#i did label all of my fuck marry kills so you guys can search the tag and see exactly how trash i am

[callmetippytumbles]

FMK: Jax, Liam and Ben

I don’t know if you are the same anon from last time, I get the sense that you are.  I feel like you want to see me kill my faves.  

Well, guess what?  You don’t know me!  

If you did know me, you would know by now that I don’t play by these rules.  I play by Tippy’s Rules because this is Tippy’s Blog!

On that note, I am fucking Jax and Liam.  Their dick is still bomb.edu/OMG.  I have said many things about fucking Jax and Liam.  At length.  

I am marrying Ben.  I have to.  For all intents and purposes, he is a Godfrey Gao clone that loves comics, art, mudslides and you.  He plays too much in the right ways and not the YOU PLAY TEW MUCH kind of way.  (Looking at you Maxwell.)  Ben can keep things light.  

While Ben will be devoted to you for the rest, he will not take your shit.  Ben will stand up to you and I find that hot.  Also, you know he would be adorable with a dog or a baby.  Maybe both.

Like I said about Zig, Ben is a nice romantic hero that I feel like I can meet.  He may not look like Godfrey (treat yourself, do that Google), but he would be a goofy guy that will be kind to you and love you like a Billy Joel song.  Just the way you are.

Thanks for the ask anon.

[zodiyack]

Rude! (3,000+ Follower Fic Special 1/3)

Pairing: Billy Hargrove x Female!Hopper!Reader

Warnings: Swearing, Billy stuff, lyrics, fluff

Song: Rude by Magic!

Words: 1,798

Summary: Billy's love for Hopper's daughter is too strong to be stopped by the tough Chief Jim Hopper. Despite being told "not in a thousand years", he plans to love her regardless.

Note: Thank you so so much! I love you all, and writing your ideas, as well as sharing mine with you, has been so fucking fun and amazing! I'm sorry for my lack of words, I wish being an author came in handy with writing this, however, all I can say is that I love you all from the bottom of my heart. I've seen people do shout-outs, and ask-related stuff with their follower things, and I may do that, I'm not sure. For now, I hope you enjoy this... Thank you all, again!

Also 1/3 means that there will be two other fics released for the 3,000+ follower present!

Taglist: @urie-bowie-mercury, @matth1w, @redspaceace-writes, @fandom-puff, @darling-i-read-it, @simonsbluee, @sebastianstanslefteyebrow, @dpaccione

Masterlist | Stranger Things Masterlist

"Saturday morning, jumped out of bed and put on my best suit. Got in my car and raced like a jet all the way to you. Knocked on your door with my heart in my hands, to ask you a question, 'cause I know that you're an old-fashioned man. Yeah."

Billy was freshly graduated, working as a lifeguard whilst his girlfriend worked her own job, both saving up for their chance to ditch Hawkins and move to California. Sweet Cali. Billy was excited to show the love of his life around the place he called home. Though, physically, he left the salty ocean and windy beach behind, the place never truly left him.

You could see it in his eyes. The waves crashing in his blue orbs. He swore the scent had just barely clung to his belongings; the smell of the tangy air that followed a majority of the state. Working at a pool was the closest he got to the memory of California. Chlorine was most certainly not the salted ocean waters, but with the circumstances, he decided it'd do.

The way his face lit up whenever he talked about his home...it made Y/n more and more excited to see it. His girlfriend had grown up in Hawkins, stayed there her whole life. Never once did the Hoppers leave Hawkins.

But the second that was introduced to Billy, he knew it had to change.

Although they were saving for a big move, Billy had...other things in mind with what to do with his first large pay-check (or series, rather. Working as a lifeguard didn't pay well with just one check). He began to work more shifts to make up for the money he'd spent, and one day after calling in for a day off, he decided to put his plan into action.

"Billy, stop messing with the tie."

"It's annoying." Hands slapped away his attempts of adjusting the black silk tie.

"Well it won't stop being annoying if you keep fucking it up."

For the first time in a long time, Neil Hargrove was calm. Not happy, not amused, not pissed off for some unjust reason- just calm. He wasn't wreaking havoc and he wasn't being an asshole to his son. Billy hadn't seen this side of his dad in quite some time, in fact, he thought something important was going on and he was about to fuck it all up. And then, Susan retreated to the living room with a camera and a freshly ironed suit.

"You're not putting me in that."

"And who asked for your opinion?" Neil deflected with a raised brow. One heavy sigh later and Billy was leaving the bathroom, dawning the whole black and white getup.

Susan clasped her hands over her mouth, a tear leaving her eye, "You look so handsome! Just like your dad!"

Billy rolled his eyes, "Great."

However, his careless attitude was swept under the rug when the blue Camaro pulled up to the police station, interrupting a clearly distressed Chief Hopper bickering with his daughter. Billy had to get himself together before stepping out of the car, jaw slack after seeing the beauty he got to call his date.

"Hello Mr-"

"Don't even try play nice with me, Hargrove. She's not going anywhere with you. End of story." Hopper kept his eyes trained on the blond, body tense like a snake preparing to strike it's prey.

Y/n grabbed Billy's arm, slowly directing him to the car, "And in the sequel, we find out I am going with Billy. End of that story."

"There is no 'sequel.' The writer got drunk and lazy." She paused, turning to face her father who stood tall, arms crossed and face unamused.

"So his daughter picked up where her father left off, and then the sequel was published and the two lived happily ever after, the end."

While her dad attempted to search for a line that would better hers and force her to stay, she pushed Billy toward the driver's side and slid into the car as fast as she could, rolling down the window as Billy started it up. "Bye! I'll be back before midnight!"

The two drove off toward the school, leaving behind a trail of dust and very, very, pissed off Hopper.

Prom was better than Billy thought it would be. He didn't want to go at first, but after Max found out and spoke to her mom about it (the little redhead a cupid-in-the-making), Neil pushed him to go (as he was "doing something else besides being a lazy-no-good rebel"). It was then that he called Y/n and asked if she'd be going.

The suit came in handy. Clashing with his rocker aesthetic, he put it back on once more. The once-annoying tie proved to be somewhat okay in the end.

Can I have your daughter for the rest of my life? Say yes, say yes, 'cause I need to know. You say I'll never get your blessing "till the day I die, tough luck my friend, but the answer is no!"

Why you gotta be so rude? Don't you know I'm human too? Why you gotta be so rude? I'm gonna marry her anyway. Marry that girl, marry her anyway! Marry that girl, yeah, no matter what you say! Marry that girl, and we'll be a family! Why you gotta be so rude?

With a deep breath, he ran-over the conversation in his head once more. Like a script for an actor, he had thought of every possible outcome and every possible line for him to face it with. He almost chickened out as his fist rose to the door, but it was too late, for his knuckles rapped against it before he realized he was even knocking.

El opened the door, eyes wide when she saw the familiar mullet and button-down. "Papa..." She muttered as she backed away and out of view.

Hopper traded places with her, his lazy expression sobering up instantaneously, replaced with a grumpy scowl. "Hargrove."

"Mr. Hopper, sir."

"What are you doing on my front porch?"

He swallowed roughly, palms sweaty against his sides. "I was wondering if I could talk to you."

"You seem to be doing just that right now, Hargrove." Hop crossed his arms and clenched his jaw.

Well, this was certainly not something Billy had thought of. He was on panic mode internally, attempting to find any response that could save his hide and accomplish what he set out to do. Unfortunately, the word-vomit button seemed to be misplaced under the button labeled "help".

"I'd like to marry your daughter, sir."

Hop's eyes grew just as big in size as El's had when she opened the door. He choked on his own surprise, coughing it off, then glaring at the boy in front of him. "Over my dead body, Hargrove. If that's all, I'd strongly advise you to get off of my fucking porch while you're still alive."

I hate to do this, you leave no choice; can't live without her. Love me or hate me, we will be boys- standing at that alter. And we will fly away, to another galaxy, you know. You know she's in love with me, she will go anywhere I go-

"Billy, he's just stubborn."

"No, no, I don't think he likes me."

Y/n sighed, rubbing her boyfriend's back. He hadn't told her of his proposal plans, only that Hop seemed to have it out for him. "It'll take time, but he'll warm up to you!"

"It's been how many years since he's met me?"

"To be fair, your reputation wasn't doing you any good until now..."

"It's not like that was fucking obvious." He slouched further down in the front seat of his Camaro. To Billy, all hope was lost. If he couldn't get Hopper to give him his blessing, he was sure he'd lose his goddamned mind.

Y/n frowned. Her frown flipped around as an idea popped into her head, her lips finding Billy's knuckles and quirking his attention. "Even if he never likes you, I'm not going anywhere."

Billy laughed softly, "he'll fucking kill me if you go against him."

"Eh, that's only if he can catch us."

"You're out of your fucking mind, Y/n Hopper."

"I know."

The rest of the night was spent in the Camaro, of course, doing one of Billy's favorite pastimes. By the time the sun rose, Billy was sneaking a kiss to a giggling Y/n before dropping from her window in the cabin and running to his car, parked far enough that Hop or El wouldn't notice. He blew her one more kiss, which she pretended to catch, then he broke into a sprint.

Maybe, he thought, just maybe; there was still a chance.

His knuckles hit the door again, shifting on his feet nervously. It swung open to reveal Hopper, an unimpressed look bringing no surprise Billy's way. It was quite expected, honestly.

"What." His tone made it clear he wasn't up for fucking around.

"Mr. Hopper, if you just give me one chance to prove to you that-"

"No, no, no, no, no. Let me make it very clear to you that I want you to have nothing to do with my daughter whatsoever. No marriage, no friendship, I don't even approve of you guys fucking or whatever-"

"We're in a serious relationship, sir. It's nothing like you think it is."

This made Hop laugh. He continued to do so, holding his stomach, until he realized Billy was unamused. "Oh, you're serious?... My answer is still no, Hargrove. My answer will always be no. Go find someone else's daughter's heart to break. You're not hurting mine."

"It's not like-"

Before he could even get the words out, he was met with a door in his face. Turned down, again.

Can I have your daughter for the rest of my life? Say yes, say yes, 'cause I need to know. You say I'll never get your blessing "till the day I die, tough luck my friend, 'cause the answer's still no!"

Why you gotta be so rude? Don't you know I'm human too? Why you gotta be so rude? I'm gonna marry her anyway. Marry that girl, marry her anyway! Marry that girl, yeah, no matter what you say! Marry that girl, and we'll be a family! Why you gotta be so rude, rude?

Again, again, and again, Billy incessantly pleaded with Hopper. Different tactics were all met with the same answer; rejection.

He held up a sign outside the cabin, only for Hopper to close the curtain and chuckle as he sipped his coffee.

He asked at the door again, only for Hop to threaten to give him a black eye (which was met with "aren't you the sheriff? Isn't that illegal?").

He raced past the police station, Max leaning out the window with another sign, only for Hop to threaten them with holding cells.

He even went as far as to ask Max and El to help, but Hopper had none of that, and sent Max home with a rant full of nos.

However, if Jim Hopper thought any of it would get it into Billy's head that getting his blessing was just not happening- he was as wrong as Nancy when she claimed not to have feelings for Jonathan.

Billy had another plan in mind, and this one was impossible to say no to.

Can I have your daughter for the rest of my life? Say yes, say yes, 'cause I need to know. You say I'll never get your blessing "till the day I die, tough luck my friend- but no still means no!"

"Hopper." Billy stood before his desk, interrupting his nice date with a delicious doughnut, and earning a very annoyed glare. "I got Miss Byer's blessing. Aren't you two a thing?"

"You son of a-"

"I got Eleven's too."

"Hargrove, I'm gonna-"

"Before you cuss me out, I think you should know that I've got a stable job, an interview with a mechanic so I have a job when the pool closes for the winter, and I've got a house on the market I'm looking at. I'm devoted to your daughter and she's devoted to me. You may not like me, but I think you're a great dad, better than the one I was unfortunately stuck with. You raised a strong and amazing woman. She's incredible and I admit, she deserves better than me-"

"You don't have to say that twice." Hopper huffed, crossing his arms.

"I know she deserves so much better than me, I'm surprised she's even with me too. But she loves me, and I think you can see that. I love her too. I would never, in a million years, break her heart."

Jim stayed silent for a few minutes. The silence brought uneasiness to Billy, but that was intentional on Hopper's behalf. He finally piped up with a cough, clearing his throat, before his piercing eyes met Billy's blue orbs.

"I'll hold you to that, Hargrove."

Why you gotta be so rude? Don't you know I'm human too? Why you gotta be so rude? I'm gonna marry her anyway. Marry that girl, marry her anyway! Marry that girl, yeah, no matter what you say! Marry that girl, and we'll be a family! Why you gotta be so rude? Why you gotta be so rude?

Bonus:

(after the wedding)

"What was that about a no?" Billy quipped with his infamous smirk.

"You're lucky I'm sheriff, Hargrove."

Why you gotta be so rude?

[scott-mccall-the-hot-girl]

my ultimate guide to thiam fic !!

( as a new teen wolf stan )

-

the classic post war, long ass (multi chapter) fic !!with great development that genuinely made me laugh out loud, they have the best friendship in this & i love it very much. ( like theo teaches liam to drive and i just *happy sobs* ) a fundamental in thiam fanfiction !! all stans have probably already read it but if you haven’t this is in fact a threat ,, go show this vv iconic story some love !!

Airplanes - Captainmintyfresh

Summary: After the Anuk-ite and the hunters are dealt with Liam needs a break. Cue Theo and a road trip that Liam should know better than to think will be peaceful.

Not Rated, No Archive Warnings Apply, Completed, 43/43 Chapters, Words: 236,875 (236k)

-

okay okay so this one is also post 6B !! but ,, now we introduce fighting monroe & the hunters again ,, so we get the boys & a new mission !! so if you like an intresting plot 11/10 would recommend !! just to be clear this ISN’T complete ,, if that turns you off i understand but definitely give this one a read !! it litterally have theo doing crossword puzzles & fighting zombies

Vacancy Signs - LovelyLittleGrim

Summary: Theo and Liam are in Manhattan negotiating a pack allyship when the zombie apocalypse breaks out. Now, the two of them have to find their way back to Beacon Hills without getting eaten by zombies or killing one another.

Rated: Explicit, Graphic Description of Violence, Not Completed, 15/17 Chapters, Words: 89,605 (89k)

-

Royalty AU !! I REPEAT ROYALTY AU !! a fantastic au where i stan their moms more than i stan them !! genuinely so good at the childhood rivals to lovers trope !! i’m genuinely obsessed with this one. has made me cry more than once ,, hurts in a good way <3 the ending is just *chefs kiss* also one of the tags is genuinely: # theo and liam make bad choices for over 130k straight !! if that doesn’t sound appealing i don’t know what does !!

Artificial Love - songbvrd

Summary: Prince Theo and Prince Liam are forced to spend every Summer together from age five onwards. They hate each other, and usually find ways to make each other miserable as much as possible in their six weeks together. But when they're reunited because of intended unions as adults, things change. They're both supposed to be married to noble women, but neither of them is as interested in anyone else as they are with their childhood rival.

Rated: Mature, No Archive Warnings Apply, Completed, Chapters: 32/32, Words: 172,935 (172k)

-

so if you are in the mood for a crack fic that’s not explicitally a crack fic this is for you !! okay so i’m really hit or miss with AU’s ,, sometimes i feel like they don’t quite capture the characters right but this story have the BEST dramatic liam i have ever seen in my life !! basically they all live in the same apartment building & it’s fantastic !! i saw this one floating around a lot but the summary didn’t really unrest me until i have it a shot !! so go read it rn !! also nolan & brett are genuinely fantastic and make me wheeze ,, LIKE ACTUALLY VERBALLY LAUGHING !! all i’m gonna say is that my fav characters are scott & the beetles but that won’t make actual sense until you read it !!

The Neighbors Song - TheodoreR

Summary: “I always hear you singing on your balcony every morning, but suddenly you’ve stopped?”

Or the one where Theo annoys Liam every morning with his awful singing until he doesn’t anymore and Liam is even more annoyed. Liam hates every single thing about his mornings -the fact that they happen in the morning alone is enough. The thing Liam hates the most about his mornings though is the terrible voice of the guy who lives below him. He can’t sing for shit and Liam tried to politely let him understand that by throwing flour and water on his balcony, and also by shouting it to him, you can’t sing for shit!, and then by writing it into a note he proceeded to attach to his door, but this Raeken guy just keeps doing it, every single morning, like a fucking rooster. Liam did nothing to deserve this. He probably didn’t do anything to deserve better either to be fair, he doesn’t expect to open his window and be welcomed by some angelic voice singing him good morning, he’d just be happy with nothing. Silence. That’s something Liam can appreciate in mornings. Just some bark from his dog and the sound of his misery and that’s it. But no, god forbid the new guy lets him have that.

Rated: Explicit, Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Wanrings, Completed, 8/8 Chapters, Words: 42,814 (42k)

-

me: i’m not a big fan of AU’s ,, proceeds to talk about ANOTHER au… OKAY BUT THIS ONE !! it’s not complete but the author has been updating regularly ,, vv slow burn !! but in a REALLY intresting way !! i lOVE LIAM IN THIS SO MUCH ,, he is such a diaster of a person and it’s wonderful !! they have a great dynamic & i’m sucker for general puppy pack content ( and erica reyes being a badass ) !! also theo plays lacrosse in this & i really like it ahhhhh ,, also liam is just being an artic monkeys stan the whole time & theo is like *que confused repressed gay noises*

Inglorious Roommates - honeyscape

Summary: A roommate is defined as “a person with whom one shares a room.”

Theo would say a roommate was more along the lines of, “The person who's the bane of his existence. The weirdo that sleeps for days. The spaz that exercises at 3am. The guy with a revolving door of annoying friends. An insufferable human being that Theo has no control over living in his room.”

Example: Theo hates his roommate Liam.

-

okay okay i hate myself but i have another WIP for y’all !! this one is jUST FANTASTIC. i’m genuinely so upset it’s most likely not going to updated again *incoherent screaming ensues*. for this story ,, it’s very theo-centric bUT thats bc it ends right before liam becomes a concrete member of the story !! ANYWAY: basic plot = theo & acquiring not one but two children ,, so #dad theo but he is still crusty & homeless and i love him very much. it’s just so GOOD !! just read if you want to experience my fav theo coming out story & him etching high school musical

Look who's talking - Captainmintyfresh

Summary: Theo had been labeled many things in his life. Evil, failure, monster. He'd never thought Father would be one of those things but as he looked across the table to a six year old with blue smears of bubble gum icecream across her face trying to coax the first words out of her sister. Finger jabbing towards Theo's face as she repeated 'Daddy' again and again he couldn't bring himself to dispute the label.

(Theo accidentally adopts two young werewolves)

Not Rated, Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings, Not Completed, Chapters: 16/?, Words: 48740 ( 48k )

-

so here me out: post-canon ( poetry like angst ) summer get away !! just the boys doing cute little domestic things together whilst pining !! theo’s guilt in this is just so powerful & aGjffkgkkfkvkdlv !! i think it’s so interesting to see how they interact in this one, it’s just very heart warming !! and it features one of my favorite niche teen wolf tropes of theo being great with like seven year old girls- it’s just so good ,, very much a wonderful little one shot that just makes your heart happy.

(next time i see you you'll show me) a hundred different ways to say the same things - cherrysprite

Summary: “...You deserve good things,” Liam says eventually. He makes sure not to look at Theo even though he can feel his eyes turn on him. Somehow he can already tell that Theo doesn’t believe him.

Liam instantly makes that the goal of this summer - making Theo believe him.

Rating: Teen and Up, No Archive Warnings Apply, Chapters: 1/1, Words: 28875 ( 28k )

-

okay so this next section of fic recs is a bit different !!

two of my favorite authors !! and a compilation of fics i’ve read by them both !!

for context: these two have written some genuinely gorgeous fics, like pure poetry, they explore the real gritty & scary side of our boys relationship in such a wonderful way. they’ve both used some of my favorite tropes & i love them very much !!

whenever i need something soothing but so genuinely intresting & enticing these are my go to !! ( also they both write a lot of good nolan angst & some vv good fics with hayden )

go check out:

eneiryu

as well as fallingforboys

here are some of my favorite fics by them ~

darling i want you here in my arms (kiss the pain away, i know you can) - fallingforboys

even before you touched me, i belonged to you (all you had to do was look at me) - fallingforboys

memories linger like tattoo scars (but your touch on my skin is just as permanent) - fallingforboys

skin, bones, a stolen heart, and an ugly creature lurking underneath -fallingforboys

i don't know how to breathe in the place i called home - fallingforboys

whisper your gossamer truths into the shadow, maybe you'll find the answers you're searching for - fallingforboys

between the mountains and the valley we built a monument to our regret - eneiryu

cracked the hinges of the cage and waited for you - eneiryu

-

okay and finally: since i am a self centered whore

my own fic: an rendition of the # elevator scene

it’s basically my version of post canon if we did get the kiss in the elevator. we got a classic liam pov in which he is has 12/10 for extreme bi diaster energy even whilst being shot at !! so go him ig…

Fuck Off, Fuck This & Fuck It! - nefelibata_peach

Summary: Liam thought to himself heart rate climbing, they were bound to be dead by morning. So he thought with everything but his brain and he kissed him.

Where Liam Dunbar is very confused, slightly traumatized, and just a bit scared but hey, aren't they all! Bad decisions ensue as two boys fight in a war they never did sign up for.

Rating: Teen and Up, Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Chapters: 1/1, Words: 3558 ( 3k )

[docholligay]

Please rant/rave (well, we already know which one it will be here) about Harry Potter!

GEE I HOPE THIS WAS WORTH WAITING FOR

OH MY GOD. The level of hatred I have for Harry Fucking Goddamn Potter, the culture around Harry Fucking Potter, extending its poisonous tentacles even to the concept of young adult fiction, fantasy, and the United Kingdom as a country and people. 

When you being on this, you may think, “Oh, Doc will explain that Harry Potter sucks because JKR hates trans women” and I will say, oh no, dear reader, that is a fantastic reason to hate the author, and I really suggest we all continue to hate her, and perhaps not purchase the QUEEN’S TONNES of officially licensed merchandise and movies and theme parks that give her stupid little fucking hands all that cash, but no, that is not why I hate the work. There are a number of great works done by terrible people, and the further out the lens of history gets the truer this is. 

I hate Harry Potter because it fucking sucks, and mentally stifled an entire fucking generation. 

“Well, Doc, Harry Potter was really there for me when--” Oh my god I could not fucking care LESS about your personal emotion connection to “orphan wizard boy turns out to be a rich aristocrat yet somehow less woke than Cinderella though” I have personally emotional connections to hot fucking garbage pails of media properties, and if someone came barreling through talking about the myriad ways in which they were horrible, I would be like, “Oh, you aren’t fucking wrong, pal” 

Harry Potter gained wild ass popularity in part due to its magnificent sorting system of Smart, Brave, Evil, and Other, because there’s nothing liberals like more than being able to put everyone’s personality into an easily labeled box, which is why astrology is so popular, or for the intellectuals, Myers-Briggs, which is just as fake but with the veneer of science. This allowed people to give into the tribalism they so desperately liked to pretend they did not possess, and also allow them to write thinkpieces about “The misunderstood Hufflepuff” or “Slytherins aren’t all bad!” or really anything that allows them to write a very real piece about their very imagined oppression for being a part of a totally fake house in a children’s book. Excellent use of your sociology degree, Kai, I thought the addition of phrases like, ‘Content of socialization” and “axes of oppression” really spoke to the struggles you face when wearing a green and silver scarf. 

The other reason it became popular is that it’s essentially wallpaper paste formed into characters. I have read all of the books, and I could not tell you even remotely what Harry’s defining personality traits are other than “protagonist”. In American, at least, a large part of it was the fascination with all things British, with the idea of boarding school and prefects and uniforms that aren’t inexplicably chinos and polo shirts for nine year olds. It allowed children to project onto something so bland that it could be anything. And for children, THAT’S FINE. There is a great deal of bland media made for children, but what I’m speaking to is the fandom, which is largely well over the age of 18. 

Because if we look at the books, are they...actually good? Was it good, or did I experience it as a child? I mean, honestly, on a literary level, are they, or was it just like we all watched Friends, we did it because everyone else was doing it, because I have a distinct memory of a series that involves such greats as “magical geegaws with poorly defined rules that are quickly forgotten despite being able to solve later problems quickly” or “Everyone loves Harry or is a bad guy, or secretly loved Harry all along” 

Oh, speaking of, man, if this was an actual well-written book, wouldn’t it have been wild to have Snape’s whole thing be to teach us that sometimes people do good things for the wrong reasons? Instead of naming your fucking child after the guy who ‘protected you’ because he still wanted to bone your mom? “After all this time” “Always.” 

While all this could have been explained, we have Quidditch added into the mix instead because 20 pages of the goddamn Puppy Bowl is exactly what I was looking for while I was waiting for JK to move the goddamn ball on literally any of these actual magical concepts. 

Harry Potter is a fucking trust fund baby, star quarterback, who grows up to be a cop and marries his high school sweetheart. (Speaking of, why were we shocked that JKR turned out to be a piece of shit when this was and always has been the conclusion of Harry Potter? Why are liberals so fucking into this series that upholds structures like it ain’t no one’s business? It’s a series that opines that those beneath us “Muggles” should be kept in the dark from us) Literally, he finds out he is a wizard and has a dragon-guarded fucking VAULT OF CASH. At 11. It’s such a series for little tyrants, you are special from birth and need do nothing to prove it, here is a letter certifying as such. Oh, not only are you rich and the greatest seeker and have excellent quips, but also your parents were not only rebels, but the best of rebels, and so deeply involved that your parents were killed by the big bad personally, again, because you are so special. His mother’s love literally saves his ass over and over again, because he was SO SPECIAL. He fought Voldemort FROM THE BEGINNING, and WON.  It’s literally the most privilege baby fantasy in the world. 

“But Doooooooooooc, it’s for chiiiiiiiiiiiiiiildren” 

A) Yeah, and you’re 32, you’re making my fucking point about Harry Potter setting an entire generation up for intellectual failure to launch. 

B) Okay, and? I can think of a bunch of kids’ books off the top of my head that in no way require specialness to be given by birth so as to roll out the red carpet for master protagonist. The Hunger Games. Watership Down. A Series of Unfortunate Events. The Chronicles of FUCKING NARNIA, about which I have only a small handful of particularly kind things to say. I’ve never read Percy Jackson, but it’s my understanding that despite his being a literal demigod, the attitudes of the supporting cast are allowed to fall between the extremes of “Appreciates Percy” and “naughty or will learn” Harry does nothing to improve himself even after knowing that he is HUNTED BY THE BIG BAD! “I won’t do this because I don’t like Snape”. So There” which, again, if this series were written with the slightest bit of care or know-how, could be a humbling fucking plot point! BUT NO THAT WOULD BE NAUGHTY. 

But the real reason I hate Harry Potter so much has everything to do with the fandom surrounding it, and how it intellectually stunted a generation of adults. The promise of Harry Potter was that it was supposed to make a new generation of readers, and so the popularity of them was pushed, and so there was discussion of teaching them in schools, but I tell you fucking what, I know a whole lot more folks who grew up reading Harry Potter that never advanced beyond reading YA, or even just rereading the entire series every year and that’s pretty much them done and dusted. 

In the attempt to recapture whatever it was about Harry Potter that attracted children (A lot of it was your peers doing it. I read them all as they came out, and it was literally the equivalent of watching the game so you could talk at the water cooler. That was never going to be recaptured) people, who by this time were likely in their teens, kept getting recommended stuff at the same and same level. No one ever felt pushed to read things that are challenging, to read things that have some of the concepts or themes of Harry Potter but maybe complicate. I know FAR more adults who read adult books that aren’t into Harry Potter, even if they were as children, than the reverse. 

But Doc, why is reading only books meant for 14 year olds a problem??? I mean I suppose I can’t convince you that comfort is not the job of literature or of life, it is the job of an easy chair, because Americans especially are decadent as fuck about being comfy cozy all the time and if anything causes them distress or pain it should be immediately avoided. But Maybe I can convince you that you’re fucking up these books for actual ass children who deserve to have their own writing section without adults bringing their fucking asses into it. They deserve their own spaces. There’s a number of YA editors who have talked about the difficult space YA now occupies because since Potter’s blowup, it’s no longer a niche category, but basically “adult easy reads” and so they have been buying books that are more about the tastes of adult buyers than of literal 14 year olds. 

Is that not...sad? To anyone else? Honestly, and this is not part of the essay because it’s a broader reaching problem, but CHILDREN’S MEDIA IS NOT FOR US. CHILDREN’S MEDIA IS NOT FOR US. CHILDREN’S MEDIA IS FOR FUCKING CHILDREN. The fucking 40-23 set really needs to get their shit together and grow up a little bit and engage in some fucking adult media, and maybe, if we support what we’re actually looking for FOR ADULTS, it will come to us. No one is saying you can’t read Harry Potter or watch some Cartoon Network show, but like, search your heart and come the fuck on. Engage in something more complex. If not for yourselves, for the kids getting shoved into simplified adult stories. It should not be about us. 

ANYWAY, my larger point is that it was Harry Potter, a badly written series about a magical boy who was chosen and magic and also rich and also a favorite of the headmaster and also more clever than most adults and also spoke the same magical snake language as the big bad and was also star quarterback, but at least there was a system in which you could buy a scarf in block colors and feel like you belonged to a team. 

(But not a sports team! lol handegg! I’m cool I don’t get into sports! Except Quidditch.) 

[chalkrevelations]

SO, Episode 28 of Word of Honor was a roller-coaster ride.

(Spoilers, as ever, so scroll away and come back later if you want to see it unspoiled.)

They managed two entirely separate scenes in this one that had me going “Did … did that just happen? Is this really happening?” Let’s get this one out of the way first: The scene of Zhao Jing in his serial killer lair with the altar and memorial tablets and his serial killer trophies. Y’all. I swear, scene opens with a shot from behind of drunk Awful Yifu in his Fantasy Ancient China underwear staggering through a set of doors into a room with candles and draperies, and before I was able to register the rest of the set design, my brain gave a terrified squeak and started rabbiting around like, “Oh my god, please do not let this be Xie’er’s bedroom. Oh my god, they wouldn’t actually go there, not even hinted, surely that would be too far!” Then my eyeballs caught up and registered the set, so I thought I was safe, but that didn’t even turn out to be the moment in the scene that had me going “Is this really happening?” (Although I do think the fact my brain immediately jumped to that scenario speaks to the creepy vibe the show has managed to build between Awful Yifu and Xie Wang). So, Zhao Jing is a sloppy drunk and absolutely shitfaced, stumbling around and yelling at his dead brothers, and I’m sitting here watching him, feeling like I need a shower, with my skin a little bit trying to crawl off my body, and then he picks up Rong Xuan’s memorial tablet and pours an entire stream of alcohol out of the pitcher all over it, and I say, out loud, to the screen, “Oh my god, they just had him figuratively piss on that tablet.” Only, no, they didn’t, because there was no need to have him do it figuratively because then, he literally whips it out of his pants and takes a piss on the tablet, complete with sound effects, and I’m open-mouthed, thinking “Is this really happening?” As some background, I grew up in mainstream U.S. culture where ancestor veneration isn’t formally practiced - although it isn’t an entirely absent part of our cultural mythos, it’s just that now when I when I offer cultus to the Patres Patriae, it’s deliberate and intentional – but I’ve been doing ancestor work in my particular flavor of polytheism for long enough, and intensely enough, that I had a visceral reaction of disgust and horror to this. Hand literally clapped over my mouth in shock, even after watching all of his ranting at his dead brothers and spitting at his dead shifu and just generally being a disrespectful asshole with delusions of grandeur building up to it. So, yes, show, you have indeed convinced me that Awful Yifu is the worst, even in an episode that also devoted that much screentime to Prince Jin.

Fortunately, the other “Is this really happening?” moment was at the other end of the spectrum, somewhere in the face of how married Zhou Zishu and Wen Kexing are, which I cannot believe passed censorship. I know I keep saying that, but every time I think I’ve adjusted to how far they’re going to go, the show laughs gay-ly as it pushes the envelope another mile down the road. Truly, this show is the gift that keeps on giving where these two are concerned, and not just because of Zhang Zhehan’s face. I realize I had to spend 50 episodes deciphering Lan Wangji’s smallest microexpression (not that I’m complaining), but I can’t believe how expressive both Zhang Zhehan and Gong Jun are in these roles, with Gong Jun’s little sadness eyebrows when WKX wants ZZS to humor him, and how soft Zhang Zhehan’s face gets when ZZS looks at WKX, and how great they both are at making all this look like a pair of adults who are in an established relationship and confident of each other. I’d be as weak as Wen Kexing if Zhou Zishu pouted at me the way he does when he tells Chengling that he can’t do anything to help decorate the Manor except observe and direct because he’s oh, so injured and frail, poor him. Wen Kexing can laugh at Zhou Zishu when ZZS pokes at him by saying the papercrafter was such a beauty! (Compare this to his reaction back in the day, when ZZS deftly manipulated him out of bringing A-Xiang along on their honeymoon adventures by calling her a beauty and implying she might draw attention away from WKX!) Wen Kexing waves kitchen knives at Zhou Zishu in (somewhat fond) exasperation! Zhou Zishu now accepts Wen Kexing piling his plate with food at the table as perfectly normal! There’s no crying in Spring Festival! They send their kid outside to watch the fireworks so they can have sex some alone time! (Merciless killers. How the fuck so adorable?) Someone must have backed up an entire truckful of money to the house of someone very important to get this aired, because what is the heterosexual explanation for … any of this?

Other thoughts:

We continue to get small things that maintain the parallels between Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishou and Gu Xiang/Cao Weining, including the mirrored theme of finding a home with a welcoming family, shown through family dinner, and expressed through WKX’s description of his former self as a “lonely ghost,” echoing A-Xiang’s self-description (to Shen Shen in an earlier ep) the same way.

HAN YING! Listen, I am stupidly attached to this bit player, and not just because he’s a familiar face (because half of Wen Xu’s screentime in The Untamed was just a disembodied head hanging at the entrance to the Unclean Realm, so it’s not like there was time to get … attached). And I say stupidly attached because ever since we first saw the way he looked at ZZS with big puppy heart-eyes, I knew he was going to be a goner. I just know they’re gonna fridge him for the next step in ZZS’s journey, because something has to pry ZZS out of Four Seasons Manor, as much as I, personally, would like nothing better than to see 8 more episodes of wedded bliss for two gay dads and their son. (OK, one thing I would like better would be if their daughter and son-in-law came to live with them, too.) At least it looks like Han Ying will get to die taking a figurative bullet for ZZS, which will make him happy and might prevent him from finding out the Glazed Armor he’s so proud of bringing is actually pointless, because don’t think that didn’t hurt to know while I watched him being so proud of managing to get his hands on it. But I’d prefer he didn’t die at all, show. Also, why on earth are there only two (completed) stories under the ZZS/Han Ying label on AO3? Because yes, I have looked. I have the search open in another tab right now. Why haven’t more people taken advantage of this guy’s utter devotion for ZZS? How are people looking at the way Han Ying reverently brushes his fingers over the single white blossom on the wall mural in ZZS’s rooms back in Prince Jin’s palace and not falling all over that?

Xie’er, oh, Xie’er. You’re killing me, here. I need someone to rescue you, you desperate affection-starved little sociopath. So, to recap, last time we met, your Awful Yifu finally let it slip that he was never ever going to acknowledge your existence in public. So now, you’re being a very clever boy, setting up a scheme to manipulate him into having to publicly acknowledge you if he’s going to claim credit for your successes (because I’m sure you can’t even contemplate failure) in service to Prince Jin. So clever, but I hate to tell you, you’re clever at everything except learning from your mistakes when it comes to your Awful Yifu. You really learned nothing from Beauty Ghost, did you? Ugh, your sad little face as you watch your hot mess of an Awful Yifu while you wait for the maids to make tea – it hurts me. Please tell me you’re playing some kind of long game, and you’re just a really great actor. Because he’s sloppy drunk, and right now, watching your face journey, I think maybe you think that makes what he’s saying true – that he’s not guarding his words, and he means it when he tells you that of course he loves you and would never leave you. “Are you still angry with me?” Awful Yifu literally asks. “Alright, I’ll apologize. I was just mad. It didn’t mean anything. We’re together in this. I’ll always stand by you.” Xie’er, you have got to stop believing gaslighting abusive men who shovel that BS. This is what they call the honeymoon period in the cycle of abuse. Seriously. This is textbook. Please stop making the same mistakes over and over again. Maybe think about the fact that your Awful Yifu is, single-handedly, the reason the Department of the Unfaithful actually exists in the first place. He is THAT AWFUL. I would like to think actually seeing his serial killer trophy room will make a difference, now that you have some confirmation of what Tragicomic Ghost told you and not the ability to wave it off as part of some he-said, she-said situation where how could we ever possibly know the truth, despite the fact that Zhao Jing has shown he’ll stab anyone in the back in his quest for power? But, then, I also thought maybe learning last ep that he never planned to publicly acknowledge you would make some kind of difference. Are you going to roll the dice again, gambler? Because I’ll tell you right now, the house always wins. (Not that you’d listen to me anymore than you listened to Beauty Ghost.)

(Also, wait wait waitwaitwait. Waitaminit. This is pure speculation and probably way too out there to be true (oh, but, someone’s going to write this AU for me, right?) Hot-mess drunk yifu tells Xie’er that they’ve been depending on each other “ever since I picked you up and brought you back home.” I can’t remember if we know anything about Xie Wang’s background at this point, but it does sound like Zhao Jing might have literally yoinked him off the street to raise him. He … he doesn’t think Xie’er is actually Yan’er, does he? Only he kidnapped the wrong orphaned urchin by mistake? I’m just sayin’, thinking back to Shen Shen’s reaction to finding out Zhen Yan was still alive, it would be exactly the kind of thing Zhao Jing would do, to keep this kid that his brother(s) wanted to find hidden right under their noses.)

Chengling and the chicken. I can’t, y’all. And Zhou Zishu’s face as soon as he realizes what Wen Kexing is telling Chengling to do – he knows this is going to be a show.

Prince Jin, you are almost as bad as Xie’r and his awful Yifu combined:

Prince Jin: Zhou Zishu, you mastermind, your super-secret spy network continues to spread everywhere, including into my very own palace. Oh, the things you must be plotting against me!

Zhou Zishu, chillin’ at Plum Blossom Manor, day-drinking, dressing up in pretty festive robes, taking advantage of his disciple’s unpaid labor so he doesn’t have to raise a finger for himself, and providing his husband with sex so incredible he is never required to actually cook: “OK, my gay husband and our son-with-two-dads, how about we just stay here together forever and be happy?”

Also Prince Jin: *Creeps on Zhou Zishu like a gaslighting m’fker*

Anyway, if Prince Jin always knew what Han Ying was up to all along, is the letter about ZZS’s father a plant, with false info? It was just kind of suspiciously hanging out in the open on Prince Jin’s desk.

[13-reasons-ideas]

Finding Peace in Another Part 5

A/N: So sorry for taking so long to update. I had MAJOR writers block. I wanted to make this a slow burn but I just couldn’t resist. I am going to update two chapters tonight. The next chapter contains smut just a heads up. Sorry if the spacing is weird. Enjoy! TW: mentions of parental abuse and violence. 

After a slow morning, lunch finally rolled around. Tony and I walked to the cafeteria together and he told me about the merits of cassette versus CD in his car. I didn’t really follow since none of my family or friends back home is really that in to cars but I nodded and asked questions at the seemingly appropriate times. Going our separate ways as usual I went and sat with the jocks who seemed to be very engaged in a game of Fuck, Marry, Kill. 

“Hey Becca, you want in?” Bryce asked. 

“Sure. Who am I choosing between?” I agreed as I began pulling out my lunch and setting it on the table. Scott has long since stopped giving me shit for my “boring crime against sandwiches” as he so eloquently put it one Friday afternoon. 

“The Chrises.” 

“Okay. Is Pine included? Because I could honestly take or leave him.” 

“Nah. Evans, Pratt, and Hemsworth.” Scott answered as Montgomery sat down. He did a double take at Monty’s state. He was still bandaged from last night. 

“What are we playing?” Montgomery asked nodding at Scott. 

“Fuck, Marry, Kill.” I responded before turning back to Scott and the rest of the boys. “Easy. Kill Pratt, fuck Hemsworth, Marry Evans.” I told them, ticking them off on my fingers in rapid succession. 

“Explain? And how much thought have you put into this that you can do that so fast?” Bryce asked, surprise evident on his face.

“Not that much honestly. I’m not really a big Chris Pratt fan so kill him. Fuck Chris Hemsworth because he could dirty talk me in his deliciously smooth Australian accent. And marry Chris Evans because he’s adorable. Who wouldn’t want to marry that man? He’s like the sweetest, most innocent man to grace the streets of LA in I don’t know how long. And have you seen his dog? Dodger is reason enough.” I explained to them as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Bryce shrugged accepting my answer, and the rest of the team murmured sounds of agreement. I turned to Monty and jerked my head asking if he wanted in. When he nodded I stopped to think for a second. “Okay. Scarlet Johansen, Kaley Cuoco, or... Emma Watson?” 

“Kill Kaley, fuck Scarlet, and marry Emma.” He responded smoothly. I only nodded in response. The boys looked at me as though I should ask for an explanation. 

“What? The man has taste. I don’t need an explanation.” I told them simply. Scott laughed and we played a few more rounds before the bell rang. As we got up and left, I pulled Montgomery aside. “You’re going to want to remove the dressings on your hand and brow tonight. Make sure to clean everything again before you go to bed and after you shower. Oh and try not to sweat too much at practice.” I told him, examining the bruising to his face. 

“I know. Not my first rodeo but thanks for checking in.” 

“Anytime. Have a good day, I gotta head to class.” I replied before turning and walking to class, trying not to think about the boy I patched up having to go through that pain before and, most likely again in the future. 

Montgomery and I had been talking more and more in the past few weeks. We had spent more time with each other than I anticipated when I first met him. That first night he came to me for help was not the last. He would swing by after school if there was a fight with a student or, as I came to discover the third time he showed up under the cover of darkness, his dad was on another violent rampage and took his anger out on him. A couple of times my dad was home, so we had to sneak around quietly and I had to patch him up in silence. My dad was a heavy sleeper so he probably couldn’t hear us, but it seemed like a better option to stay quiet. Since he wasn’t around much, he couldn’t really tell me what to do without acknowledging that fact, but I figured not letting him know about the boy who came to me bloody a couple of times a week and slept in my bed, was a good way to avoid a fight. After a while he would come by at night just to talk. 

      My friendship with Montgomery slowly but all together quickly began to morph into something more. When my dad wasn’t home we would talk to each other about anything and everything while I patched him up and fed him. We also talked more at school. It seemed to everyone else that we were just becoming more comfortable around each other, like Scott and I. But to us-at least from my perspective-it was more than that. Montgomery made me feel like myself again. He made me feel a little more whole. I knew about his reputation at school, but I felt safer around him than I had felt with anyone in months. We decided to go for a mid-night walk in the hills, away from people, so we could just… be. We did not have to worry about labels and what other people thought, or about parents who weren’t around or didn’t care. As we walked along the path, he took my small smooth hand, holding it in his large one, rough from years of sports and fighting. And when I shivered, he gave me his jacket so I wouldn’t be cold. Finding a bench that overlooked the town, we sat down and started up a game of twenty questions. Initially we stuck to safe topics; favourite cereal, worst subject at school, Coke or Pepsi- he’s a Coke guy thank God, before moving on to heavier topics. I felt him put his arm around me and I leaned into him to rest my head on his shoulder. As we got to talking more and it was his turn, he asked me “what is the most painful thing someone has ever said to you?”

I felt my breath hitch as I was brought back to the day my world crashed around me. Staying silent for a long time, I whispered back “maybe we can talk about that some other time.” I felt him nod and run his hand through my hair. Changing the topic, I asked him another simple question, “dogs or cats?”

“Easy. Dogs. But not the little ones. Big dogs.”

I smiled at him. “Good answer. Your turn.”

He took a deep breath and asked me softly, almost afraid of what my answer would be. “What would you do if I kissed you right now?”

I gasped a little at his question. It caught me off guard but not in a bad way. I turned my body to look at him. He was looking down at his sneakers. I lifted his chin and whispered, “why don’t you do it and find out.” as I leaned in. His eyes widened for a second and then he closed the gap. His lips met mine and I saw stars. He was so gentle, and his lips were so soft. I felt his hand come up to cup my face as I wrapped my arm around his neck, after a few moments I pulled away. Catching my breath, I quietly said “Montgomery, will you please take me home?” I saw his face drop and I amended my words, “take me home Montgomery.” As I spoke, I ran my hand up and down his chest, hoping he would get the hint. I watched as he grasped what I was asking, his eyes moving to search mine.

“Are you sure?” he asked, his breath heavy. I nodded and smiled at him.

“Yes. Please.” I asked, breathlessly. He kissed me deeply again before pulling me up and pulling me close to him as we walked back to his Jeep. As we walked, I saw a familiar leather jacket, its owner standing near a tree, and upon arriving in the parking lot I saw the telltale red Mustang.

[theonewiththefanfics]

70s Vintage (one-shot)

80s Retro (one-shot)

70s Bling (one-shot)

70s Glam (one-shot)

Synopsys: More shenanigans ensue as the Taylors hang around the set. And if the BoRhap boys thought they were wild on nights out, they’ll be proven severely wrong.

Pairing: Roger Taylor x f!Reader

Genre: fluff

Warnings: drinking, swearing, alluding to sexy times ;)

Word count: 2595

When Brian May walked up to the BoRhap boys who were engaged in a discussion about how to better work off of one another during the big Live Aid scene, Ben in the meantime had been struggling to get one particular bit in ‘Radio Ga Ga’ right, so Bri, the ever-loving father figure, went out on a search for the real drummer.    “Has anyone seen Rog? Ben’s struggling with getting the movements down.”    The guys only shook their heads when Jon got a quizzical look on his face. “We haven’t seen Roger in like half an hour. In fact, we haven’t seen Y/N for twenty minutes either.”    It was a bold suggestion, but by the eye roll that Brian did, they knew they hit the jackpot. And all the confirmation they needed came in the form of a thoroughly dishevelled Y/N.    “Did you have fun?” Brian asked, and she winked at her old friend.    “I think Roger enjoyed it a bit more, this time.”    “Well, is he put together enough to go out and help Ben?” Brian asked, just as the blond actor came up to the guys, drumsticks tightly clutched between his fingers.    “Come on, love,” Y/N said linking her arm through his elbow. “Rog is a bit preoccupied at the moment, so I’ll try and help as much as I can.”    Ben’s eyebrows were high up on his forehead. “You know how to drum?”    She hummed in response, and the crowd, seeing him and the woman walk out on stage went wild, chanting Y/N’s name like she was a Goddess there to fulfil all of their wishes. With a small wave, she sat down behind the drum set and adjusted the height of the little round bench. “I also know how to play the cello, violin, bass, guitar, piano and trumpet.”

   Expertly Y/N twirled the drumstick and looked up at Ben. “Which part were you struggling with, honey?”    But even before she could tap a snare, Roger stormed on stage, the crowd of extras going absolutely crazy.    “No,” he pointed a finger at Y/N. “Not happening. You’re not stealing my spotlight.”    A smirk tugged up her lips, seeing that purplish mark on his neck, which he so desperately had tried to cover up with a shawl, but it was still peeking through. “Your spotlight? Love, it’s Ben that’s gonna be on stage, not you.”    Roger raised a grey eyebrow. “And who do you think he’s playing? Me! Ha!”    “Fine,” Y/N stood up, leaving the drumsticks on the chair. “But who do you think is sleeping on the couch? You! Ha!” and with a wide smile plastered over her face, Y/N waved at the roaring crowd and disappeared behind the scenes.    The grey drummer put his hands on his hips and looked up to the sky, letting out a deep sigh.    “You alright?” Ben asked, clearly concerned if he’d somehow made a mistake and offended the legend.    “Yeah,” Roger nodded, sitting down behind the drums. “Just can’t figure out how the hell did I fall in love with a woman who infuriates me so much.” But he said it with nothing but adoration in his voice.

***

   “Ronnie, I’m telling you, it’s crazy freaky,” Y/N sat in one of the sofas in the trailer that was labeled 'THE BAND AND PAUL'. “I’m telling you! Look, I’ll just send you a picture and then you can see for yourself.”    As Y/N pulled the phone away from her ear and went into the photos folder, Joe walked inside, fingers massaging his scalp as he had just been able to get the wig removed.    The woman gave him a small smile, before doing a double take and practically shouting “Don’t move!” and putting her phone back to her ear. “Imma switch to Facetime.” She said to whoever was on the other line and Joe just stood there confused.    Y/N turned the phone to him and the man almost choked on his spit seeing the Veronica Deacon on the other side, the woman’s eyes widening at the appearance of Joe. Silence took over the trailer before she quietly asked when he was born.    “Nine- ninete- 1983. September 21, 1983,” Joe stuttered out. “Mam.”    Veronica narrowed her eyes before yelling down the house. “John, you better come here and explain some things to me!”    Joe couldn’t believe what was actually happening as John Deacon came in view, the man rubbing his eyes as if he had just been rudely awoken.    “If this is Y/N again, trying to persuade you to go bar hopping, I’m not joining. Last time ended with you in a jail cell and her in Scotland.”    But just as he was about to talk further about the crazy things the two women had done, he stopped, looking Joe dead in the eye. Veronica for a second thought he wasn’t breathing, but then John cleared his throat.        “Hello,” he warmly smiled at Joe who was still frozen in the spot. “You must be mister Mazzello. Brian and Roger have had nothing but good things to say about you and the guys.”    Joe just stared at the rock legend, mouth hanging open, cause holy fucking shit, he was talking to the Disco Deaky. Y/N smiled looking at the star-struck actor and glanced at Veronica who cleared her throat and crossed her arms.    “Are you sure you didn’t have an affair with someone in late 1982 or early 1983?” Veronica turned her head to the side as John looked at her fondly but rolled his eyes. “I’m just saying, you look quite uncanny.”    Joe laughed at that and he couldn’t help but feel relief flood his veins. They spent a few minutes talking about the music of Queen and how Y/N had been the one to push Veronica to ask Deaky out on a date.    “She was so bloody petrified that he wouldn’t say yes, she came to my flat and we both got drunk. In the end, she ended up calling him and slurring out that she liked him and wanted to go out on a date.”    “And she,” Veronica pointed at Y/N, “ended up calling Freddie, who was also coincidentally drunk that night, and convinced him that flying over to New York that night was a good idea.”    Y/N shrugged, remembering how she had woken up next to a passed-out Freddie, in a hotel room. Her scream had been the thing that had stirred both of them up, massive hangovers already forming.    “What the fuck did we do last night?” Y/N asked, rummaging through the first aid kit she had found underneath the sink in the bathroom for some painkillers. “Where are we?”    Freddie had been very nonchalant about all of it, as he made two cups of black coffee. “Well, my love, by the view outside of the window, I’d say we're on some thirty-odd story of a hotel in the middle of New York.”    Y/N had choked on the water she was drinking. “New York? How the fuck did we end up in New York?”    Veronica smiled, reminiscing about how much fun it had been to tease the two as they caught the first plane home. “Almost gave Rog a heart attack. He thought she’d run off with someone.”    “Honestly, he overreacted way too much,” Y/N replied, and it was like he had been waiting to be mentioned, Roger stepped in the trailer.    “What are you two conspiring about? Y/N if you’ve put some bloody dumb ideas in his head, I swear you’ll be the one staying at Bri’s.”    She rolled her eyes and scooted closer to Joe, to make room for Roger to sit down.    “Deaky!” his blue eyes lit up like Christmas trees, seeing his old friend. “How are you?”    “Good. We were just talking about when Y/N and Fred got so hammered they ended up in the city that never sleeps. And she was just saying how you overreacted.”    “Overreacted?” Roger’s eyes shot up to his forehead. “One second you and Ronnie are simply drinking wine at your flat, the next I hear is Freddie’s hungover voice telling me to be at the airport in nine hours, since you two had fucked off to God knows where.”    “We had gone out on two dates, Rog. You really took it as if I had cheated on you and married the pool boy.”    “You were still my friend, even if we weren’t dating then. So, pardon me if I got worried.”    Y/N rolled her eyes, but her heart swelled at the thought of Roger taking care of her like that.    The five of them talked a bit more about what wild things they’d done in the past and a little bit about how Joe could become an even more convincing Deaky. Soon enough, he was called to set, and with a very solemn look, he said goodbye to Veronica and John, exiting the trailer.    “Honestly, you two,” Deaky said through the phone pointing at his wife and Y/N, “are forbidden to drink without supervision.”    Roger laughed and nodded along, but the glance Ronnie threw Y/N, whose smirk had widened tenfold, was enough to make his heart drop. “What did you two do?”

***

   The cast and crew, Y/N, Roger, Brian and Anita as well, all decided to go to a local pub after a gruelling day of shooting and during that, her mischievous side came out once more.    The drink off between her and her husband was provoked by Joe who was chatting away with Anita and she had mentioned how wild Y/N used to be. He’d laughed and told her about the conversation they’d shared with Veronica and Anita could only agree.    “I mean,” the woman snickered, “they had been married for what, eight years at that point, but were still at one another throats. And so, after a particularly bad fight, she said that if Roger could out drink her, she’d forgive the man.”    Joe laughed, leaning in. “And did she? Forgive him?”    At that point, both Ben and Y/N had overheard their little conversation and she simply smiled as Anita answered. “Let’s just say the next day, that minx over there was filled to the brim with guilt, as Roger nursed a hangover for two days.”    “What can I say,” Y/N said, smirking at Ben, “if there is one thing, I know how to do right, it is leave an impression. And obviously, prove a point.”    And right on cue Roger Taylor, most famous drummer in the world of the most famous band I the world started weeping, as Freddie’s voice erupted over the heads of everyone singing ‘Love Of My Life. “I love my wife, Bri. I love her, so much. Even though there are times I think she might kill me, I love her.”    Y/N sighed, rolling her eyes and she went over to her husband. “Alright, Rockstar, that’s enough for you,” she said and chugged his half-finished pint.    “Hey!” now an obviously pissed off Roger looked up at her. “I was drinking that- wow.”    He leaned over to Brian, and the curly haired man already knew what was about to happen. “D’ya think she’ll let me shag her? She’s real pretty. I like pretty women. Like Y/N. Y/N is the prettiest. Hey love, what’s your name?”    She almost choked on her laugh. “I’m Y/N.”    “No fucking way!” Roger exclaimed, “that’s my wife’s name.”    “I know. Cause I am your wife.”    For a second, Roger paused and then through a big, big grin he exclaimed, “Cool! Can we go home and have sex?”    This was where Y/N saw her opportunity. “We can.”    The smile that split Roger’s face apart was amazing, and he smugly looked at Bri. “After all these years I still have it.”    “If,” Y/N interrupted his gloating, “you can outdrink me.”    Brian was instantly up on his feet and pointing at her. “Y/N, no! We’re not going through this again. Just take your idiot of a husband and go home. Please,” the last word was a desperate plea, but she just ignored the only rationally thinking person in the room.    “Bri, ma man,” Roger said standing up and motioning for Y/N to go to the bar. “I thought we were friends. And here you are, barring me from having a good night with that fox.”    She smirked over her shoulder ordering twenty shots of vodka, ten for each. When Brian saw it, everyone could read the disappointment on his face. “When they get to shot number five, you two,” he pointed at Anita and Joe, “take Y/N and me and Rami will get Rog.”    “Why five?” Gwil asked, amusement evident on his features as he watched the married couple sit down by a free table in the bar, the shots in two perfect rows before them.    “Cause last time they got to number six, they got thrown out of a pub for indecent behaviour.”    And let’s just say, everyone in the bar looked with awe in their eyes as the two of them downed shot after shot, completely disregarding the fact they had been together for years, only so they could shag.

***

   “Rog, what did we do?” Y/N groaned, pressing her face in her husband’s shoulder, who pulled her closer, the bright morning sun making her eyes hurt. “I think we had a drinking competition," he replied. "Again. Though things are very blurry after Anita said something about a badger and you two running around naked in Bri’s garden.”    Y/N hummed and was about to roll out of the bed when a stack of pictures caught her gaze. Slowly, she took them, and her mouth hung open when she saw a bare Roger and her own stripped body in them.    “I guess we recreated a moment from what- 1976?”    Roger’s eyes were still closed, but his mind remembered the exact thing that was in the photos; how a young him had persuaded her to take her top and pants, off so he could snap some pictures of the girl.    “If these ever get out, Roger Meddows Taylor,” Y/N had said through a laugh, covering her face with her hands, but that meant leaving her chest exposed. “The next pictures people will be seeing in the tabloids will be of my mugshot.”    Roger had laughed, pressing his legs tighter around Y/N’s hips, so she would stop squirming and he could focus the camera on her body. “I promise. These are for my personal collection when I get lonely without you on tour.”    Though that had been his intention, Roger was quite the forgetful person. And let’s just say he’d heard an earful two days later as Y/N berated him for leaving the polaroids on the middle of a table on the bus.    “If history repeats itself, I’m divorcing you, Taylor,” she said, slipping the photos in a drawer and closing her eyes ready to go back to sleep.    “If history repeats itself, then we should prepare for a pregnancy.”    Instantly Y/N’s eyes were open, cause, of course, that little photo shoot had led to one of the steamiest nights of her life and of course, that’s when she’d fallen pregnant with their first child.    “Well, then this time, you’ll be the one pushing a watermelon out of your vagina.”    With that said, the hungover pair smiled and fell asleep, dreams of the past pulling them down, securely wrapped in one another’s embrace.    “Think they’ll allow to put that moment in the movie?” Roger suddenly asked, and Y/N slapped him.    “Shut it, Taylor.”    “Love you too, Taylor.”

Tags (crossed out wouldn’t take): @chlobo6 @pietrorunsforme @brianhemian-rogerdy @16wiishes @wanderingsami @desir-ae @thiccio-and-thicciet @roseslovedreams @vesoleil @gloomybisexualemo @kostyaownsmyheart @perriwiinkle @screaminggalileochickenwrites@lumelgy @palaiasaurus64 @supernaturalbaesduh @breezy1415 @crazy--me @thatawkwardlittlefangirl @sea040561 @staryeyedgirl @deathbyarabbit @s-c-a-r-e-d-po-t-t-e-r @reblogger-not-a-blogger @m-a-t-91 @dalilx @i-need-a-hero-i-need-a-loki @maladaptive-ninja-returns @averyrogers83 @in-the-end-im-still-trash @gallifreyansass @dewy-biitch @avxgers @unlikelygalaxygiver @sweet-ladyy @magicwithaknife 

A/N: Y’all loved the shit out of 80s Retro, so I hope you like this as well :D

P.S. what did you think?

P.S.S. my tags are always open :)

[leeholtwrites]

Red Queen: Chapter 15

So, last time I found a worthy target for some anger in an otherwise “meh” YA book. I mean, this book is really, really cliche on a level that even I can barely forgive, and I recognized that tropes are important to defining genre, but I hadn’t found anything yet that made me angry. Then Dickbag happened.

If you have a better nickname for him, please comment below.

Horse is startled awake by her servant, Walsh. I’m not sure I remember mentioning her before, but she has a servant who is a Red. And startled is an understatement. Horse almost downright Tazers the poor woman in shock.

Horse gets out of bed, trying to apologize to the woman because she’s not completely the worst, and Walsh just mouths “Rise, Red as the dawn” to her (because of course she does) before shoving a teacup of water into Horse’s hand.

“And at the bottom of the cup, a piece of paper bleeds ink. The ink swirls as I read the message, the water leeching it away, erasing any trace, until there’s nothing but cloudy, gray liquid and a blank curl of paper. No evidence of my first act of rebellion.”

Apparently the paper said “Midnight,” but that isn’t my gripe. She knows there are cameras in the room. Isn’t it going to be suspicious that she just stares into her teacup before setting it aside? Also, the thing with prisoners, especially if you have people serving her that might sympathize with her, usually trays and food are searched. So either the writer wants us to know that the king isn’t having her service checked for anything from the political dissidents running around that he knows about just in case they might contact her, or the writer is just not smart enough to think about that. 

If you couldn’t tell by now, there are a lot of similar YA set ups involving political intrigue, but the writers don’t really think things through or do their research enough to make it convincing. In this situation, someone would need to dispose of the ink-paper trick in the room filled with cameras. So unless that ink is drinkable, and someone (Horse) drinks it, what is Walsh going to do with it? 

Maybe I’m overthinking this. Whatever. It just feels stupid.

There is a new schedule on Horse’s nightstand. Horse now has training just as Cal said she would. She’s impressed that he worked so fast. As Lucas walks her to training (I’m assuming because the time line is awful at the moment) he warns her to be careful because the trainers are brutal. Then we find out he entered the army at nine.

Okay, what is with YA and child soldiers. Is that just another shortcut for Current Administration Bad? HUNGER GAMES did it to make a point, but here its just another thing for the writer - fuck it - Aveyard to be all “War is bad, m’kay?”

“But Lucas shrugs like it’s nothing. ‘The front is the best place for training. Even the princes were trained at the front, for a time.’

“‘But you’re here now,’ I say.... ‘You’re not a soldier anymore.’

For the first time, Lucas’s dry smile disappears completely. ‘It wears on you.’... ‘Men aren’t meant to be at war for long.’

‘And what about Reds?’ I hear myself ask.... ‘Can they stand war better than Silvers?’“

I’m just going to lay down right here and try not to start shredding this book. First, you train people before you send them to battle so they know what they’re doing. Second, how old are the princes? When did they go? They’re not even the age of a modern US enlistee (18). Like, what the fuck? Also, why would you stick the goddamn crown princes on the front line? Are you trying to destroy the  royal lineage?

I have been reduced to rhetorical questions. 

And then Lucas answers:

“... looking a little uncomfortable. ‘That’s the way the world works. Reds serve, Reds work, Reds fight. It’s what they’re good at. It’s what they’re meant to do.’”

Nice on the casual classism. 

“Not everyone is special.”

I wish this book understood that more, what with 3 guys lusting after our lovely protag.

Horse gets mad at him, but mostly just brushes him off. Lucas notices her feelings and warns her that he if he doesn’t have the luxury of asking questions, than neither does she, even going so far as to use her new name.

Lucas will not ask questions. Despite his black eyes, his Silver blood, his Samos family, he will not pull at the thread that could unravel my existence.

This confuses me. Her italics thought bubble at the beginning feels more like a criticism than Horse’s realization that Lucas won’t do anything that will hurt her, even going so far as to try to help her understand how silvers Silvers think and how controlling their upper echelons are. I mean, its pretty clumsily done, but I get what Aveyard was going for. The italics double don’t work because this book is in first person. We’re in Horse’s head. We don’t need thought bubbles. The whole thing is a thought bubble!

Second, “Silver blood” or “silver blood?” I feel like it should be the second. Just saying.

Lucas also continues to sympathetic, making all the woman hate even more pronounced.

Le sigh.

At training, Horse is handed what sounds like a Lycra jumpsuit before entering what sounds like my university gym. Multi-storied, lots of equipment, dozens of baby-faced young adults in better shape than I am. Of course, all those college students are more mature than most of the people in this book, and mind their own damn business.

Unlike Polarity Princess.

The moment Horse walks in, PP drops what she’s doing to mock her. She is of course joined by her mean girl club in the process. We’re spared because Horse ignores her and immediately goes to find Maven. They talk a little, mostly about what their life will entail after they leave and the ball before they leave - which leads to dancing and how Silver girls are the worst.

Maven then asks how her visit with her family went. She tells him it was difficult because she found out one of her brothers was executed before they were all released. Mavey places his hand on hers, apologizes, and says he that he’s sure he didn’t deserve it because the guy Silvers aren’t shit heads.

Then for a moment Horse thinks he might be able to read minds, which leads to this little detail:

Few silvers Silvers inherit abilities from their mothers, and no one had more than one ability.

The low key misogyny is killing me.

And if Maven turns out to be the evil prince, he’s totally going to have his moms abilities. Watch. Or at least that’s what I would do.

Hey, I never said I wrote capital L literature. 

We get some more description about powers. Shades can bend light around themselves for invisibility. Windweaver says exactly what you think it does, and that is probably the least lame power name so far, while also not belonging at all. Then you have eyes, which have limited precognition. You know, they can see the next 5 seconds or something. If I remember right (and my Teen Titan’s knowledge is rusty) Rose Wilson has that ability. I’m still confused what a silk is. They still sounds like a D&D Rogue. Or a hunska from Red Sister. (Go read that instead. It’s written by a dude and has 100% less misogyny and a 99% female cast.)

A soft voice orders them into a line, followed by an old man with Cal and a telekinetic boy. I refuse to call them “telkies.” It sounds like something I would put on a baby’s butt for diaper rash. The old man is her trainer, and apparently used to oversee executions. Turns out this was because he’s a null - he nullifies powers, or turns them off as the book puts it. 

He can reduce a Silver to what they hate most: a Red. He can turn their abilities off. He can make them normal.

All that wealth and privilege, but removing their powers can make them normal. If only it were that simple. It’s almost like this book doesn’t understand power structures at all.

They begin to run laps. Horse is happy it’s something she recognizes until it isn’t when a piece of wall swings out and slams her in the stomach. She’s startled, but manages to keep up. And before you think this is some cool tech, the telekinetic controls the pieces.

Their powers return, and a gun barrel without the actual gun part rises from the floor.

Only the telky’s power makes it move, not some greater, strange technology. The abilities are all they have.

I thought they were defined by having power and Reds having tech. Why is this a new revelation to you? Unless this is book treating the reader like an idiot again.

Horse is called forward for target practice first, and again we hear about how special she is because she can create electricity despite bio-electricity being a thing. She misses the first target but hits the second. PP is a bitch who won’t clap. The instructor moves onto the next instead of patting her on the back. I can’t tell if this is supposed to be a bad thing.

The work out calls wore her out, but she’s still happy for it. Happier for the quietness of Julian’s class, even though the moving time means she’s closer to her midnight meet up. When she arrives, he has book labeled with years. Turns out they’re death records for the war. She knows her executed brother probably isn’t in them, and makes the lamp flick on an off in her distress. Julian asks her why, and she says its the new schedule. He says she did fine today, she gets cranky about him asking to be there, and he uses her power on her to calm her down.

Horse is upset he does this, and he explains he’s the last Singer. They can control people as long as they hear them. (Found the Bards.) Julian launches into how his sister married the king for love, not by Queenstrial, and how they could talk their way to the throne, but didn’t because they’re nice.

I don’t honesty hate this, but there are so many toxic women in this book that we see on a regular basis that it makes me sad that the one that sounds non-toxic is dead.

Horse relates to Julian, mentioning Shade and how he was executed. Julian tells her that they “removed” his sister too and will do it to anyone that gets in the way. He warns her that over-throwing them would take too much planning and luck, and to not get over her head. She knows that she’s already in deep, but doesn’t tell him this.

I actually kind of liked this scene because Horse behaves like a person. Even Julian just comes across as sad and lonely. I just wish that Julian was a woman so Horse could have a relationship with the same sex that wasn’t pure hate. We don’t see her family enough to matter. I think that’s one of the things that bugs me about this book the most. Most of the women are bad, and most of the men are good. Why? Just... why?

Next time, Horse has her midnight meeting.

[biggy-habes]

So we left off with me and Fennie moving in with Amanda. I was a bit nervous about this, because the last 2 girlfriends that I had lived with ended up crashing and burning. One took all of our shit with her while I was at work one day. Nothing better than coming home from a hard day's work to come home to…Nothing. Jack shit. The other one had pissed on our couches and threatened to cut my dick off in my sleep. I slept with a knife in my hand that night. Good times!

So you can probably understand the hesitance. There were some major lifestyle differences between us. She was high maintenance. I am a bit of a slob. She enjoyed being young and having a good time. I was heavily into the drug-free lifestyle of NA. Also…I was a vegetarian. Not just a vegetarian, but a vegan. And a super annoying self-righteous vegan at that. Now how did I get there? How does one go from downing 50 wings at Hooters during a wrestling Pay Per View to eating cashew cheese and lentils? Well it all started with a cat named George. In 2010 I was living in a shitty one bedroom downstairs unit in a shitty part of Lawton, Oklahoma. Every so often a grey cat would be wandering around the tree outside my door. I never saw a collar on him so I assume he just would just wander around the neighborhood. When I would see him from my window I would bring him cold cuts or what not. One day I looked outside and saw him climbing into the tree, however it looked like he had something stuck to his fur. I went out to see what the issue was and give him a hand. I certainly was not expecting to see what was actually in his fur. As I got closer I saw that it was actually burns and scars. It looked as if someone had poured boiling oil on him. I was horrified! This angered me beyond being able to put into words! I felt like I needed to do something. I needed to file a report or something! So I jumped onto my computer and I immediately started searching for ways to report animal cruelty. This would lead to me reading about animal cruelty in general. And this would lead me to reading about animal cruelty in the meat industry. And THIS…would lead to the videos of animal cruelty in the meat industry. And it was that day that I decided that I could not ethically participate in the anything that would promote the things that I have witnessed that day. So from then on I was all about that Vegan Lyfe, son! That was…until I got to Boston.

For my birthday in May we were able to take a few weeks off together and decided to do a bit of traveling. The plan was to spend a week in Boston, come back to Oklahoma, then drive to New Mexico to attend a wedding. Amanda and I had such an incredible time doing all of the touristy stuff that Boston had to offer. I knew a few friends from High School who moved to the Boston area so I had looked up a buddy and we ended up eating sushi at a low key Japanese bar near Boston Common. I figured a walk around after eating would be a nice end to the evening. Unfortunately my stomach had different plans. Soon after we started walking around the Commons I felt a rumble and a grumble. I turned to Amanda and informed her that we needed to find a restroom. STAT! Now here is the thing with large cities like Boston…they don’t just have a McDonalds or a WalMart that you can run into and use the bathroom. And as we continued walking around looking for ANY PLACE where I can duck in and do some damage the sense of urgency just kept rising. It is getting to the point where I am about to settle for an alley and a newspaper. And then, like a beacon of hope, I notice a familiar green mermaid a few blocks away. I immediately start booking with the gait of Abe Vigoda and reach the doors of the Starbucks in a nick of time. I tell Amanda to pull guard while I handle my business. For discretionary purposes I will not dive into the violent details but a few minutes later Amanda knocked on the door to ask if I was alright. And I was. I really was! That is…until I tried to flush. The toilet was broken. It was Dumb and Dumber, but in real life. And happening to me! By now I am looking like I ran a few laps. I am pale and covered with sweat. Like I said…violent. There is NO WAY I would have an explanation for what just went down. So…I did what any rational man would do. I pretended like nothing was wrong and walked out, all the time hoping that no one is waiting to use the bathroom after me. I don’t know what happened after I left that Starbucks that night, but my heart goes out to that poor employee who got assigned that mess.

The next day we had tickets behind the first base line to watch the Sox play the Twins. It was at this game where I came SO CLOSE to achieving a lifelong dream of catching a ball at Fenway Park. A foul ball came into the stands 2 rows behind me! I immediately scrambled to grab the loose ball when a pair of kids ran towards it. I backed off to let them snag an *official* Sox game ball. Good for that kid, right? WRONG! Because he started acting like the cockiest little prick. Talking about how quick he is and teasing his brother with his "trophy catch". I sat there thinking "Listen, you little shit. If you weren't 4 foot nothing and I would have gone after that ball as if you were a grown ass man. You would have ended up somewhere near the On Deck Circle so sit down and shut your fat ice cream covered face!" Now by this time I had been a hardcore vegan for about nine months. And I had gotten GOOD at it. I learned how to spot animal products hidden in labels. I learned which restaurants had off-the-menu vegan options. But being in Boston was going to be the ultimate test. Right now just thinking about being there and not being able to eat seafood is making me the sads. No scallops. No lobster. No chowdah. At the game I was ok with my bag of peanuts while I watched Amanda scarf down a Fenway Frank. But I have always had a weakness for cheese. Not just a weakness though. It is more like I have a problem with cheese. Not the lactose intolerance problem. It is more of an "I Binge Eat Cheese" kind of problem. If I get a night of the sads I will drown my sorrows in a 1 pound brick of muenster. Not just by the slice like a gentleman. No, I have to tear off chunks with my hands like a friggin savage. I happened to notice a lady an aisle over from us eating a slice of pizza. This was not just an ordinary slice of pizza at a baseball game though. This was perfect. The cheese was still hot and melty. The grease glistened from the stadium lights overhead. In a moment of weakness I just had to have a slice of pizza. I turned to Amanda and said "I think I am going to get a slice of pizza." She looked at me, puzzled, and asked "Are you sure? The cheese isnt…" I stopped her right there. I didn’t need to be reminded. #YOLO. So that was the last night that I was a vegan. I held on to being a vegetarian for a few years after that. We can cover that later. Anyways, back to hanging out in Boston.

We tried cramming as much as possible in the few days that we had there. We did a bit of shopping (for her. Amanda was a big fan! Me…not so much. But hey, whattayagonna do?) I took the time to just wander around looking at all the cool sights, the buidings, the people.

Our last night there we went on this super cool ghost tour around Boston Proper. It is one thing to read about these tales about Lizzie Bordon and the great molasses flood. It was a completely different ballgame when you are actually walking around their gravestones! The next day we headed back to Oklahoma, where we has just one day to rest up and pack what we needed for the wedding before hitting the road for Santa Fe, New Mexico.

I did not really know who was getting married. The bride had been a friend of Amanda for a while. Now I know that I am usually cooler than a polar bear's toenails but this was going to be the first time that I would be meeting all of Amanda's closest friends and I was fucking nervous! This was a time where I was very uncomfortable in my own skin and my anxiety was through the roof. The wedding was absolutely stunning! It was held in an adobe brick church that you could not help but marvel at when you walk inside. As the bride walked down the aisle she had a glow to her that caught my attention. It was here that I first imagined Amanda walking down the aisle in a wedding gown. After the wedding we had some time to kill before the reception. We got changed and I put on my game face. I was in recovery at the time and Amanda and her friends still enjoyed partying so I immediately felt out of place. There was also a fair amount of guilt from the feeling that I was preventing her from having a good time. These days when I am in uncomfortable social situations I will usually just start rambling until the conversation gets awkward. However, back then I would just shut down and be the large, weird, reclusive guy. And that is how the wedding reception was. It was just a lot of sipping my coffee and smiling creepily. Thankfully we did not stay long at the reception. I feel like she knew how out of place I felt but was trying my best to power through. Due to the fact that we drove up we were able to bring Fennie along for this leg of the trip so he was a valid excuse for us to leave early.

We took a cab back to the hotel and spent the rest of the night watching TV with the pup. We spent the next day wandering around the city with a few of Amanda's friends. I felt much more comfortable in this setting as I can become charming as fuck in small group situations. Jon Haber is King of the Dinner Table. I spent most of the afternoon getting to know some of her closest friends and let them get to know me a little better now that I was more in my element. There was also something about New Mexico that made me feel at east. The Land of Enchantment has a breathtaking backdrop of mountains and mesas. The architecture of Santa Fe maintains the Pueblo culture and feel.

Amanda had recently started selling jewelry (Translation: She entered a pyramid scheme) and enjoyed looking at the street vendor shops selling various turquoise trinkets. I enjoyed the laid back pace and fresh air. And the food. The food was fucking INCREDIBLE! We went to bed early so that we could head back to Oklahoma the next morning. And that was the end to yet another memorable birthday week. Despite constantly being on-the-go I felt refreshed and grounded. As it turns out I was a hit with Amanda's friends. This was relieving, as the impression that I left on them was constantly in the back of my mind. Overanalyzing the perception that I leave on others has been the one regrettable trait that I have carried in me my entire life.

We returned to Oklahoma and had a week of rest before we hit the road again. This time our destination would be to visit Amanda's mother outside of Vegas. I have never set foot in Las Vegas and was excited to see the bright lights and strange folk that I have heard so much about. For someone who often requires visual stimulation this was perfect!

I am not much of a gambler so I mostly entertained myself by watching the surroundings. It reminded me of something out of one of those In-The-Near-Future sci fi movies. Strangers crowded in the streets wearing any clothing that you could possibly imagine. Celebrity impersonators would have you making constant double takes. Tom Cruise, Pee Wee Herman, Liberace, and of course the stereotypical Vegas strip Elvis. As we were preparing to make our way back to the car the sky lit up like Broadway and an easily recognizable George Thorogood riff blares from all around. Next thing you know Lonesome George is on overhead screens everywhere playing a killer 15 minute set as I sat with my mouth wide open in awe! Being sober I could not take in the FULL Vegas Strip experience but for my first time I was it was thrilling nonetheless.

The next day we went strolling through some of the (free) attractions around Vegas. We had dropped some major coin the past few weeks and were on a tight budget. Amanda's mother lived right outside of Vegas so we had a place to stay. This was the first time meeting her mother. She reminded me a lot of my own. She had a very boisterous laugh and had a light, fun personality. She immediately fell in love with Fennie and was ecstatic to have us staying with her for a couple of days. While we were there I also met Amanda's brother and his family. So if you have been keeping track, in the course of 3 weeks I met the close friends, the mother, the brother, the sister-in-law, and the nephew. This was a pretty significant advancement in our relationship. We had to leave the next morning for Oklahoma so we opted for a nice relaxing day walking around the strip and watching the college kids having their foam parties and beer funnels. It was a great trip and I really enjoyed meeting Amanda's family. I knew that we would be back soon.

And that is where I think we will end this chapter. Join me next time as we wrap up 2011.

And perhaps a big proposal.

[paradiseforlana]

Lana Del Rey’s interview for Dazed Magazine:

Courtney Love: Is this the mysterious Lana Del Rey?

Lana Del Rey: Is this the one and only Courtney Love?

Lana Del Rey: So, we could just talk about whatever... Like those burning palm trees that you had in the ‘Malibu’ video. I didn’t think they were real!

Courtney Love: Back when rock’n’roll had budget, you mean? Oh my God, Lana, setting palm trees on fire was so fun. You thought they were CGI?

LDR: Yeah.

CL: God, you’re so young. I burned down palm trees. In my day, darling, you used to have to walk to school in the snow. So, since I toured with you, I got kind of obsessed and went down this Lana rabbit hole and became – not like I’m wearing a flower crown, Lana, don’t get ideas – but I absolutely love it. I love it as much as I love PJ Harvey.

LDR: That’s amazing because, maybe it’s slightly well documented, but I love everything you do, everything you have done – I couldn’t believe that you came on the tour with me.

CL: I read that you spend a lot of time mastering and mixing. Is that true on this new record?

LDR: Oh my God, yeah, it’s killing me. It’s because I spend so much time with the engineers working on the reverb. Because I actually don’t love a glossy production. If I want a bit of that retro feel, like that spring reverb or that Elvis slap, sometimes if you send it to an outside mixer they might try and dry things up a bit and push them really hard on top of the mix so it sounds really pop. And Born to Die did have a slickness to it, but, in general, I have an aversion to things that sound glossy all over – you have to pick and choose. And some people say, ‘It’s not radio-ready if it isn’t super-shiny from top to bottom.’ But you know this. Whoever mixed your stuff is a genius. Who did it?

CL: Chris Lord-Alge and Tom Lord-Alge. Kurt was really big on mastering. He sat in every mastering session like a fiend. I never was big on mastering because it’s such a pain in the butt.

LDR: It is a pain in the ass.

CL: I think my very, very favourite song of yours – you’re not gonna like this because it’s early – is ‘Blue Jeans’. I mean, ‘You’re so fresh to death and sick as ca-cancer’? Who does that?

LDR: I have to say, that track has this guy (Del Rey collaborator) Emile Haynie all over it. I remember ‘Blue Jeans’ was more of a Chris Isaak ballad and then I went in with him and it came out sounding the way it does now. I was like, ‘That’s the power of additional production.’ The song was on the radio in the UK, on Radio 1, and I remember thinking, ‘Fuck, that started off as a classical composition riff that I got from my composer friend, Dan Heath.’ It was, like, six chords that I started singing on.

CL: You have that lyric (on the song), ‘You were sorta punk rock, I grew up on hip hop.’ Did you really grow up on hip hop?

LDR: I didn’t find any good music until I was right out of high school, and I think that was just because, coming from the north country, we got country, we got NPR, and we got MTV.

CL: What I hear in your music is that you’ve created a world, you’ve created a persona, and you’ve created this kind of enigma that I never created but if I could go back I would create.

LDR: Are you even being serious right now? I don’t even know if your legacy could get any bigger. You’re one of the only people I know whose legacy precedes them. Just the name ‘Courtney Love’ is… You’re big, honey. You’re Hollywood. (laughs) Touring with Courtney Love (was), like, an Elizabeth Taylor diamond (for me).

CL: You know, I met Elizabeth Taylor. I was with Carrie Fisher at (Taylor’s) Easter party and she was taking six hours to come downstairs.

LDR: I love it.

CL: I looked at Carrie and I said, ‘This is not worth it,’ and Carrie said, ‘Oh, yes it is.’ So we snuck upstairs and, Lana, when you go past the Warhol of Elizabeth Taylor as you’re sneaking up the stairs and it says ‘001’, you start getting goosebumps. And then you see her room and it’s all lavender, like her eyes. And she’s in the bathroom getting her hair done by this guy named José Eber who wears a cowboy hat and has long hair, and I’m like, ‘What am I doing here? I’m not Hollywood royalty.’ And the first words out of her mouth are, like, ‘Fuck you, Carrie, how ya doin’?’ She was so salty but such a goddess at the same time.

LDR: She was so salty. The fact that she married Richard Burton twice – and all the stories you hear about those famous, crazy, public brawls – she was just up for it. Up for the trouble.

“What I hear in your music is that you’ve created a world, you’ve created a persona, and you’ve created this kind of enigma that I never did’’ — Courtney Love to Lana Del Rey

Tweet this quote

CL: You know what, darling? I started real early. I started stalking Andy Warhol before I could even think about it. And you kind of did the same, from my understanding. That ‘I want to make it’ thing. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

LDR: No, there’s not. There’s nothing wrong with it when you do the rest of it for the right reasons. If music is really in your blood and you don’t want to do anything else and you don’t really care about the money until later. It’s also about the vibe, not to be cliched. And the people. I think we had that in common. It was about wanting to go to shows, wanting to have your own show – living, breathing, eating, all of it.

CL: Can I ask you about your time in New Jersey? Was that a soul-searching time?

LDR: Oh, I don’t even know if I should have said to anyone that I was living in that trailer in New Jersey but, stupidly, I did this interview from the trailer, in 2008.

CL: I saw it!

LDR: It’s cringey, it’s cringey. (laughs)

CL: You look so cute, though.

LDR: I thought I was rockabilly. I was platinum. I thought I had made it in my own way.

CL: I understand completely.

LDR: The one thing I wish I’d done was go to LA instead of New York. I had been playing around for maybe four years, just open mics, and I got a contract with this indie label called 5 Points Records in 2007. They gave me $10,000 and I found this trailer in New Jersey, across the Hudson - Bergen Light Rail. So, I moved there, I finished school and I made that record (Lana Del Ray a.k.a. Lizzy Grant), which was shelved for two and a half years, and then came out for, like, three months. But I was proud of myself. I felt like I had arrived, in my own way. I had my own thought and it was kind of kitschy and I knew it was going to sort of influence what I was doing next. It was definitely a phase. (laughs)

CL: But you have records about being a ‘Brooklyn Baby’. You can write about New York adeptly and I cannot. I tried to write a song about a tragic girl in New York, going down Bleecker Street – this girl couldn’t afford Bleecker Street, so the song made no sense, right? (laughs) I did my time there, but it chased me away. I couldn’t do it because I wouldn’t go solo. I had to have a band.

LDR: I wanted a band so badly. I feel like I wouldn’t have had some of the stage fright I had when I started playing bigger shows if (I had) a real group and we were in it together. I really wanted that camaraderie. I actually didn’t even find that until a couple of years ago, I would say. I’ve been with my band for six years and they’re great, but I wished I had people – I fantasised about Laurel Canyon.

CL: I wanted the camaraderie. The alternative bands in my neighbourhood were the (Red Hot Chili) Peppers and Jane’s (Addiction). I knew Perry (Farrell, Jane’s Addiction frontman) and I went to high school for, like, ten seconds with two Peppers and a guy named Romeo Blue who became Lenny Kravitz. I remember being an extra in a Ramones video and he stopped by, when he was dating Lisa Bonet from The Cosby Show and it was a big deal.

LDR: See? You didn’t really see that in New York. When I got there, The Strokes had had a moment, but that was kind of it. LA has always been the epicentre of music, I feel.

CL: LA is easier. People have garages. And then as you go up the coast, in Washington and Oregon people have bigger houses and bigger garages, and people have parents. I didn’t have parents, and you – well, you had parents, but you were on your own.

LDR: Yeah. You know that song of yours (‘Awful’) that says, ‘(Just shut up,) you’re only 16’? I think there are different types of people. There are people who heard, ‘What do you know? You’re just a kid,’ and then there are people who got a lot of support (from the line), like, ‘Go for it, go for your dreams.’ (laughs) And I think when you don’t have that, you get kind of stuck at a certain age. Randomly, in the last few years, I feel like I’ve grown up. Maybe I’ve just had time to think about everything, process everything. I’ve gotten to move on and think about how it feels now, singing songs I wrote ten years ago. It does feel different. I was almost reliving those feelings on stage until recently. It’s weird listening back to my stuff. Today, I was watching some of your old videos and this footage of you playing a big festival. The crowd was just girls – just young girls for rows and rows. I was reminded of how vast that influence was on teenagers. And – going back to enigma and fame and legacy – you know, those girls who have grown up and girls who are 16 now, they relate to you in the exact same way as they did right when you started. And that’s the power of your craft. You’re one of my favourite writers.

CL: You’re one of mine, so, checkmate. (laughs)

LDR: What you did was the epitome of cool. And there’s a lot of different music going on, but adolescents still know when something comes authentically from somebody’s heart. It might not be the song that sells the most, but when people hear it, they know it. Are you a John Lennon fan?

CL: When I hear ‘Working Class Hero’, it’s a song I wish to God I could write. I wouldn’t ever cover it. I mean, Marianne Faithfull covered it beautifully, but I would never cover it because I think Marianne did a great job and that’s all that needs to be said.

LDR: I felt that way when I covered ‘Chelsea Hotel (#2)’, the Leonard Cohen song, but when I was doing more acoustic shows, I couldn’t not do it.

CL: I don’t have your range. I’ve tried to sing along to ‘Brooklyn Baby’ and ‘Dark Paradise’ and this new one, ‘Love’. You go high, baby.

LDR: I’ve got some good low ones for you. You know what would be good, is that song, ‘Ride’. I don’t sing it in its right octave during the shows because it’s too low for me. But I’ve been thinking about doing something with you for a little while now. Then after we did the Endless Summer tour, we were thinking we should at least write, or we should just do whatever and maybe you could come down to the studio and just see what came out.

CL: When we were on tour, our pre-show chats were very productive for me.

LDR: Me too. That was a real moment of me counting my blessings. I just wanted to stay in every single moment and remember all of it, because it was so amazing.

CL: Likewise. It was really fun coming into your room. My favourite part of the tour was in Portland, getting you vinyl that I felt you needed. (laughs)

LDR: When you left the room, I was just running my hand over all the vinyl like little gems, like, ‘I can’t believe I have these (records) that Courtney gave to me, it’s so fucking amazing.’ And we were in Portland, too. It felt surreal.

CL: Yeah, I don’t like going there much but I went there with you. We have this in common, too: we both ran away to Britain. If I could live anywhere in the world, I’d live in London.

LDR: If I could live anywhere in the world other than LA, I’d live in London. In the back of my mind, I always feel like I could maybe end up there.

CL: I know I’m going to end up there. I know what neighbourhood I’m going to end up in, and I know that I want to be on the Thames. I subscribe to this magazine called Country Life which is just real-estate porn and fox hunting. It’s amazing. OK, so, if you weren’t doing you, what would you do?

LDR: You take ‘red’. I’ll trade for ‘whore’. I’m so lucky.

CL: I love this new song (‘Love’).

LDR: Thank you. I love the new song, too. I’m glad it’s the first thing out. It doesn’t sound that retro, but I was listening to a lot of Shangri-Las and wanted to go back to a bigger, more mid-tempo, single-y sound. The last 16 months, things were kind of crazy in the US, and in London when I was there. I was just feeling like I wanted a song that made me feel a little more positive when I sang it. And there’s an album that’s gonna come out in the spring called Lust for Life. I did something I haven’t ever done, which is not that big of a deal, but I have a couple of collabs on this record. Speaking of John Lennon, I have a song with Sean Lennon. Do you know him?

CL: I do, I like him.

LDR: It’s called ‘Tomorrow Never Came’. I don’t know if you’ve ever felt this way, but when I wrote it I felt like it wasn’t really for me. I kept on thinking about who this song was for or who could do it with me, and then I realised that he would be a good person. I didn’t know if I should ask him because I actually have a line in it where I say, ‘I wish we could go back to your country house and put on the radio and listen to our favourite song by Lennon and Yoko.’ I didn’t want him to think I was asking him because I was namechecking them. Actually, I had listened to his records over the years and I did think it was his vibe, so I played it for him and he liked it. He rewrote his verse and had extensive notes, down to the mix. And that was the last thing I did, decision-wise. I haven’t mixed the record, but the fact that ‘Love’ just came out and Sean kind of finished up the record, it felt very meant-to-be. Because that whole concept of peace and love really is in his veins and in his family. Then, I also have Abel (Tesfaye), The Weeknd. He is actually on the title track of the record, ‘Lust for Life’. Maybe that’s kind of weird to have a feature on the title track, but I really love that song and we had said for a while that we were gonna do something; I did stuff on his last two records.

CL: Do you have a singular producer or several producers?

LDR: Rick Nowels. He actually did stuff with Stevie Nicks a while ago. He works really well with women. I did the last few records with him. Even with Ultraviolence which I did with Dan (Auerbach), I did the record first with Rick, and then I went to Nashville and reworked the sound with Dan. So, yeah, Rick Nowels is amazing, and these two engineers – with all the records that I’ve worked on with Rick, they did a lot of the production as well. You would love these two guys. They’re just super-innovative. I wanted a bit of a sci-fi f lair for some of the stuff and they had some really cool production ideas. But yeah, that’s pretty much it. I mean, Max Martin –

CL: Wait, you wrote with Max Martin? You went to the compound?

LDR: Have you been there?

CL: No. I’ve always wanted to work with Max Martin.

LDR: So basically, ‘Lust for Life’ was the first song I wrote for the record, but it was kind of a Rubik’s Cube. I felt like it was a big song but... it wasn’t right. I don’t usually go back and re-edit things that much, because the songs end up sort of being what they are, but this one song I kept going back to. I really liked the title. I liked the verse. John Janick was like, ‘Why don’t we just go over and see what Max Martin thinks?’ So, I flew to Sweden and showed him the song. He said that he felt really strongly that the best part was the verse and that he wanted to hear it more than once, so I should think about making it the chorus. So I went back to Rick Nowels’ place the next day and I was like, ‘Let’s try and make the verse the chorus,’ and we did, and it sounded perfect. That’s when I felt like I really wanted to hear Abel sing the chorus, so he came down and rewrote a little bit of it. But then I was feeling like it was missing a little bit of the Shangri-Las element, so I went back for a fourth time and layered it up with harmonies. Now I’m finally happy with it. (laughs) But we should do something. Like, soon.

CL: I would like that. That would be awesome.

Lust for Life is out this spring.

[lanadelreyfiles-blog]

Lana Del Rey: Wild At Heart ‘Is this the mysterious Lana Del Rey?’ — set to release her era-defining fifth LP, pop's dream-queen shoots the LA breeze with grunge hellraiser Courtney Love. Editor's Note: This interview has been condensed from the print edition. Courtney Love’s gravelly voice is unmistakable on the line next to Lana Del Rey’s syrupy sing-song: “Is this the one and only Courtney Love?” It’s been a while since any of us has heard from Del Rey. She’s calling Love from her home in California a few weeks after releasing “Love”, the booming, lounge-y first single off her upcoming fifth studio album, Lust for Life. Although Del Rey’s last record, Honeymoon, was released only a year and a half ago, that particular span has felt like forever. An anti-anthem of sorts, “Love” takes into account turbulent times, offering commiseration as opposed to call-to-action. Lines like “the world is yours and you can’t refuse it” slip under a ringing chorus that proclaims, “You get ready, you get all dressed up to go nowhere in particular.” The video rockets a group of teenagers, current-day devices in hand, to a vintage-rendered outer space. It’s a message that could easily be mistaken for nihilism. A month earlier, though, Del Rey pre-empted criticism by Instagramming the Nina Simone quote, “An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times.” Which is perhaps what Del Rey does best. Lust for Life could be called the next chapter in a long-running investigation into era-non-specific youth qualifiers that started with the self-directed video for her breakout single, “Video Games”. That song perfectly crystallised a mood and a moment, splicing an at-home aesthetic heretofore only found in webcam vlogs with imagery of a 1950s red carpet, an iPod billboard, and Paz de la Huerta falling in front of paparazzi. While Del Rey often insists that she’s lost in reverie, obsessed by the past, her music is a poignant reflection of a generation that continues to resist expectations. It’s a study, too, of femininity in general. For isn’t womanhood itself, she appears to ask, steeped in anachronism? Both Lana Del Rey and Courtney Love write about irresistible institutions – Hollywood, mainstream acceptance and powerful men. The heartbreaking twist of each narrative is that the singers will always be outside the circles they describe desiring. While Love deftly played the unfiltered outsider as frontwoman with Hole through the 90s, in the age of infinite footnotes, Del Rey has taken up the role of oblivious misfit, more prone to a pout than a scream. Two decades apart in age, similarities between the two women (who played eight shows together in 2015 for Del Rey’s Endless Summer tour) are irrefutable. What if Love had come of age when Del Rey did, when every professional move she made was documented on Wikipedia within moments? Or if Del Rey grew up in a time when she would have to petition for music reviews, even as the wife of a huge rock star? Would one more closely resemble the other? Either way, each has become a Cassavetes-esque tragic figure in her performed world, toeing the line between outlying cult hero and revered pop star. “People ask me about musical similarities between our stuff,” Del Rey says to Love, who is calling from a movie set in Vancouver. “I just know it’s the kind of music I listen to all the time: when I’m driving, or when I’m alone, or when I’m with friends.” You can buy a copy of Dazed’s latest issue here. Taken from the spring/summer issue.

Lana Del Rey: So, we could just talk about whatever... Like those burning palm trees that you had in the ‘Malibu’ video. I didn’t think they were real! Courtney Love: Back when rock’n’roll had budget, you mean? Oh my God, Lana, setting palm trees on fire was so fun. You thought they were CGI? LDR: Yeah. CL: God, you’re so young. I burned down palm trees. In my day, darling, you used to have to walk to school in the snow. So, since I toured with you, I got kind of obsessed and went down this Lana rabbit hole and became – not like I’m wearing a flower crown, Lana, don’t get ideas – but I absolutely love it. I love it as much as I love PJ Harvey. LDR: That’s amazing because, maybe it’s slightly well documented, but I love everything you do, everything you have done – I couldn’t believe that you came on the tour with me. CL: I read that you spend a lot of time mastering and mixing. Is that true on this new record? LDR: Oh my God, yeah, it’s killing me. It’s because I spend so much time with the engineers working on the reverb. Because I actually don’t love a glossy production. If I want a bit of that retro feel, like that spring reverb or that Elvis slap, sometimes if you send it to an outside mixer they might try and dry things up a bit and push them really hard on top of the mix so it sounds really pop. And Born to Die did have a slickness to it, but, in general, I have an aversion to things that sound glossy all over – you have to pick and choose. And some people say, ‘It’s not radio-ready if it isn’t super-shiny from top to bottom.’ But you know this. Whoever mixed your stuff is a genius. Who did it? CL: Chris Lord-Alge and Tom Lord-Alge. Kurt was really big on mastering. He sat in every mastering session like a fiend. I never was big on mastering because it’s such a pain in the butt. LDR: It is a pain in the ass. CL: I think my very, very favourite song of yours – you’re not gonna like this because it’s early – is ‘Blue Jeans’. I mean, ‘You’re so fresh to death and sick as ca-cancer’? Who does that? LDR: I have to say, that track has this guy (Del Rey collaborator) Emile Haynie all over it. I remember ‘Blue Jeans’ was more of a Chris Isaak ballad and then I went in with him and it came out sounding the way it does now. I was like, ‘That’s the power of additional production.’ The song was on the radio in the UK, on Radio 1, and I remember thinking, ‘Fuck, that started off as a classical composition riff that I got from my composer friend, Dan Heath.’ It was, like, six chords that I started singing on. CL: You have that lyric (on the song), ‘You were sorta punk rock, I grew up on hip hop.’ Did you really grow up on hip hop? LDR: I didn’t find any good music until I was right out of high school, and I think that was just because, coming from the north country, we got country, we got NPR, and we got MTV. So Eminem was my version of hip-hop until I was 18. Then mayb I found A Tribe Called Quest. CL: Have you met Marshall Mathers? LDR: No. Sometimes he namechecks me in his songs. I called the head of my label (Interscope CEO) John Janick and I was like 'OK in this last song (Big Sean's "No Favors") when Eminem says 'I'm about to run over a chick, Del Rey CD in’. Did he mean he wanted to run me over or was he listening to me while he ran someone over?'. And John was like, 'No, no he was listening to you while he ran someone over' and I was 'Ok, cool.' CL: You got namechecked by Eminem? oh my god that is a jewel in the crown. LDR: Just a little ruby. CL: Yeah, it's not really a diamond, but it's a ruby. LDR: Not like touring with Courtney Love. That's like an Elizabeth Taylor diamond. CL: You know, I met Elizabeth Taylor. I was with Carrie Fisher at (Taylor’s) Easter party and she was taking six hours to come downstairs. LDR: I love it. CL: I looked at Carrie and I said, ‘This is not worth it,’ and Carrie said, ‘Oh, yes it is.’ So we snuck upstairs and, Lana, when you go past the Warhol of Elizabeth Taylor as you’re sneaking up the stairs and it says ‘001’, you start getting goosebumps. And then you see her room and it’s all lavender, like her eyes. And she’s in the bathroom getting her hair done by this guy named José Eber who wears a cowboy hat and has long hair, and I’m like, ‘What am I doing here? I’m not Hollywood royalty.’ And the first words out of her mouth are, like, ‘Fuck you, Carrie, how ya doin’?’ She was so salty but such a goddess at the same time. LDR: She was so salty. The fact that she married Richard Burton twice – and all the stories you hear about those famous, crazy, public brawls – she was just up for it. Up for the trouble. CL: So back to you. What I hear in your music is that you’ve created a world, you’ve created a persona, and you’ve created this kind of enigma that I never created but if I could go back I would create. LDR: Are you even being serious right now? I don’t even know if your legacy could get any bigger. You’re one of the only people I know whose legacy precedes them. Just the name ‘Courtney Love’ is… You’re big, honey. You’re Hollywood. (laughs). CL: You know what, darling? I started real early. I started stalking Andy Warhol before I could even think about it. And you kind of did the same, from my understanding. That ‘I want to make it’ thing. And there’s nothing wrong with that. LDR: No, there’s not. There’s nothing wrong with it when you do the rest of it for the right reasons. If music is really in your blood and you don’t want to do anything else and you don’t really care about the money until later. It’s also about the vibe, not to be cliched. And the people. I think we had that in common. It was about wanting to go to shows, wanting to have your own show – living, breathing, eating, all of it. CL: Can I ask you about your time in New Jersey? Was that a soul-searching time? LDR: Oh, I don’t even know if I should have said to anyone that I was living in that trailer in New Jersey but, stupidly, I did this interview from the trailer, in 2008. CL: I saw it! LDR: It’s cringey, it’s cringey. (laughs) CL: You look so cute, though. LDR: I thought I was rockabilly. I was platinum. I thought I had made it in my own way. CL: I understand completely. LDR: The one thing I wish I’d done was go to LA instead of New York. I had been playing around for maybe four years, just open mics, and I got a contract with this indie label called 5 Points Records in 2007. They gave me $10,000 and I found this trailer in New Jersey, across the Hudson - Bergen Light Rail. So, I moved there, I finished school and I made that record (Lana Del Ray a.k.a. Lizzy Grant), which was shelved for two and a half years, and then came out for, like, three months. But I was proud of myself. I felt like I had arrived, in my own way. I had my own thought and it was kind of kitschy and I knew it was going to sort of influence what I was doing next. It was definitely a phase. (laughs) CL: But you have records about being a ‘Brooklyn Baby’. You can write about New York adeptly and I cannot. I tried to write a song about a tragic girl in New York, going down Bleecker Street – this girl couldn’t afford Bleecker Street, so the song made no sense, right? (laughs) I did my time there, but it chased me away. I couldn’t do it because I wouldn’t go solo. I had to have a band. LDR: I wanted a band so badly. I feel like I wouldn’t have had some of the stage fright I had when I started playing bigger shows if (I had) a real group and we were in it together. I really wanted that camaraderie. I actually didn’t even find that until a couple of years ago, I would say. I’ve been with my band for six years and they’re great, but I wished I had people – I fantasised about Laurel Canyon. CL: I wanted the camaraderie. The alternative bands in my neighbourhood were the (Red Hot Chili) Peppers and Jane’s (Addiction). I knew Perry (Farrell, Jane’s Addiction frontman) and I went to high school for, like, ten seconds with two Peppers and a guy named Romeo Blue who became Lenny Kravitz. I remember being an extra in a Ramones video and he stopped by, when he was dating Lisa Bonet from The Cosby Show and it was a big deal. LDR: See? You didn’t really see that in New York. When I got there, The Strokes had had a moment, but that was kind of it. LA has always been the epicentre of music, I feel. CL: LA is easier. People have garages. And then as you go up the coast, in Washington and Oregon people have bigger houses and bigger garages, and people have parents. I didn’t have parents, and you – well, you had parents, but you were on your own. LDR: Yeah. You know that song of yours (‘Awful’) that says, ‘(Just shut up,) you’re only 16’? I think there are different types of people. There are people who heard, ‘What do you know? You’re just a kid,’ and then there are people who got a lot of support (from the line), like, ‘Go for it, go for your dreams.’ (laughs) And I think when you don’t have that, you get kind of stuck at a certain age. Randomly, in the last few years, I feel like I’ve grown up. Maybe I’ve just had time to think about everything, process everything. I’ve gotten to move on and think about how it feels now, singing songs I wrote ten years ago. It does feel different. I was almost reliving those feelings on stage until recently. It’s weird listening back to my stuff. Today, I was watching some of your old videos and this footage of you playing a big festival. The crowd was just girls – just young girls for rows and rows. I was reminded of how vast that influence was on teenagers. And – going back to enigma and fame and legacy – you know, those girls who have grown up and girls who are 16 now, they relate to you in the exact same way as they did right when you started. And that’s the power of your craft. You’re one of my favourite writers. CL: You’re one of mine, so, checkmate. (laughs) LDR: What you did was the epitome of cool. And there’s a lot of different music going on, but adolescents still know when something comes authentically from somebody’s heart. It might not be the song that sells the most, but when people hear it, they know it. Are you a John Lennon fan? CL: When I hear ‘Working Class Hero’, it’s a song I wish to God I could write. I wouldn’t ever cover it. I mean, Marianne Faithfull covered it beautifully, but I would never cover it because I think Marianne did a great job and that’s all that needs to be said. LDR: I felt that way when I covered ‘Chelsea Hotel (#2)’, the Leonard Cohen song, but when I was doing more acoustic shows, I couldn’t not do it. CL: I don’t have your range. I’ve tried to sing along to ‘Brooklyn Baby’ and ‘Dark Paradise’ and this new one, ‘Love’. You go high, baby. LDR: I’ve got some good low ones for you. You know what would be good, is that song, ‘Ride’. I don’t sing it in its right octave during the shows because it’s too low for me. But I’ve been thinking about doing something with you for a little while now. Then after we did the Endless Summer tour, we were thinking we should at least write, or we should just do whatever and maybe you could come down to the studio and just see what came out. CL: When we were on tour, our pre-show chats were very productive for me. LDR: Me too. That was a real moment of me counting my blessings. I just wanted to stay in every single moment and remember all of it, because it was so amazing. CL: Likewise. It was really fun coming into your room. My favourite part of the tour was in Portland, getting you vinyl that I felt you needed. (laughs) LDR: When you left the room, I was just running my hand over all the vinyl like little gems, like, ‘I can’t believe I have these (records) that Courtney gave to me, it’s so fucking amazing.’ And we were in Portland, too. It felt surreal. CL: Yeah, I don’t like going there much but I went there with you. We have this in common, too: we both ran away to Britain. If I could live anywhere in the world, I’d live in London. LDR: If I could live anywhere in the world other than LA, I’d live in London. In the back of my mind, I always feel like I could maybe end up there. CL: I know I’m going to end up there. I know what neighbourhood I’m going to end up in, and I know that I want to be on the Thames. I subscribe to this magazine called Country Life which is just real-estate porn and fox hunting. It’s amazing. OK, so, if you weren’t doing you, what would you do? LDR: Do you have a really clear answer for this, for yourself? CL: Yeah, I would work with teenage girls. Girls that are in halfway houses. LDR: That’s got you all over it. I’m selfish. I would do something that would put me by the beach. I would be, like, a bad lifeguard. (laughs) I’d come help you on the weekends, though. CL: Do you like being in Malibu better than being in town? LDR: I like the idea of it. People don’t always go out to visit you in Malibu. So there’s a lot of alone-time, which is kind of like, hmm. I’m not in (indie-rock enclave) Silver Lake but I love all the stuff that’s going on around there. I guess I’d have to say (I prefer) town, but I’ve got my half-time Malibu fantasy. CL: The only bad thing that can happen in Malibu really is getting on Etsy and overspending. LDR: Oh my God, woman... (laughs) Tell me about it. Late-night sleepless Etsy binges. CL: Regretsy binges. OK, so, lyrically, you have some tropes and one of them is the colour red. Red dresses, scarlet, red nail polish... I kind of want to steal that. LDR: You need to take over that, because I think I’ve got to relinquish the red. CL: Well, I overuse the word ‘whore’. LDR: You take ‘red’. I’ll trade for ‘whore’. I’m so lucky. CL: I love this new song (‘Love’). LDR: Thank you. I love the new song, too. I’m glad it’s the first thing out. It doesn’t sound that retro, but I was listening to a lot of Shangri-Las and wanted to go back to a bigger, more mid-tempo, single-y sound. The last 16 months, things were kind of crazy in the US, and in London when I was there. I was just feeling like I wanted a song that made me feel a little more positive when I sang it. And there’s an album that’s gonna come out in the spring called Lust for Life. I did something I haven’t ever done, which is not that big of a deal, but I have a couple of collabs on this record. Speaking of John Lennon, I have a song with Sean Lennon. Do you know him? CL: I do, I like him. LDR: It’s called ‘Tomorrow Never Came’. I don’t know if you’ve ever felt this way, but when I wrote it I felt like it wasn’t really for me. I kept on thinking about who this song was for or who could do it with me, and then I realised that he would be a good person. I didn’t know if I should ask him because I actually have a line in it where I say, ‘I wish we could go back to your country house and put on the radio and listen to our favourite song by Lennon and Yoko.’ I didn’t want him to think I was asking him because I was namechecking them. Actually, I had listened to his records over the years and I did think it was his vibe, so I played it for him and he liked it. He rewrote his verse and had extensive notes, down to the mix. And that was the last thing I did, decision-wise. I haven’t mixed the record, but the fact that ‘Love’ just came out and Sean kind of finished up the record, it felt very meant-to-be. Because that whole concept of peace and love really is in his veins and in his family. Then, I also have Abel (Tesfaye), The Weeknd. He is actually on the title track of the record, ‘Lust for Life’. Maybe that’s kind of weird to have a feature on the title track, but I really love that song and we had said for a while that we were gonna do something; I did stuff on his last two records. CL: Do you have a singular producer or several producers? LDR: Rick Nowels. He actually did stuff with Stevie Nicks a while ago. He works really well with women. I did the last few records with him. Even with Ultraviolence which I did with Dan (Auerbach), I did the record first with Rick, and then I went to Nashville and reworked the sound with Dan. So, yeah, Rick Nowels is amazing, and these two engineers – with all the records that I’ve worked on with Rick, they did a lot of the production as well. You would love these two guys. They’re just super-innovative. I wanted a bit of a sci-fi f lair for some of the stuff and they had some really cool production ideas. But yeah, that’s pretty much it. I mean, Max Martin – CL: Wait, you wrote with Max Martin? You went to the compound? LDR: Have you been there? CL: No. I’ve always wanted to work with Max Martin. LDR: So basically, ‘Lust for Life’ was the first song I wrote for the record, but it was kind of a Rubik’s Cube. I felt like it was a big song but... it wasn’t right. I don’t usually go back and re-edit things that much, because the songs end up sort of being what they are, but this one song I kept going back to. I really liked the title. I liked the verse. John Janick was like, ‘Why don’t we just go over and see what Max Martin thinks?’ So, I flew to Sweden and showed him the song. He said that he felt really strongly that the best part was the verse and that he wanted to hear it more than once, so I should think about making it the chorus. So I went back to Rick Nowels’ place the next day and I was like, ‘Let’s try and make the verse the chorus,’ and we did, and it sounded perfect. That’s when I felt like I really wanted to hear Abel sing the chorus, so he came down and rewrote a little bit of it. But then I was feeling like it was missing a little bit of the Shangri-Las element, so I went back for a fourth time and layered it up with harmonies. Now I’m finally happy with it. (laughs) But we should do something. Like, soon. CL: I would like that. That would be awesome. Lust for Life is out this spring.

[artificialqueens]

Hypnotized Ch.1 (Trixya) - Emma

Authors note: Eeek. Okay, I am super nervous to submit this - so I hope you’ll like it. Basically, this turned into an angsty/fluffy thing - it sort of plays on recent Trixya events, but I totally spaced on what Trixie’s boyfriend’s name is (maybe that’s for the better, since no disrespect and yada yada). Either way, there will probably be three chapters of this, I hope. Happy readings, my doves!

” You did what? How did I miss this?” Trixie asked, his brown eyes staring wildly at the blonde man in front of him. Brian, or Katya had surprisingly turned out to become one of his best friends. He had never thought that they would still be this close. Of course, that always came with a price. Trixie, who had been in a serious relationship for the beginning of his friendship with the other man, had known to put Brian in a friendship jar right away, and make sure to screw that seal on as tightly as possible. He had done that as a preventive measure, only because whenever he was around the quirky Faux-Russian – he felt the most immeasurable kind of love that he had felt for a long time. They just got each other in a way that seemed unfeasible to anyone else. Trixie did have the balls to admit that he felt something for Katya, but he had never been able to determinate whether it was just platonic or not.

So, he kept his mouth shut even after the relationship ended – thinking to himself that someday, he would just blurt it out, they would get married and have little dogs that they took to the dog park. Katya would make him watch re-runs of ‘Contact’, but Trixie would take it because he would then force Katya to give up his precious nicotine addiction for him. It all seemed perfect. Until it wasn’t.

Trixie met someone else, Katya got angry, and it all resulted in them barely speaking for nearly five months. They had shot several episodes’ worth of their show, but Trixie had been forced to speak with plenty of angry producers – even Ron was annoyed, and that had practically never happened before– about how they did realize that they were breaching their contract, but they needed yet another break. Thankfully, a loophole was found, and they were both off the hook. Not that Trixie wanted to be but the short messages Katya would reply with on occasion, usually when Trixie had bombarded her with texts – the older queen made it perfectly clear that she had no intentions of continuing on their show if it meant lying to their fans and to herself. So, they didn’t.

Trixie realized that she had been leading Katya on. Their relationship had started as a fun thing they did for their fans that shipped them together, but it soon led to snuggling and making out when they were just Brian and Brian. When Katya had propositioned Trixie for sex, Brian Firkus’s whole being was shaken to the core. He had tried to search for signs that the other man was just joking around, but there was nothing but lust and adoration in those big, blue eyes. Even then, when he knew that at least one of them had passed the point of platonically cuddling each other, he still wouldn’t stop.

He kid himself when he pushed his own feelings away, because they were always hiding underneath the surface – just biding their time before they would come bursting out. Trixie knew he was being unfair, he really did. But he couldn’t stop. And that was ultimately what led to that awful afternoon.

“So, what are we doing tonight? I’m finally all moved in Tracy, you need to come over and see my new place. I haven’t even painted the walls in some neon tragedy yet.” Katya asked as she wiped away the last reminders of her drag persona in the small dressing room they shared in Wow Presents studios. Trixie smirked, knowing that the horrendous yellowy green – honestly, the colour was too bright for anyone to figure out what it actually was, Katya considered it soothing though – was finally out of their lives. Whenever she would visit Katya in Boston, she would always make some kind of comment about how the colour of her walls actually hurt her cornea. And that was coming from the guy that had hot pink all over his own apartment.

“Actually, I’m kind of busy tonight. I was going to tell you, but that guy I was talking to has been getting sort of serious about us. I’m even meeting his parents tonight, it’s insane – right?” Trixie blurted out, chuckling to herself. She hadn’t told her friend about the guy she had been seeing, Jack – she would like to think that was just about keeping some form of privacy, but for some reason, Katya had been popping up into her mind. She was worried about hurting her friend, and had had to spend several days of convincing herself that it would be fine. If there was anything you could count on Brian McCook to do, it was supporting her. No matter what.

Trixie waited for a response, but wound up with an awkward silence that spread across the room. She instantly knew that something was wrong. She glanced over to Katya, who was sitting beside her in front of the big, dirty mirror they had hanging on the wall. The only remnants left of Katya was a red smudge on her chin from the copious amounts of red lipstick he smacked on. Only Brian was left, and he looked incredibly solemn. Trixie kept on staring at him whilst wiping at her own face with a stack of makeup wipes, hoping that her piercing stare would prompt her friend to finally give her the ‘okay’- mark she was subconsciously craving.

Finally, Brian looked over – a cold look on his face. “Oh.” He replied, before returning to wiping the persistent lipstick off of his face.

“What do you mean, ‘oh’? That’s all I get?” Trixie asked, now mildly annoyed.

“What do you want, Bri?” Brian asked, an uncharacteristically stern tone in his voice that sent chills up Trixie’s spine. “I don’t know, maybe something that doesn’t make you sound like I just asked you to kill your own mother?” Trixie propositioned, hoping that they could turn this around before it got any worse.

“Sorry if my response isn’t what you were expecting, but that’s what you’re going to get.” Brian continued, not letting up. As he had finished wiping away furiously at his face, Trixie watched as he pulled the tight dress he had bunched around his waist off of his torso. Usually, Brian would make some comment about his body, trying to kid around whilst he was half-naked, but now – he just grabbed his black t-shirt and quickly threw it on.

“Why are you so upset?” Trixie muttered. It wasn’t as if he didn’t already know the answer, however – because in reality, it had been on his mind from the start.

For a minute, Brian’s eyes softened as he looked over at him. “I’m sorry, but I think we are about to have a fight. I’m going to say some harsh things now, and I don’t think I’ll be able to apologize for them once they’re out. Do you understand?” He asked calmly, to which Trixie could only nod, the final strand of makeup now gone from his face – and so, the masque he could hide his feelings behind.

“Honestly, I just don’t want you to play dumb. You know exactly what’s going on. I feel like you’ve been taking advantage of me, and that fucking sucks.” Brian continued solemnly, sadness washing over his face.

Bri instantly flew into defence mode, which was something he had been hoping to avoid; only because he knew how he acted once he set himself up like that. He tore the large, blonde wig off of his head and then put his own colourful Trixie-t-shirt back on. “Don’t you think it sort of takes two to tango, Brian? We knew what we were setting ourselves up for, and you have said in the past that you think we wouldn’t work like that. We’re so different.”

“Sure, we took this whole ‘Trixya’-thing too far, but you’re not the one that the entirety of our fans has labelled as love sick. And the worst part is that they’re not wrong. You knew that when you let me cuddle and kiss you. You’re just afraid to admit the fact that you like me too, which is why you’re rushing into this whole thing with your supposed boyfriend.” Brian rambled on, his large eyes now blown out, making him look slightly bewildered.

Bri sighed, standing up to put his jeans on. The ‘other’ Brian wasn’t wrong. In fact, he was probably one hundred percent right in his assessment. He had tried to dial down the boundary-blurring things they did, but still let the older man do some things that would grant him the closeness both of them craved. Jack had been incredibly understanding, thinking that was just how their friendship worked; and had promised that he wouldn’t get jealous unless they continued their probably inappropriate ways when they were boys.

“Don’t bring him into this. You know why this can’t work, and that’s all I can really tell you. You’re too impulsive, give it another month or so and you’ll have found someone else to claw onto.” Bri snapped. He was not into having this conversation anymore. However, once he saw the look on Brian’s face, he immediately regretted his harsh words. He could see all of the hurt and defeat flash across the blonde man’s features, along with the fact that tears were beginning to dwell up in his eyes; threatening to roll down his flustered cheeks. Bri zipped up his pants and then ran a hand through his short hair. Shit. A tear ran down Brian’s cheek, making the younger queen immediately plummet into action.

“Fuck, I’m sorry. Please don’t cry, I didn’t mean it like that.” He pleaded, watching the Russian impersonator furiously wipe the tears from his cheeks. Brian Firkus had never seen his friend cry before, only on a video he put up on periscope. Katya never cried, and now, he had caused it. He took a tentative step towards his friend, who had begun stuffing things into his black backpack. Brian snapped his head to look at him, the look he gave him was enough to step off. Instead, he just watched as his, perhaps former, friend took all of his belongings and stormed out of the dressing room.

What had followed after that was dreadful to even think about. Trixie had been forced to simply watch different videos and pictures Katya posted of her and their friends, specifically Alaska. Whilst she knew that even after Katya had seemingly decided to start talking to her again, she had no right to question the amount of time her friend spent with the reigning Drag race-queen. She had to tread carefully, all was still not right. Trixie was still seeing Jack, so there was that. Katya told her when they made up over the phone that she had no interest in discussing their fight again, because she felt like it would only lead to another. Trixie was also, under no circumstances, allowed to bring up the feelings Katya had had for her. Despite the fact that she desperately wanted to, for reasons she could both admit to herself and those she couldn’t – she needed to respect her friend’s conditions so that they could start building their relationship up again. Because the bitter truth was that Trixie was nothing without Katya. She could pretend that since she had only really known the other queen for a slightly limited amount of time, going back to her old life would be simple. But it wasn’t. No matter how she tried, there was no getting past that fact.

Realizing that she had spent too much time in her own mind, she snapped out of it and met Katya’s amused face. “I zone out like that too, at times. Usually, it’s because I’m imagining a world where I get to lay on the hood of a car and scout for extra-terrestrial connections.” Katya reasoned, a small smirk playing on her red lips.

Trixie rolled her eyes, trying to push aside the lump she had in her throat. “I thought we were officially closing the ‘Contact’-chapter for good.” She remarked, making Katya beam at her. “I’m proud that you got that reference. But yes, we’re about to start recording next week or something. So, I’m going to have to try and balance the podcast with Alaska along with the thing we’ve got going on here.” Trixie watched her friend idly as she informed her of the new business plan she had got going on with Alaska.

What Katya didn’t realize, was that her ramblings were actually multi-facetted. How were they going to balance their ‘thing’ with the booming friendship Katya had going on with the queen that had beat her to the crown? Trixie was jealous of them. Jealous that Alaska got to experience what an uncomplicated relationship with Katya was like. Trixie had spent several nights, after Jack had fallen asleep, scrolling through videos and pictures of them – also noticing that after they had gone to Aspen together, Katya had started to comment Alaska’s pictures in the exact same way she had commented on Trixie’s. It seemed like such a trivial thing to get hung up on, but she couldn’t help herself. She was now completely and utterly obsessed with finding out what was going on.

“Okay, well, as long as you don’t spill all of the T with her and save some for me.” Trixie made a half-assed attempt of a joke. Katya smirked and replied light-heartedly: “Of course not. You should be happy; I’ve actually succeeded in making her watch Contact and she liked it. Now, I can transfer all of my admiration for Jodie Foster onto her.” She stretched her thin arms out in a bow as she headed over to her fridge. Trixie had finally gotten around to visiting her new apartment, but had hoped in light of their conversation that they were in a more neutral place then Katya’s small kitchen table.

Her friend’s words didn’t make her feel any better than the fact that she had been in full Tracy-mode for the entire day now. They had headed straight to Katya’s after filming some videos at WOW-presents. Hearing that Alaska had already proven to be a remarkably better friend than she was wasn’t making anything better. “You say that, but I still haven’t been able to convince you that watching Disney movies is a perfectly acceptable way for any grown man to live.” Trixie retorted and accepted the Snapple Katya handed her before the other queen sat down. “They are filled to the brim with misogyny and a bunch of white people, and I’m not here for any of that.” Katya determined. Trixie chuckled and agreed with her, it was true – whether she wanted to give up her childhood or not.

Trixie dwelled in her own mind for a bit, trying to contemplate what Katya had just told her. Her mind was running crazy with different scenarios of how all of this could turn out. The most prominent one was where Katya told her that she had decided to make it official with Alaska, and Trixie would just stand idly by whilst everything transpired. No, she couldn’t do that. She hoped that what she was about to say wouldn’t be interpreted as anything close to the boundary Katya set for them, but she had to say it regardless: “So, is there anything going on with you and Justin?” she asked innocently whilst sipping on her drink. She peeked under her heavy lashes at Katya, and noticed that the other queen had crossed her arms and now had her head cocked to one side. “Would it matter to you if there was?” Katya shot back, and Trixie realized that she had walked straight into a trap.

“No, of course not.” Yes, of course it does.

“Good to know.” Katya answered, casually shrugging. It was clear to Trixie that Katya was toying with her, wanting to know what she would do. She realized that whilst she had changed into her boy clothes, she still had on a full face of makeup. “Do you mind if I go get cleaned up? I need to get out of this face before I become it.”

Katya let out one of her asthmatic laughs that Trixie had learned to love so much, and then gave her the ‘go ahead’. Once Trixie returned, Katya had slipped into a pair of black jeans and one of her own merch t-shirts. “So, how’s Jack then?” Katya asked in such a way that Bri knew she really had no interest in it whatsoever, but felt like she was at least obliged to try.

He sat down again and sighed before he answered: “It’s good. I guess. We don’t have to talk about him if you don’t want …”

“Hey, we’re threading on dangerous territory here, my silly goose of a friend.” Katya warned, and wagged a thin finger at him. “Besides, apparently I’m hooking up with Alaska now – so you’re off the hook.” She added.

Bri rolled his eyes, silently cursing at himself for ever having brought up the Alaska thing. “On that note, I need to get going. But we’ll see each other tomorrow, I guess? Ron said to be at the studio at like ten or so, we’ll be shooting something for some ‘mean comments’ video whilst we’re there.” He explained whilst he headed over to where he had tossed his jacket and boots.

Katya followed him until he was at the front door, peering into the other queen’s eyes. For some reason, the distance between himself and Katya seemed less and less. Then, Katya did something she rarely ever did; she engulfed him into a deep hug. He held tight, relishing in the opportunity of being close to his friend. “What’s this for?” he asked jokingly whilst stroking her back in small circles with his hand. He could feel Katya’s mouth get closer to his ear – her calm breaths sending yet another wave of chills down his back.

“I just figured you needed it, Barbie. And by the way, Justin has a boyfriend.”

For some reason, her words sent a jolt of joy through his entire being. He knew then that what was about to happen was something he would probably grow to regret in some way, but he couldn’t control himself. Not anymore.

He leaned his head back and stared straight into Brian’s eyes, the barrier that Katya provided melted away before him. The other man just stared straight back at him, signalling that he too knew what was transpiring. Bri took a deep breath before he closed the distance between them, crashing their lips together violently. He tore Brian’s wig off - thankful that he still didn’t glue down his lacefront-, and then followed suit on removing his shirt.

He proceeded to spin them around and press Brian against the door, making quick of grabbing his hips and hoisting his thin legs around his waist. The kisses between them held everything that they had gone through in the last couple of months. Every fight, regret, anger, lust, passion was in there, but first of all – the love. Bri moved down to place sloppy kisses onto Brian’s neck, relishing in the gasps he emitted from the Faux-Russian impersonator. He was just about to take things to the next level when he heard Brian’s voice: “Baby? We need to stop.”

Bri instantly tore himself off of his neck, having left ugly hickeys down Brian’s entire throat. He would need to apologize for those later. For now, he settled on just making sure that he hadn’t done anything wrong. Well, he knew that there was a lot wrong with what they had done, but he hoped that his sudden burst of passion hadn’t hurt the other man.

His makeup was now all over his face, which for some reason made him look even sexier. Bri was sure that he had some of that red, hooker lipstick on him as well. “I don’t want to be some home wrecker. That’s not how I want this to start.” Brian reasoned, still gasping for air from their rendezvous.

In all honesty, neither of them wanted that. He was the one that had cheated, and he needed to deal with that, but there was no point in dragging Brian into all of this. “I’m sorry.” He said in a puny little voice, hoping that he hadn’t ruined things between them yet again. Brian’s gaze softened, and he reached a hand out to cup his chin. “Don’t be sorry. I’m not. You have to decide for yourself what you should do, but just know that I’m here. I still want you. All of you, man and lady-man. This is what I was waiting for you to do when we weren’t speaking.”

Bri smiled, and managed to squeeze his lips down to kiss Brian’s pale wrist. “I know. I always knew, I just wasn’t ready. Listen, I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

Brian smirked, and then stated jokingly: “I’ll be having words with you later about those bruises I’m sure are residing on my neck by now. Bye, Tracy.”

“Bye Kathy.”

Before he knew it, he was out of the door. The biggest question now was what the hell he was going to tell his boyfriend. It wasn’t like him to cheat, but for Brian, he hadn’t even cared. That was what he had to focus on, because this would be the only chance he had left to make it right between them.

He needed to take that chance.