#i mean a pretentious hipster place

[wolfavens]

briteBeans  │ ★★★★✩

close to uBrite campus, coffee stale, open late tho. GO DRAGOOONS!!! 🐉🐉🐉

[scoobysnakz]

heyy girl i think if u haven’t what abt u write a dbf miguel x reader ik i see so many but theyre so gd to read they get me so invested every time🤷🏽‍♀️

summary: you’ve just come home from college for christmas but there’s a stranger in your bedroom

a/n: dbf as in dads best friend or dad boy friend? 😭 i’d do either but for this i’ll do dads best friend bc… yh. also tysm for the request it means sm 😚😚😚 also I guess this is a fic now? Bc I kinda hate one shots bci can never cut down on lore and stuff.

❤️

You hadn’t realised how easily college had managed to seep its way into every aspect of your life, pulling you away from both your family and social life, until you came home for Christmas.

Everyone looks so different, your mum is more colourful and chirpy, your father is healthier and your brother is surprisingly mature. But what takes you most by surprise is the lack of silence that has taken them by storm. When you had come home for the summer most of your stay had been filled with an uncomfortable but unfortunately familiar silence following you around but now, you can’t shut them up.

The entirety of the drive home from the train station is full of chatter, and for once they include you. They seem so genuinely invested about you that you don't even question the randomness of their questions, ranging from the journey home and the local shops that surround your campus.

“I heard that there's one of those pretentious, hipster coffee places nearby,” your dad claims from the driver's seat, not bothering to look around at you.

“Vegan?” you offer dryly, unsure of it he knows you work there or not.

“That's it!” he clicks proudly, resulting in both you and your brother sharing a sigh.

Part of you hopes that it’s because of you; that maybe they realised how much they loved you while you were gone and now feel overjoyed at your return. There’s a feeling of doubt floating around in your mind, telling you that this is just a random occurrence, but you push it to the side, wanting to focus on the positive and unrealistic.

***

Your brother helps you lug your suitcase into the house claiming, ‘It’s the least I can do’ which is surreal coming from someone who hasn’t written to you the entirety of your time away. You hand him your antler clifton all the same, glad you didn't have to carry it across the drive as well as up the stairs.

The warmth from the house welcomes you in, the softness of the heated air a stark difference from the harsh bitterness from outside. The sweet smell of cinnamon and gingerbread candles lures you in so soothingly that you don't even notice the extra pair of shoes neatly paired together with the rest by the front door.

“I'll leave it here,” your brother mutters before sliding across the floorboards towards the living room on the heels of his feet- not as mature as you presumed. You smile half-heartedly with a small nod, jealous of how easily he can dismiss himself.

And suddenly you’re alone again, left to your own devices as your parents go start dinner and your brother now yelling into his mic from the living room. It hurts slightly, moments ago they were all over you, so invested in you and your life that you forgot what they're truly like. It's the way it always been and you're a fool for thinking otherwise.

You scold yourself for being so naive as to believe that they'd changed, that they weren't as self-absorbed as they used to be, before pulling yourself away from your sea of negative thoughts.

You stare at your suitcase, bright white light shining on it from the lamp hanging above your head, and decide to leave it there, too tired to carry it upstairs to your room.

The steps creak under your weight as you slouch up the stairs, one hand idly dragging across the chipped bannister. You can't count how many times your dad’s tried to repaint it, how much money he's spent on overpriced glosses and varnishes, how many hours he's spent sanding the thing down.

As you cross the landing, thick carpet dampening the sound of your steps, you the bathroom door left ajar and the soft heat emanating from it. Which is… weird because both your parents and your brother are downstairs. But you shrug it off, too fed up to care, and drag yourself over to your bedroom, head drooping downwards with fatigue.

Casually, you push your door open, expecting the room to be empty and your bed freshly made as it often is when you come home for the holidays. Except it isn't.

Soft jazz music hums throughout the room, playing from a speaker you can't quite place, and the smell of an intoxicatingly strong aftershave clings to the air. Your walls are still decorated with the wallpaper you had when you left but it's covered in various posters. Some are boring and presumably scientific based on the array of symbols, whereas others are insanely niche but you don't really put too much effort into trying to understand them- you're too distracted by the man standing in the middle of your room, half naked and dripping with water.

He's tall, intimidatingly so, but the soft dimples that form in his cheeks as he smiles down at you soothe your nerves- slightly.

“Hey,” he grins down at you, head now cocked to the side and pats his ear causing water droplets to drip onto your carpeted floor.

You blink at him, completely dumbstruck and unsure of what to do. “What the fuck?” you breathe shakily, palms clamming up as your brain desperately flickers between arousal and fear.

The man’s brow furrows at your anxious tone and his smile falters slightly. “I think I should be the one cursing here,” he jests, tone annoyingly light, “you’ve just walked into my room without knocking or anything.”

“You're room?” you scoff, arms folding across your chest. “You're the stranger here, not me.”

He grins at your attitude, those dimples presenting themselves again. “I’m offended, has it been that long since you've last seen me?” he questions, large hand splayed across his chest feigning offence.

You pause for a moment and let your gaze scan him for a moment. He looks familiar, dark slicked back hair and mahogany eyes that are simultaneously scrutinizing and sympathetic.

“A la mierda, querida, have you really forgotten me?” he teases.

And then it clicks. You feel so embarrassed now, for not recognising him. Miguel, your dad’s best friend who you haven't seen for years, is finally visiting again.

He does look different now, though. He's still tall and his face is as chiselled as ever, though there are creases in his skin from when he's smiled too often or squinted too hard at the sun, but he's bulked up a considerable amount. His biceps look bigger than your thighs, tensing and relaxing with every slight movement and shining with the shower water in the yellow light of the evening sun. In fact, his entire body is covered in muscles, and what you can see of his lower half is toned, covered in dark tufts of hair, yes, but the curvature of each muscle is still visible.

He clears his throat and you realise that you’ve been staring longer than intended, shame burning hot on your neck.

“Sorry,” you mutter, “about not recognising you.”

He shrugs off your apology, which irks you slightly but you push past it, and smile once again. “I look different, old age is catching up on me.”

That's definitely what's different.

> next

[oh-allie]

shakespeare and swooning

alhaitham x g/n reader

synopsis; you read one shakespeare play and now you want to impress your "buddy" alhaitham with your newfound knowledge !! what could go wrong?

fluff, g/n reader, TOTAL CRACKFIC, OOC alhaitham, SWEARING, kind of a modern au ???? i mention "ringing tighnari" but that could just be imagined as using the akasha terminal !!!! didnt write this with a modern au in mind

warning ‼️ PLEASE dont expect this to be accurate, if youre a big classic literature fan then dont attack me for not being a NERD ☹️ just imagine a poser using their fancy words (because they think its cool)

you know how libraries are supposed to be a place of study and tranquility? no the fuck you don't, or at least you don't care, because running through the house of daena with shakespeares, "romeo and juliet," in your hands is NOT very tranquil.

multiple poor akademiya students look at you, PISSED OFF because your shoes are going clu-clonk on the marble floors, which wouldn't be an issue if you weren't scurrying through the library.

is that kaveh ?? he's giving you the same look he gives alhaitham every day ..

... but this is IMPORTANT !! you're on a MISSION right now !! you just finished reading the first act of "romeo and juliet," and you're convinced your brain has expanded tenfold in size.

you're now rushing to your good pal haitham to share your knowledge! how kind and gracious!

you're stopped before his house, you've known him for long enough and gotten close enough for him to let you come in whenever. you know kaveh isn't home, and haitham would never purposefully work overtime, so you're certain you can get his attention and show off in peace.

why are you so adamant about showing off to alhaitham? is it REALLY showing off, or are you trying to, heehee, impress him?? its too late to be flustered at this thought because you already unlocked the door with the spare key kaveh leaves behind one of haithams ugly ass decorative plants and you've taken off your shoes and oh god hes right there and the sunlight from the door is lighting up his face in that way that only happens to him and hes looking at you with a suprised, slightly annoyed, but incredibly fond look and oh no what was your plan again?

"greetings, alhaitham! ☝️🤓" you say, finding a surge of confidence remembering the story you read.

"... hey. what are you doing here?" his response is quick but before you respond he continues, "did you just say greetings?"

"indubidibdibdly! hath you be surprised?" you pretentious hipster. you think youre SO cool, but unfortunately your little crush doesn't seem very impressed either.

"okay, what are you doing? you're being weird." he's not even looking at you, and he's back in his chair before you can rush over and sit on the couch. "is something wrong? should i get tighnari to give you a checkup?"

you'd be touched by the care of the suggestion if he wasn't so cheeky in his tone.

"wha, what, no?! no what the hell- stop ringing tighnari."

"are thou o'er wrought with admiration?" you grin, somehow still under the impression that you sound cool.

he gives an eyebrow raise to that. not bothering to mark his place in his book, he stands up.

"i lie testy in why you act so unpregnant, my dear."

"what"

HUH ? what did bro just say ? testy ???? unpregnant ?? MY DEAR ??? backtrack again, UN-WHAT ??

"be still my beating heart, thou hast taken mine with absolute cunning." is he making fun of you i genuinely can't tell ... its like hes speaking in moon runes right now.

"haitham, heheh, WHAT are you DOING ??" you can't help but laugh at his funny little words, magic man. even if you're clueless to what he just said to you.

"whatever doth thou mean?" he's totally making fun of you !! after ALL your effort to impress him too?

"well, usually i do all the ranting and you sit pretty and listen, so it's weird that you're talking so much, especially like THAT?" fym sit pretty ....

"when words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain." that sounds familiar, but you can't think about it longer before he continues, "shall i compare thee to a summers day?"

"ALRIGHT, i recognize that one, dummy." you laugh, "were you really not impressed by me?" you whisper, the rush of embarrassment you shouldve felt in that library is finally catching up with you.

he stares at you for a second. you just wish you could find out what hes thinking up there, if you could even understand it.

and then he lets you into his mind, with a simple "i love you." as if alhaitham, renowned scribe of the akademiya, top student, couldn't find the words to describe how he felt for you.

or maybe that was what he felt for you. he loved you.

"... you called me unpregnant."

a/n; i read romeo and juliet like... 3 years ago.... so.. uam... 😇😇 totally accurate! hope this crackfic style of writing isnt too niche so this doesnt flop because EMBARRASSING....... do people even like al haitham anymore like guys lets go back to the good old days before the FRENCH came in..... (this is just me projecting cause i havent played genshin in a while and i still lovelove sumeru)

[netflixonyourcouch]

So much has been made of the Halsey response

Thank you Halsey, first and foremost, for an amazing album. I don't want that point to get lost by discussing what is admittedly the NOISE surrounding this album.

The main culprits: Pitchfork and Fantano. The long and short of it, for those who are unaware: both Pitchfork and Fantano cruelly and unfairly attacked Halsey's intentions, accusing her of essentially milking their illness for the album and exhibiting "main character syndrome" or some shit. There is no way around it, these were personal attacks, and designed to shock and make a statement against her instead of engage with the project in good faith.

So many people have come out on both sides to either support Halsey or defend Pitchfork/Fantano's right to criticism.

Let me tell you something. You white-washed, hipster ass, elitist ass motherfuckers who think indie music is so superior to pop music (and liking Charli's BRAT doesn't count, you bandwagon bitches) need to get a life. All of you. You're NOT the smartest in the room, you're not smarter than Halsey fans, you're not more cultured, more correct, or even more logical. You pride yourselves on that because you've already made up your mind about pop music and refuse to bend, and I'm here to tear down that smug sense of superiority.

You fucking chumps have the gall to say, "What? People aren't allowed to criticize music anymore" Blah blah blah. Stop going to one end of the extreme every fucking time someone wants to put your bullshit "criticism" in its place. You all sound like fucking Republicans lmfao, ignorant as fuck. Republicans cry about "free speech being cancelled" because they can't say racist shit anymore. Yall cry about criticism being "dead" because you can't openly denigrate pop stars anymore.

You can't say ignorant, close-minded, sexist, rockist bullshit and act like nobody is allowed to call it out. Genuine criticism ISN'T THE ISSUE. Petty, personal and short-sighted attacks on Halsey's character IS THE ISSUE. Until you stop at the stop sign and ACKNOWLEDGE THIS FACT, I don't wanna hear anything else about defending the "right to criticize." Present criticism in good faith and then we'll talk.

I can talk about this shit BECAUSE I'VE BEEN THERE. I used to run in the same little cliques as yall. I'm so glad I'm no longer like you fucking pricks anymore because you are all insufferable people. I feel frankly embarrassed that I was ever that pretentious and condescending and I pray that all of you wake up and understand the error of your ways. THERE IS STILL TIME, the irony is that your refusal to keep an open mind about pop music means that you're NOT the so-called "music experts" that you think you are. If you were true music experts you'd be experts about ALL MUSIC not just white people with guitars. Again, CHARLI DOESN'T COUNT. CARLY RAE JEPSEN DOESN'T COUNT, YOU SOUND LIKE THE WHITE PEOPLE THAT SAY THAT SAY THEY CAN'T BE RACIST BECAUSE THEY HAVE 2 BLACK FRIENDS. It's the joke about being US sports teams calling themselves "World Champions" when they are only playing in an American league. You're not an expert on "music" while simultaneously ACTIVELY IGNORING A BIG CHUNK OF MUSIC.

You're also attempting to outsmart all the backlash by saying "Just because Halsey talks about their sickness doesn't make it a great album!!!" Let me address that claim and then I'm done with your faux-intellectual fucks, who again I'd like to remind, are not as smart as yall think. Some of you cobbled a few more brain cells together, I'll give you that, and think that this is the ultimate "gotcha" but it's not. Let's start with the elephant in the room: 1. Many of you who are saying all this shit against Halsey HAVEN'T EVEN HEARD THE ALBUM YET. So until you listen to it, I'm not even entertaining any of your fucking arguments because it's coming from a place of literal ignorance. You don't even know what the album sounds like!! 2. If you DID listen to it, it's a strong chance you didn't digest it. NO I'm not saying it's this ultra challenging piece of work that's difficult to understand, I'm instead arguing you skimmed it, didn't listen closely enough or went in with a strong bias to where you're not even in the position to hear its greatness.

Yes, it's a technically right statement that simply talking about a deep or emotional topic doesn't automatically make a work of art great. The reason why that doesn't apply here is that she DID make a great album. I like her last album more but there's no denying that this is right behind it, and in some parts even better. Not every song is my favorite, but there's no way around it, there are some PHENOMENAL songs on here: I Believe in Magic, The Arsonist, The End, Dog Years, Ego, Darwinism, and Lonely is the Muse are all better than your standard indie singer-songwriter stuff.

Finally, I've seen this over and over again: People like to overapply the rules to artists they don't like. I've seen it with Taylor too, who I admittedly don't like, but people tend to be super uncharitable toward her too. You'd NEVER disparage Sufjan for talking about his struggles with Guillain-Barre or try to say, "Just because he talks about Guillain-Barre doesn't make it a great album!" It simply wouldn't happen. So stop this rules-for-thee-but-not-for-me hypocrisy bullshit and try to get a fucking clue, please.

In short. I won't sit silently anymore as people in the indie community try to self-assure themselves that Halsey fans are the crazy ones for calling out cheap, personal attacks under the guise of "criticism." Yes, I'm sure you all are assuring yourselves that "stan twitter" is the problem and "people can't criticize music anymore" but I need all of you to wake up and get a clue, THERE IS STILL TIME, if you love music try actually opening your mind for a change and LOVE MUSIC instead of parading around your indie music bias as if it's the only correct take there can be. Try to get some more pop music in your diet before you criticize pop music. I wouldn't expect someone who likes two hip-hop artists to give good constructive criticism on hip-hop any more than I'd be able to give good constructive criticism on a jazz album just because I like Thundercat and Flying Lotus.

This was long-winded and aggressive but I'm sorry, I'm tired of pretending it's okay that hipster motherfuckers do this shit. I can't do it anymore.

[kimbapisnotsushi]

Hello, here to help you through the midterms! I would like to hear about Tsukki if you haven't shared hcs for him a thousand times already and/or Fukunaga :)

my babies!!! i'd be more than happy to, let's get it :))

tsukishima:

avid romance defender. he may be kind of mean when it comes to rejecting confessions and girls and doesn't totally get why he's so popular for it but as a bookworm he's very aware of the issues that the genre in literature (and across other mediums as well) faces and WILL have a whole rant locked and loaded if you ask him

thinks strawberry shortcake needs to stay in its purest form to be any good and absolutely will not accept any variations like "white chocolate strawberry shortcake" or "raspberry strawberry shortcake" or anything that alters plain ol' strawberry shortcake

nerdy enough that he has a map tacked up in his room with pins in all the places he wants to visit someday

does not know how to use emojis or kaomojis or even just the simple :) at all and if anyone gets a message from him with one they can safely assume his phone was stolen by yamaguchi, hinata, noya, or suga

everyone is really surprised when they find out that he and lev actually text quite a lot and tsukki is like "look if i don't help him with hw he is NOT going to pass first year"

during tokyo training camp he tries to sneak into the high school's library LMAAAAO

has the most pretentious-ass music taste you will ever find but DOES like a handful of mainstream pop songs

(personally i think he's a yorushika fan but that's just me)

likes getting hw done at cute coffeeshops/cafes especially when his room feels really overwhelming

fukunaga:

once told tora very seriously that he knew a great trick for freaking people out and then proceeded to whip out a mandarin from seemingly nowhere and bit into the whole thing like an apple and tora's resulting reaction was what made fukunaga think about getting into comedy

he did it to lev too except he used a banana and lev's been scared of him ever since

knows, like, every single classic-52-deck card game in existence for some reason

do NOT play poker with him he has an excellent resting face you WILL lose

also really good at sleight-of-hand and simple magic tricks

probably has the most knowledge/experience in non-japanese cuisines let's be real

also has a bucket hat collection that ranges from "cool and stylish" to "walking shitpost"

he's got one with cat ears attached to the top that he's very fond of

uses the team as trial-and-error for his recipes and once accidentally gave them all food poisoning

(nobody blamed him ofc but he felt really bad and made them all cupcakes after)

likes going to hipster artsy events like open mic nights at coffee shops and bookstores and free gallery viewings and band battles and whatever

has to resist the urge to pat inuoka's and lev's heads like a dog sometimes

[waywardstarfishkid]

Outragiously long and stupid rant incoming!

I like never make posts on here but I wanted to scream into the void about heartbreak high. Since s1 I've seen like really strange takes and half the time I'm like is it because people don't know how Australian school is different or is it a lack of critical thinking.

Like in s1 I only saw people either hating or loving spider and don't get me wrong either of those is valid but the way people were explaining it was strange to me.

For me I didn't like spider but not because he was some unrepeatable arsehole I actually think he was a great representation of a lot of Australian guys I knew growing up. Like he says dumb shit but then when things are serious he does the right thing like he helped malakai with the cop (then said fucking stupid things after) and he helped amerie at the festival, he wanted to help harper and let her in even though it would mean he and American would have to stop hooking up.

In comparison I swore people liking dusty who in my eyes was way worse than spider. He acted all woke like he said the right things and then did shitty things like shaming harper and deciding to frame jojo.

Like theyrr both shit but I would trust spider with my drink over but maybe not dusty.

Then ant I understand if you like ant and spider together but I think people maybe don't understand how touchy guys are with each other in Australia. Like gay straight bi whatever guy friends hang off each other and I think it's actually healthy to show that. I also saw someone complaining about spider and ant doing gay shit but only as a joke but I never saw that like I don't think any of it was a joke it just wasn't gay. Like spider calling him pet names them cuddling and stuff is just affection which is actually great especially for men who often don't know how to have affection that's not sexual.

Also can we agree that ant just doesn't care about the gender he's hooking up with like I don't think he's bi I think he's just into who he's into (is that pansexual? Sorry).

I was a bit disappointed with all the bisexual characters ending up in straight relationships but that's mostly because I really wanted an ant malakai and I liked Rowan Malaysia before it went to shit. But at the same time I dont like how people critiquing it often feels like Bi erasure. Like I'm a bi woman whos first gay relationship ended because my gf (lesbian) cheated on me with a lesbian because she constantly thought I was cheating on her with my guy friends and for a long time I just dated guys because I didnt know many bi women and lesbian girls kept being horrified that I would go near a dick (not all of them my ex was very understanding and actually encouraged me to embrace my sexualising when I was just a baby bi) but my point is I totally understand how having a straight relationship when bi can actually be more understanding (at least in mine and my friends experiences) and it's totally valid even though the relationship is straight.

Also people angry about not as much quinni (I agree more quinni she and cash are my loves) I'm actually happy they took a back-seat with her on the relationship front like her and Sasha were a big deal/quinnis first relationship and I think it wouldve really messed quinni up with how it ended. I also love that they're not just centring her storyline around being the gay girl you know like she I a multifaceted queen.

Also for the Sasha redemption, I get why people are calling for it but unlike spider and dusty like Sasha didn't really do anything wrong (except for how she treated quinni but they talked at the end of s1 and seem to be moving to a place of good friendahip) shes mostly just annoying and pretentious like the other idiots actually fuvked up. I don't really want a Sasha redemption I just want to see more of her character make her a bit less of a two dimensional hipster, which I honestly think they only didn't fo because they had a lot of characters to juggled Sasha had to take a back-seat so Missy could shine (and I love Missy so I'll allow it also her and malakais friendship means everything to me the indigenous representation that shows not just the aspects of country and family but also shows them as fully formed characters I LOVE)

Sorry for the obscenely long rant this is just all my thoughts from s1 and s2 so ignore it by all means and also if you disagree that's fine and you are probably right lol.

[canenotabeltofunction]

Not to sound like a pretentious hipster but art is not meant to appeal to everyone. Making art purely to appeal to as many people as possible defeats the purpose of creating in the first place. And so much of this has to do with consumerism and a lack of connection to other people.

Because of consumerism art has become something that needs to be as easy to consume by as many people as possible. Books are often heavily filled with tropes and caricatures of characters (ie: enemies to lovers, brooding male lead, sunshine female lead, etc). Songs and poems can’t have personal touches to them- it has to be as vague as possible so as many people can want to hear it. People are forced to make what the masses want rather than things that portray some kind of message. The intention behind the art becomes meaningless and overshadowed by the need for it to be profitable. And most of this is not the fault of the artist but more so in the need to survive in a capitalist hellscape.

The real reason for creating art gets lost. And with it so many people seem to have lost their ability to consume art properly. If it hasn’t been watered down or requires us to think about what it means to us or it doesn’t immediately make us happy then it’s labeled as “bad”.

I would rather listen to a song about a man singing about the ginger with a butterfly tattoo that broke his heart in college than someone sing about some outline of a girl and saying the things that they think will make me relate the most. Because one of those has real pain, real pain from a real person. Just because I was not heartbroken by a ginger woman with a butterfly tattoo I have been heartbroken and I am going to connect more deeply to this guys pain because it’s REAL it comes from a REAL place.

Unfortunately I feel like at least with what I see online, many people have forgotten how to do that. We want to consume it as quickly and mindlessly as possible- we don’t WANT to think about what something means.

And people forget that art isn’t always supposed to make you feel good. Sometimes it’s supposed to disturb you, sometimes it’s supposed to piss you off. Obviously there are times that I want to just watch a fun little movie and not think about the deeper meaning. But just because a movie disturbed me or because I don’t agree with the message of something doesn’t mean it was bad.

Even creating art for the purpose of making things people will like has some depth when you are doing it out of love and the desire to spread happiness or comfort or to make people smile. But often that even gets overshadowed by the need to make things as quickly as possible and removes that emotional aspect.

But overall this is your reminder that your art is meant to be personal. Because making art that is genuine may not connect to as many people but for the people it does it will be in a deeper way.

[chappell-roans]

did u see this whole millie bobby brown disclosure? Her saying that she doesn’t watch movies because she thinks it’s too long and she can’t just sit and watch. and this is sadly typical behavior from nepo babies and those kids that were essentially made to be actors by their parents. they don’t feel real love for the craft but get so many opportunities than other actors that study cinema and are very knowledgeable barely get.

but i think only actors that love cinema are able to transcend and work for a long time. a lot of people were calling Austin Butler pretentious but I find his knowledge of cinema admirable. chalamet also got called pretentious once for referencing a lot of movies but I find that normal because studying cinema as an actor should be your job? it’s part of the preparation? A look at the career both of them have… it’s easy to know when an actors loves the craft by how they speak, Florence’s hot wings interview was very insightful and you can tell she pays attention to every element of filmmaking.

For instance, I remember watching an interview w Tom Holland and I find him a charming guy but I really dislike how he once joked and made fun of a very valid question about studying process for a role - it doesn’t seem that he takes the craft that seriously and I find the instances of where he didn’t know who certain directors were and when he said Scorsese couldn’t direct a Marvel film so crazy considering how he has been the pioneer of so many “blockbuster” in its time, and his lack of cinema knowledge shows in the quality of his choices for roles.

I feel a lot of actors don’t realize that by saying things like they they get a lot of doors slammed in their face.

I'm late replying again sorry but all of this, yes. I tried not thinking about it too much but it definitely irks me. And I think there are a loooot of people of tbh all ages that feel this way. But it does particularly suck for someone making movies to feel this way? (I did see some conversation on twitter between people who actually work on film sets and they said this is common, particularly among like crew members like gaffers, lighting, etc etc.)

YES. This is why when "pretentious" discourse goes around because like Jacob Elordi talks about Marlon Brando (not his method acting, but just his acting) or old movies, people make fun of him and say he's just a try-hard hipster. But maybe... he loves acting and wants to improve his craft? Like, I agree. It's something that should come from a place of love and wanting to get better. We can't all be Hugh Grant and annoyed at the world all the time lmao. And like you said, same with Austin, Timothee, hell, remember the Jeremy Strong "dramaturgical" discourse that people freaked out about for a week because he used... a common theater word? Lmfao.

It's like, when letterboxd does their asking an actor or director their four favorites, there's always people in the comments saying they don't believe that an old French movie or hell even a 70s movie (that isn't The Godfather or Star Wars, bc apparently Jaws is pretentious?? LMAO), could be someone's fav and they're lying to look good. But if someone lists a bunch of animated Disney children's movies, La La Land, and Scott Pilgrim then they must be telling the truth. Maybe they both are? But god it's so frustrating to think that having taste beyond the basics is pretentious. Like, people call CHRISTOPHER NOLAN MOVIES PRETENTIOUS. Just because something is mildly to extremely clever or smart doesn't mean it's pretentious :)

Rant over lmao.

I need to watch Florence on Hot Ones still but I loved seeing bits of her on the press tour for Oppenheimer and I saw a clip of her and Zendaya talking about the craft of cinematography (linked) and how like Flo told her story about the camera breaking on Oppenheimer, and Z talked about like how she loves sitting in the tent w the Dune cinematographer and learning how everything works. Like, they love filmmaking!!! And I love that! This is how actors become better, and can produce, and even direct successfully. (Z I think definitely will. She'd had plans to direct at least one Euphoria ep but of course shitshow that it is, it hasn't happened yet.)

But yeah agreed about Tom Holland it's all soooo. Idk. You can very much tell when someone really loved movies and the process of how they are made, or not. And that's the truth whether someone's favorite movie is Godzilla v. Kong or Breathless. But yes!!! I truly don't understand why they say things like that, like... unless you want a door closed, don't close it for no reason! Lmao. Ayo Edebiri has talked about this recently.

I really don't get that w Scorsese of all people too like... all his movies are fucking popcorn movies. It's all cinema but who the hell is thinking Goodfellas is boring? Or The Aviator? Hell, I just watched Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. It has a batshit opening and is suuuch a fast-paced movie for what it is like, about a woman coming to terms w loss and making it on her own w her annoying kid (affectionate) and domestic violence I just ?? I don't get it myself! And pretending Scorsese actually has a war against Marvel is stupid as fuck. I wish he did! Someone should.

[courtneykistheway]

Start of a new blog...

I've decided to put all of my writing happenings here, on tumblr.

A.) It is free. I know I 'should' be charging people for my oh-so precious thoughts and ramblings. It's what's proper and keeps the creative economy going, in the sphere of the internet. But I don't want to. Honestly, I hate charging for anything and wish we could live without the need for money, so here we are. (I want to be in a place eventually where I can charge money for my full-length novels. I tried a poetry book once, didn't go well. Anyways, not that I want to charge, but I'm not very good at working normal jobs due to my stupid, creative, mentally-something brain. Books would be ideal, but I mean. I do think I have the right to be mad about it. I should just be able to give people my books without worrying if I can feed myself from it, ya know? But yeah. Again, here we are, at an emotional limbo that's tied to finances, yet again.)

B.) I post too many things on other platforms in regards to my writing that doesn't make sense for the platform, the posts bomb, then I beat myself up for not being able to 'perform' properly.

C.) There's less people. Tumblr has always felt like a pink bubble to me. I can say what I mean, using as many words as necessary to achieve my intention.

D.) I really just want to share snippets of my writing. I can't do that other places in a social-media aspect.

E.) I can't see views on here, and because of the way I've used this app for the past decade, I don't care. I don't expect to get likes on literally anything I post here, and due to the personal nature, I don't really want to.

F.) I'm a pretentious hipster and only want the people that took the time to come to my thought box to see my real thoughts. It is what it is, I know this about myself at this point. Oh. Well.

[pining-mx-diva-dumpster]

Isolationist

Sometimes I think I might’ve been too smart for my classes because in my intro to religion’s class, I decided to talk about Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha. Everyone looks at me with a blank stare and I’m like damn this is just like highschool again. I’m a pretentious artsy little hipster, which means I watch shit like Paprika and say I’m cultured.

I’ve always been super above grade level when it came to reading but I never really wanted to apply myself because that would’ve just spelt more isolation. I wanted to fit in like all insecure high schoolers. So I never really wanted to tell people that I listened to history podcasts or watched video essays breaking down concepts like liminal spaces in horror.

I isolate myself from my peers not because I don’t want friends but because I don’t know how to keep them around if they don’t respond to me or always place me on a last priority. When I have friends I backtrack a lot, I make sure they feel prioritized and safe with me cause I’ve never really had this with the people I hung out with from high school. I think they just saw me as a sort of pet. Which is why I protect myself with books and studying. If I can just be surrounded by words maybe it’ll be enough to sate my desire for companionship.

[unhingedwomandiaries]

Look, I've been dying to check out one of these absolute bin-fire mystery kilo clothing sales for ages. You know the type - where they chuck random textile roadkill into these massive plastic barrels and charge you basically bugger-all to dig through it like some feral raccoon with a clothing addiction. When one of these fashion apocalypses finally landed in my postcode, I was SO IN. Three quid for an early bird ticket? That's basically paying to breathe at this point.

I dragged my two partners in crime along because A) misery loves company, and B) splitting train fare means more money for potential trash-treasure hunting. We stumbled about town at 10 a.m., looking like we'd been dragged backwards through a charity shop, hitting all the hipster morning spots. Chocolate shop? Check. Dying candy shop? Check. Pretentious artisanal bakery that nobody actually needs? Double-check.

When we rocked up to this clothing carnage, the queue was already longer than my list of teenage grudges. Blokes were strategizing like they were planning some military invasion, all desperate to grab the best Nike tat before scurrying off like frightened woodland creatures. There was even this absolutely mental blonde wandering about, waving a tenner and begging to cut in line like some sort of deranged queue terrorist.

The local press were lurking too - because apparently this was going to be the hard-hitting journalism that would save print media. As if.

When those doors finally opened, it was pure, unadulterated chaos. Body-on-body violence that would make Black Friday look like a sodding tea party. I'm talking grown adults throwing actual hands over a manky dri-fit tank top from some random American baseball team nobody's ever heard of. "Shakopee Sno-Devils, 2001 Finalists!" Mate, I don't give a flying toss about 10-year-olds playing baseball in Minnesota, and neither do you.

While the unwashed masses were beating seven shades out of each other, I made a tactical beeline for the handbag section. The real battlefield of this entire operation. I spotted a Hermès box and nearly wet myself with excitement. But of course, the bag was long gone - snatched by some more aggressive fashion vulture.

My final haul? Two skirts, two shirts, two scarves - all for 43 bloody pence. One scarf was actually a cheeky Gucci number, which is just peak capitalism, innit? Some rich muppet once spent a month's wages on this, and I'm walking away with it for less than the price of a Freddo.

The whole scene was like some weird social experiment. Everyone documenting their "incredible finds" on social media like they'd just discovered the Holy Grail of clothing. We ended up grabbing food at this vegan place with the most ridiculous name - "Bento" my arse. My mate ordered something called "Sexy Mock Legs" which looked like the remnants of a vegetarian crime scene. Just smooth, alien-looking fake meat that no sane person would voluntarily put in their mouth.

We're a weird bloody species, aren't we? Hunter-gatherers turned into sad little haul-uploaders, all chasing the same pathetic delusions. Such is life in this absolutely mental modern world.

[outside-lookingin]

The end of tumblr

Back in 2018, tumblr got caught with their pants down and bums exposed when it made the news, the BIG NEWS one of their blogs posted child porn. All the higher up execs and staff panicked, risk of losing their place on every platform avail, they banned nudity and pornography from this site in an attempt they were ‘doing something’ about it. Tumblr has always been a place where anything goes. Well, ALMOST anything. Despite tumblr’s community guidelines we all agreed to, blogs were breaking rules daily and if you trotted off into the dark side of tumblr, you found hideous things. Scary things. You found things you’ve never seen before or wanted to see. To this day some images have stuck with me. Some images so unbelievably gruesome and disturbing, I wish I could forget. Some blogs that posted certain nonsense were deleted. Or a post was simply removed. Then some blogs weren’t and by some magic twist of fate slipped under the radar basically forever and got away with murder. Then some other blogs were deleted with no warning or no good reason.

Then a light at the end of the tunnel? As of this year, tumblr has reinstated nudity. This unfortunately has not saved their site. The good blogs that left after the great ‘females presenting nipples ban of 2018’ didn’t come back. The posters that post haven’t been posting as much. It’s been too little too late. Oh, now you’re sorry?! Four years later?!! Nice. The blogs that were labeled ‘explicit’ stayed explicit and weren’t given the option to be rebirthed to have a site again. If you’re an explicit blog, you’re dead to tumblr. You don’t even exist.

I’m sorry to say after all that tumblr has done to try to save their site, they are hanging on by a very short thread. In an attempt to regal feelings of old, this site gets goofy, but in the most pretentious way. As a feeling of a stale corn flake that no longer serves it’s purpose. We had the click for frogs thing for no reason which was stupid. Or an old windows 95 desktop blocking half of the damn page. To keep it all hip and cute for the kiddies, now we have a tumblr store selling random, useless and stupid items. What? Nonsense. And as a cherry on the shit sundae, there is now tumblr live. What in the hell is tumblr live? Well, it is nothing more then a bunch of random and i mean RANDOM yo-yo’s who have no idea what tumblr is or who don’t even like tumblr who are streaming for no good reason whatsoever. Oh, so that’s what that is. And every week after you snooze the annoying banner of icons of the most hipster jerks you’ve ever seen in your life, tumblr live turns on again for you and it appears like some horrible thing. So you go back in your settings and have to turn it off again. You have to turn it off every week so you don’t have to look at the most horrible thing you’ve ever seen in your life: Other people. Ewwwwwwwww. What? We don’t want to see other people. We want to see what we like to see. Which is whatever we want why we’re here! Art! Old time hollywood! Movie gifs! Other shit! What the fuck does live streaming nobodys have to do with tumblr! You know how tumblr’s Q&A is basically Q&A with people you’ve never even heard of in your entire life? Same thing except much worse.

Even after all these changes, additions and ‘improvements’, would you believe that child porn blogs still exist on this site? You’re kidding? Nope, I am not. You might be asking yourself, how do you know such things? Well, I happened to have followed the wrong blog which I no longer follow which reblogged garbage. I also became aware of another blog I followed that also posted and reblogged garbage and from there saw who they reblogged garbage from and so forth and so forth. Tumblr cannot possibly handle this. Or can they? How many blogs are on this damn thing anyways? Well, after an extensive google search which was literally 3 seconds, over 500 millions blogs exist on tumblr. But how many REAL blogs is that? 500 million blogs nearing 600 million? This counts blank blogs, spam blogs and blogs that haven’t posted for ten or more years. So now how many blogs does that leave? Would you say 100 million or less actual users?

I still can’t help but feel tho with so much to oversea, there is still a right way and a wrong to handle this. What would be hard about having a special ‘team’ separate from the regular tumblr team to seep out the garbage? SO, you’re just going to keep letting pedophiles post trash?

After me reporting dozens of these blogs and even an e-mail to the CEO, these blogs are being erased one little bit at a time and some not at all? Why would tumblr have time to get rid of trash when they have to worry about designing stupid stickers or cashing in so hipsters can buy 20 checkmarks that mean NOTHING. Tumblr’s priorities are in the wrong place. You need a solid foundation first before you go off bullshitting and fucking around. And to make a functional foundation you need A: Having a functional site. B: Have it run fast. C: Fix your damn bugs. D: Make sure you’re not having a whole host of the wrong blogs. And ‘speaking’ of the wrong blogs, for a site that doesn’t allow porn there sure is a lot of it I come across. Not only porn gifs from random blogs, but full on porn blogs that reblog nothing but porn. Well, imagine that. I remember the welcome back e-mail from CEO Matt Mullenweg, who told us that now we can not think of nipples as a bad thing anymore, but allowing porn on a blog site basically doesn’t work. It SEEMS to be working pretty good for some peeps? Tumblr can’t seem to weed out it’s own troth of minions violating it’s community guidelines. How do you fix this? We don’t need a tumblr filter again. We remember what a disaster that was. Liars. You would appeal a post that had nothing to do with adult content at all and a promise it would be reviewed by a real human, only to receive an e-mail a half a second later informing you your post IS adult content and will not be restored. BOY, those tumblr staff real humans sure are quick, aren’t they? But why regal the things of old. The point is, this site is dying and not as exciting as it used to be.

Some blogs that suffered a cruel fate or having their blog labeled explicit or deleted and started a new blog found they were being targeted on the new blog and still being punished by having their archive wiped out or random posts disappear. What is that about?

Knowing there is a whole community of sick blogs that got tumblr in trouble in the first place and that got us punished means nothing has changed other then a four year gap where nakedidity (it’s a word) meant your ass. The fact that it took as long as it did for word to get out this site has blogs that post illegal crap is incredible it took that long. And now at this point we find that there are still illegal posts that a four year hiatus on tits did NOTHING.

[whimsicallywiddershins]

True. Yeah, there are some rich assholes that get there with private planes. But the majority people there drive. And yeah, they are using generators, but so does everyone else who ever goes camping with a trailer. I know it's stolen land but the land itself is BLM land so all of the public is allowed to be there. (I've actually been camping on the Black Rock Playa in the spring, it's quite pretty and a great place to learn how to drive a clutch lol) And calling them rich for paying for a ticket and getting special equipment? Um, what do you think skiing and snowboarding is? Or surfing? Or ocean fishing? Or even just camping jeez.

Yeah, most Burners are hipsters that call eachother silly names and go do drugs in the desert. They are pretentious and have all of the worst hipster characteristics. But that doesn't mean it's OK to laugh and point at wish them misery. Jeez. These are normal people who save up every year to go to Burning Man, not a bunch of billionaires and millionaires disturbing a mass grave. Cut them some slack.

Burning Man is an art festival where the tickets are $300-$500 for a nine day event.

If you know someone who has been to comic con or disney world or a taylor swift concert for more money for fewer days, be sure to let them know that you consider them to be a member of the one percent and therefore expendable in your quest for total class conscious.

[cheeriecherry]

viktor as a bassist in a band?? Like some Alex Turner vibes and reader is somehow attracted to it

You hadn’t meant to come in again, you really hadn’t. It was your fourth day in a row that you’d stopped by the little hole-in-the-wall hipster bar on your way home from work; you’d sworn to yourself that you were just going to go home that night, and have a quiet evening to yourself. But it would appear that your subconscious had other plans. What had you so enraptured? Perhaps not a what, but a who. You’d come by the establishment a couple times over the months, enjoying the laid back atmosphere and overall more-comfortable-than-your-typical-dive-bar vibes. 

More often than not, there was some kind of live music set up off to one side of the room -small artists that wanted to start making a name for themselves, or even the occasional highschool band that wanted to practice performing for people- and the performance four days prior had been no different. You’d asked the bartender about the group of three, and she’d shrugged and told you ‘they’re kind of a mystery. They show up here every few months and do a weeks’ worth of shows, and then disappear into the wind’. You had been a little miffed, but you were definitely intrigued. So you’d come back every night since then, to sit and nurse a single drink for a couple hours, and listen to the melodies of the unassuming musicians. 

In all honesty, you’d thought you were subtle in your admiration, but last night, when the clock was just shy of eleven, one of the musicians had quietly sat down across from you in your booth, and given you a wry smile. You’d been flustered the entire time, and had stuck the proverbial foot in your mouth on several occasions; it hadn’t seemed to put the man off, though he had taken note of your nervousness. Still, he’d been graceful in saying goodnight to you, and had gone back to the stage, leaving you a little bit shell shocked. After that, you’d sworn that you wouldn’t go back to that bar ever again - there was no way you were going to risk making a fool out of yourself just for the chance to talk to some guy you didn’t even know. He was probably pretentious, you’d told yourself, and only looking for someone to share a bed with for the night.

Yet there you found yourself, tucked into the smallest booth at the back of the bar, right beside the door where cold gusts of air would wash over you every time someone came in. If you were lucky, no one would notice you. But as you’d discovered throughout your life, luck was never on your side, because moments after your arrival, a slim body was sliding into the seat across from you, and you were fixed with that same wry smile. “You’re back again,” he says, somewhat surprised, and you want to wither away in embarrassment. “You know,” he continues, “I never got your name? I had meant to ask last night, but you seemed so uncomfortable, I thought perhaps my presence might be unwelcome.” Your eyes widen, and you quickly correct him in his assumptions, admitting that no, you’re just awkward as hell. This, apparently, turns out to be the best thing to say, because his smile softens into something warmer and he offers you his hand.

You gently take it, and he gives you a light squeeze before introducing himself. “I’ve been meaning to come say hello since the first night we performed here, but…” and he goes on to tell you the tale of his own misplaced luck. Before long, the two of you are talking animatedly, sharing stories of your lives and the schools you’ve been to, the places you’ve seen and what your aspirations are, and by the end of night, you’ve learned three things about Viktor; he’s as much of sweetheart as he is a flirt, he ‘enjoys having a coffee at that little place down the street every day at noon’, and he’d like it if you would join him sometime.

[tropes-and-tales-archives]

Nevada Ramirez:  I’ll Protect You

Word Count:  6056

TW:  Angst; hurt and comfort; implied murder; smut (PiV, protected).  18+ only.

Even before you started dating, he showered you with gifts.  

Gifts, paired with his filthy euphemisms, were Nevada Ramirez’s unique way of flirting.  Which meant that when he strolled into the bar where you were bartending the first time the two of you met, he left you with a huge tip and an outright proposition to sleep with him.  

Only he didn’t say ‘sleep with me,’ and the memory of his boldness still made you laugh in astonished surprise.

It also meant that he pursued you relentlessly for weeks, then months as you turned him down over and over:  gifts of clothes and shoes turned up at your apartment, and you’d march them back to him unopened and unworn.  Then it was jewelry – nothing too extravagant – but you returned it too.  Then other gifts – rare books and tickets to the hottest concerts in the city.  Electronics.  Expensive wines.  Once, an ounce of premium weed.  That had made you laugh.

You didn’t realize that he was studying you the whole while.  Calibrating you, like some sort of trashy, horny terminator.  He judged your reaction to the gifts, smirking at your bewilderment (the platform heels that cost more than you’d spent on your beater car) or your frustration (the time you had to walk to his club with a heavy, top-of-the-line sound bar for your TV).  

His smirk had been widest, almost bordering an outright grin, when you’d blown into his office and thrown the flat lingerie box like a frisbee at him.  He had snagged it in mid-air and sat it on his desk.

“Don’t be mad,” he had told you in that slightly accented voice that got uncomfortably under your skin.  “I thought it would look good on you.”

The lingerie in question was a flimsy excuse for undergarments, nothing but narrow silk ribbons that really just framed the bits in question instead of covering them or supporting them.  You had made the mistake of opening the box in front of your friend, and it opened up an entire evening of questions.  Who’s the guy?  What’s his name?  How long have you been dating?

The point was, you weren’t dating him, but you saw him all the time when you came into his club to return his latest present.  You knew his type.  He was the kind of man who fucked around, probably cheated on the handful of actual girlfriends he had.  Relationships were just sex to him, and while there was nothing wrong with the occasional one-night stand or casual hook-up, you preferred a deeper connection to your partners.  

So no – you weren’t dating Nevada Ramirez.  You knew it would only end in heartache for you.  But it didn’t mean that your resolve wasn’t being chipped away a bit at a time, every time he smirked at you or smiled at you.  Every time he touched you – just incidental touches, but still….he was wearing you down.  And you suspected that he knew exactly what he was doing.

*****

The good news was that business was running smoothly.  

The bad news was that business was running smoothly.

There were no real competitors on his turf.  He had a healthy supply coming into the city, and an even healthier demand for the product.  His men were well-paid and content; there was no concern of betrayal or mutiny.  He mostly pushed weed, and the NYPD and feds were more focused on the harder stuff, mainly the black tar out of Guerrero and the meth out of upstate New York.  Sometimes a runner got popped with a few ounces on him, but Nevada had a lawyer on hand to plead that shit down.

His empire was running like a well-oiled machine, and the King of the Heights was bored.

Lucky for him that he went into that new bar on West 175th and Amsterdam.  There was no reason for him to enter the place:  as real estate prices on the lower half of Manhattan pushed people up into the Heights, more and more bars like yours were popping up.  Pretentious hipster shit, all warm woods and Edison bulbs and fussy fucking cocktails.  But something drew him in that evening, and he was glad for it.

In a sea of pretentious hipster bullshit – the bartenders were called “mixologists,” for fucks sake – there was you.  Like a little oasis of normal, though you were far from normal.  Nevada was drawn to you because of your smirk.  When you came over to take his order, you explained the cocktail of the day as an “experience.��  You said it so sarcastically, and gave him such an elaborate eye-roll that he laughed.  You had laughed along with him, as if to say, “I’m not buying any of this either, but a job’s a job.”

It was busy, but he kept calling you over, again and again.  Ordered another drink, ordered fucking tapas.  Pulled a bit of information out of you with each interaction:  your name, the fact that you were in school.  Which neighborhood you lived in – the Heights, just like him.  

When he asked for your number, you leaned across the bar with another smirk.  “You wanna call me sometime?” you asked saucily.  When he nodded, you laughed and insinuated that he was just drunk on the sage-infused cocktail.

He wasn’t drunk.  He left you a massive tip and an offer to fuck him (that you laughed at in astonishment), but you turned him down.  

That didn’t bother him.  You were his new project.

He thought you were just being polite when you turned down his first few gifts, but you kept doing it.  Nevada was bewildered by that – he’d never known a woman to not accept his presents of jewelry or expensive shit.  

More bewildering was that you never told him to fuck off.  He didn’t seem to be bothering you, exactly, with his charm offensive.  When you invariably marched into his office to return his latest gift, you always seemed happy to see him.  Even when you acted mad (at the top-of-the-line sound bar) or scandalized (at the lingerie), you smiled at him and laughed and returned every one of his filthy lines with your own sarcastic rejoinder.  

You seemed to like him for him, which felt….wrong.

You were standing across from his desk now with his latest try – a brand new, just-released smart phone that people around the country were standing in line for.  Your own phone was scuffed and ancient, and when he picked it up once, it was hot to the touch from a battery on its last legs.  

“I can’t accept this,” you said, which was your usual line.  The routine usually went back and forth, you refusing, him pressing you, until negotiations broke down and you just did your flirty, innuendo-filled chatting.

“Why don’t you take it?” Nevada asked now, cutting through the usual lines.  “I can take care of you if you’d just let me.”

You snorted.  “Taking care of me requires weed and skimpy underwear?”

“Among other things.”

“Right,” you nodded in mock seriousness.  You sat down in the seat across from him.  “You’d also take care of me sexually, right?”

Nevada cocked an eyebrow at you.  “I’ve never had a single complaint.”

“And you’d hold me afterwards and let me fall asleep in your arms?  Make me breakfast in the morning?  Then go to meet my parents, my friends?  Come over to my place even when I’m on my period so you can rub my back and watch reality TV with me?”  

Nevada’s face fell a little, and you laughed when you saw it.  You leaned forward and held out your hand, and he extended his own.  You slipped your warm palm into his, grasped it lightly, then released him.  “See?  That’s the problem, Nevada.”  You gave him a smile that was almost sad.  “You just want sex, and I want a relationship.”

His voice was a grumble.  “I don’t do those.”

“Yeah, I figured.  Which is why – “ you slid the phone back across the desk at him.  “ – I can’t accept your gifts.  I’d rather have a boyfriend than an ounce of weed or a sound bar.”

That made him scoff outright.  The shoes he had bought you were several thousand dollars.  Women saved up for them.  Bought knock-offs in Chinatown until they could afford the genuine article.  He had a hard time believing that you wanted a boyfriend ��� some fucking chump who’d only hurt or disappoint you – over that.

Still, all those gifts had been feelers to learn more about you, and they had worked.  You weren’t a woman who could be tempted with baubles or shiny toys.  Nevada knew that now, and it made him a little sad, which was fucking stupid. There was a whole city full of women who would fuck him for far less effort.

He pushed the phone back across the desk at you.  “Keep it,” he insisted, and when you opened your mouth to protest, he talked over you.  “Your phone is a piece of shit,” he pointed out.  “You don’t owe me anything for it.  It’s just a gift for…wasting your time.”

You tilted your head and gave him a soft smile.  “It wasn’t a waste of time.  I enjoyed our little back-and-forth repartee.”  You paused, then asked, “Have you never just been friends with a woman before?”

A ridiculous question.  Of course he hadn’t.  He had mostly conquests and one-night stands, a few girlfriends.  

There was a long moment where you both regarded each other across his desk, and you finally gave a slight nod and took the phone.  Unbelievably.

“I…appreciate this,” you said, haltingly.  “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I’ll put number in as my ‘in case of emergency,’” you added with a smile.  “In case I find myself in need of your help. Say, a lingerie emergency.”

He found himself smiling back at you.  Unbelievably.  “Sounds like my kind of emergency.”

You stood up and went to leave, but you paused in the doorway.  “You know, if you ever want to just grab a drink or something…” You trailed off.  “You can never have too many friends, Nevada.”

He only nodded.  In his more maudlin moments, Nevada might admit that he had no fucking friends at all, only associates and acquaintances.  No need to tell you that, though.  He watched you leave and figured that was the last he’d hear from you.  

But it wasn’t.

-----

It was only a month later.  Nevada was in his office, idly fucking around with a random woman he pulled from the dance floor of his club.  She was gorgeous, poured into a skin-tight dress that left little to the imagination, but she was too chatty.  Kept trying to fucking draw him out, when all he wanted was a blowjob and a cigar afterwards.

When his phone rang, he almost ignored it, but then he saw it was you.  

When he picked up, though, it wasn’t you.  The man on the other end was a fucking cop, looking for someone to come to the 34th precinct to pick you up.  He wouldn’t say much else, only that you weren’t under arrest.

There were few people that Nevada Ramirez would walk into a cop headquarters for.  If pressed, he’d say that there was no one worth entering the lion’s den.  But apparently there was one person he’d face the police for, and it was you. A woman he hadn’t even kissed, let alone fucked.  A goddamned fucking friend.

-----

At the precinct, Nevada did his best to appear like a completely law-abiding citizen.  He shed his usual leather jacket, left his big gold ring in his SUV.  A bored looking young man staffed the front desk, and he pointed back a hallway when Nevada mentioned your name.  He found himself in a bullpen, bouncing from cop to cop until he was practically sweating from the stress.  He finally found someone who knew where you were.

“The bar where she works got robbed,” the detective said as he led Nevada back another hallway.  “EMT looked her over, but she refused to go to the hospital.  We brought her here to take her statement, but I didn’t want to let her leave on her own.”  The man paused at a closed door.  “She’s pretty shaken up.”

Nevada nodded, and the detective opened the door.  You were sitting at a conference table, your hands wrapped around a paper cup of coffee.  You didn’t look at all like yourself, and Nevada had to do a double take.

You were usually one of those people who took up exactly the right amount of space in the world; meaning, you didn’t try to shrink down and make yourself smaller and less noticeable.  You also didn’t puff yourself up and try to take more space.  You walked through the world completely confident in who you were and what you wanted.

Now, though, you were hunched over and shivering.  You looked so small, like you wanted to disappear altogether.  Your head was bent, and Nevada could make out the few knobs of spine at the base of your neck.  It made you seem so fragile.

Your bartending job had a uniform of checked blue shirts, like some sort of fucking Bavarian beer garden, but you weren’t in that.  You were in an oversized NYPD t-shirt, and Nevada made a fist when he realized why.  There was a gash on your forehead and a deep-looking scratch along your neckline.  You had probably bled onto your shirt.

When you saw him, you stood up and practically flew into his arms.  Nevada barely had time to make out your other injuries – a split lip, a bruised eye that was swollen shut – before he enfolded you into a gentle hug and said that you were safe.  That he’d take you home.  He wasn’t sure if you heard him; you were sobbing against him so hard that he wasn’t sure if you heard anything at all.

-----

He didn’t take you to your apartment.  He took you to his place, and he sat you on the couch for a moment while he made some fucking calls.

The police told him nothing, and Nevada knew they were worse than worthless.  Robberies happened all the time, and no one was gonna approve overtime for a fucking bar in the Heights, even if it was a trendy gentrified bar.  

Good thing the Heights had its own fucking justice.

Nevada called his best two lieutenants and explained in no uncertain terms that they were to solve this robbery.  The quicker, the better.  Then he hung up and went back to you.  He wasn’t an especially gentle man, but he tried to bite back the white-hot rage that coursed through him every time he looked at you and saw your wounds.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” you said, and you refused to look at him.  You only looked down at your hands, and Nevada noticed that two of your fingers were swollen too, like they’d been twisted back.  He felt the anger churn in his gut, and he grunted out that it was fine, that you weren’t a bother at all.

“I can go home,” you replied, still not meeting his gaze.  “I’ll…I’ll be okay.”

“Don’t be fucking ridiculous,” he growled, and he kicked himself for how you flinched away from his rough voice.  He wasn’t mad at you at all – but he was furious at the people who hurt you.  You were beat to shit and trembling on his couch.  It was never quite so stark, the difference between you and him and the worlds you each lived in.  Nevada had his fair share of scars from his rough life; it was entirely likely that you had never been punched before tonight.

“C’mere,” he said, and his voice was still a rough growl.  But his arm around your shoulders was gentle, and you allowed him to hold you.  After a moment, he felt your arms snake around his midsection and squeeze him so tight he could barely breathe.  “Don’t worry anymore.  You’re safe, dulzura.  I’ll protect you.”

-----

All told, you stayed with him three days.  That night, he convinced you to take a nice long bath in his tub – a luxury for you and your tiny, tub-less apartment, you joked with a wan smile.  Afterwards, he had laid out some of his clothes to wear, and he’d be lying if he said that it didn’t stir his blood, seeing you in an oversized t-shirt of his.

Nevada wasn’t gentlemanly by any measure, but he installed you in his bed and let you sleep undisturbed.  There was certainly a part of him that just wanted to slide between the sheets with you, take your mind off of your ordeal and injuries.  But that part of him was small compared to the outsized hatred he had for the men who hurt you.  Right now, he channeled that rage.  If the NYPD wasn’t going to get you justice, he would.

*****

When you saw Nevada walk through the doors of the precinct, you should have felt embarrassed.  You didn’t really know the man, after all, and the sum total of your relationship was just base flirting.  But when you saw him, you felt nothing but relief.  And gratitude.

The gratitude extended for the days you spent at his place.  He was rarely around – he had business to attend to – but he always was there at night, to spend a few hours with you before he ushered you to bed.  He made sure you had a million options of food to tempt your nonexistent appetite.  

When you went home, you found that he had installed new locks on your apartment door.  And a state-of-the-art security system that monitored your windows.  It was ridiculous – top of the line security for your tiny one bedroom apartment – but you felt nearly moved to tears by his gesture.  You had leaned forward to brush a light kiss on his cheek, and he had seemed surprised by it.

You also knew that he had his men keep an eye on you.  The same black sedan sat outside your building every night, and when you made eye contact with the man through his window, he tipped you a nod as if to say, “no one will harm you on my watch.”

The detective who gave you his card was little help.  He gave you the number for a victims resource group, but as far as the case went…it went absolutely nowhere.

You and another bartender, Liam, had been closing up that night.  Liam had been in the back, pulling bottles to restock the bar for the next day.  You had been counting out the cash and balancing the registers.  Which is why you caught the brunt of the abuse from the three armed men who stormed in.  You hadn’t put up a fight, but you had moved far too slow for their liking.  Your hands shook, you spilled cash on the floor.  Their heavy fists didn’t do much to improve your speed.

The men hadn’t even bothered to conceal their faces, and while the police had pulled surveillance footage from the bar and nearby traffic cameras, nothing seemed to materialize.  You quietly raged every time you left a message for the detective on your case that went unreturned.  

No arrests.  No leads.  Nothing.  Nothing beyond waking up gasping and in a cold sweat when you dreamt over and over that those men found you again.

Until a month later.

Your wounds were mostly healed, and you could mostly sleep at night without too many nightmares.  You did sleep with a softball bat under your bed, so when there was a heavy knock on your door late one night, you gripped the bat and checked the spy hole.  Then sagged in relief – it was Nevada.  You threw the bolts (there were three of them now) and let him in.

Before, Nevada was a strutting, smirking innuendo wrought in human form and wrapped in multiple layers of black clothing.  After the robbery, he was almost deferential to you, very nearly gentle (albeit still gruff, and with liberal use of the word “fuck” in nearly everything he said).  

Now, he was back to the old Nevada apparently.  He openly ogled your sleepwear – a thin camisole and boy shorts – and he practically sauntered into your tiny space.  He crowded close to you, close enough for you to smell his expensive cologne and the lingering remnants of cigar smoke.  His normally slicked-down hair was a little mussed. The man wasn’t entirely unappealing.

“You know,” he started, his tone light and conversational.  “I tried every fucking thing with you.  Tried every damned gift that worked on other women.  But you weren’t a woman that could be bought with gifts.”

You smiled.  If he was back on that mien, then things were really returning to normal after all.  “Maybe I’m just a woman that can’t be bought at all.”

“Everyone has a price.  And I think I finally found a gift that you will appreciate.”  You didn’t reply; you just watched him watching you.  

“You heard from the fucking police?” he asked after a beat.  You shook your head.  You had talked with Nevada about your frustration with the cops, and he never seemed surprised.  

“You won’t,” he continued.  He reached out and laid his hand on the side of your face, and his calloused thumb traced the scar on your forehead.  It was thin and fading every day, and you hoped it would be gone soon.  Nevada’s touch was gentle, and the expression on his face shifted from smirking to something indescribable.

“I told you I’d protect you that night after the robbery,” he said.  “Did you believe me?  When I said I would, did you believe me?”

“Yes,” you replied.  “I did.  And you did.  You took good care of me.  I appreciate it, Nevada.“

He scoffed at you and leaned in a fraction.  He shifted his thumb to run over your bottom lip, then dropped his hand to trace along the other scar on your neck.  His green eyes blazed in anger, and you realized that he was seeing you as you had been that night – bloodied.  Hurt.

“The NYPD will never find the men who hurt you,” he whispered.  “No one will.”

It took a long moment for you to understand his meaning.  Your eyes searched his face to see if he was joking.  He didn’t seem to be.  You should feel sick at what he was implying, but you didn’t.  You felt curiously cared for.  Loved, even.  A little turned on, if you were being honest with yourself.

He shifted his head so that he was whispering in your ear.  His breath brushed against you and made you shiver against him.  

“I want you to know, dulzura:  the pain they gave you…they felt it fivefold before I took their miserable lives.  No one touches you like that and keeps their life.  That’s my gift to you.  By the end of the week, everyone in the Heights will know what it costs to hurt you.”

You pulled back, gazed in his eyes, and saw the truth to what he was saying.  You had indulged in the playful banter with him months ago, and you had even allowed yourself to fantasize about him in your lonelier moments.  You had never seriously considered being with him, though, because you thought he was shallow and only looking for an easy lay.

This, though?  Killing for you?  Putting his own freedom, or at least his business, in jeopardy to give you justice. Fucked up and unhealthy as it was, no man had ever done so much for you without a thought for getting something in return.

There was nothing else for you to do but lean forward and kiss him.

You didn’t miss the surprised hiss as he pulled in a breath, but Nevada recovered in seconds.  He reached up and cupped your face, tilted your head.  Kissed you back.  Close-mouth at first, but you each seemed to want more.  It wasn’t but a moment before he was deepening the kiss and groaning as you opened your mouth to him.  You answered with your own sigh at the taste of him:  cigar and whiskey, both underneath a heavy top note of mint.

His hands shifted from your face to your hips, and you moved your hands to his chest.  Your fingers were too clumsy, took too long to undo the buttons on his shirt, so you tugged it open and sent the bits of plastic ricocheting like shrapnel.

Nevada pulled away from your lips a fraction.  “So eager,” he mumbled, and you swore you could hear the triumph in his voice.  You answered by pushing his shirt off of him and tugging his undershirt out of his jeans.

If you were eager, so was he.  He slid his hands around to your ass, kneading you and pulling you flush against him. You could feel his erection straining against your belly.  You took the last remaining bit of your restraint and pulled away from him.

“Come on,” you said.  You took his hand in yours and tugged him towards your bedroom.

*****

Nevada hadn’t expected you to fall into bed with him, but he had been surprised by how your eyes darkened (in delight?  In desire?) when you understood what he had done for you.

He would have done it anyway – you getting pistol-whipped made him incandescence with rage – but you never even asked him for help.  You knew that he ran in rough, criminal circles.  Nevada kept waiting for it; he kept expecting you to ask for a favor from him to help catch the men who hurt you.  But you didn’t.  Nevada realized – really knew in the core of his being – that you saw him as more than someone to exploit.

He would have done anything for you, but the fact that you never asked him to?  That made him think long and hard about what you meant to him.  He concluded that while you may never ask him for anything, he wanted to give you everything.

As much as he rejoiced when you tugged him into your bedroom and tore off his clothes and then your own, Nevada felt a minor twinge on his conscience.  It happened so infrequently that it felt alien.

“You don’t have to do this,” he muttered, but his words trailed off as he drank in the sight of you, naked in front of him.  Fuck, you were better than he even imagined, and he told you so as you pushed him gently backwards onto your bed.

“You’ve thought of this?” you teased, and you were suddenly you again:  the confident woman who used to march into his club and sass him, tease him, with that glint in your eye.  Not the scared girl who answered her door with a baseball bat and fingered her scars self-consciously.

Nevada would have reveled over the change more, but all of his higher-thinking rapidly fled his brain as you mapped his body with yours – your hands tracing over the lines of his body, your warm palms running from his chest to his belly and lower until you wrapped a hand around his cock, already hard and getting harder as you touched him.  Your mouth alternated between kissing his and shifting to spots on his neck, his jaw.  Across his collarbone, nosing past the giant gold cross and nipping at him here and there with your sharp little teeth.  

“Thought about this all the time,” he growled.  You tightened your grip on his length, stroked him at a leisurely pace, and Nevada fisted one of his hands against your comforter to keep from flipping you over and taking control.  His other hand snaked between your bodies – him underneath, you mostly laying on top of him – so that he could cup one of your breasts.  You hissed as he drew a calloused thumb over your sensitive peak.

“Thought about fucking you,” he continued.  You ran your own thumb over the tip of his weeping cock, and he bucked up against you.  You tightened your grip more, and he choked out, “thought about making you mine.”

That made you pull your face back a bit to gaze down at him, and if your eyes narrowed a little at his admission, you still had that smirky fucking smile you always had when you were trying to rile him up.  

Nevada saw you open your mouth with some retort, but you snapped it shut.  Whatever teasing remark lay on the tip of your tongue remained unsaid, and you only leaned forward to kiss him deeply.  You nipped at his lower lip then ran your tongue over it before tilting your head to claim his mouth.  He’d never fucking admit it out loud, to you or anyone, but he rarely kissed much – just the bare minimum before he could push a conquest’s head down towards his cock or flip her around to bend her over his desk.  Kissing you, it felt almost too intimate.  Almost.

A long moment later, you broke away, a little breathless and with a dazed look in your eyes.  “Can I be on top?” you whispered, and Nevada was so turned on by the naked lust on your face that he would have agreed to nearly anything.

“Fuck, yes,” he growled hoarsely.  

You released your grip on him and shifted onto him fully – your slick core pressed against his lower belly – and reached into your nightstand drawer.  Fumbled for a condom, muttered a curse as you struggled to open it.  Gave a quiet, triumphant ‘ha’ when you finally got it out.  Nevada watched your face as you rolled it onto his length, searching for the barest hint of reluctance.  He saw none.

He couldn’t remember the last time he let a woman take control.  Probably never.  You weren’t rough or bold – just assured.  Like you truly wanted him.  

Slowly – too slowly for his fucking taste – you lowered yourself onto him.  Nevada wasn’t sure where he wanted to look more:  at the extraordinary range of emotions crossing your face as he entered you, or at the rapidly closing space between you and him, where he was splitting you open inch by inch.

Finally – fucking finally – you were seated on him.  His hands were on your hips, twitching as he held back the urge to push you down that final bit.  Even through the thin latex of the condom, he could feel the molten heat of you, feel how well you gripped his cock.  

You didn’t move at first.  You took a deep, steadying breath and gazed down at him.  Then you removed his hands from your hips and laid them on your breasts one at a time.  You pushed into his palms a bit, and to make yourself perfectly clear, you demanded that he touch you there.

“Fucking bossy,” he said, and his voice sounded rougher than he felt.  “You think you’re in charge here?  La jefa?”

That made you move finally, slow movements at first.  The more Nevada palmed at your tits, strummed and plucked your nipples until they were diamond-hard, the harder you rode him, until you were raising nearly off of him and then impaling yourself back onto him.  Over and over in a smooth rhythm, ending each movement with a swivel of your hips that made Nevada’s mouth go dry.  If you kept doing fucking moves like that, Nevada would happily let you be the boss whenever and wherever you wanted.

Closer and closer, you drew him towards his orgasm.  He could feel the tension in his belly tighten with each twist of your hips.  When you reached back to fondle his balls, he knew he wouldn’t last much longer.

Nevada released your tits and put his hands back on your hips, helping to drive you onto him as he lifted his hips to meet your downward thrusts.  Fuck, he could feel the tip of his cock hitting the very end of you, swore he had to be hurting you, but you were moaning his name low and husky, like a fucking song, each time he hilted himself up into you.  He shifted a hand to the place where you were joined.  Circled his thumb around your swollen clit.

“Just…like…that,” you panted breathlessly, and he knew you had to be close.  You were losing the rhythm as you rode him.

“Come for me, dulzura,” he said.  “Let me feel that sweet little pussy come all over my cock.”

That was the last nudge you needed, and Nevada felt you tighten against him.  Your eyes fluttered shut as you seated yourself onto him and stilled, and he could feel every clenching movement of your cunt, gripping him until he felt the tension in him snap as he came too.  His hips stuttered up into you, and he couldn’t help but groan your name as an entire galaxy of stars exploded behind his eyelids.

It was only a moment after that you collapsed on him, wrung out and sated.  Nevada wrapped his arms around your back and felt you nuzzle against his jaw, and he let you lay like that as long as  you wanted.  Not that he’d fucking complain.  His softening cock was still buried in you, and those perfect tits of yours were pressed against his chest.  Not a bad fucking place to be, as far as he was concerned.

But you finally heaved a contented sigh and climbed off him, and Nevada sat up.  He made his way to your bathroom and disposed of the condom.  He made his way back to your bedroom to find you under the covers and fighting off sleep.  Waiting for him.

Nevada never stayed the night, but something made him walk past his pile of clothes and crawl in beside you.  Maybe it was because he made you feel safe again and you wanted him, and who didn’t want to feel wanted?  Maybe it was because you had returned all his stupid gifts, all that blustering empty bullshit he had tried early on.  Maybe it was because even when you returned those gifts, you still stuck around for a few moments to joke around with him, chat with him.  Like he was just a regular guy and you were just a regular girl, and he wasn’t on his guard with you because you never asked him for anything other than those few moments of jokes and conversation.

Maybe because your eyes widened in surprise when he crawled into bed with you – but that surprise was quickly given over to a wide grin.

“You looking for seconds?” you joked, and Nevada only pulled you against him until your head was nestled again under his jaw.

“Shut up,” he growled without any real heat.  “You have a comfortable bed is all.”

You made a thoughtful hum, and then replied softly, “you’re welcome to it any time, Nevada.”  It made his chest ache, how hopefully fragile you sounded.  You knew his reputation.  That had always been your main issue with him in those fumbling early months when he tried to seduce you:  you wanted a relationship, and Nevada…didn’t.

It’d be a long, long while before Nevada even learned the words to use to describe how he felt, but the more time he spent with you, the more he realized that he didn’t need to.  You seemed to understand him unlike any other woman he’d known, so when he fumbled through every next stage with you – to dating exclusively, to living together - you had met him with mostly patience and even more good humor.  And love.

If he took longer to say those words out loud to you, it was only because it wasn’t in his nature.  And if it took you longer to be comfortable with his gifts, that was only because it wasn’t in your nature either.  In the end, though, you did learn to accept his gifts – even the obscenely big ring he slid onto your finger one evening months into the future.  But only because he did learn to say those words, those ‘I love you’s’ too.

[cheeriecherrymain]

Prompt: Musician Viktor?

You hadn’t meant to come in again, you really hadn’t. It was your fourth day in a row that you’d stopped by the little hole-in-the-wall hipster bar on your way home from work; you’d sworn to yourself that you were just going to go home that night, and have a quiet evening to yourself. But it would appear that your subconscious had other plans. What had you so enraptured? Perhaps not a what, but a who. You’d come by the establishment a couple times over the months, enjoying the laid back atmosphere and overall more-comfortable-than-your-typical-dive-bar vibes.

More often than not, there was some kind of live music set up off to one side of the room -small artists that wanted to start making a name for themselves, or even the occasional highschool band that wanted to practice performing for people- and the performance four days prior had been no different. You’d asked the bartender about the group of three, and she’d shrugged and told you ‘they’re kind of a mystery. They show up here every few months and do a weeks’ worth of shows, and then disappear into the wind’. You had been a little miffed, but you were definitely intrigued. So you’d come back every night since then, to sit and nurse a single drink for a couple hours, and listen to the melodies of the unassuming musicians.

In all honesty, you’d thought you were subtle in your admiration, but last night, when the clock was just shy of eleven, one of the musicians had quietly sat down across from you in your booth, and given you a wry smile. You’d been flustered the entire time, and had stuck the proverbial foot in your mouth on several occasions; it hadn’t seemed to put the man off, though he had taken note of your nervousness. Still, he’d been graceful in saying goodnight to you, and had gone back to the stage, leaving you a little bit shell shocked. After that, you’d sworn that you wouldn’t go back to that bar ever again - there was no way you were going to risk making a fool out of yourself just for the chance to talk to some guy you didn’t even know. He was probably pretentious, you’d told yourself, and only looking for someone to share a bed with for the night.

Yet there you found yourself, tucked into the smallest booth at the back of the bar, right beside the door where cold gusts of air would wash over you every time someone came in. If you were lucky, no one would notice you. But as you’d discovered throughout your life, luck was never on your side, because moments after your arrival, a slim body was sliding into the seat across from you, and you were fixed with that same wry smile. “You’re back again,” he says, somewhat surprised, and you want to wither away in embarrassment. “You know,” he continues, “I never got your name? I had meant to ask last night, but you seemed so uncomfortable, I thought perhaps my presence might be unwelcome.” Your eyes widen, and you quickly correct him in his assumptions, admitting that no, you’re just awkward as hell. This, apparently, turns out to be the best thing to say, because his smile softens into something warmer and he offers you his hand.

You gently take it, and he gives you a light squeeze before introducing himself. “I’ve been meaning to come say hello since the first night we performed here, but…” and he goes on to tell you the tale of his own misplaced luck. Before long, the two of you are talking animatedly, sharing stories of your lives and the schools you’ve been to, the places you’ve seen and what your aspirations are, and by the end of night, you’ve learned three things about Viktor; he’s as much of sweetheart as he is a flirt, he ‘enjoys having a coffee at that little place down the street every day at noon’, and he’d like it if you would join him sometime.