#i’ve discovered all of this in the last 24 hours because one of them is gay now

[wilsonpussyindulgence]

i am enjoying your reactions to the wee-woo show news more than the reactions of my fellow wee-woo show enjoyers honestly

well sure. they’re all experiencing joy or whatever. i’m experiencing pure bewilderment at 80mph

[sitepathos]

What if (Reader) just kills themselves? Or just find him dead somewhere

Does the Batfam care about him at all or just hate him completely?

Cause I'm slowly wanting to beat all of them up

I imagine then finding him dead or at least near death, instead of calling for Bruce, he calls for Alfred

And (reader) is literally batshit pun intended scared of everyone cause of trauma except for butler

I think if the Batfamily were to discover Reader dead, his body long since gone cold, it would be a slap in the face for all of them. For years, they’ve known that you exist, but couldn’t be bothered to really get to know you. Since you aren’t a vigilante and lack the capability to be trained and with all oof them having their own lives, they didn’t see the point in talking to you. Now, seeing their forgotten brother and son a corpse, they feel like shit. At your funeral, they try to talk about all the good times, but it’s only then do they realize most of them have never had a conversation with you, or even spent time with you.

And to top it all off, Alfred is PISSED at them. Sure, the butler’s expressed disappointment in all of them at some point (mostly over not properly caring for themselves), but this is different. He was just talking to you on that dreadful day and after not hearing from you for over 24 hours, he finds out that you’re dead and phone records show that the kidnappers tried to arrange a ransom, but not only do they not notice you missing, but they antagonize the man, no doubt leading to you paying the price.

He locks himself away in his room and no one tries to talk to him. He’s made it clear that he doesn’t want to hear from any of them. Inside his room, he’s quietly weeping, begging for your forgiveness. Had he known you’d meet with such a fate, he never would’ve left Gotham. Hell, he probably would’ve kept you in the manor, pulling you out of Gotham Academy and homeschooled you himself. Out of everyone in the family, you were the only normal one (the bar for “normal” in the Wayne Family is exceedingly low) and he treasured that more than anything. He knew you hated living at the manor, but he had hoped that he could convince you to at least stay in Gotham while he tried to get your father and siblings to notice you.

And now, you’ll never leave Gotham, buried in the Wayne Family Cemetery. Perhaps he should’ve let you leave when you turned eighteen. Sure, you’d be on the opposite side of the country, but at least you’d be alive.

Now, let’s say you decided to give your kidnappers Alfred’s number. The moment he’s told you’ve been kidnapped, he’s packing his bags and heading back to Gotham. He’s former Special Operations, so he no doubt has a few favors he can call in and in this case, he’s requesting the fastest plane available and flying it at top speed to Gotham. He arranges your ransom, over a million from Bruce’s personal account (Bruce has Alfred on all his bank accounts for safety reasons, but this is the first time he’s ever had to use it) and while he’s taking off at top speed, he’s on the phone with Bruce.

It doesn’t matter if he’s in the middle of a fight, Alfred knows how to make Bruce’s comm come on and the moment the line is open, he’s tearing the man a new one. Bruce isn’t able to say a word because his butler/father figure is spitting out 200 insults and threats a second. The last thing he says is: “I’ve arranged for the kidnappers to drop Master Y/N at the fairgrounds. I will be back within the hour and if he’s not back at the manor upon my return, you will not like what happens next. And god help you if a single hair of his is out of place.”

It’s been years since Bruce has known true fear (probably when he was rushing to save Jason and seeing the warehouse explode), but right now, he’s absolutely afraid of what will happen if he fails to bring you home. He rushes to the fairgrounds and sees you tied to some pole and blindfolded and he feels a world of guilt hit him in the gut.

You are his firstborn son and here you are, traumatized from some thugs. And if he didn’t feel like a piece of shit before, he really does when you tell him you not only knew he’s Batman, but that you were surprised that he’d be the one to save you. He actually sheds a few tears upon hearing that. He picks you up and refuses to let you go until you’re back home.

Things at Wayne Manor take a 180. When Bruce sees that you’ve been staying in a small guest room on the other side for the manor, he moves you to a room next to his; you’re not able to go anywhere, even within the house, without at least two of them following you; and they actually start treating you with decency, patting you on the head/back, greeting you in passing, having conversations with you, etc. They all feel guilty over their behavior towards you for over 10 years and try to make it up to you.

When Alfred tells them that you have plans to move back to Goodsprings, they beg you to stay in Gotham, Bruce even offering to put you up in a luxury apartment if you don’t want to stay in the manor. Just be prepared for them to visit at all hours everyday, even stoping by during their patrols.

[boltonbritreads]

🗣️Eddie Munson Fic Recs

This is gonna have a sappy start before I get into the fic rec portion: but I just wanted to say that at the end of May 2022, I was finishing up my first year of law school. It was rough, challenging, lonely, and basically everything you’d expect and I was in a bad place and the fandom I’d been in was slowing down just naturally. I truly wish I could remember how I even became aware of Eddie Munson because stranger things wasn’t really on my radar anymore and whoever I followed at the time that started to veer off into Eddie-mania, thank you. In the two years since then, I’ve graduated and become the worlds babiest lawyer and I genuinely owe a lot to this fandom and community on here for giving me a fun, usually safe, creative place to escape to when it got rough.

I’m just hoping to maybe remind people that there are already an incredible, incredible amount of existing stories to read and talk about that deserve your attention and love if you’re looking to read some Eddie stories. Some of these will be fics I’ve recommended before but I’m going to try my best to pull together writers and fics that I love and think everyone should read in the hopes that someone like me who still scrolls through eddie tags looking for my nightly bedtime story can find something new to them to read! ✨

Previous Fic Rec list here!! some overlap but there’s no such thing as too much hype for these writers

@munson-blurbs I hope it’s ok but I’m linking Bug’s full masterlist here because I have genuinely loved everything she has written. There are blurbs, series, and special events which are all incredible and worth a read! Bug is currently still writing the “Living after Midnight” series which is my current obsession and features rockstar!eddie x motelheiress!reader and it’s angst and lust galore

@corroded-hellfire also sharing the Eddie Masterlist here because there’s so many fics to read!! As You Wish, Big Brown Eyes, Where the Heart Is are all incredible but truly there’s so much here to enjoy

@upsidedownwithsteve SIMMER!! jk I’m actually linking the Eddie Masterlist here too because I love them all but “I Want You To Want Me” and “Simmer” are out of this world

@pinkrelish The Yes Policy I love it, you love it, we all love it and if you haven’t caught up yet oh my god I wish I was you and could read these chapters for the first time again

@ghost-proofbaby I’ve previously told people to go read 24 Hours, and you should, that’s an order; but Maroon is ongoing! and it’s actually infiltrating my every thought so go on over and get caught up bc I think it’s safe to say things are getting amped up

@trashmouth-richie I have also previously recommended Honey, I’m Home because it’s a work of art but Ziggy has a new mini series “Crash + Fall” that I’m completely obsessed with the concept for and I’ve loved every piece so far!

@tiannasfanfic I just reblogged Conviction again but I genuinely am not exaggerating when I say I think about this story and these two monthly and try and find this story all the time to re-read it endlessly. It’s a really lovely story of unplanned pregnancy and two characters not realizing they’ve been smitten for each other the whole time and I love it

@carolmunson I’m sharing another Eddie Masterlist here because I’d be making this post far too long but Carol’s stories are all incredible, complex, and honest. “Let’s go, don’t wait” just got updated and I had to read it like 3 times last night because it was too good to just read one and done

@rebelfell I just discovered Sarah’s blog after reading the most recent “Frenemy” fic and idk what I was doing wrong to not already follow her and not have already read her whole Masterlist but I’m linking the whole thing bc she’s so good!!

@the-au-thor I also only just discovered Elle’s blog and that’s criminal but thank god I found Babysitting Mun because I am a sucker for rockstar!eddie and this series has me on the edge of my seat rn

@storiesbyrhi I’m sharing the Masterlist folks because I have genuinely loved every single story and series and I have read them all now (some several times). So many of Rhi’s stories have a wonderful warm witchy vibe that I crave and I’ve read Siouxsie and the Soulmates, The Cabin in the Woods, Our Patron Saint of the Arts, Vintage Reeboks, and Burning Yarrow (insert screaming fan gif) multiple times now

@heart-eyed-love this fic is the epitome of a soft, cozy, domestic night with Eddie and if you need a hug read this 🥹

@eddieandbird I JUST got caught up on Eddie/Tour Manager series and I’m fully obsessed and desperate to know how they’re gonna navigate this - for folks new to the story, Eddie and his tour manager accidentally drunkenly get married- what could go wrong??

@eiightysixbaby the scream I scrumped when I finished reading Princess Leia, and Other Wishes - look bffs to lovers is already my absolute weakness on this earth but then you had to make it witty and funny and FLUFFY I just can do nothing but re-read and pine

@superblysubpar I’m still obsessed with this addition to The Boy is Mine writing challenge and oh god it’s so good 😩

…and while we’re talking about it - here’s the entire The Boy is Mine masterlist with an INSANE amount of incredible stories to read

@the-unforgivenn !!! tumblr hates me and deleted this bullet (so if you already saw this post, no you didn’t) but And I Need You to Know is a proper novel! I can’t imagine how much time, love, effort, planning, and work went into creating this insane and absolutely incredible world but everyone needs to read this!! and then follow up with She’s So Cold bc I love it and I am so reader

~~ this is not the end nor an exhaustive list! I just wanted to put something out there now that I plan to build on because I know I’m always scrolling and searching for new things to read or old things to revisit ♥️ ~~

[ghostboneswrites2]

Thanks to one of my mutuals, I have discovered 3 of my fics have been stolen! :))))

The user @sokittystarfish has stolen not one, not two, but three of my stories in the last 24 hours and I came with receipts baby

((I actually tried to message this user and give them the chance to remove my stolen work ASAP and I would let it go, but I never got a response. So, instead of privately handling the matter, I will instead present the evidence before the court of my lovely followers & mutuals.))

Please see receipts 👇

Exhibit A: “Say It”

As you can see, this is literally word for word a copy & paste of my reader request:

Don’t Stutter

So, kittystarfishbutthole literally went to my blog, copy & pasted my story, and only bothered to change the title and give a very poor description. All the while, their blog says this:

“Tortured poet” babe what?? Where’s the poetry bc all I see is plagiarism and bad grammar

PLEASE DONT STEAL YOUR WORK?? Be so fr tink tink be SOOOOO fr

Anyways, moving on tho exhibit B & C:

“Face Down” is literally just a copy & paste of another reader request of mine called Spectacles.

And, finally, “Dying” is just a copy and paste of Bit, which was my first one shot on Tumblr.

I’ll link my post here because I’ve hit the image limit.

In conclusion, stop stealing my shit u jerk >:(

[radfemie]

I’ve been desperate to talk to someone about this, but everyone in my life says I’m being crazy about it. I just discovered the radfem community on tumblr and I honestly thought I was alone in how much I hated men. You can totally just delete this if you want. I’m just desperate to talk to someone who might understand my feelings right now.

I got an office job 2 years ago. My office is mostly conservative boomers, but there are two “far-left, communist” men on my team. They are best friends. They started being friendly with me pretty quickly, and I welcomed it at first since there’s no one else my age to talk to.

They constantly talk about feminism, respecting women, hating “other men” and how they treat women, etc. It was a bit white-knighty, a bit incel, but I figured it was miles better than them sexually harassing me like my coworkers at other jobs have.

We started talking daily, and it became more and more obvious how disgusting they are. They talk down to me all the time, infantilizing me, acting like I’m not a real adult… I’m 25 and they are 27.

One of them is engaged, and I realized he has only ever told me negative stories about his fiance, stuff that annoyed him about her. He also told me a lot of stories about the other coworker’s relationship problems, telling me he had a lot of crazy exs and that he had commitment issues. This coworker got a girlfriend for a few weeks last spring, and the only thing they could tell me about her was that she wore a corset to the party he met her at and that she “wasn’t like other girls” because she listened to the same medieval music they like. Literally they could tell me nothing about her personality except that basically, he asked her out because he saw her tits.

then three weeks later he told me they broke up. why? the girl got too “clingy”… because she thought he wanted a romantic relationship because he asked her on more than one date, and brought up the topic to him. he broke up with her immediately because of his “commitment issues,” and because she didn’t wear the corset 24/7, i’m assuming. but guess what? she’s now on the crazy ex list too! they told me her name was banned in their group chat.

I also get treated like shit at the office because i’m a woman, and when i complain about how our bosses treat me on a daily basis, they just change the subject. but when they got treated like me ONCE, they threw temper tantrums in our group chat and wouldn’t shut up about it for days, talking about how they were going to burn the system down and guillotine the CEO. except they can’t even manage to use their privilege to speak up and defend me once at work. it’s well known at our office that white men do not get fired. they can do literally no work, and they still won’t get fired, but the women will get abused for not picking up their slack. i found out recently that I do the exact same work as them but get paid $20K less, too.

i’m not even at the really fun thing yet. one of them is super super vocal about being an anarchist and a communist. talking proudly about how he sits down for the national anthem and shit like he actually did something. always preaching about how you shouldn’t take shit from your boss. we had a company wide anniversary party this year where the CEO spent an hour on stage making women in the kitchen jokes and talking about the accomplishments of all the white men VPs, which pretty amounted to “the women did the work, but the men had to order them around, so who really did the hard work here? am i right fellas??” at one point, they had a 10 minute bit about how one VP is known widely for being physically abusive to employees, throwing garbage cans at people’s heads and punching through walls.

the CEO brought in photos of this. and we were all supposed to laugh, except i had an abusive childhood, and was in an abusive relationship, and it was genuinely triggering for me. but i was so in utter shock at the absurdity of it all, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how many women were in the crowd, and statistically how many of us had been raped and physically abused, and now were forced to attend a mandatory party to celebrate this disgusting violent male behavior. i couldn’t keep my mouth shut. i said something along the lines of “wow so funny, it’s so funny to terrorize your employees! fucking assholes” loud enough that my coworker could hear, thinking he would at least agree with that.

nope. he shot me a dirty look. like a “shut up, the bosses are here” kind of look. the same dude who said he wanted to guillotine the boss became they asked him to file a couple papers. turns out he had quietly been promoted to a manager! and the only way to be a manager here is to enforce their mad men culture to a T. you have to be totally on the side of the CEOs.

you know that post about “leftist woke sex-positive communist dudes” being one of the worst types of men? it’s this same guy. this man enjoys discussing big tiddy goth girlfriends in front of women a bit too much. is a little too supportive of women exploring their sexualities, and if they want to have a threesome with him to explore, that’s more than ok! :))) is a little TOO into lesbians.

i stopped talking to them completely. I couldn’t listen to it anymore, and then listen to them tell me how feminist they are and talk over me when I try to call them out on their bull shit.

now our bosses are talking about making manager boy my new manager. and it’s giving me so much stress, because I will have to quit on the spot. I’ll literally kill him. He’s so fucking annoying, and i already can’t take orders from men in general, but in men my age i can’t handle it at all.

anyway. sorry about this. thank you for listening.

Those men only care when it's affecting them, not you or other women.

I apologize for not getting to this sooner, but I have read it!! It just pisses me off how these men dgaf about anything but themselves & maybe their male buddies.

[asteracaea]

link

A few months ago I started joking that half of the treatments in my psychiatric practice had become “Taylor-based.” Many of my patients are adolescent girls and young women, and they have leaned on Taylor Swift as a kind of big sister through the daily agonies of being a teenage girl: unsteady friendships, the 24-hour firing squad of the internet, and of course, the endless longing to feel seen and valued. At the end of a session exploring these struggles, I’ve appreciated having her to keep my patients company the rest of the week.

But as the Eras tour steadily lurched toward our favorite city, the Taylor-based therapy issues reached a boiling point. “How am I going to stay calm before she goes onstage?” “I need to do remote today because I can’t get Covid before the concert.” “How am I going to go back to regular life once it’s all over?” They were saying they needed to calm down, and to help them do that we dug through the full bag of tricks — behavioral, cognitive, psychodynamic, existential — and explored these patients’ relationships to anticipation, to enjoyment, to self-regulation, to suffering.

I was already a casual fan. My husband has been quasi-ironically blaring “Hey Stephen” from our speakers for years, and my daughter, 9, has strong views about whether Taylor should still be with Harry Styles. But I couldn’t really understand why this artist and this tour were so powerful — and so disruptive.

And so I started listening. And listening more. And I started staying up all night refreshing apps for last minute access to the “Taypocalypse.” And then I went to the show with my daughter. And now I, too, cannot calm down.

Swiftmania is a very different kind of high from what I experienced listening to music as a teenager — a high that is worth the pain. It’s not just the plethora of songs to discover, but the nonstop Swiftie culture itself — the constant access to the music, the news, the scrolling for swag, the shout-outs on the street, the sharing of songs and lines of poetic code via text or passed bracelet — a party that is raging all day and all night.

When I was growing up, I had the Indigo Girls, Tori Amos and Ani DiFranco, singers for whom a troubled inside matched a raw, edgy outside. But there was nobody who held forth on righteous anger from the inside of a sparkly bodysuit — who suffered as I did, but whose confident prowl could make me walk a bit taller. My singers would sit outside the party and complain with you, but when you got your courage up, they weren’t going to go inside, ready for it. Taylor doesn’t force you to choose, because she is both The Lucky One you want to be, and every bit the Anti-Hero you are inside.

Who is the Swiftie? In my practice, these patients share certain characteristics. Raised on a healthy diet of kindness and fairness, she is sensitive, ambitious and a bit of a perfectionist. Like Taylor, she dresses to be pretty and cool (and sometimes, for revenge), but inside, she is in all kinds of pain. Her self-doubt perpetuates a vicious cycle in a world where she is timid and young, and others may assume she knows nothing. She’s hard-working and frustrated, and wonders if she’d get there quicker if she was a man. Desperate to experience love, she has had her moments of begging for Romeo to just say yes, or tolerating being treated badly in some situationship (you said you needed space — what??). And yet, the Swiftie strives to be the modern day Cinderella, who doesn’t remember if she has a man. She finds in Taylor Swift an actual hero who meets her where she is but also shows her the badass place she could get to — so intoxicating precisely because it is within reach.

“What would Taylor Swift do?” is a refrain among certain patients in my practice. Teenagers suffer for many reasons. One is being fragile and in formation — a human construction site. Another is being surrounded by others who are fragile and in formation. Taylor Swift articulates not only the treachery of bullying but also the cruelty just shy of it that is even more pervasive: meanness, exclusion, intermittent ghosting. She says: Borrow my strength; embrace your pain; make something beautiful with it — and then, you can shake it off.

But what is singular about this artist, in this time, is the access she has created to a cohesive community, particularly for the pandemic generation, whose social connections grew tragically elusive and for whom the internet’s offerings assumed a central role. Whatever you are upset about, the poet laureate of this generation has got a song somewhere in her mega-oeuvre describing that precise feeling. She is not going to solve whatever problem you are having, but she is going to sit with you in it until the passage of time does its work: Look at her now.

Teenagerhood taunts you to explore and perform who you might be, on repeat, and the “Eras” theme of her current tour electrifies this process. MetLife Stadium was a bacchanal of mass identification, a celebration of that ubiquitous girl who felt somewhat invisible until there were 83,000 of her, sparkling from miniskirt to concert bracelet, lighting up the night sky, and wondering: Which era am I right now? Who was I last year? And what’s the part of me that is emerging, gaining complexity? The eras offer a reassuring developmental trajectory that includes them all. You may dress up as 1989 party girl, but it’s understood by everyone here that you are also heartbroken and rageful and forgiving and brave.

We will all eventually calm down, but for now I am leaning in to this fever dream, this restlessness, and sleeplessness, and decline in focus on anything else — a champagne problem perhaps, but also a gift. Sometimes it’s good to let yourself be disrupted, to be a little less productive, to stay stay stay in an enchanted place as long as you can. Especially when there is someone new in your life who shows you colors you can’t see with anyone else.

My patients have their own dedicated professional to listen to them for 45 minutes a week and work with them to identify complex feelings and unhelpful patterns. But few teenagers have access to this kind of support. It’s confusing to be human and to be female, and I’m glad, both for my patients in their midnights, and for their populous, shimmering community, that they have someone so articulate, so generous, and so endlessly present to talk to.

[pynklemonade]

2022 was an odd one. 

in the past 24 hours I stopped and started this entry multiple times in different word processors, and all of them started with a variation of that sentence. I guess that means it really was a year I don’t really know what to make of. 

even writing this feels… redundant, in some way. because who am I doing it for, actually? why am I doing it, if I don’t know what to write about and all I can think is “that was weird”? still, I’ve been doing this January 1st thing for the past five years now, and I think I owe it to myself to figure myself out as I go. 

so.

2022.  like I said — an odd one. a chaotic one. furthest bit removed from a boring one. at the start of it I was still terrified to even hug a friend, and then I made the conscious choice to go out into the world again and put myself in situations I was uncomfortable with after having been cooped up in my home for two years. actually — uncomfortable doesn’t begin to cover it. I was scared out of my mind, and was constantly put in situations which asked something of my very panicked brain that felt insurmountable. 

it wasn’t. I did it, and it went well, and I felt a buzzing and contentment I hadn’t dared to feel in a really long time. everything felt exciting, albeit terrifying. and then I caught covid, and the terror came back in tenfold. all of the fear I had felt the entire past two years were then condensed into ten days that felt like hell in so, so many ways, and from that point on, somehow, everything got more hectic than before. I’m not sure I processed any of those things. I’m not sure I actually moved past that fear from two years ago until now. I don’t think I did — I just had no time to let it grow, because there were so many things. 

things like orchestrating a whole office move, when you’re the least organised person you know, and discovering you can do whatever you set your mind to. things like going abroad for the first time in years, despite your brain shouting terror, and finding excitement there you had missed for years now. things like going to a congress outside the country for work, knowing you’ll have to impress more than you have ever before, and giving it your all and having it be seen. things like forming a bond with people who need to trust you for your work, and watching it pay off. things like facing your darkest thoughts in therapy, and going through the treatment you spent your whole life trying to avoid. things like re-evaluating what’s important to you and fits in your life, and what doesn’t, and being honest with yourself about it. 

things like letting yourself have your feelings, and not running away from the scary thing you always used to flee from, but facing it head-on and sitting with it. moving past the fear, despite it paralysing you. letting yourself be, the way you want to be. allowing yourself to reach out, when you need to. allowing yourself the little pleasures, just because. 

all the feelings I didn’t feel in 2020 and 2021 came back to me in tenfold in 2022. not because there was room for them, not at all, but because I knew I had to stop hiding from myself and allow them back in, room or no room. in my brain, there were all these islands I had stored all my past feelings on, all the things I didn’t want to revisit, and they were safely removed from each other, lakes and seas and oceans separating them all. it worked for years. it allowed me to function and get to where I am now. 

but without warning they stopped serving me and started holding me back instead. I needed to island-hop faster, switch back and forth quicker, and found I couldn’t. I found distance where closeness should be. 

and so I spent this year reconnecting all these islands slowly, and very, very carefully. and at last, I allowed myself to be me. wholly. fully. all these islands have now drifted back to each other and have suddenly formed a continent I need to relearn how to rule. 

what the new regime includes, I’m not sure yet. I’m still figuring that out as I go. but I do know it excludes intense self loathing, punishment and a deep feeling of not being enough. that set of basic rules used to feel like a friend before, but suddenly started to feel redundant. I grew tired of the laws, let alone how the people around me must feel about them. the land needed a new king, and the only one who could make that happen was me.

and funnily enough, the feelings I had stored away proved necessary in this new kingdom. so in 2022 I felt, and I felt, and I felt. it was exhausting. never before have I felt more raw or vulnerable, but the difference this time around compared to the vulnerability of years ago is that these days, I know who I am. I know where I stand. most of the time, I know my worth (solidly, without faking it like I used to do the whole previous decade). 

I’m not there yet. I know I’m not. currently I’m facing a decision that’s been simmering for at least twenty years now, and I’m finally allowing it to become real in my mind, whether I go through with it or not. I have learned that my only protector is me, and it’s a tough pill to swallow. 

but no matter what happens, my islands are no longer islands. 

no matter what happens, the decision is mine, and it’s time I start behaving like it, because this? 

this is my kingdom. 

and I’m the one who gets to rule it.

[cooganbegs-blog]

A 24 hour dash to Sydney has me at a reprieve on the grief front. Far from home there are no echos of an absent black dog.

It’s the end of a quarter and waiting at the airport and discovering my flights been delayed, am very glad I opted to cash in one of my Qantas Club free entries. I’m still trying to figure out how on earth I can I actually just purchase a qantas club membership. Because I only travel domestic I just scrape through into silver membership every year, which gives me sweet fuck all in terms of benefits for all the fucking flying I do. And where on earth is there any info on paying for entry. I’m more than happy to pay my way into a years worth of qantas club membership! I fly enough!

Anyway, I’ll continue to search and enjoy my complimentary entry tonight!

I got a call from the vet this week that Loki’s ashes have been returned. I just can’t go and pick them up. To pick them up is physical evidence that he is gone for eternity and never coming back. I can’t face that yet. Denial is where I’m happy to dwell for a while, it’s sunny and warm and friendly and contains the illusion that he’s just at the vet and when he’s better I can go and pick him up.

I have a one on one with the CTO every week and one of the fields I fill in is the “Moodometer”…..I’ve been a steady 3 for a few weeks which fell to a 1 last week for obvious reasons, this week I felt impelled to give a 2, for no other reason than I know patience with me sitting at a 1 is rapidly evaporating. And when he asked surely I was feeling better after a week, I agreed and said I was improving. No CTO wants to know their Head of Product is a basket case over their fucking dog.

So I flew to Sydney to sit in on a multi million dollar sales pitch and the distraction helped. Being part part of an all female contingent was satisfying in some weird way.

Now it’s back to a home devoid of Loki. No madly wagging body launching himself at me as I sneak in the front door in the middle of the night. No tucking him back into bed and sitting with him, stroking his head while he calmed down and stopped quivering in pure joy just because I’m back in his world again. Where do people get this when they don’t have a dog? No human relationship has the purity of joy, the complete lack of expectation that a dog provides.

No more gentle sounds of a snoring, completely content dog lulling me to sleep.

It’s silent.

[hms-no-fun]

it’s not just rental stores either. if there’s no physical version of a film or tv show to acquire, then libraries are trapped in the same IP-licensing hell that all other streaming media is. the kanopy access i’m granted through the seattle public library lets me watch three (3) entire movies per month. three! if you’ve got a college library account i think you get ten. it’s the same with books. last summer i wanted to get into ursula k leguin, only to discover that not only were all the physical copies of her books checked out and back-reserved for months, their ebooks were all checked out too! ebooks! the seattle public library ran out of ebooks!!!!!! a digital file that can be reproduced infinitely at zero cost made arbitrarily scarce because greedy publishers want to give us as few legal ways to read stuff for free or at low cost when we could be buying them at full msrp instead. which creates more waste than the alternative, inevitably traps us in digital ecosystems which WILL be destroyed and replaced wholesale within the decade. oh and where do people buy most of their books today? oh amazon, oh that’s funny, that’s a cute coincidence.

but let us not forget that blockbuster itself was an invasive corporate parasite that drove countless independent video stores into bankruptcy using the very same business model that defines tech companies today: get big on a national scale, make prices unreasonably cheap and just eat the losses, choke out all the competition, and then hope that when it comes time to actually be profitable that they’ll just be too big to fail. unfortunately it turns out that what actually happens in this case is that when the competition is dead and you’ve stripmined every cuttable corner, your profit margins decline and you go bankrupt and now an entire industry is blown to smithereens. golly that does sound familiar! probably won’t happen with any other monopolies though, i mean what happened with blockbuster was sort of a fluke because usually the rate of profit only ever goes up! i think. i’ve only ever skimmed marx but i’m pretty sure that’s what he said

and this whole process exists in concert with the death of broadcast media and syndication. i’ve been a film nerd for a long time, i got it from my dad early on because we would watch reruns of hollywood schlock from the 40s and 50s together for hours. tv stations revived countless old undervalued media through rebroadcast. it’s a wonderful life is just one very famous example of a film that was generally disliked in its day but found an audience decades later through syndication. and yes, they did this because it was cheaper than producing new content to fill a 24/7 broadcast schedule (this was before they invented reality tv to scab for a striking writer’s guild), but it’s an undeniably more sustainable business model than what we have now. so much media today is produced for right now specifically. stranger things exists for social media, it exists to be talked about in the week of its release, it exists to bolster netflix’s name and capitalize on the very present-tense nostalgia for 80s aesthetics in an incredibly surface-level, conservative america friendly package that removes everything about the films it worships which once made those very films deeply transgressive and uncomfortable in an outsidery sort of way. and none of this even touches on the matter of how streaming media pays out infinitely less royalties for airing existing media (oh hey kind of like how spotify fucks over musicians, that’s another weird coincidence)

once a full season of streaming tv is dropped in a single day, yes, sure, hypothetically you can watch it again whenever you want. but do you? when new stuff shows up on the platform constantly, do you really go back and watch what you meant to watch earlier? doesn’t it feel like a waste of time to watch something that isn’t very immediately in the zeitgeist? so instead of recycling existing media, using the hypothetically infinite reproduceability of digital media to give a new generation of young people unprecedented access to classic films and tv shows, evolving and expanding the framing techniques that made turner classic movies so charming, they’ve opted to infinitely devalue everything which does not obviously meet the metrics of virality in an algorithm they literally paid a guy with a degree in money making to invent out of thin air. if an executive cannot see the immediate obvious shareholder-related value of something, they can choose to throw it in the trash and we’re just stuck with that decision. execs at hbo discovery can indefinitely memoryhole infinity train because it isn’t a story to them, it isn’t art, it is private property. and in the eyes of the government, that gives them every right to put it in a vault forever if they so desire. at least until it passes into the public domain in, oh, i don’t know, eighty years? thanks for that one disney. oh shit, another monopoly! it’s so funny how we keep running into those

physical media is a license that cannot be revoked. a corporation can’t invalidate it, take it away from you, make you pay for it again (except by inventing new technologies that utilize a different storage/playback technology), or keep it out of libraries. they only ever tolerated this lack of control over their ~~~intellectual property~~~ in the past because they had no alternative. but now, in the age of infinite digital reproduction, artificial scarcity is more valuable than ever. isn’t it funny that the overwhelming media narrative about physical media over the last fifteen years or so has been that it’s dying? always it’s dying. bookstores are dying, rental stores are dying, comic stores are dying. and yet the cause is never actually consumer habits, but market capture and price-fixing by unrestrained and totally unmonitored corporate capitalists. most everyone i talk to prefers reading physical books if given a choice. everyone loves vinyl and tapes despite the fact that they universally sound like shit! even streaming die-hards have copies of their favorite movies on discs.

physical media isn’t dying. corporations are deliberately killing it to bolster their bottom line.

i will never be against piracy ever but i also need physical media to remain

[libidomechanica]

Which the next of reaches gave me thus

A tricube sequence

               1

Should reapers! Horses to feel immortal

bow, above! That are deigns to mee.

Which the next of reaches gave me thus?

               2

It laurels sweete really charioteer

the been sitting saw I at a stock

the bands, yours, presse, a proper extend.

               3

Such a coronal of pleasant death.

Now—that thousands. Told jokes it no fear

such a candle you? Sweet Albany.

               4

Way music, for me bride. Shrine; and yet

I could exampled flowers rarest,

and Inarculum her loved. Chloris!

               5

Baked, and mortal tears whose that the your

bellies: my fondescript! Say—look we

for his poem,— and sweare me to spin.

               6

To hides all that’s this legs. Where that’s enough

brittle for look of like a country’s

jackal cry. Phoebus peeps their wine.

               7

The law of morn straw. Us feel my

grot, leaving, thou leave thee. And

enticipation one to the little urn.

               8

Woo’d and into thee, and the other

breast. What clear, vanish’d withal, what a

glitter these? When he high will last years.

               9

Of all it ye? Throughout a dreadful

of pain’d his gold, along there be, submits

and fell waters, one finer side.

               10

Himself: the Rhine; take melody, in

the messorum! And must lattices,

call those whole courtier tear; tlot-tlot!

               11

And scarce to strong white honey. Whom but

maggots of gentle. Is arrows so

gently leant beauty; fondescent?

               12

Why it to yours, nor binds on their fear

so fashion. Cool a pure like their like

to be path? In they with frame, autumn.

               13

The right to breast, near at eight, there. Bade

a mere air? Who art made so call’d Saviour,

first let me ’noint out the give me.

               14

Then heaven. And now Nature had been

growth to be no feed it singly

impatiently. Lass of the legend cheat!

               15

She will brings; but from some married two

side. Is not a kitten, so Arab

desert, and that dream away, desist!

               16

Look some snowy glen; in such colourless

from years false in his legs in somewhat

I shall ardently still to me.

               17

The more be copartner of dark of

sorry muttered light, and far inter-

sleep. But loving the devil told hear?

               18

Eternal dear than doth of then I

get them selues the bosom behind.

And mostly gales into discover.

               19

Now what moonlight. Of commend those in

the syntax of body than I. Linnet

pour’d inside the blue, auise thirsts grave.

               20

There we dark red waters rarest a

from wishes to passion, poor text, I

must haue all you too so much love? Scoop.

               21

I heard. The not star-showers, peace forgot

along sides, caterial clasp and

pain like a fancy, so am I!

               22

After you would calm, yet not so, when

pleasure I descend! Near on the charms,

because no more: you have show his fear.

               23

First hourly logs of the treading Nith

I have had for she coming prayer

for a form! A quiet least my self.

               24

Cried, my mothers I’ve not rouse riding

this—a living to the water: how!—

That high about some kindest loopholes.

               25

Yet my legs in its might this cool thy

guiding Triton’s bowed, wild rotten-time.

Sweet, fathoming round her lute doth seal.

               26

Sat sighs the did Miss Protean, who

makes come thus? At this—a living before:

and the was whereto my mind!

               27

The gold-skin. Thing must give relate, but

to love-knot one thin a circulation

in an empty hours late would ride.

               28

Or up to the cignet’s no less of

these: thus? Strange they madness is the visions

spade. To killing plummet do it.

               29

Chilly seas Ionian ashen- gray down

wings. Daniel in a gentle far more

neat, bess, palace at not misanthrope?

               30

Thee and elf, he silence deadly fae,

unless, the Fort Knox. Poor grave before,

that I am two-and- twenty-five?

               31

It is he! Dainty dames which, being

stilling of my lovely he sinner!

Let him all there demagogues enow.

[rememberingmybestfriend]

PB&Js & Ambien

A year ago today I had my last Peanut Butter & Jelly sandwich. You should know that I LOVE PB&Js! Even as an adult I had one for lunch each day along with a protein shake. I remember reading about different athletes doing the exact same thing and thinking, “They stole that from me!”

I am pretty weird about PB&Js, because as I like to shout from the mountain top, I was only one of like six people in the world who made them correctly!

You spread the peanut butter (Skippy or Jif) on a slice of bread. Then you wipe off the knife, scoop out some Jelly (Welchs grape) on top of the peanut butter and cut it in half. 

How can the entire planet be wrong?!?  They put peanut butter on one slice of bread and jelly on the other slice…like a terrorist??

My kids, coworkers, friends and strangers would all mock me, but I am a man of principle. I’ve always stood up for what’s right, even in the face of adversity.

Adversity is why I no longer eat PB&Js. Here’s why…

For 10 years, every day at lunch, I would share the last piece of PB&J with Baxter, my constant companion for 16 years.

Baxter gave no fucks. He didn’t care about ANYTHING in the world, other than being next to me. 

I remember when I first started dating after my divorce. If someone came over to watch TV with me, Baxter would get on top of the couch and walk across the cushions and fall in-between us. I laughed my ass off every single time, though it usually wasn’t appreciated my dates. 

When I would travel, whoever was taking care of Baxter would send me pictures of him staring at the door or out the window, waiting for my return. I know people thought it was cute, but it tore me up.  

Baxter was with me in the darkest period of my life and he was with me when I finally realized my dream of living in San Diego. We had a ton of fun, going to dog beaches and walking in the most beautiful weather in the world. 

I remember a “Low Rider” event where it was all dachshunds, corgis and bassetts (Baxter was a dachshund/corgi mix). The last Corgi Beach Day we went to there were over 900 corgis on the beach. 900!!! It was nuts and it was heaven!

During our time in San Diego I met another dog person, Jillian, who ultimately became my wife (she actually laughed at Baxter’s couch trick). She had two dogs of her own. There was Pearl the puggle and Ozzie Waldo the Shih Tzu. All three of our dogs were over 10 years old. 

In 2019, life brought me back to Tulsa. Along with Baxter, Jillian, Pearl and Ozzie Waldo. Shortly after moving back, Baxter got sick. Several vet visits later it was discovered he had cancer in his spleen and one of his adrenal glands. I took him to OSU Vet Surgery Center for a pre-surgical check and said I wanted to wait two weeks for the surgery so I would have some extra time with him in case anything went wrong. They said I had two days…..I didn’t even have 24 hours.

That night, Baxter’s tumor burst and I rushed him to the ER in Tulsa. This was at the beginning of Covid, so I couldn’t go in with him. I handed his limp body to a tech and went home and waited for the eventual call.

Around 6:00 am the next morning, I realized…the call never came. I went and picked him up and raced back to Stillwater where he had emergency surgery. Again I came home and waited for the call. Later that afternoon the phone rang and was told the surgery was a success and he could come home in a couple days. This is a picture of us after I picked him up...

Baxter never needed chemo, but I had him checked out every 90 days like clockwork. A year later, his step brother Ozzie Waldo got prostate cancer. Ozzie was a fighter and went through a dozen radiation treatments in Dallas and became cancer free.

A few months later Jillian found blood outside of our new home and we assumed it was from Ozzie peeing. We made plans to take him back to the cancer doctor. Later that night Baxter started bleeding from his nose. It wasn’t Ozzie’s cancer that had returned, it was Baxter getting a new form. Nasal cancer.

Baxter and I made our own trips to Dallas for radiation treatments. Again during Covid, so I could never enter the doggie hospital. I remember the night after his first treatment he bled all over the hotel room. It looked like a crime scene. I cleaned up as best I could and left a huge tip for the maids.

Baxter eventually beat that cancer too, but damn it was long and brutal. It’s normal for dogs to still have bloody noses and he had his share. It’s the most terrifying thing because there's a LOT OF BLOOD from those damaged arteries in his nose.

After Baxter turned 14, his back legs started giving out. He went to a lot of acupuncture and laser appointments that would slow the progress, but he was half dachshund and back issues are part of their life as they get older.

I was so fortunate to work from home the last 10 years of his life.  I moved around a lot throughout the house each day. I’d sit at my desk where Baxter had a bed right next to me. During work Zoom calls, coworkers as well as customers would ask, “How’s our boy doing?” 

If I got up to get a drink, Baxter followed. If I got up to use the bathroom, Baxter tagged along. I have a home gym and he thought he had to follow me on every exercise.

As Baxter’s legs started getting worse he would STILL follow me everywhere. I would plead with him, saying “I’ll be right back!” but he had to be next to me, even if he had to drag his beat up old body with just two legs.

Ozzie’s cancer tragically did return in December of 2022, and we said goodbye to him on the last day of the year. 

Two and a half months later, a couple days after Baxter turned 16, I had another scan done. No cancer, but they found a clot in his artery. I did some research (I know too damn much about dog diseases) and it was not good. 

If the clot broke free it would be a horrible death. They gave him some blood thinner, but that wasn’t helpful with the bleeding that would still come from his damaged nasal arteries. 

The next morning I could tell he wasn’t feeling well and I said, “Fuck it, I’ll cancel my plans and just hang with him in the living room all day.”  Later he started bleeding so much. Our living room was covered in blood. I realized it was getting close. 

I had promised him after that last vet trip that he would never have to go to a clinic again. I called a service that helps people say goodbye to their pets at home, and set up a time for the following Wednesday. Once again, time had other plans. 

By noon I knew we weren’t going to make it to Wednesday. I called a vet close to our house and made an appointment for later that afternoon. 

I laid next to Baxter and told him all the things we did together over the years and how much I loved him. We also split a whole PB&J sandwich. Later that afternoon I said goodbye.

I am so grateful for those 16 years. I am grateful that I had the ability to keep him around longer than most. I think about him every single day. 

Later on, at the end of 2023 my doctor kicked me off of Ambien after almost 20 years. Pro Tip: Never tell your doctor the truth.

I bring up this seemingly irrelevant fact because with Ambien….you don’t dream. I didn’t give a crap about dreaming, I just needed to sleep. 

Eventually, after multiple attempts, I got a new prescription that allows me to get 8 hours of sleep….along with a lot of dreams.

One night, Baxter came to visit. I knew he wasn’t real but was overjoyed to see my boy one more time. I am sure he wouldn’t care if I still have PB&J sandwiches but it was “our thing” and I don’t want to share those memories. 

[castle-dominion]

4x12 m for mayor

Loving death. Oh gosh that coat? I recognize.

Martha??? Just like my little bro, finished all his credits & just doing advanced physics. I on the other hand took an extra year of high school. I wanted to go busking in europe for a year after high school before going to college but that didn't pan out. Oh an internship? seriously? She's such a boring goody two shoes which is actually really good for her & I'm proud ig...

hyoid! new york ofc she doesn't have her license. nice coat on castle, becks, espt, & lanie too. Everyone is so pretty today. (oh & ryan also looks great & has that pretty pink shirt with no tie, they keep dressing him in pink right after his marriage, I think that's on purpose. No tie tho which is interesting & brings back s1 vibes but it's rly rly cute) lmao amish. I mean yeah the hutterites mennonites & amish are, well... As a folk catholic myself I should keep my mouth shut. kept the purse? & dumped it? Why not just leave it with the vic? or take the cash just as a bonus?

BIG CHEESE? NO

New actor for the mayor? RW: This is one of New York’s finest, huh, Ricky? RC, fondly: She’s the best. I like him I think. KB: I’ll do my best to keep the nature of your business private. RW: Thanks. I hoped you’d be there, Rick. RC: Fondue night with Alexis, but I did send a cheque. [this one is a cheque not a check] who calls them staffER rather than just staff?

I like how jordan the intern (alexis?) leaves & then the mayor takes rick to talk about the library stuff. RW: You know, I’ll—I’ll leave you guys to work through this unless, Rick, you want to take a look at our new library initiative. It wouldn’t hurt us to have your endorsement on that. RC: For the New York Public Library, my first love? Anything.

BS: I’ve already done your legwork, Detective. The car was checked out by Elizabeth Watson, Senior Director of Communication here at the office. When she left last night’s event around midnight, she discovered that it was missing. [that's really good of him!] *Shay pulls out a piece of paper.* BS: Here’s her statement. [that's taking it a bit far] KB: With all due respect, Mr. Shay, police investigations are usually conducted by the police. [she's right] BS: Yeah, well, unfortunately the 24-hour news cycle moves a hell of a lot faster than you do [yeah lol] and I have to get all my ducks in a row before this thing breaks. It’s my job. [he's right] KB: And my job is to find Laura’s murderer. So, if you don’t mind, and even if you do, [you can still accept the statement & thank him] I’m gonna get my own statement from Ms. Watson about that car, and I’m also gonna need statements from all of your staff as to whether they recognize our victim. [as you should] BS: Knock yourself out. But trust me, you’re wasting your time. [bro] KB: It’s my time to waste. Now, I got a job to do. [she's right] BS: So do I. Let me be clear. Mayor Weldon is my priority, and I’m not about to let this thing embolden his opponents and ruin everything that we’ve built. [he's right]

RC: Step back? These are politicians. They can’t order at a restaurant without two compromises and an ultimatum. Ooh gates is rly pretty Use castle's closeness to your advantage? Oh no castle you ARE biased

KR: No phone calls at all, because Laura Cambridge didn’t own a cell phone. Her credit cards haven’t been used in six months. RC: No cell phone and no credit cards? It’s like she’s from another century. JE: Amish theory’s looking pretty good, bro. Oh, I remember now. This is the phone sex episode. Good will hunting but in reverse. markiplier is the matt damon of poop. Rape or smth? death of a loved one?

Chuckleheads? like that time rysposito kept saying names for suspects & almost f*cked right then & there? Officer & gentleman? lmao. John watson? Mr Harvey: Bunch of deadbeat tenants in here. You ever get bored? I’m sure I could fill up a couple of holding cells for you. Caucasian is actually specific, not just white.

Ooh I love the pattern on the vest, I love esposito's shirt, looks not necessarily ironed but has some good breast pockets, I feel like the pink might contrast with his eyes. I'm a blue-eyed-indian but dang my eyes aren't that blue.

"No Please" really makes me think bad stuff & then Phone sex, babes!!! "yeah I'm still here babey" XD RC: I’d say it’s about $4.99 a minute. It’s not a sweatshop. *points to wall saying dial a goddess* It’s a sex shop.

Good gracious this is... well... I like how the office has dial-a-goddess art on the walls. Makes it feel more like an office. Tho they could work from home. But then they would have to set up secure phoning in their homes & it would just be easier & safer (safety of SWs is important) to route the office for payment & safety & anonymity. RC: Well, being the Chief… *reads the manager's nameplate* ...Sexecutive Officer did you notice any conflicts with her and her colleagues? [lmao sexecutive] MK: Maybe she liked it. We get all types here, Detective: students, actresses, moms. I know an accountant who did it because she liked the challenge…and it turned her on. It's a powerful thing to make a client lust for you.

Lil bro played the minecraft chicken sound & I was so confused for a sec bc I thought it was from-- (I almost called it sherlock)-- (I almost called it murdoch)-- Castle.

So true. You need fellowship & company & sometimes people, esp men, need the intimacy of sex to be able to have that emotional intimacy. Don't tell my mom but I've spoken to my priest about this, when I was in school & really stressed, I would have adult fun a lot, but after school was over (& I increased my testosterone dose too!) I stopped doing so much adult fun. It is a stress reliever. RC: It's therapy. Or…so I've been told. Castle nobody would doubt that you have called a place like this before. Plus you could say "or so I theorize" or smth. I mean remember that plastic surgery case when ryaposito were like "I can't believe the doctor doesn't have porn on his work computer" & the nanny case when castle saw rysposito & the captain standing around a computer & he said "that better not be porn & if it is I want in" like what? Ah well such is life. (Question for all you real adults out there, I'm technically an adult & I'm sort of a man but I'm trans & young & sheltered: do men really jerk off together? Do they sit around & watch porn together? Seems kind of gay tbh, jerking off around other men, comfy with or wanting them to see you jack it? sus. also gross.)

*picks up his phone & immediately has the number up*

WHEN was the door opened tho? Ah gas company. Fake af. Six foot, white, dark hair again.

Hm, usually drinks for actors are just coloured water but this wine has a foam on it, it looks very much like real wine imo.

RC: but that's going to be like looking for a needle in a needle stack. OH HO HO THIS IS A PLOT HEAVY EPISODE? I THOUGHT IT MIGHT BE WHEN I FIRST STARTED PLAYING IT BUT THEN I THOUGHT TO MYSELF IT CAN'T BE BUT HERE IT IS IT IS INDEED A PLOT HEAVY EPISODE. HOO HOO HOO. but how so they always seem to be able to catch the murderer after being told not to in these episodes?

Greater forces at play? There is way too much, so much more than just beckett than just beckett's mom, with all the killing & death I think it is not worth it to look the other way for the safety of just one person. What if you DON'T know when it is time? RC: Tell her what? "Hey, Kate, I've been taking calls from a shadowy figure who wants to keep you off your mother's murder case so they don't kill you, too"?

KB on the phone: No, I'm not eating *while eating* RC: Brown cashmere. So, we narrow our suspects down to rich men with impeccable taste. KB: Are you saying you're a suspect? LOTS of phone calls dang. copious is a good word. RC: Are there any calls in there from the Mayor's office? KB: I thought you said you were confident that he wasn't involved? RC: I'm…just trying to be thorough…and impartial. KR: Not yet. But the private sector is well represented. I got calls from The Met, banks, several high profile brokerage houses. No wonder the economy collapsed, huh? btw ryan outfit, no tie, striped shirt (not a fan of stripes), & vest plus jacket with lapel pin. Typical Ryan wear. I prefer castle's stripes, they are a pattern in the weave of the fabric to make it catch the light differently, they are not actually different colours. Nice dark navy blue jacket.

Rystle protecting beckett they both love her so much. RC: A television station! RC: ya idk The way espt says navarro <3 beckett's jacket <3

my brother helped me get ship names for just the main four. 0: nobody 1: castle, beckett, ryan, esposito 2: caskett, rystle, Castlesito castito casposito espostle estle (he actually didn't help me choose), ryckett, especkett, rysposito 3: ryspeckett, ryspostle, caspeckett, Rycaskett 4: rycaspockett caskeitan (I chose rycaspockett but lil bro chose caskeitan which is three syllables but four ppl)

Man had a nice tie I am not the smartest person but here: Polemic = a speech or piece of writing expressing a strongly critical attack on or controversial opinion about someone or something.

Oh no not the mayor! & then the coat nooo

Remember what happened last time castle? with damien? Tho if he DID do it then he ruined his own career.

It's the backgrounds that make the show. I'm noticing this while gates is getter her leftovers for lunch. They have cereal tupperwares on top of the fridge, including fruit loops (froot loops?) & images on the fridge.

RC: You know what I think? I think she's hoping it's him, because if he's gone, I'm gone. She's right, she can't have him with her.

Find a nice private space to talk, you don't need to do it in public you don't need to do it in the interrogation room.

Lol I forgot that this was before castle & gates started to make some leeway.

VG: We are tasked by the City of New York to protect its people. Sometimes that task comes with a cost. I know what they call me, Detective. "Iron Gates." I hear the whispers. "She's from I.A., she must hate cops." Well, the truth is I love cops. My daddy was a cop, my uncles were cops. But the sergeant who assaulted my patrol partner under color of authority, who holds him accountable? We do. Go to the mayor, get him to voluntarily surrender his coat for fiber testing without a warrant. Tell him it's the only way to keep it out of the media. But if he refuses, you get that warrant and you do your job, whatever the cost. This is why I respect gates. I'm anti-cop so I respect her here. Protect the people, keep the cops in line.

He DOES play poker with him lol.

It's going to be the kid right? The intern? I respect that, I'd believe that. Once you are given the context you remember but you don't remember before that. The way castle nods at him. "it is in your best interest" Oh no he killed her? Who is "they"? Ah "they" probably planted his coat. She still needs to get the coat but again they could have planted the evidence. Yeah castle! She totally should have told him that she needed the coat & was going to get it either way. Withholding the coat & then getting it with a court order looks guilty but it looks even guiltier if they find it matches, but then it supports the conspiracy thing if he turns it over bc he believes it is normal. Here's a question tho, what if two coats were made of the same alpaca fur or whatever? What if someone spilled hot sauce on their coat & so the part on the body has hot sauce residue but the part of the coat they test has no hot sauce residue so they don't match? idk how forensics work(s).

Sus parking garage. Does he see the guy's face? not right but not wrong? Man just disappears like that? So cool & sexy bestie.

Ryan not wearing his gun rn. Rly cute tho, nice sweater, he also seems almost to be walking like a girl rn which is weird. Not a hip-problem way like he often does.

woah who's that wearing the unicorn onesie? "I had an epiphany" he says Fellow had a rubik's cube in her office while she was doing phone sex lol

Sarah! Heck yes!

lmao poor greta gramma I remembered it! It was indeed the boy I remembered! tho I feel bad that it was jordan More dangerous than you know though, so like here, why did smith help the investigation if he knew that beckett would get closer to The Big Bad Guy? Wouldn't he try to steer her away to protect her? suspense suspense suspense just spit it out BILL MOSS I KNOW THAT NAME FROM FUTURE SEASONS he has a nice coat btw.

KB: Jordan Norris is a pawn. I want the people controlling him. VG: Oh, it’s a long game, Kate. Play it piece by piece. (sus?) Feel bad for big cheese

RW: There are people out there. I realize it now, people who control what goes on in this city and beyond. I wouldn’t play ball, so they took me out of the game. It’s been decided: this is as far as I get. Like watts the autistic jewish man can't get better than detective, murdoch the catholic autistic man who can't get better than detective, george crabtree the adhd ex-con (innocent) who was raised by prostitutes who can't get better than constable.

RC: I’d be gone from the Twelfth Precinct. Me: not everything is abt you Smith: nono he's right. Smith: You play chess, Mr. Castle? There are times when a well-placed pawn is more powerful than a king. casually says he's a pawn. But good, he reaveals that castle's job is to protect kate, keep her in check.

Like yeah the case wasn't quite resolved but he had to prevent it from going any further, that's what's going on. I see

Oof so yeah that was a good episode.

[spectaculardistractions]

From Octavio Paz Cannes, 11 April 1951 Dear Buñuel, We presented The Young and the Damned yesterday. I think we won the battle with the public and the critics. Or rather, your film won the battle. I don’t know whether the Jury will award it the Grand Prix. But what is absolutely certain is that everyone (at least up until now) thinks that The Young and the Damned is the best film at the Festival. And so we are certain of an award (bearing in mind, of course, last-minute reservations, surprises and permutations). I shall now tell you a little of how things went. On 1 April, as soon as I discovered I was going to be an official delegate, I met up with Karol, the film industry delegate (or the delegate of the distributors, I’m still not quite sure). Karol and his wife were completely sceptical. Not only did they not believe in your film, I also got the impression they didn’t like it. Of course, it was pointless to argue with them. I knew that in a week’s time – given the opinions of people they respect – they would change their minds. And that is what happened. Now Karol is proclaiming The Young and the Damned will win the Grand Prix. When I arrived in Cannes on the 3rd, I realized that neither Mexico nor Karol had prepared the screening. There were no pamphlets, no information, nothing. They’d prepared no publicity whatsoever, nor had they tapped into the admiration and friendship people have for you here. My first concern was to mobilize public opinion. Luckily, on the same day, the 3rd, I met up with various friends (journalists and film-makers) who not out of any self-interest, but because of their admiration for your work, dedicated themselves to making The Young and the Damned ‘the film of the Festival’. Amongst them, I should mention Simone Dubreuilh (your friend), Kyrou (a young friend of Breton’s), Frédéric and Langlois (from the Cinémathèque), etc. First of all, they went to see Prévert (who has been wonderful). We secured the help of Cocteau and Chagall. (Picasso, who promised to attend the screening, could not or would not – party politics? His friends were with us anyway.) We also mobilized what Mexican politicians refer to as the Festival ‘infantry’: journalists, secretaries, etc. Prévert declared it a great film. Cocteau called the Secretary General several times asking for tickets, etc. And finally, 24 hours in advance, we distributed the text I wrote about you. In short, we stirred up an air of anticipation. Even Karol woke up and helped us over the last few days. Danztinguer (is that how you spell it?) turned up at the last minute and – though a little late – was also useful. The theatre was as full yesterday as it was in your glory days. Something was happening. We distributed our allies strategically. But there was no battle. The film won the public over although – inevitably – there was some incomprehension: the ‘sophisticated set’ and a few communist groups (I can’t be certain of this, but I’ve been told Sadoul found the film excessively ‘negative’ and ‘unfit for use’). The audience applauded various sequences: the dream, the erotic scene with Jaibo and the mother, the part with the pederast and Pedro, the dialogue between Pedro and his mother, etc. At the end, loud applause. But above all, profound, beautiful emotion. Everyone came out, as we say in Spanish, with their throats dry. There was one moment – when Jaibo wants to put out Pedro’s eyes – when some hissed. They were silenced by the applause. The response could not be more enthusiastic. Prévert declared it the best film he’d seen for a decade. Cocteau quoted Goethe, who declared Beethoven the best musician of his era. ‘What about Mozart?’, people asked. ‘Mozart is not the best, nor the second-best. He is unique; he is in a category apart.’ That’s what he said of Buñuel. He is not the best, nor the second-best: he is unique, he is in a category apart. Pudovkin declared it a great film, full of optimism about the value of humanity. That will confuse the communist journalists. French Radio are inviting all of those personalities on this morning to give their opinion. We’ll send them on to you. We’ll also send press cuttings. And for now, you can use what I’m telling you for the press (leaving aside, of course, the intimate details, Karol’s attitude for example, which are for you alone). I have to ask a favour: could you add to page five of the article I sent, just after ‘major and minor stars’, the following: ‘We knew that Rodolfo Halffter was a great musician. We didn’t realize that music – an art form with infinite power to enchant – could blend in this way with action. Visual imagery, sound and cinematic motion together as one whole. Halffter’s music has what it is no exaggeration to call an “interior” quality. That is to say: it does not accompany the drama, nor underline it, nor comment upon it: it emerges from the action, its inevitable response, its necessary complement, unity in motion!’. I’m asking you to include this paragraph, not only because I think it’s fair, but also because I would never forgive myself for forgetting Halffter. Also, could I ask you to have the article copied and sent to Fernando Benítez, editor-in-chief at Novedades. It would be good if the article were to appear with a brief note mentioning the success of The Young and the Damned and of the opinions transcribed in this letter. And that’s all, apart from these cordial greetings from your friend, Octavio Paz [PS] I’ll write with more news soon.

Jo Evans & Breixo Viejo, Luis Buñuel: A Life in Letters

[duhragonball]

Cooldown

The last 24 hours have been very relaxing.  Now that I’ve got that Christmas fic out of the way, and I’ve hit my 1-million word goal on the damn wienerfic, this is the first time since Halloween where I don’t have a due date or writing goal breathing down my neck.  I should find a chill Dragon Ball screenshot to accompany that feeling.   Here we go...

I’m just going to reflect on my writing output for the year, and try to head off some mistakes before I repeat them next year. Also, I’m going to be eating leftover fruit salad while I do it.  I’d offer to share, but... no, I won’t.

Okay, so first and foremost, I kind of screwed myself over with Red Christmas. I think the fic itself turned out pretty good, and I’m pleased with the accomplishment, but I’m also annoyed with myself for failing to plan for how big it ended up being.   It’s about 33000 words long, almost twice as long as the previous Luffa Annuals, and I think like four or five times longer than the first one. 

To be fair, Green Christmas was the prototype, and it was a Coffee Shop AU, a premise so thin that it basically boiled down to having DBZ characters stop in for coffee.  I had to have barista!Luffa moonlight as a joshi wrestler just to keep myself entertained. 

Orange Christmas turned into a boondoggle.  That was the Sentai AU that I only half-finished by Christmas of 2020, and I had to wrap it up several months later.  I think Red Christmas kind of shared the same challenge, where I introduced way too many characters and made the plot much too complex for the length I was aiming for. 

Violet Christmas was the Noir AU, which I enjoyed writing, except for the part where I was pulling an all-nighter on Christmas Eve to get it done on time.  Luckily for me, the genre gave me a reprieve.  My original concept was more of a hard-boiled detective story, featuring Trunks as a PI trying to save Luffa from being framed for murdering her husband.  That would have been a lot more convoluted, but then I discovered that the noir genre isn’t the same thing as hardboiled detective, and after further study, I realized I could just focus the tale on Towa and Mira, who do the murder and frame Luffa for it.  The twist is that Luffa doesn’t even appear in the story, but Towa and Mira get so anxious about her exposing the truth that they turn against each other.  The point is that I was able to skip the crime-solving half of the tale, and just stick to the two characters that actually drove the plot.

Red Christmas was more ambitious, not because I needed it to be, but because I wanted to get as much out the vampire concept as possible.  My options were pretty much down to having Luffa be a vampire or a vampire hunter, and I decided the best choice for the character would be to do both at once.  But if I wasn’t careful, I’d just end up turning her into a cheap knockoff of Hellsing’s Alucard.  So I set her up as an anti-hero, pledged to rid the world of vampires, but also being a real dick about it.  Luffa is cruel and manipulative to the humans in the story, not because she wants to be, but because she believes this is the only way for her to carry out her mission.

In preparing for the story, I read an article critiquing the vampire-au trope, and it pointed out that if you take a character like Obi-Wan Kenobi and turn him into a vampire, is he still really Obi-Wan Kenobi?  In other words, you have this selfless public servant, a warrior for justice and peace, who never uses his powers for his own gain, and then you turn him into basically the exact opposite of those things.  And sure, maybe Ewan McGregor looks sexy in the fangs and gothic attire, but have you compromised the character to the point of being unrecognizable?   If so, what’s the point of telling a vampire Obi-Wan story at all? 

I tried to keep that in mind with Luffa, and I think I managed to skin the cat.  The version in my fic is a thousand-year-old legend, and inspiration to Vegeta and his allies, but she also fails to live up to his expectations in a lot of important ways.  That tracks with the “main” Luffa in TLSSJ, but the Red Christmas version is trapped in this curse.  The “main” Luffa can grow and make peace with her place in the world, but the “Red” Luffa is locked in a death struggle with vampire-kind.  Her only escape is through death or victory, and they’re ultimately the same thing.   Vegeta can remind her of who she is and what she’s fighting for, but he can’t really do anything to pull her back from the brink.  Her fate is sealed.

But I’m getting off track.  The problem with Red Christmas was that I hammered out the basic plot over the summer, and planned to write 15000 words of it in September, thinking that would cover most, if not all, of the story.  Then I would finish it off in December.  Instead, the final version ended up being about 33,000 words, which meant that I spent this month writing more than half of the work, which is not what I had in mind at all.

And while it all seemed to work out in the end, I need to be careful that I don’t repeat the same blunder when I work on the next Christmas Annual in 2023.  Right now I have a whole month in the summer blocked off for work on Blue Christmas.  I haven’t settled on the premise, let alone the plot, but I’ve got a few ideas, which is more than I can say for Yellow Christmas, which is why I’m putting that one off another year.

The main thing is that I need to plot both of these more responsibly.  The goal should be to finish them in the summertime, not to reach some arbitrary word count and hope that’s enough.  I don’t want to get stuck working on them all December long. 

Although, for the last four years, working on the Christmas annuals has been my holiday tradition.  So if I don’t work on the next annual in December, I need to put some thought about what I want to do instead.  I bought another string of lights for the plastic tree I have in my apartment, just because I wanted to get in the mood, and I feel like I want more of that.  My family seems to have moved on from exchanging gifts, so I’m basically down to mailing cards and watching TV with my mom for a few days.  I need to come up with something else to mark the occasion.  Something low-effort but enough to keep me from getting bored.  That’s kind of what the first two Luffa Annuals were supposed to be, but they’ve turned into something else.  I want to post them on the 25th to kind of cap off the holiday season, but I don’t want to be working on them during the season. 

So, anyway, I need to set some realistic objectives for Annual #5.  Keep the cast of characters limited, don’t go overboard on the plot, and give myself room in case the fic turns into another novella.

As for this week, I want to get Luffa #203 posted before the end of the year, but I think that ought to go smoothly.  After that, I start in on Janwum III, and a very special project that I think you’ll enjoy.  Stay tuned.

[lovingperfectionsblog]

Privacy

TW: Eating Disorder

Pierre Gasly x Reader

Summary: Pierre discovers y/n’s eating disorder.

Warning: Angst, Eating Disorder, Language, mentions of smut, nudity.

Word count: 4545 words.

Authors note: This is by no means me glorifying an ED, but instead writing from my own experience and perspective. There are certain things within this story which I went through and finally after 3 years of breaking up with my ex, I am finally in a much healthier place. Writing about it is incredibly therapeutic for me and realistically it won't be the last one I do write with the subject matter. If you think you may be suffering, please seek help <3

______________________________________________________________

“One Month and Three weeks” Pierre grunted out as he lifted the weights in the gym.

“God, how have we managed to stay away from them for that long?” Charles shook his head, sweat dripping down his brow as he mimicked the exercise his friend was doing.

“Never again, I can promise you that”, Charles immediately agreeing with the statement made by Pierre.

“It would be wrong of us to try and convince them to travel around with us wouldn’t it?” Charles dared asking the question.

“Every part of me desperately wants to” Pierre spoke honestly, “wouldn’t be fair though, ask them to give up their dreams just because we miss them too much”.

“Could you not be reasonable for like, two seconds?” Charles asked indignantly.

Pierre’s only response was to shoot his friend a knowing look. He knew he would never be able to ask you to move around with him, he only just managed to convince you to live with him in his flat. Something he noticed you were incredibly nervous of doing, simply stating that you were fairly protective of your space and privacy. Pierre remembered making a lot of promises during that conversation, mainly around not pushing you and allowing you your space and privacy the second you asked for it. He knew these were none issues though. Honestly, he didn’t care what promises he had to make in order to have you all to himself the second he got home every evening or after a Grand Prix weekend.

And then the nearly two-month long absence of each other had occurred, but all of the drivers were feeling the tension of being away from their better halves. All itching to get back for the summer break.

“Are you guys still joining us for the Maldives trip?” Charles asked. Between you and Charlotte, you had planned a trip away with your boys, wanting to just spend some time away together with friends and with your loves.

“It’s all y/n’s been able to talk about for the last two weeks” Pierre laughed, thinking about how excited you were to finally be getting away with him for a bit.

“Charlotte too”, thinking back to his own girlfriend’s excitement, “not hating the idea of seeing her in nothing but a bikini on the beach for a week either”, Charles added, throwing his friend a sly smile.

“It’s literally all I’ve been able to think and it’s getting worse the longer I’m away from her”. Charles could almost feel the pain in his friend’s voice.

Both y/n and Pierre were both incredibly affection people and honestly, Pierre wasn’t sure how he had managed to keep it under control with not being able to touch you in any way for two months. If he could have you in a bikini for a week, free reign to touch as much visible skin as possible, no, can’t think about this in gym with his friend.

“What time is the flight home by the way?” Pierre asked, fully aware that he needed to be at the airport in exactly four hours and 24 minutes, but he desperately needed to change the subject to get his head out of the gutter.

“At 6, we’ve got a little while before we need to head over to the airport” Charles responded, after meaningless chatter filling the rest of their time in the gym, both well aware that neither truly cared, only fixated on getting back to their girlfriends at home.

______

You heard the front door click and you were immediately running towards your boyfriend from the couch you had previously occupied. You flung yourself at Pierre, curling both your arms around his neck and your legs around his waist, and he wrapped his arms around you instantaneously in turn, burrowing his face in your neck, inhaling deeply, your very scent calming him, let alone the physical presence of you against him.

After a brief minute, Pierre began walking you over to the couch, plopping himself down so you two could continue your embrace. You two sat there for what you assumed was the better part of 10 minutes, not speaking, not moving, doing nothing other than cling to each other.

Eventually you uttered a quiet “hello”, pulling back to look at your boyfriend.

“My love” Pierre said back, moving a strand of hair out of your face, finally taking a good look at you.

And there you were, those green eyes he loved so much staring back at him, but you looked slightly different. Concern crossing his face. Your face looked tired, and he could have sworn your face was looking slightly thinner, your cheek bones sticking out slightly more, but he couldn’t be too sure, but he knew you definitely looked more tired.

Choosing to ignore it for now, assuming you were just having a tough time at work, he just kissed you. Finally, God, he loved kissing you, and now that he was kissing you, he was definitely not stopping until he had you on your shared bed, completely and totally spent.

______

“You should probably get packed” you told him, tracing patterns on his bare chest.

“mmmmm” was the only response you got in return from your now thoroughly exhausted boyfriend, not bothering to open his eyes, squeezing your thigh as he responded.

“I know you’re tired, which is partly your fault by the way”, you giggled as he lightly slapped your thigh, reminding him exactly why he was so tired, “but we leave fairly early tomorrow morning and you probably don’t want to get up early to do all your packing” you pointed out as you began getting out of bed to get dressed so you could sort out some supper for you both.

“If I promise to pack now, can we do a round two afterwards?” he asked, now sitting up to watch as you walked around the room, clad in absolutely nothing.

Your laugh filled the room, “yes, we – careful, I’m gonna turn the lights on” and with that Pierre closed his eyes to prepare for the onslaught of light “– we can have a round two IF you finish packing tonight”.

Pierre slowly opened his eyes. Allowing them to adjust to the light that now overtook the room but allowed him to truly get a good look at your naked form. Now he knew there was definitely something wrong. He assumed as much when he was feeling your body, he knew what every inch of your body felt like, he’d kissed every single part of you, but truly seeing you properly, alarm bells were ringing in his head.

His eyes didn’t leave you once as you made your way around the room, getting dressed again. He noticed how big everything suddenly looked on you, you literally drowning in sweatpants he was so sure fit you perfectly the last time he saw you. Had you been sick? What was going on?

“Get packing while I go make supper” you told him as you left the room.

You were clearly eating if you were making them supper, so you surely must be sick. What other option could there be? But if you were sick, how come you hadn’t said anything?

After a few moments, Pierre decided he was going to leave it for now, just watch you, figure out what was going on and try not invading your privacy in the meantime, terrified that if he did, you’d turn away from him.

So instead, Pierre just got up and began unpacking his previous suitcase and start packing for the much-deserved holiday with you and friends. After he was done, he made his way through to the kitchen to where you were plating up dinner for the both of you. You motioned towards the longue where he went and got a movie lined up for the both of you as you brought out your food.

God he loved your cooking, you always knew exactly how to treat him with his favourite cheat meal the first night he was back home, somehow knowing exactly what he wanted. A secret you both kept from his trainer.

You sat down, draping your legs over his before handing him his plate of food, which he immediately dug into after thanking you. He glanced over to you as he was shovelling a handful of pasta into his mouth, and he noticed that you had barely touched your already minimal amount of food.

“Everything okay?” Pierre asked, nodding down towards your plate, indicating that he had noticed you weren’t eating.

He saw your whole body stiffen at the question, refusing to look him in the eye, “Of course, why wouldn’t it be?”

“You haven’t touched your food?” Pierre dipped his head low, trying to catch your eyes.

You quickly looked up, flashing him your stunning smile, “I think I’m just really excited for tomorrow” you giggled out.

Pierre laughed at your enthusiasm, of course that’s what it had to be, you were excited, nothing was wrong, not with his girl.

He wasn’t sure he fully believed either of you though.

_____

“Pierre!” Charlotte called from the boarding gate, “about time you guys got here” she gleefully said, hugging her friend, “Where’s y/n?”

“She’s just getting us some water from the shop quickly”, languidly pointing in the direction of the store.

“Oh good, I’ll go find her quickly, I need to get for me and Charles” she said before she moved off in your direction.

As soon as Pierre was sure Charlotte was out of ear shot, he sat down next to Charles and began talking to him quickly in hushed tones.

“Listen, I need your help with something”

“You’re not planning on proposing right? Like, I get you guys are in love and all, but it’s a little soon isn’t it? You just got her to move in with you?” Charles questioned, just as frantically, suddenly feeling panic rise.

“No god, just, listen, I think something is wrong with y/n, but I just need someone else to confirm and like, if I’m right I’m not even nearly sure how to bring the topic up with her without scaring her away” Pierre stated.

“Wrong with Y/n how?” Charles asked, a new type of concern creeping in.

“She’s lost like, a lot of weight” Pierre began, “like, too much I think, and last night she literally didn’t eat more than a handful of food and I’m pretty sure she didn’t eat breakfast this morning either”.

Charles brow furrowed, suddenly far too aware of the concern his friend was feeling. It was a fear all the drivers had to some extent, knowing the types of pressures their partners were under to always look good, to look perfect, and to watch your partner succumb to that kind of pressure was devastating. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t watch out for Charlottes weight constantly, without her being aware of it, making sure that if he felt she dropped some, he’d begin treating her to more hearty home cooked meals, and fancy dinners out. Not to mention how he was always paying attention to how she spoke about herself, the second he noticed a shift in her self-confidence, he made sure he doubled down on the compliments, making sure he didn’t take his hands off her, constantly telling her how beautiful she was to him.

“I’ll keep an eye out, I promise, and if there is an issue, we get through it” Charles assured his friend, “plus, I’m sure she’s absolutely fine man”.

The boys quickly shut their conversation down as they saw you and Charlotte walking up to them, Pierre flashing you a smile as you handed him his bottle of water, greeting Charles at the same time.

You sat down next to Pierre and began talking about the accommodation that had been booked, two chalets next to each other for the two couples, while Charlotte sat next to her boyfriend, looking at you before looking back at him, eyes slightly wide.

Charles leaned in to whisper in her ear, hoping you wouldn’t notice, “Pierre has already brought it up to me”.

“And what exactly is he doing about it because I think this may be a problem” Charlotte voiced her concern to him.

“Honestly, I didn’t expect it to be this bad but yeah, there is definitely a problem” Charles said, mimicking the concern of his girlfriend.

______

“New bikini?” Pierre asked as you draped a summer dress over yourself, getting ready to join the other couple of the beach.

He knew something was wrong, but he had absolutely no idea how to address it. How does he bring up that he thinks you need to out on some weight and how does he gauge if this was a legitimate problem or if it was a simple mistake? God, how could losing that much weight be a mistake though?

“Yeah, got it specially for this trip, what do you think?” you asked.

‘Yeah, it’s a really nice bikini” Pierre answered, not wanting to comment on your actual body at the moment, not sure what the best way to respond to all of this would be.

“Oh, thanks”, you looked and sounded dejected by his answer, “we should get going”, and with that you just walked out the chalet to head down to the beach.

When you finally got down to the beach, you spotted Charles and Charlotte already with their towel out, basking in the warm sun.  You lay your towel out next to Charlotte, taking your dress off hesitantly, suddenly all your fears about how you look hitting you again, but you had lost all this weight recently, surely you looked good now? You gave a cautionary look to Pierre, ‘how come he hadn’t complimented you on it yet or was he hoping you’d lose more?’.  

“Charles, want to go test the water mate?” Pierre asked his friend, eagerly nodding towards the water, hinting at more than just a splash in the waves.

“Yeah sure-“Charles began

“Let’s go then” Pierre hurried him along.

Once Pierre was far away enough he immediately gave Charles a look, “do you see what I mean?”

“This may definitely be a bigger problem that what I was expecting” Charles honestly answered him.

“So, I’m not going insane, she has lost way too much weight right?” Pierre urged his friend, hating that he was right.

“Do you know how long this has been going on for?” Charles asked

“No idea” Pierre answered him, “she’s always seemed like she had a decent appetite I guess”

“But that was the short amounts of time you saw her before she lived with you yeah? Maybe this was a problem long before and now that you live with her, things have gotten worse because she can’t really hide it behind the few times she did see you and maybe she got it in her head that it was okay since you hadn’t then commented on it? Charles suggested.

“And it doesn’t help that we’ve been away for the last two months either” Pierre finished the thought, “you think this is why she was adamant on her privacy and space?”

“Shit, maybe” it all dawning on both boys at the same time.

“What the fuck do I do” Pierre asked, carding his hand through his hair, not daring to look at you in fear of you figuring out what they were talking about.

_______

“Is that all you’re going to have?” Pierre’s tone coming out harsher than expected.

“Guess I’m just not that hungry” you hesitantly responded, unsure of why Pierre had asked so aggressively.

“You sure? The foods really good, plus, it’s our last night here, might as well treat yourself” Charles added in, shocking both you and Charlotte, never expecting him to prompt you to eat.

“I’m good, thanks Charles” you responded, unsure of what else to say.

“You can order more babe, we don’t mind” Pierre encouraged you.

“I said I’m good thanks” you semi spat out towards you boyfriend, overwhelmed by the boys pushing more food on you.

The more Pierre had kept his eye on you, the more you avoided eating, concerned he would find you disgusting, it had to be the reason he was watching you so much.

You were suddenly drawn out of your thoughts by Pierre’s touch on your thigh. Wincing as he squeezed, sure he was able to feel the fat around your thigh, God you needed to up your exercise.

“I guess we should head off to bed then, Charles has probably had a little bit too much and we all have an early flight back” Charlotte stated, urging Charles to get up to head back to the Chalet, knowing Pierre needed to talk to you and it was about time it happened.

You all got up and made your way back to the little chalets you were staying, and you were hoping that Pierre would be willing to make this last night one worth remembering, but that all changed the second you went to grab his hand to hold and he gently avoided your fingers sliding between his. He was upset. Not only that, but he was upset with you.

“Is something wrong?” you carefully asked, trying to avoid upsetting him even more.

“I don’t know Y/n, you tell me?”, his answer shocked you.

“What do you mean?”

You really didn’t want to argue, and you aren’t sure you could stand here and listen to him shout at you for how much you ate, immediately making you think back to how your ex treated you whenever you weighed too much to his liking. Those arguments always leaving you shaking.

“Sorry” you instinctively said, hoping to ease the tension between you two.

Pierre stopped before opening the door, “for what exactly y/n? Because honestly, I’m not even sure you know” he replied, the sound of venom in his voice as he said it.

He didn’t mean it. God knows he didn’t mean it, but he was scared. He was scared and frustrated because he didn’t know what to do and it wasn’t often that he felt this lost, especially with something, or rather someone, as important as this.

Before you could even respond he was making his way into the room, shrugging his jacket off and chucking it down on the small couch that was in your chalet.  You followed sheepishly, ready with the speech to explain how you know you had too much, by the time you entered he was sitting on the bed, head between his hands, staring at the floor.

“I’m sorry for having too much,” Pierre’s head shot up, suddenly thoroughly confused, although you took this as an indication to continue, suddenly rushing through the well-versed speech, knowing exactly how it used to calm your ex down.

“I’m sorry for having too much food, I didn’t mean to embarrass you in front of your friends. I’ve really been trying to lose the weight and I know it’s been slow going and I wanted to surprise you by the time you got back, so you would be proud of me as your girlfriend on holiday in a bikini, but clearly it hasn’t been enough and I’m so sorry and I promise I’ll try and lose more, I’ve already made sure to up my time at the gym-“ you couldn’t even finish before Pierre had his hands on either side of your face, kissing you through the tears, although at this point you were unsure of whose they were, yours or his. You weren’t even sure when either of you had started crying.

“You think I’m upset with you because you haven’t lost enough weight?” Pierre gently asked once he had done kissing you.

“Well, yes?” Confusion laced in your voice as well as spread on your face.

“No, no baby. I’m upset because I’m scared.” This level of honesty always leaving Pierre vulnerable.

“That I’m too fat?” A new tear running down your cheek.

“No Jesus, baby, I’m scared because you’ve lost too much” Your whole body jerked back at this response, slipping out of his grasp, “Y/n, there’s clearly a problem here, you’re nothing but skin and bones and this isn’t you. This is too thin. This is unhealthy. God you’re always beautiful to me and I respect your right to do what you want with your body, but this is too much my love.” He so desperately wanted to reach out to you but kept his distance in fear that you’d shut the entire conversation down.

“I don’t want to talk about this” You immediately said, doing what you always did, forcing him to step back because you weren’t prepared for him to step into your private bubble.

“No, not this time baby” Pierre forced.

“You said you’d respect my privacy and space when I asked for it” you referred back to the conversation you’d both had when the talk around you moving in had happened.

“Y/n, you can’t do that. Not now.” Pierre was not willing to drop this conversation.

“Yes I can” you moved around him, grabbing your Pjs to go and get changed in the bathroom.

Pierre grabbed your arm, knowing that this probably wasn’t the best way to go about this, but he was running out of options, “please don’t run away and shut me out, please, let’s just talk about this” he pleaded.

“And what? Talk about how I can’t stand to look at myself and how my ex constantly reminded me how ugly and fat I was? How I should be so thankful I was with him and at least he was willing to be honest with me? How everything I ate was commented on, every single meal and I was belittled for even feeling slightly hungry and the goddamn comments on my portion sizes? How the food I bought was monitored and I was blamed for wasting too much money on fucking food? And how I am now desperately terrified that if I don’t make sure I keep my weight under the limit he wanted then you’ll probably think I’m disgusting and want to leave me too? Is that what you wanted to hear?” you spat at him, pouring all the secrets you were determined to keep in out on the floor.

Silence enveloped the room. Surely you didn’t believe all of that. No, not his girl. There was no way your ex did all that to you. How had you not told him? How could Pierre not know? How could he not have been there for you through it all.

He was going to kill him. He was going to fucking rip him to shreds.

“You know I feel none of that right?”

“I know you’re better than him” you confessed.

“Baby, I think you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen and you have changed my life in the best way and maybe I need to start being a bit more vulnerable with you if I expect the same thing in return and I promise I am going to work on that, but my god, I cant lose you and I can’t have anything bad happen to you, especially when I know I could have done something to help” Pierre spoke freely for the first, trying to let you know how much you truly mean to me.

“I don’t know how to fix it Pierre, I feel like I’m always going to feel this way” sitting down on the couch, running your hand through your hair.

“Therapy, I think that’s the best place for us to start, then we move from there.” He crouched in front of you, grasping your hands in his.

“Us?” you tilted your head at him, prompting him to continue.

“Yes, us, what? Did you think I was ging to let you do this on your own? You do your own therapy, I’ll do mine, and we also go together to make sure we only build our relationship up and I learn how to help you in a healthy way as you heal.” Smiling wider and wider as he noticed the growing smile on your own face.

“I may need you to take me to that bed and have your way with me” you frankly stated, biting your bottom lip.

“You got turned on by me suggesting therapy?” Pierre laughed, before standing up and dragging you with him.

“Every girl is turned on by their man saying they’re willing to go to therapy, we love self-aware men” ending the sentence by placing a long kiss to his lips.

“Fuck, I should’ve suggested going to therapy months ago” and with that, he picked you up and chucked you over his shoulder, swiftly moving over to your shared bed before dropping you safely down and leaning over you, placing a kiss to your neck, “so, going back to when you mentioned me having my way with you”.

“mmmm I don’t recall” you said, slowly unbuttoning his shit

“Guess I’m just going to have to remind you then” and with that he shrugged his now open shirt off and began kissing you in earnest.

______

“Want half my sandwich?” Pierre asked opening the packaging.

“Baby steps my love” you reassured him.

“One bite, please, and then I’ll stop” he wasn’t above begging if it was something this important.

“I think I could manage one bite” you said, taking the corner of the sandwich he was holding in your mouth, a warm feeling blooming in your chest as you saw how relieved and proud he looked after you do so, “I’m gonna go grab a bottle of water quick, you want anything?”, you asked the group.

“I’ll come with” Charlotte decided, thinking she should probably sort out some food for herself and Charles too.

“Well, that was good” Charles commented, “wait, it was good right?”

“Hopefully” Pierre commented, not taking his eyes off of you as you and Charlotte walked to the little ship inside the boarding area.

“We had a talk last night, honestly, not even close to what I expected” Pierre finally looked at his friend.

“Yeah?” Charles prompted him to continue.

“Thought it would be about the pressures of being in the spotlight, turns out her ex did a bit of a number on her and we’d just never spoke about it” Pierre filled his friend in.

“Fuck, seriously?” Charles was shocked, not once had you ever indicated that there had been an issue with your ex, but maybe that was the problem and why none of them ever realized what was wrong, “So, is there a plan?”

“Therapy” Pierre answered honestly, “for both of us, we’re sorting it out when we get back”.

“No better option I reckon mate” Charles truly couldn’t think of anything better for the situation, “I’m proud of you, of both of you, truly”.

“And I’m proud of her. Truthfully, I couldn’t imagine having to deal with what she is going through” he smiled before looking back at his friend, “but also, I kind of wanted to go back to you mentioning me proposing”.

“No mate! Too soon!” Charles said, bursting into laughter

[saskiahaggens]

I Bought A Private Island

Masterlist

Pairing: Karl x Reader Warnings: none Word count: 1967

//While spending a day on Jimmy's island for a video, Karl and Y/n finally confess their feelings for each other.  //

Please remember that English is not my first language, so please don't kill me.

I was supposed to take part in my first challenge. Sadly, it wasn’t meant to happen.

Jimmy offered me to take part in the last video, were we just had to scan thousands of scratch-up-tickets and now he asked me to spend twenty-four hours on the island, which he bought with the money he won.

I thought it was stupid to spend so much cash on scratch-up-tickets, on the other hand the idea of winning an entire island was enough for me to say yes.

“I honestly can not believe that you just can buy an island.”, Jimmy said when we neared the beach of said island.

The island was beautiful. The sand was almost white; the sea was crystal clear and being here kinda felt like a dream.

We loaded everything from the boat over to the island and met up with Jimmy for a part of the video.

“Do you have everything you need?”, he asked us when the camera started recording.

Everybody muttered something like a yes, and Jimmy told the boat driver to leave. Just for the content, the boys screamed at him to stay and it was kinda funny to watch, to be honest, but I just didn’t feel like screaming.

“We are going to die.”, I whispered to Tareq, which he just laughed off.

“We are now stranded on this private island for the next 24 hours and to celebrate, let’s go explore the new island, because I have no idea what I bought.”, Jimmy explained.

However, in the middle of his speech, Karl pulled me toward the almost jungle like forest on the island and the others followed us. It was refreshing to get out of the blazing sun for a little while.

“Yeah, we are in a jungle now. I thought we were on the beach.”, Chris exclaimed when we walked into the so called ‘tube’.

While we were crossing the island, Jimmy told everyone what we could expect from this island.

“Do we go left or do we go right?”, Jimmy asked when the path parted.

“Left.”, we all said at the same time.

It was staged, but it was still funny thou.

“Okay, I guess we’re going left. Bye cameramen.”, Jimmy waved while Chandler took the lead.

“Left is the good path, I was told by the native animals.”, Chandler explained, and after a few more minutes of walking, we acutely saw animals.

“There are pigs on this island?”, I asked, excited.

Except for Karl, Tareq and me, everybody knew about the pigs. We split up the first time when we got to the intersection and while they found the pigs, we noticed nothing interesting.

“If there are pigs on my island, do I own the pigs? Is that how this works?”, Jimmy asked the camera.

“Wait Chandler, what if we find an ostrich on here?”

“Than I will swim back to the mainland. Ostriches are scary.”, I mumbled.

“Did we discover one of Y/n fears?”, Jimmy laughed while Chandler looked at me, acting mad.

The pigs were really cute and while the boys tried to pet them, they apparently showed more interest in my shoes.

“Y/n is stealing all the pigs.”, Chris exclaimed offended, and pointed in my direction.

“No, I’m not. You are just boring. Look, they like Jimmy too.”, I answered, pointing to one of the pigs that sniffed on Jimmy’s leg.

Sadly, we had to leave the pigs behind. We were supposed to ‘survive’ 24 hour on an island and not patting pigs.

“This is the craziest thing I’ve ever experienced. I’ve never seen live pigs, like wild.”, Chris starts another conversation with Jimmy.

“I didn’t even know you could buy an island a month ago.”, Jimmy laughed at that.

“Really? I mean you can buy parts of the moon, so why not an island?”, I asked, and Jimmy’s head shot back to me.

“You can buy property on the moon?”, he asked.

“Yeah, but you aren’t able to do anything with it anyway, so it wouldn’t be interesting enough for a video.”, I explained, trying to convince him not to buy it.

After what felt like infinity, we made it to the other half of the island.

“Bro, it never ends. How much more Island is there, Jimmy? This is ridiculous.”, Karl asked what I was thinking about.

After naming the island, we headed back to the camp to get everything ready before it gets dark. Tyler built a shelter while we were exploring the island and surprisingly it looked really cool, but I still couldn’t understand why we didn’t just bought tents too. We are around fifteen people here, even if the viewers will only see us six, and except for us, everyone was sleeping in a tent.

Jimmy gave each of us tasks, because he got bored.

“Chris and Y/n you are in charge of fire, food and building structures.”

“So we do everything?”, I asked, while Chris plunged into work.

“Yes, because you two are good at everything. Karl, you’re in charge of mapping the island. That includes figuring out what animals are here, figure out what fish are around and just drawing a map.”

“He really gets into it, huh?”, I asked Chris while we collected firewood.

“When does he not?”, Chris laughed and throw a stick at me.

“Yeah, you're right. Do you know what you want to do with the island if you win it?”, I asked him, after I caught the stick.

“I don’t know. Probably sell it. I mean, it’s not like we got time to get here very much anyway.”, he shrugged.

“Sad but true. I will probably do the same or I would train the pigs.”

Chris laughed and we spend the next few hours just talking about stupid stuff and making dumb jokes, while doing our work.

A little bit later, Chandler shot a flare gun. I didn’t know if that was planed from Jimmy, but it scared the hell out of me. Chandler ran way after that and we actually didn’t saw him for some time, if one of our cameraman weren’t with him, I would be worried. Meanwhile, we build the fire because it was getting dark really quickly.

Chandler came back eventually, after stealing one of the cameras, and we ate our hot-dogs. Then we waited for it to get really dark, because the guys wanted to walk back to the cave with touches. My heartbeat was so high the whole time, because I always expected one of the guys to jump out of the dark to scare me. Karl noticed it at some point and took my hand. I was smiling lightly at him while we kept walking. I had a crush on Karl for a long time now, so it didn’t slow my heartbeat down, but I felt safer now. The two caves were actually so big that all of them kinda started to hallucinating things in the shadows, at least I hope they did.

On our way back, we got lost and hearing all the animals didn’t make it less scary.

“Well, we can’t go that way, because we heard a wildlife. That’s where we came from.”, Jimmy stared, pointing out directions.

“We heard a wildlife.”, Chris laughed, more concentrated on his touch after he almost burned himself.

“Man, I’m scared, but that was probably just one of the pigs or a mouse.”, I tried to calm the boys down a bit and smiled at Karl, who looked really worried.

This time I took his hand and gave it a little squeeze, to show him that he is not alone. We walked for a little while longer. I didn’t recognize anything, but the boys seemingly did.

“Oh, I know where we are.”, Jimmy suddenly spoke up.

“On the wrong side of the island?”, Chandler asked, disappointed.

“Yeah.”, Jimmy sighed, “We are on the north side. Our camp is on the south side.”

Nobody said anything for a few seconds. We were exhausted by now, but at least they weren’t so scared anymore.

“Alright, everyone follow me.”, Jimmy broke the silence, and we headed back. This time knowing where we were heading.

As we were walking, Chris tried to scare us, but it didn’t work, because Jimmy runed it.

“I say we end the night with some nighttime swimming?”, Jimmy asked us when we finally reached the camp.

Everybody cheered and even though we were tired, we were sweaty too and the boys didn’t gave me a choice anyway, because they just dragged me in there with them. At first, it was fun, but after a while Taylor claimed to be touched, even though no one else was around. I thought he was trying to scare us, but a few seconds later, my whole body started to burn.  

I tried not to scream, but I took a sharp breath. This and my wincing did not go unnoticed by the guys.

“Okay, something is in the water.”, somebody exclaimed. I wasn’t sure who it was, but I didn’t care anyway because of the pain.

Chris got me out of the water, because he was the closest and Karl was by my side as soon as we reached the beach.

They laid me down when we reached the ‘hut’ made by me and Chris. I didn’t catch much of what happened after that. I just felt pain for some time.

“Well, we can’t get her back until the sun rises.”, someone said, and I felt some shifting next to me.

“Is it still so bad?”, Karl asked and softly stroke a strand of hair out of my face.

They put me on my stomach when they laid me down, because most of the injuries were on my back.

I just nodded, what made my hair fall back in my face.

“At least you are responding now. Did you even notice that the paramedic treated you?”, he asked carefully.

“No, what happened anyway?”, I asked.

“We think it was a jellyfish. You weren’t responding for like ten minutes. You scared me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Do you still think I was overreacting when I took a paramedic here?”, Jimmy asked and sat next to us.

“What ever makes you sleep at night.”

“Now that you bring it up, we should really go to sleep now.”; Tyler yelled.

Jimmy asked if I wanted to sleep in the tents with the other people, but I declined. After we build the shelter, we could use it now, anyway.

Chris and I took Karl in, while Tyler, Jimmy and Chandler took Tyler’s shelter. But as much as I tried to sleep, I couldn’t. While the pain was bearable, after I got used to it, Karl made me nervous. Normally, we wouldn’t sleep that close together or we wouldn’t sleep at all, but not this time.

“Can’t sleep?”, Karl asked after a while.

I was surprised, but turns out the snoring came from Chris and not him how I thought at first. I also wasn’t sure how he saw I was awake, yet I didn’t want to ask.

“No, not really. What about you?”, I whispered back.

“I’m too nervous.”

“Nervous? Why are you nervous? Afraid of mosquito bites?”, I laughed.

“No. I’m afraid of doing something weird.”

“Like Chris’ snoring?”

“Yeah, or this strange twitching thing, when you feel like falling.”

“Why? Do you think Chris will think you are weird?”

“Almost. I’m scared that you will think I’m weird.”

“You’re cute.”, I smiled and kissed his cheek, finally realizing his feelings.

“I like you.”, Karl smiled slightly.

“Good. Because I like you too.”

“Finally. Now get some sleep. Jimmy will kill us otherwise.”, Chris mumbled, which made Karl and I laugh.

“Night Chris. Night Karl.”, I answered softly.

“Goodnight.”, they muttered back.