#it’s the way it sets up the series 9 insanity for me

[betterwithbooksthanwithpeople]

watching series 8 of doctor who as it premiered in 2014: wow these characters are horrible (derogatory)

rewatching series 8 of doctor who all at once in 2024: wow these characters ARE horrible (affectionate)

[ifyoucandaniel]

exactly one person asked and i’ve been DYING to make this, so here are all of my favorite long batman fanfics in general and for new readers @twisted-tales-told :)

cards on the table by @wesslan ! 69k, completed. this is one of my all time favorite fanfictions, it’s so funny and tim is a mastermind genius and a little liar <3 he basically pretends to be a fortune teller and gives scarily good predictions and advice by stalking the upper class and eventually gets involved with the batfam and has to maintain his lies while dealing with his issues :) 10/10, very found family, good angst, so much lying

Dark Matter by @mysterycyclone , 221k, ongoing. this is a batman fanfic rec, of course my bbg dark matter is going to be here <3 this is a MCUxDCU crossover where after infinity war (spoilers for that if you haven’t seen it!) peter parker gets sent to the DCU dimension with part of the soul stone and basically is haunted by the ghosts of the avengers while trying to survive in gotham and get back to his dimension. this is so well written i’ve read it at least three times, it’s still ongoing but trust me it is SO GOOD. i can’t properly describe it, but if you like spider-man and you are interested in batman, you’ll love.

Red is the Color of Sinners by @bluelotuswrites , series, 120k, ongoing, M. i want you to look me in my eyes when i tell you this is my favorite series on ao3. it is set after under the red hood and daredevil 3 where jason and matt meet in a church after jason loses his ability to speak following the events of UTRH. they keep running into each other both as matt and daredevil and eventually jason begins helping matt out with injuries and tech. it’s not finished yet, but there is something so compelling about their dynamic in this series as well as jason’s overall character and how he is portrayed. i’m a sucker for mute jason after UTRH and this series does so well giving him a fresh start and a place away from gotham to heal and build relationships. i cannot recommend enough.

buy back the secrets by @vinelark , 71k, ongoing, T. THIS!!! oh my god, so this is a timkon fic where kon still doesn’t know tim’s civilian identity, but whenever he’s in trouble tim calls for superboy which leads to them meeting without kon knowing. shenanigans ensure when kon starts spending more time with tim! it’s still ongoing but the author is currently working on the next part and it is so so worth the wait. chapter 4 ends on a cliffhanger though so be warned :))

Sales People Know (listening is the most important part) by Mayhem10, 77k, completed, T. this has the coolest urban magical realism ever. tim basically runs this magic shop that shows up places and people who need something find it in his shop :) it’s kinda a slow burn found family fic with magic themes and a smidge of angst!

Retrograde Motion by Lysical, 112k, completed, T. this is best de-aged kid fic ever. jason gets turned into a 7 year old and basically the outlaws, artemis and biz, join forces with the batfam to take care of him. but trust me when i say this is worth your time, it might sound tropey but in the best way possible!! and jason’s relationship with artemis is sooo important to me in this!

Hand in Unloveable Hand (a chokehold) by britishparty, 54k, completed, M. this is one of the best psychological torture/grooming fics i’ve ever read. pretty much what if while our taking photos of batman and robin, little tim gets kidnapped and black mask gets his hands on him and decides he’s the perfect size for a protege. years of psychological abuse and insane mind games ensue. also tim is a Badass™️

If He Had Come by bronwe_iris, 45k, completed, T. so i’m a little freak and i love the angst of arkham knight jason, but more specifically the aus where bruce saves jason before he becomes the arkham knight! this is an au where bruce finds jason and saves him from the joker after 9 months of torture and brings him home. focuses on his healing mentally and physically and rebuilding his relationship with his family

Banshee in a Well by liverobinreaction (bugbee), 43k, completed, T. veeeery good angst. basically what if tim couldn’t die? 43k of tim drake whump where he just dies a bajillion times and eventually his family notices <3

The Birds: Hatching a Family by Oceanera12, 81k, completed, T. this is like “what if the batkids weren’t adopted by bruce, but instead they were all foster siblings who can’t seem to stay out of gotham at night and batman happens to find them and decides obviously he can’t leave these kids to their own business, he has to stick his nose in it” and there’s some angst and heaps of found family

The Hellblazer’s Apprentice by @bluelotuswrites, 29k, ongoing, M. what can i say, im a simple woman, i love to see jason with literally any older male mentor :) basically in UTRH what if he took up an apprenticeship under constantine to learn magic to piss off batman! so good, i really love constantine so seeing him and jason interact in a long fic is so good. also ALL BLADES JASON TODD SAVE ME… ALL BLADES JASON TODD-

something in the static by bonerot19, 101k, ongoing series with three main completed works, T. this is a jason centric series where jason still lives in crime alley with his mom and dad and never stole the batmobile tires. it follows his life in crime alley with an addict mom and an abusive dad and one night when his dad is whaling on him nightwing finds him and the bats just can’t seem to leave him alone after that. steph is his neighbor and best friend also and their relationship is so good. this is a “what if jason took a different way home to the wayne’s” fic series and i love it so much <3

catch the asteroids that come your way by ThePackWantsTheD, 54k, completed, T. i don’t read a lot of ships in the batman fandom i’m sorry, but this kyle/jason one is sooo lovely. basically the two of them growing up together and falling in love and then dealing with the aftermath of A Death in the Family and finding each other again :) really sweet and nice!

hope you find something you like! i realized the majority of these are tim or jason centric, and i love them all dearly, but if anyone has any recs for long fics focusing on any of the other batkids lmk! and any other recs in general, i am a fiend for new fics

[beronicalongcon]

MY TOP 10 RIVERDALE MOMENTS

In honor of the most gorgeous beast of a show to ever air being put in the ground tonight, here are my top 10 Riverdale moments. It was pretty impossible to make this list because I had to leave out so many beautiful things like that time Archie got forged, that time Cheryl was Queen of the Bees, and that time he was looking for the girl next door, but instead he found me.

10. JUGHEAD MEETS THE RAT KING

Sweaty, unhinged Loser-Jughead hallucinates his literary agent appearing to him as a Dark God of sewer rats. In a bid to save his life, he offers to be the Rat King's personal storyteller, like a Riverdalien Scheherazade. Betty appears to him and guides him out of the underworld and it's revealed that he was in the hospital for RABIES, which is made one billion percent funnier by the fact that rabies is 99% fatal. This made me so happy I was literally riding the high for weeks.

9. Archie boxes Hiram in the secret speakeast while Veronica sings "Daddy Lessons" by Beyonce.

This is just one of those great Riverdale musical moments - cutting between the blood spatter and bulging muscles of Archie and Hiram's furious machismo coming to fruition and Veronica dressed in gold singing about her terrible and vital love for her insane mob boss Daddykins.

8. PSYCHO KILLER PROM NIGHT

This whole plotline is great because 1. the auteur making big, clunky comic book caricatures of the main cast and having them relive their traumas through the mode of film with all the edges sanded off is metatastic, 2. Jellybean is the coolest middle schooler ever, and 3. Psycho Killer playing at Prom Night while they all dance around Mr. Honey's corpse is just objectively great television.

7. THE FOOTBALL WAR OF UZBEKISTAN

"Haha football war" shut up this is one of the most artistically cohesive and interesting sequences in the entire series. It lays bare the twisted knot of dream logic and aestheticism that governs Riverdale's universe. "Why do all the visual cues point to Archie fighting in WWI if Riverdale is set in 2021?" Because WWI was the period where America most successfully fetishized the IMAGE and AESTHETIC of young men going to war as a MASCULINE IDEAL. "Why are they fighting on a football field?" Because football is another heavily fetishized mode of expressing American masculinity and violence as heroic. "Why is Jughead there?" Because Archie loves Jughead.

6. BERONICA KISS IN OUTER SPACE

I may not like season 7 but my URL is 'beronicalongcon', and the way this episode reminds us how Betty and Veronica are historically positioned as diametrically opposed forces vying over Archie's love before bringing them together and letting them truly see each other is really nice. Also they kiss in space to symbolize that the world of the narrative by definition cannot allow women to connect independent of men, the only way they can truly be together is by inventing a new universe that is able to hold them.

This got long so I am making another one.

[xoxo-sarah]

I Wanna Be Yours || Part 10

Part 9 | part 11

↝a/n: it's officially been over a year since I started this series. That is just insane to me. Sorry it's taking me so long! Much love 🩷

↝pairing: Robin Buckley x fem!Wheeler!reader

↝Warning: possible spoilers, cannon events, throwing up, the 'demo'bats from the show, Steve getting hurt, cursing, blood, slightly proofread, pinning,

↝⎙ 6.13.24

You flopped on the ground, soaking wet and panting. Particles that resembled that of dead embers swirling up from a fire flew around, making you blink.

Nancy got to her feet, running towards Steve, who was struggling to breathe.

Two bat-like creatures were biting at his sides, another having its tail wrapped around his neck. He tried grabbing at them and at anything that could possibly help. You followed suit, seemingly having telepathic powers with how you two moved to do the same thing. Nancy picked up an oar right as you heard two thunks behind you.

Eddie cursed, moving to stand. He leaned against a boat, grabbing the other oar. He yelled your name, the wooden tool flying through the air, landing at your feet. You yanked it up, swinging at anything that let out a squeak.

Nancy wacked one of the squeaking creatures with the oar, causing it to fly away with a whine. “Hey, there.” She leaned over Steve's body, and he registered that there were other people. That you all jumped in after him.

Nancy's arms moved automatically, swinging every which way, at anything that was coming toward her.

Robin ran to stand on the tail that was choking Steve.

Eddie stood, not knowing what to do. It was all so overwhelming. All the weight of the last few days sat on his chest like an elephant. A whisper of his name had his eyes focusing on you, blinking quickly as you ran towards him. He didn't have time to register you swinging at his head until he was pushed back, a wail ringing on his ear as one of Satan's spawns flopped at his feet.

He straightened his head, turning towards the other group. “Nancy! Behind you! Watch out!” At Eddie's exclamation, you turned, seeing one attach itself into the back of her neck. She yelled, dropping her oar. Yours fell out of your hand, and you were right at her side, yelling and pulling at the slimy yet scaly body.

“Oh my god, Nancy!" Robin tried helping you, pulling and prying.

“Get it off of me!” Nancy shrieked.

Eddie picked up the oar you dropped, hitting anything that was flying.

Steve ripped the tail from his neck, moving to sit up.

Nancy fell forward on her knees as her neck was finally freed. Your grip loosened, letting Robin have full control as she slammed the thing into the ground over and over.

Eddie used the broken part to stab, yelling as he impaled one in the air.

Steve threw his against the grind, until he put his foot on its upper body, ripping its tail from its body. He panted, throwing the tail somewhere, before spitting out blood. You looked Nancy over, your eyes moving to Robin, frantically searching her for any injury, doing it quickly so she- or anyone- wouldn't see you. She caught your eye, heaving.

“Fuck!”

“Steve!” Nancy frantically made her way to Steve, “oh, my god.”

“ Jesus H. Christ!” Eddie's oar clattered to the ground as he began pacing around.

“ Are you okay?” Nancy gawked at Steve's body, noticing every injury. She gasped, as he moved his hand from his side.

“Well, they took about a pound of flesh, but other than that, yeah, never better.”

You stepped closer to Robin, inspecting the bat in front of her.

“ Uh, do you guys think these bats have, like, rabies?”

“What?”

It's just that rabies are, like, my number one greatest fear. And I think we should probably get you to a doctor really soon because once the symptoms set in, it's too late. You're already, like, dead." Robin's breathing became shallow.

You quickly stood, grabbing her face. Maybe it was to comfort her, or yourself-as your hands were shaking against her cheeks. “Robin. Robin, he doesn't have rabies.” Your voice was soft, yet stern. She stared into your eyes, switching between them with her own doe eyes. The other three watched, until a loud squawking echoed in the distance behind you. You dropped her face, turning toward the sound.

More bats flew toward you, stopping around where you fell through the glowing gate.

“Aright, there’s not that many.” The bats began this awful screeching, ringing in your head like a headache.

“We can take ‘em. Right?”

More screeching came from the distance, where the bats had flown from. “You were saying?” Robin glanced at you. You didn’t dare look in her direction.

Nancy frantically looked around, “The wood. Come on.” She began running, Steve and Eddie in tow.

Robin sighed, “Great. More running.”

“I should’ve stayed with the kids.” you said quietly, only loud enough for Robin to hear, before running toward the wood. If Nance had heard you, she would never let it go. Even if you did help save her from bats. It wouldn’t matter in the end.

After running like your life depended on it- probably because it did-, Nancy noticed a rock, quickly realizing it was Skull Rock. She halted, pointing at the rock for Steve and Eddie to go ahead and get under. When Robin caught up, Nancy searched behind her, “Y/n, c’mon!” You didn’t hear her. Your focus was on the ground and making your feet move.

You all huddled under the rock, trying to catch your breath, but it didn’t do any good. Your hands squeezed at the flesh of your thighs in your crouched position. Squeezing your eyes shut, you let your head fall against the rock behind you. You gave no min to the tingling it caused.

You could hear the bats stop- or at least move far enough away. Robin stood, moving from under the rock, exhaling, “Oh, okay. That was close.”

“Yeah,” Eddie’s voice broke, “too close.”

Rapidly blinking, you lifted yourself up, catching Steve losing his balance and leaning against one of the rock walls out of the corner of your eye. “Oh, sh-shit.”

Nancy turned, “Steve? Jesus…” She leapt forward, looking at his wounds.

“I’m fine. I’m fine.” he whispered, not wanting to worry anyone.

“No, no. No, you’re not. You’re losing blood. Come on, sit. Alright?”

Steve grunted, but obliged, his body dropping against the hard round. Nancy squatted in front of him. He moved his hand that was covering his side. Blood coated his hands, and trailed from his wound to under his waistband. Robin gasped, Steve grunted, and Nancy internally panicked.

You, on the other hand, felt sick. Your eyes were glued to where the blood was gushing out, your empty stomach feeling like it would come up as a whole any second.

Nancy ripped the bottom of her shirt, as Robin kneeled at Steve’s side. “Okay, so the good news is I’m pretty sure wooziness is not a common symptom of rabies, but if you start having hallucinations or muscle spasms, or you start feeling aggressive-like you wanna punch me or something-you should totally let me know.”

“Robin?”

“Yeah?” She looked at him, worry clear in her eyes.

“I kinda wanna punch you.”

Robin laughed, “Sense of humor still intact. That’s a good sign.”

You silently made your way out of the opposite end of the rock, walking away from the others. Sinking to your knees, you began heaving. You tried to be as quiet as possible, as to not alert anyone.

“Where’s Y/n?” Nancy looked around, not seeing you. She locked eyes with Robin, silently asking her to find you. As Nancy stood and began walking around the rock, Nancy glanced up at Steve, before she wrapped the torn shirt around his waist.

“Y/n?” Robin knew you couldn’t have gone too far. Coming around the corner, she saw you hunched over. You were dry heaving, leaning against a much smaller rock. She quickened her pace, dropped beside you. “Oh, y/n.” She whispered, grabbing the hair that was falling in your face, pulling it into a make-shift ponytail.

When you were done, you wiped your mouth, although nothing had actually come out. You fell back, sitting on your knees, as Robin undid the loose ponytail you had thrown your hair in, trying not to pull at the knots the water had created. She threw your hair in a messy ponytail, just to get it out of your face. It wasn’t at all flattering, but you really couldn’t care less. You both sat in silence for a minute. You sighed, wiping sweat off your forehead.

“God-sorry.” the embarrassment hit you as you motioned to where you had been hunched over.

Robin only shook her head. “It’s no problem. One of us was bound to throw up soon. I mean, did you see Steve? Gross. I’m just glad it wasn’t me.” She offered a little humor behind her words. You could only offer a small, amused smile in return, before your attention was brought to Eddie, who had made his way onto a rock, looking into the eerie sky.

“So, uh…this place is like Hawkins, but with monsters and nasty shit?”

“Pretty much.” Nancy answered Eddie, helping Steve walk. Eddie pursed his lips, starting to step down. “Wait! Watch out for the vines. It’s all a hive mind.”

Eddie froze, “It’s all a what?”

Robin offered her hand for you when she had stood up, but something inside you made you shake your head, offering a thankful smile. You got to your feet, stepping away from her.

Steve answered Eddie, “All the creepy crawlies around here, dude. They’re, like, one or something. You step on a vine, you’re stepping on a bat, you’re stepping on Vecna.”

“Shit.” Eddie tried walking down the rock, avoiding the vines.

Robin walked forward, away from the awkward air you had created. “But everything from our world is still her, right? Except people, obviously?”

Nancy nodded, “As far as I understand it, yeah.”

“So, theoretically, we could go to the police station and steal guns and grenades and whatever we need to blow up those bat things that are guarding the gate?”

Steve glanced at the girl, “yeah, I highly doubt the Hawkins PD had grenades, Robin. But guns, yeah, sure.”

“Well, we don’t have to go all the way downtown for guns. I have guns in my bedroom.”

Eddie jumped off the rock, landing with a thud. “You, Nancy Wheeler, have guns - plural- in your bedroom?”

“Full of surprises, isn’t she?” Robin grinned, thankful for the woman at the moment. You felt the same sick feeling in your stomach, but for a different reason than before.

Nancy ignored her, “A Russian Makarov and a revolver.”

Steve stepped forward, right by Nancy to whisper in her ear, “Yeah, you almost shot me with that one.”

Nancy turned to him, a playful tint in her eyes, “You nearly deserved it.”

Eddie chunked his vest at Steve’s bare chest, ruining whatever tension that was building in Steve and Nancy’s little bubble.

“For your modesty, dude.”

A sudden rumbling of the ground had everyone stop talking. You tripped over your feet, moving to the left to avoid landing on a vine, but ended up landing on somebody else, causing a domino effect. Robin caught her breath from under you, her hot breath fanning against your ear. A mean growl sounded from the distance.

“It sounded like a dinosaur.”

“Don’t…even.” Eddie glared at you from under Robin, moving his legs, that half of your body landing on, to kick you, no bite behind it. Truly, he wouldn’t doubt there was some kind of dinosaur creature lurking. He didn't appreciate the teasing. “Guns seem like a pretty good idea to me.”

“Yeah, me too.” Robin puffed.

You stood, offering your hand to Robin this time. She stared at it, seemingly understanding that this was your silent attempt at apologizing for earlier. She took your hand, taking your apology in the process.

Eddie wiped the sweat from the palms, before taking your outstretched hand.

“So, what are we waiting for?” Steve threw the vest on, grabbing his flashlight, and began leading the way.

•© 2021-2024 by xoxo-sarah on Tumblr•

• My work is not to be translated, copied, modified, and/or reposted on any other site without my permission. [!I don't give permission!]

🫧 Taglistׂׂ ૢ ~ @overtrred28 @ihatepeanutss @jovana1234578 @dobbycarl @kyleeservopoulos @marirxse

[the-one-where-casey-watches-tv]

The Bear episode 3.06 "Napkins"

I’ve seen a lot of discourse and criticism for this season already, which at first glance is hard to argue with, but after finishing season three I think there’s a big line to be drawn between Carmy’s values and The Bear’s values. From what I’ve seen on Threads (I’m on Threads… you should come), people are falling off The Bear because of what they perceive the show has become: a glorification of a privileged white man’s gentrification of a down to earth, local family restaurant.

People will clap back to these statements with things like “but it’s literally his restaurant.” and “they’re still making the sandwiches at a window in the back!” which is all true, but I think equally missing the show’s larger point. With each passing season, I feel more and more committed to viewing The Bear as a whole entity. It’s not a procedural, a 9-1-1, a Law and Order, or a Grey’s Anatomy that returns to its core theme every single episode. There are episodes with huge emotional meat and weight, with observations about life, grief, food, and the characters to be gleaned throughout, but every episode is a stroke of a paintbrush in a painting that we’ll only be able to really step back and digest when the series ends… hopefully a long time from now.

Season one forced Carmy back to his roots, shoved his unprocessed grief in his face all day every day. It turned him into the ticking time bomb he is today, but it also served as a reminder of the love of people and reverie of food that got him into this business. And this fueled him into season two, where he put everything on the line to do food the only way he knows how: intensely. Enter season three.

This season, Carmy’s the problem. His freezer meltdown wasn’t a cathartic release that freed him to love and work smoothly; all season it’s like he never left that frenzied headspace we last saw him in. The pressure is on financially, but more than that, Carmy simply can’t stomach not being exceptional. His non-negotiables are certifiable. A new menu every single day that he comes up with entirely by himself? Needing these brand new dishes cooked at breakneck speed? An environment of “excellence” where it seems he’s the only one allowed to yell?

If people’s critiques of The Bear were redirected to be critiques of Carmy, they would be spot on. Carmy’s need to be on this insane level is going to be the very thing that is going to run this beautiful opportunity to the ground. He’s veering off the path he was set on by good people and good food; he’s forgetting those things in favor of tweezers and the old, toxic work environment that he can’t get out of his head. But The Bear is well aware of these shortcomings. Not a single person didn’t balk at the idea of a new menu every day. His ingredients are racking up such a bill that The Beef sandwich window, run singlehandedly by Ebra, is the only part of the business making a profit. Richie is laughed and shouted out of the kitchen when he tries to set his own non-negotioables for the front of house, recognizing the importance of guest satisfaction. When asked to recreate a dish from several nights prior to be photographed for a review, no one can remember what was in it. When Sydney tries to help Carm work on tomorrow’s menu, he’s so dismissive of her that it’s hard not to want her to take this new job. The season finale’s episode description merely says “Carmen thinks about apologizing”- and we’re sucked in because we all know he’s overdue for some apologies.

But nothing really confirms that The Bear knows what it’s about quite like “Napkins”. A flashback episode detailing how Tina first started working at The Beef, five minutes in had me declaring that “just because it’s a good filler episode doesn’t mean it’s not a filler episode”. I was so wrong that now I’m here to say that it’s this season’s central episode, the one that really zeroes in on what they’re trying to say at this moment in time.

With Carmy nowhere in sight, Tina, Mikey, Richie, and some Faks are tugging at the heartstrings of people trying to juggle making ends meet with finding some meaning in life. After being let go from her job after a decade of loyal service, Tina has been striking out on the job hunt for weeks, and it’s starting to get dire. She sees an online posting for an open interview tomorrow, and full of optimism, she heads to the office. When she arrives, a receptionist who can’t even look up from his computer tells her the post must be old because the position has already been filled internally. She could cry, I could cry.

She wanders into The Beef, in all the loud, chaotic glory of its heyday. An ever-pleasant Richie does more than take her order for coffee- he introduces himself and gives her a sandwich on the house. She takes it to the back by the arcade machines, bites into it, and promptly bursts into tears. Both caring and concerned about having a crying customer, Mikey sits down next to her. That guy was so personable and seeing him take the time to sit with her in such a genuine, laid back way depicts all the traits that Carmy lacks. Carmy needs to slow down, interact with people, remember why he’s here. The Bear knows that food is a form of caretaking and a source of community. It’s just Carmy who’s forgotten.

And the heartbreak of the show is that he would absolutely have that lightbulb moment if he were able to hear his brother say:

“Full disclosure, this place… like, this fucking place, it sucks. Like, it sucks. It’s like, you go home, and you fucking smell it, you know? And it’s, like, insane. And there’s so much fucking yelling here. But, I swear to you, there are days that it is so much fun. Like, it is so much fun. And- and the pay is shit, right? But there are days we make a rack of fucking tips, and it’s like… it feels fucking good, you know?”

And when Tina offers him her résumé:

“What the fuck am I gonna do with a résumé? I’ll go clean the toilet with the fucking résumé. I don’t need a résumé. I talked to you.”

The Bear is about connecting with people through food. It’s also about Carmy’s journey of remembering this after being broken by both the rigors of the high-end culinary world and the loss of his brother, the embodiment of that love and connection.

The Bear (the restaurant) is doing way too much right now, but The Bear (the show) is most definitely on the path of seeing Carmy’s lunacy to a turning point where he and the restaurant both can return to their roots. Stories are journeys and characters are flawed. Let’s let it breathe and see where we end up without conflating a character flaw to a shortcoming of the show itself.

[ratherembarrassing]

2024: weeks 36 through 38

here are some things i had thrown into a note

beetlejuice beetlejuice (2024). cute! enjoyable but not mindblowing, but representative of a the middle class of films that no longer exists and which i miss dearly.

corridors of power (bbc, 2024). i'm still making my way through it, but if you're excited by seeing formerly powerful people say absolutely batshit crazy things about the exercise of that power, this might be for you too.

maria abramovich's this or that for GQ germany.

and now: LONDON (a chronological series of happenings)

airplanes: still miserable. i do think that we need to rethink international airtravel, because 23 hours in a plane is just ridiculous. nonetheless, in keeping with tradition, i had a pretty good 8-9 hours sleep, which i measured by having hotd on and every few hours waking up to wonder what all the screaming was about.

immediately spent money on clothes: it could not be helped. i've been staying walking distance from brick lane and these things happen. now i own a levis jacket that's as old as i am that fits me perfectly, as god intended.

food: part 1. took my cousin, who is also in london on holiday rn, to dishoom, per literally everyone's recommendation. you were all entirely correct.

food: part 2. abuelo in marylebone, served me some vanilla fig jam on a plate of random other foods that was, without exaggeration, the most delicious thing i have ever eaten. i literally asked if i could buy a jar. i could not, and i will feel sad about this for the rest of my life.

punished for the crime of being interested in a crime: the british museum. the parthenon room was closed, so what even was the point. anyway, i was generally unimpressed, with some exceptions (who amongst us is not moved by the existence of the rosetta stone, also a very good prints and drawings exhibition). but also my god, would it kill them to install some aircon (a sentiment i have felt applies to almost everywhere i have been in london thus far)?

very far away: kingsmeadow. opening week for my beloved chelsea, i could have wept from happiness. sat next to a local woman and her husband who come every week and talk about the team like they are each girl's parents and biggest stans, and it was entirely perfect.

did i mention: CHAPPELL FUCKING ROAN. yes, i queued for like five hours. i was 68th in the priority queue, which is behind the vips but in front of everyone else. all i did to get in that queue was buy an o2 sim card for £20, which i needed anyway. it was fun, everyone made friends, you could come and go as you pleased and we all made sure everyone got their spot back even as we were repeatedly shuffled up the side street behind the brixton o2. it was nice and wholesome and exactly what you would expect from the 99% of people who aren't assholes and also into this lovely woman. the rest is just a blur of askldhjalsk. objectively, she's not the best performer going right now, the show's not overly produced beyond a set list of songs and a bit of banter, and absolutely none of that matters in the face of how quietly charismatic she is and the absolutely insane set of pipes she's got. it was fucking intense, man. zero regrets about the time and money (oh my god, the money) it took to make this happen, delighted to have corrected my grievous mistake of choosing not to go to her show in melbourne last year.

i don't think my insurance covers this: ebiking across north and east london. first attempt was, uh. ill conceived, and i will never recover from seeing my phone go flying in one direction into the street as i went skidding along in the wet, still in the bike lane. phone's fine, i'm fine, not sure why i decided today was the day to ride a bike for the first time in 15 years. second attempt went much better.

sportsball 2: this time bigger! like the absolute turncoat that i am, i also went to arsenal's opener at emirates with 40k other people. sat next to a woman with her 13 year old daughter who come every few months and who noted early on, pointedly, that it was unfortunate we weren't sitting on the other corner, where we would have been closer to the WAGs. love this mum for this kid.

food: part 3. i just ate the most delicious burger i've ever eaten, wtf???

coming up: i fought a battle with booking.com, and i won, and tomorrow i'm off down the south coast for a few days. LA's roads didn't kill me, but london's might.

[steddieunderdogfics]

This week’s writer spotlight feature is:  Cchapsticck! @cchapsticck has 9 fics posted to AO3 in the Stranger Things fandom and all of them are in the Steddie tag!

@dreamwatch recommends the following works by @cchapsticck

UNTITLED RECORDING rcd ca. 1987-1988

ANACRUSIS ca. 1987

RED ATMOSPHERES rcd. 1995

THE UNENDING HOWL EP rcd. 1999

wait, runner

"cchapsticck's Eddie is one of my all time favourites. It's one of the most complex depictions of Eddie I’ve every read; every work is a beautiful character study. Eddie’s history and trauma are laid bare; it feels real, and it hurts. cchapsticck’s writing is just insanely good, lines hit like massive gut punches. I love the METALHEAD series so, so much, and if you're a fan of 'musician Eddie' fics then it's a must read. Every fic is incredible, hit after hit. Writing this good deserves to be celebrated." -- @dreamwatch

Below the cut, @cchapsticck answered some questions about their writing process and some of their recommended work!

Why do you write Steddie?

I’ll be honest, it's probably exclusively because of Eddie. I’ve been a fan of Stranger Things since its original release but wasn’t really participating in the fandom side of things until season 4. As a Dungeons and Dragons nerd with an abrasive taste in music myself, of course there was the kindred spirit-ness of Eddie’s introduction to the series, but more than that he made the normal midwestern town of Hawkins feel more a character than a setting to me than it had been previously, and that really amplified my interest in his character and the space he takes up in the narrative environment that were only just then learning about. There were so many implications about him and about Hawkins that were just left on the table that I couldn’t get enough of. Prior to season 4 Steve had been my favorite character, I’d always been invested in his little redemption roadtrip and his “otherness” stumbling blocks over the seasons. How he’s cultivated this arc of rallying against an archetype that’s comfortable but worse for him in the long term - and I found myself really excited by Eddie’s sort-of inversion of that same journey as Steve’s. Both of them still sort of stuck in their ways assigning social value based on arbitrary factors and are comfortable in the more judgmental impulses they have when they first really meet, but they’re coming from opposite perspectives on the nerd/jock hierarchy and the self imposed tensions between them there and what it might take beyond the actual end of the world to overcome those things. I love a mess.

What’s your favorite trope to READ?

I wouldn’t say that I’m a reader who specifically seeks out any one particular trope over another in the strictest sense, I have the capacity to be just as invested as an enemies to lovers as I am a childhood friends to lovers, kind of thing. But generally speaking I love a character study - I genuinely enjoy works that have the creators really deeply held headcanons and making a whole world with and around it, I love some angst - I’ll never say no to a little melodrama. I really enjoy work with a really strong point of view, and I like to be sad.

What’s your favorite trope to WRITE?

I love an unreliable narrator, I love a flawed perspective, I love a narrator who lies to themselves (and you, dear reader) a little about what’s going on. I have a lot of fun as a writer getting into the way we talk to ourselves about the things we’re living with and the shapes we bend ourselves into to do the living.

What’s your favorite Steddie fic?

This is hard, I have read so many impactful fics I could easily fire off 5 right now but for the sake of brevity I will say this: I rotate afterlight by Kostas around in my head like a rotisserie chicken on the regular. There’s such a deeply felt and embodied sense of Eddie’s past throughout, and how it manifests in his present - as well as some genuinely charming details about Eddie’s present and his benign quirks that have only helped compile his bad reputation and how the life he had prior to getting wrapped up in the supernatural fits into the public narrative of canon events. The very nostalgic vibes of fall and what we of the American midwest get up to at that time feel so real. And it's so genuinely sweet, the getting-togtherness, while also being not-that-simple. It has so much going for it, really truly, and navigates and emotional complexity and honesty that I’m envious of as a writer.

Is there a trope you’re excited to explore in a future work but haven’t yet?

I’ve written very little about Dungeons and Dragons in all of my writing about Eddie and Stranger Things (I guess a lightweight AU not withstanding?), and that feels like such a missed opportunity for me to have a lot of fun. I’ve been playing Dungeons and Dragons since I was in high school, I have such a deep love for ttrpgs and collaborative storytelling but man, 1e of D&D is so dense and incomprehensible part of me wonders if it's actually really boring to write about to-hit statistics and spreadsheets but alas it stands as a really nerdy sirensong to me.

What is your writing process like?

It's a whole mess. It’s genuinely a wonder I get anything done. I tend to get fixated on granular character things that I want to explore and it all sort of explodes outward from there. I’m almost entirely a stream of consciousness writer, and I usually only loosely have specific beats or emotional landmarks I want to hit when I begin writing but it's a pretty amorphous sense of what I’m trying to write. I tend to write mostly chronologically while I’m in that first pass of story dumping and it’s pretty rare the structure changes dramatically after that. From there I make several editing passes to fix anything from grammatical errors to character voice. I’m pretty sure I could be in the “nit pick it to death” phase forever and have to bully myself into calling it quits in order to publish.

Do you have any writing quirks?

My perspective might be a little flawed, but I think I tend to write without an abundance of plot? I think it's a product of how I write; where there aren’t a series of events that I hope to navigate, but more a series of emotional car crashes I wish to describe? I also make playlists for everything. Sometimes a playlist is 3 hours of music, other times it’s about 4 songs I listen to on a loop while I write. Each of my published works have a pretty distinct “theme song”.

Do you prefer posting when you’ve finished writing or on a schedule?

Oh, finished writing - no question. I cannot be held to a schedule, I’m so allergic to it. I am horrifically at the mercy of my fickle creative drive. I struggle with writer’s block not infrequently and I’ve definitely put myself in situations writing on a schedule where I felt like I had to brute force my way through the block to meet a publishing goal and ultimately wasn’t happy with what I put out there because I didn’t give myself the kind of time I need to work.

Which fic are you most proud of?

I think that goes to dog at the door. It definitely was the fic that gave me the most trouble, and challenged me the most with what I wanted to accomplish and how it forced me to deviate from my normal writing process, I’ve never written suspense or horror before and I genuinely do not have an objective read on how successful that was. I have mixed feelings about the piece as a whole, but I’m proud of the work and of myself for sticking with it and getting it out there despite the way it challenged and frustrated me at times.

How did you get the idea for UNTITLED RECORDING rcd ca. 1987-1988?

I grew up in the Great Lakes area in the not too distant future of the events of the show in a semi-rural/semi-suburban town that Hawkins always reminded me of. Similarly, I spent a lot of my teenage years in go-nowhere bands and driving around the state at basement shows for other go-nowhere bands and I had been thinking about the kind of community that experience that built for me at that time, and at the time - in the fandom, I was seeing a lot of Rockstar Eddie and I was very charmed by this desire a lot of people in the fandom seemed to be having about affording him a kind of positive notoriety, for once in all of our various hypothetical futures. And that personal reflection of a period of my own life, plus what was spinning around the ecosystem of the fandom at the time sort of coalesced into this character study I wanted to do about The Midwest and Alternative Music and Finding Yourself Authentically within the boundaries of those spaces. Steddie wormed its way into the concept because one, I like it. Two, as much as it's clear that Hawkins is a burden to Eddie and his character, I think the same can be said for Steve, but again, a little in reverse. It's good to leave your hometown, even when you’re comfortable and welcome there. It felt like an appropriate experience for them to both have, together, to different ends.

When writing UNTITLED RECORDING rcd ca. 1987-1988, what was something you didn’t expect?

That there was going to be so much of it! METALHEAD, the series, was initially just the first UNTITLED segment and when I’d wrapped that up I realized there was more I wanted to do. Both with form and I just felt like I wasn’t quite done with this version of Eddie I was writing, it didn’t feel like the whole story even though I felt like I’d written the whole story. No idea if that even makes sense.

What inspired ANACRUSIS ca. 1987?

Honestly, I think I mostly just wanted to try to write Steve’s voice and perspective. I only briefly described the “getting together” moment in UNTITLED and I thought it would be kind of fun to have that exist more concretely, but I’d already established Eddie’s perspective on it by that point and to retell that moment from his perspective felt needlessly repetitive, so there really seemed like there was only one appropriate narrator. And while I was writing it I think I realized I wanted there to be some kind of indicator that despite things going well and being good in UNTITLED, they were still sort of missing each other where they were at, in that moment.

What was your favorite part to write from RED ATMOSPHERES rcd. 1995?

The periodical segments! I actually had a lot of fun looking up back issues of genre magazines from the time. I definitely lost a lot of writing hours just reading Metal Edge. I used to read Kerrang! and AP when I was a teenager and I remembered the articles in those magazines always had a certain kind of journalistic voice and I wanted to try to capture some of that from those periodicals. Ultimately I think I ended up abandoning a lot of that specific tone and erring a little more contemporary with the focus and tone because I wanted the journalistic perspective on Eddie as a sort-of public figure to serve a specific contrast to the reality of his inner life, but it was a fun research project to be sure.

How do/did you feel writing THE UNENDING HOWL EP rcd. 1999?

I think HOWL had about 3 or 4 false starts, I had all these ideas for it to be a lot of different things when I first set out to wrap up METALHEAD and I stalled out on every single one of them. The scope was really broad and I was struggling to pull out anything that felt important in what I was writing. It was really discouraging for a long time because I felt really committed to this final element of the series and I wanted this sort-of catharsis at the end of it all, fragile as it kind of ended up being, but I just could not write something that was working for me. I couldn’t say why or how, but it was actually a The Wonder Years song that made everything click into place about funerals and closure and yadda yadda yadda but up until that moment there was a lot of doubting myself and floundering to finish the series. I think my relationship with HOWL is still a little fragile, as a result of me feeling really insecure about its process, but I think ultimately I’m proud of being able to just to finish an undertaking like METALHEAD.

What was the most difficult part of writing wait, runner?

Fighting the desire to make everything okay! runner started its life as a lot of scrapped sections of UNTITLED and some cut material from my first ST fic, sunflower broke because it became clear to me I was preoccupied with certain elements of Eddie’s inner life; staying in Hawkins, being a pariah, self medication, etc. and so much of that and its place in a post-canon-Eddie-lives world is tremendously bleak. So it felt dishonest to make some kind of unambiguously and clearly happy way forward, but the self loathing and self doubt I was writing in that piece felt so oppressive I kept catching myself trying to mitigate some of that and make these characters happy and I kept having to back down from it because it wasn’t really the point of any of these writerly meditations on this character.

Do you have a favorite scene and/or line from any of your fics?

I really enjoyed writing the very low stakes banter in head line, particularly Steve and Eddie being able to talk about their respective reputations without getting too deep into it: “Well then let me fill you in: I’m bad news. Headline bad news.” “Sure, but I like you.” Sure, like he agrees. But, like it doesn’t matter.

Do you have any upcoming projects or fics you’d like to share/promote?

Not so much! I have a few fics in the works that I’m hoping I can massage into something fit for public viewing but I’m not really working on a timeline right now.

Outside of these questions, Is there anything YOU would like to add?

Oh gosh, not much. Just a thank you to who nominated me, I am genuinely touched. But also to thank the mods of this blog, this is really wonderful work you’re doing here!

Thank you to our author, @cchapsticck, and our nominator, @dreamwatch! See more of Cchapsticck's works featured on our page throughout the day!

Writer’s Spotlight is every Wednesday! Want to nominate an author? You can nominate them here!

[beemers-hell]

I've seen a lot of fashion doll posting on your twitter and like, I don't exactly know how to ask but if you ever want to infodump about it on here that would be so genuinely interesting

Not pressuring you in any way of course! I just like seeing your fashion doll posting

rubs my hands together maliciously

Ok so I don't actually have anything I feel like talking about doll wise atm, I prefer making one off posts here n there about the dolls I'm into on twt more than tumblr cause I feel like twt is better suited for one off thoughts while tumblr is better suited for dedicated n thought out posts, at least with how I use it. Which is why you see a lot more wips/shitposts from me on twt than tumblr. so instead I'll just show yall my current collection!!! ANYWAY long ass post time

I've been working on finding and filling out various release lines from different doll brands im fixated on and have been rearranging my collection set up a lot cause of it lol. My shit is scattered all around my room because of how me and my little brother have divided up space for us to display both of our separate collections of things (we are both autistic and insane about our special interests) so there's gonna be a lot of photos lol

TO BEGIN: here's my display case of all my old g1 Monster High dolls I managed to hold onto since I was a kid! I got all of these back when MH initially debuted (when I was around 8 or 9) and all of these dolls have survived through my childhood/teenage years, hence why they're not in super great shape unfortunately lol

the only exceptions to this being the Día de Muertos Howliday Skelita, since obvs that's a recent release, as well as the misc. dolls I have scattered around the top of the case, those are dolls that s0uless has gifted to me over the past 2 years teehee

Moving on, to my current collection of dolls I began purchasing for myself over the past year: starting with this set of shelves next to my bed! I'm mainly using this as my Bratz shelf, but I ran out of room to fit my Skultimate Secrets Fearidescent Dolls where I usually keep my Monster High dolls, so they're there for now.

I only have Jade's reproduction doll because when the Bratz reproductions first began releasing, I was being strict with myself about not indulging in dolls again so I only let myself get Jade since shes my fav. Which I'm sad about, cause I'd love to have all the girls together for both their 20th anniversary reproduction dolls and their Alwayz dolls together. Also, there's a spot left empty next to my Alwayz Cloe bc I have Not been able to find Alwayz Sasha in stores like ANYWHERE for the past 2 months, so I gave up and ordered her online. She'll be arriving here in a couple days!!

Next up is this series of shelves above my dresser that I mainly use to display misc. figures n other shit I've come to own since I was like 12 (you can tell bc of the MHA stuff lmao) but I recently cleared some space so I could fit my Skultimate Secrets Series 1 Dolls (and Spa Day Lagoona + Scare-adise Frankie and Draculaura) somewhere, as well as having a place to display my current set of LOL OMG dolls! And also Bank art doll cameo lmao

Then we have the top shelf of my desk, which mostly has various Knicks knacks compacted into a corner but I put my two LOL OMG Tweens together there, as well as my single Licca doll that s0uless got me for this past christmas and the custom doll they made of my sona for me! <3

(fun fact me and s0uless are currently in the process of making more custom dolls of Eb, Bank, and the triplets but you'll have to wait n see on that one hehe)

And finally for dolls, here's my desk setup, where I display my main Monster High dolls! I mostly just display each Signature Doll + Their Core Refreshes here, but Monsterball Draculaura didn't have space anywhere else so she gets to chill there too lmao

Thats it for my actual dolls, but I have two other photos to share, which is just how I set up my Skultimate Secrets Series 1 Lockers + where I put the posters that come with each Bratz doll I have lmao

ok thats all I'm done now, ill update this when Sasha gets here lmao

[hauntedhowlett-writes]

NOTE: NOT ALL FICS ARE AVAILABLE ON TUMBLR YET. Feel free to send me a message if there’s one in particular you want posted ASAP!

the satanic rites of eddie munson (wip) **cw: blood, violence, gore**

Summary: Eddie was just trying to have a normal Thursday when some band from out of town decides he’d make an excellent virgin sacrifice for their get-famous-quick plan. 

Except he’s not a virgin, and the ritual unleashes something much more sinister that lives in him now, hungry for flesh and possessive of you, the pretty cheerleader he’s always been drawn to.

Which means anyone that touches you? Needs to die.

Pairing: Demon!Eddie Munson/Female Cheerleader!Reader

Rating: Explicit (18+, MDNI)

Word Count: 10,959

Chapters: 4/6

Tumblr | AO3

1. bat out of hell (complete) **cw: dubcon, violence, gore**

Summary: Convinced Eddie might still be alive, you travel to the Upside Down to find him. You weren’t expecting the monster that finds you instead.

Pairing: Kas!Eddie Munson/Female Reader

Rating: Explicit (18+, MDNI)

Word Count: 19,548

Chapters: 6/6

Tumblr | AO3

2. the mark you saw on my collarbone (part 2 - not to be read standalone)

Summary:  A snippet of life with your human and your monster.

Rating: Explicit (18+, MDNI)

Word Count: 2,322

Tumblr | AO3

3. secret’s out (part 3 - not to be read standalone)

Summary: Dustin and Steve meet Kas. It goes about as well as you’d expect.

Rating: T

Word Count: 1,004

Tumblr | AO3

1. something perfect (complete)

Summary:  While your mom heads out on her grand honeymoon with her new husband, you find yourself spending your summer before senior year in the sleepy town of Hawkins, working at your dad's comic book shop. It's shaping up to be a pretty monotonous time until Eddie Munson enters your life.

Pairing: Eddie Munson/Female Reader

Rating: Explicit (18+ MDNI)

Word Count: 26,269

Chapters: 9/9

Tumblr | AO3

2. something more (wip - limited updates)

Summary: Moments with Eddie through your senior year at Hawkins High. This is a part two to my work “something perfect”.

Pairing: Eddie Munson/Female Reader

Rating: Explicit (18+ MDNI)

Word Count: 4,386

Chapters: 2/?

Tumblr | AO3

1. nothing else matters 

Summary: It’s been a few months since Corroded Coffin has played at The Hideout. Ever since recording an actual album and having one of their songs picked up on the radio, they’ve been securing actual shows, with actual crowds. 

But whenever they’re within fifty miles of good ol’ Hawkins, they drop into the grimy dive and put on a show. The crowds are bigger, with fans coming in from surrounding towns and cities, but there’s one constant he looks forward to every time.

The new bar owner. As of two years ago, crotchety old Hank finally sold the bar to the hottest woman he’s ever seen.

Pairing: Rockstar!Eddie Munson/Female Reader

Rating: Explicit (18+ MDNI)

Word Count: 2,454

Chapters: 1/1

Tumblr | AO3

2. change your mind (connected to “nothing else matters”, can be read as a oneshot)

Summary: Five times Eddie Munson asks you to marry him, and the one time you say yes. This is a companion prequel to “nothing else matters”, but can be read as a standalone.

Pairing: Rockstar!Eddie Munson/Female Reader

Rating: Explicit (18+ MDNI)

Word Count: 6,575

Chapters: 1/1

Tumblr | AO3

3. ‘til the sun burns out (connected to “nothing else matters”, can be read as a oneshot)

Summary: Your wedding night to one Eddie Munson. Part of the “nothing else matters” series, but can be read as a stand-alone.

Pairing: Rockstar!Eddie Munson/Female Reader

Rating: Explicit (18+ MDNI)

Word Count: 3,069

Chapters: 1/1

Tumblr | AO3

4. we are the dreamers (you are the dream) **cw: pregnancy**

Summary: You pee on the stick as instructed and set it on the counter, staring at it as you bite your nails. “This is insane. There’s no way. There’s absolutely no—“

Two pink lines.

Well, fuck. Part of the “nothing else matters” universe. Can be read as a stand alone.

Pairing: Rockstar!Eddie Munson/Female Reader

Rating: Explicit (18+ MDNI)

Chapters: 1/1

Tumblr | AO3

spilling our guts

Summary: Eddie Munson has been your best friend for years, and your secret crush for longer than you care to admit. When Chrissy Cunningham shows up at his house one day, you’re thrown for a loop, thinking they’re together.

Eddie proves to you just how wrong your assumption is.

Pairing: Eddie Munson/Female Reader

Rating: Explicit (18+ MDNI)

Word Count: 3,701

Chapters: 1/1

Tumblr | AO3

demon’s are a girl’s best friend

Summary: Since returning from the Upside Down, something dark exists in Steve Harrington and Eddie Munson. Something that is satisfied by only one thing - sex. And they've set their sights on you.

Pairing: Incubus!Eddie Munson/Incubus!Steve Harrington/Female Reader

Rating: Explicit (18+ MDNI)

Word Count: 5,530

Chapters: 1/1

Tumblr | AO3

your name like a prayer

Summary:  The list of mistakes Eddie Munson has made in his life is not short, but he’s pretty sure “calling out your best friends name while fucking your girlfriend” has jumped straight to the top of the list.

Pairing: Eddie Munson/Female Reader

Rating: Explicit (18+ MDNI)

Word Count: 4,899

Chapters: 1/1

Tumblr | AO3

blue jeans and leather (even better on the floor)

Summary: When Steve Harrington sees Eddie Munson for the first time in ten years, he’s not prepared for the feelings that resurface. But this time, he’s willing to see where they’ll take him.

Pairing: Eddie Munson/Steve Harrington

Rating: Explicit (18+ MDNI)

Word Count: 4,846

Chapters: 1/1

Tumblr | AO3

this is for real (this time i mean it)

Summary:  Five times your best friend Eddie Munson kissed you, plus the one time it meant more.

Pairing: Eddie Munson/Female Reader

Rating: Explicit (18+ MDNI)

Word Count: 4,546

Chapters: 1/1

Tumblr | AO3 

cruel summer [complete] **cw: age gap**

Summary: Joel takes a contracting job renovating a master bedroom and bathroom while the homeowners are away for the summer on a cruise.

He wasn’t expecting their twenty-three year old daughter and the thoughts he’d have about her.

Pairing: Joel Miller/Female Reader

Rating: Explicit (18+, MDNI)

Chapters: 6/6

Tumblr | AO3

take care (complete)

Summary: Joel and Ellie stumble on a house they think is abandoned as they escape from Silver Lake.

Except it’s not, and Joel isn’t ready for another reason to lose sight of what he needs to do.

Pairing: Joel Miller/Female Reader

Rating: Explicit (18+, MDNI)

Word Count: 6,684

Chapters: 2/2

Tumblr | AO3

home

Summary: A snippet of a happy life in Jackson.

Pairing: Joel Miller/Female Reader

Rating: G [no warnings, just fluff]

Chapters: 1/1

Tumblr

1. crimson red paint on my lips **cw: age gap; dark!Joel**

Summary: Joel Miller is an asshole.

You should have known better than to show up at his door with your lips painted red.

Pairing: Mean Smuggler!Joel Miller/Smuggler!Female Reader

Rating: Explicit (18+ MDNI - significant content warnings available on post)

Chapters: 1/1

Tumblr | AO3

2. me and the devil **cw: age gap, dark!Joel**

Summary: Joel doesn’t take kindly to the attention you’ve been receiving from a FEDRA agent.

Pairing: Mean Smuggler!Joel Miller/Smuggler!Female Reader

Rating: Explicit (18+ MDNI - significant content warnings available on post)

Chapters: 1/1

Tumblr

[daniclaytcn]

Tumblr Fandom: A Year in Review 2023

i was tagged by @mistmarauder, thank you!!

Top Five Blorbos:

Eddie Diaz (9-1-1)

Nancy Wheeler (Stranger Things)

Nancy Drew (Nancy Drew)

Alex Claremont-Diaz (Red, White & Royal Blue)

Lucy Preston (Timeless)

Top Five Fandoms:

9-1-1

Red, White & Royal Blue

Stranger Things

The Haunting Anthology

Nancy Drew

Top Five OTPs:

Evan Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1)

Lucy Chen/Tim Bradford (The Rookie)

Nancy Drew/Ace (Nancy Drew)

Lucy Preston/Garcia Flynn (Timeless)

Dani Clayton/Jamie Taylor (The Haunting of Bly Manor)

Shoutout to Some New Friends:

@eddiediaaz we've been mutuals since last year but i feel like we talked a lot more this year, so i'm very grateful for that ❤ @poughkeepsies is one of my dearest mutuals on here and i love you and all your takes <33 and also @ice-sculptures i've adored following you over this year!

Shoutout to Some Old Friends:

all of my love to the one and only @tawaifeddiediaz, i don't know where i'd be without her to rant and get emotional over our blorbos with and she's just such a wholesome soul!! and of course, @bieddiediaz and @oneawkwardcookie, the besties, i love you guys so so much ❤❤

Favorite Creation You Posted This Year:

i'm very proud of my fic, but i can see all along, love (it was you all the way down) <3

Favorite Creation Posted by Someone Else This Year:

oh gosh this is SUCH a difficult question because there are so many amazing creations from this insanely talented fandom—but i'd have to go with @eddiediaaz's speak now gifset it was so incredible!

People Who Brightened Your Year:

too many people to count—@buck2eddie @lover-of-mine @jeeyuns @diazass @kitkatpancakestack @bieddiediaz @tawaifeddiediaz and so many others i'm probably forgetting!

Anyone Else You'd Like to Mention:

there are just too many people to mention—every single one of my mutuals on here, and all the kind people who've sent me lovely messages (anonymous or not) and all the people who continue to follow me!!

Five of Your Favorite Authors This Year:

elless continues to be an all-time favourite, they have some of the most beautiful fics in the fandom ❤❤

@tawaifeddiediaz is the most talented person ever ily 😘

@letmetellyouaboutmyfeels is another favourite!! your halloween fics were SUCH a treat and i'm sitll working my way through them!!

@cal-daisies-and-briars has fics with some of the most intriguing concept and is honestly a powerhouse—it seems like you're posting fic all the time!

@bvckandeddie i recently discovered your fics and they're just *chefs kiss* so delightful!!

Five of Your Favorite Artists/Gifmakers/Podficcers/Etc. This Year:

no list about gifmakers is complete without @eddiediaaz who is so talented and creative it makes me wanna cry (with joy!)

@padme-amidala while i don't follow most of the media you post gifs for, your work is so stunning and i'm so obsessed!!

@stationoneeighteen i love love all of your gifs especially the ones that focus on the firefam, they're so good ❤❤

@buckleys-diaz alie you haven't been around for a while (and i hope you're doing well!) but you've always been one of the most talented gifmakers in this fandom and i've always looked up to you <3

@roseapothecary your gifs are so so gorgeous and i've adored all of your rwrb sets!! they're so pretty and creative!!

Three Things You're Looking Forward to in 2024:

the new season of 9-1-1 and also the PJO tv series!!

Tagging:

tagging everyone who's already been mentioned in this post <33

[absolutebl]

This Week In BL - GMMTV Holds the Line

Feb 2023 Wk 1

Being a highly subjective assessment of one tiny corner of the interwebs. Organized by which ones (in each category) I’m enjoying most.

When they say “famous last words” this is what they mean. 

Ongoing Series - Thai

My School President (Fri YT) ep 10 of 12 - They are so stinkn’ CUTE as bfs. Possibly the cutest. I chuckle a lot with this show. And that’s great, very serotonin inducing. Also 2nd half had good soapy drama tension with the music competition + the mom’s surgery at the SAME TIME (gasp). Can’t wait for next week.

Moonlight Chicken (Weds YT) 1-2 of 8 - Oh it’s great. Messy gays struggling with both internal and external conflict. It has a Taiwanese gritty queer authenticity to it. EarthMix are perfect for these roles. Khaotung is the most adorable thing ever. And GeminiFourth are fun to see as new characters. Fourth is showing off his acting chops, the way he holds his jaw and mouth for this more sullen complicated part - it’s completely different from Gun. His acting style reminds me of Nanon a bit, he’s very nuanced in his facial expressions.   

Never Let Me Go (Tues YT) ep 9 of 12 - 15 minutes of cute bf and dumb tattoos and then SUFFER! I love how quickly Palm put to rest your bog standard gay boy fantasies about a bisexual’s options. Palm was basically: “All the things that you dream for me with a woman, I can do that with you.” Honestly? I wasn’t that moved by the noble sacrifice of this episode. It was fine. More peril please. Looking forward to things going very very badly for the next couple of episodes. Bring on the pain GMMTV. 

Hit Bite Love (Sat YouTube) ep 3 of 6 - Baby Dom is quite the kink dilettante, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a kinkster with more varied tastes. Maybe baby just hasn’t found his true fetish yet? I feel for poor Shogun who just wants a boyfriend who treats him decently and ends up with Mr. Experimental. The humorous outcome is, of course, predictable. Not wild about the stepbrothers storyline (despite my taboo preferences). Really? I just want more King and Burger.

609 Bedtime Story (Fri WeTV) ep 11fin - With the exception of Mum, every character suddenly started acting totally OUT of character. Anygay, Mum comes back to find Dew single and all obstacles to their romance magically cleared. The pub staff setting them up was cute. But all in all it felt like we were suddenly in a completely different show. Series review below. 

I cannot believe we have 3 BL’s airing AT THE SAME TIME from GMMTV. It’s insane. I remember when it was exciting because we had 3 BLs airing at the same time at all.

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

HIStory 5: Love in the Future (Taiwan Weds Viki) ep 7 of 10 (or 13&14 of 20) - It’s an office romance BL, so I like that office politics is complicating matters for both of our couples. I personally don’t believe in scions (with very few exceptions, we know it tends to be bad for a corporation, and that has certainly been my experience). Still, it’s suitably traumatic to see our couples in angst over the power transition. The confession scene for the leads was very sweet. And a nice kiss. And cute bf. Taiwan always just does these beats better than anyone else. 

Candy Color Paradox AKA Ameiro Paradox (Japan Fri Gaga) ep 8 fin - K needed to realize O is a big boy. Yes we get it. Bummer he couldn’t figure out that for himself and had to be told by somebody else. I do feel sorry for the bartender character who keeps having to deal with all of these gay boys and their inability to communicate and resulting overdramatic depression. Meanwhile O needed to realize K needs him. And they both needed to learn to communicate, these… journalists. Good kiss and decent sex scenes for a JBL, with an HEA. Careful Japan we may start to develop expectations. I bumped up my rating on the strength of this finale. It was good! Series review below.  

Individual Circumstances (Thurs Viki) 7-8fin - I like the resolution and explanation for the conflict, a lot more than I liked the conflict itself. The kiss wasn’t awesome, but it wasn’t entirely dead fish either. However, Korea has proved that it can do better, so I was annoyed by it. Also, no shirtless scene this time around, we were robbed. Series review below.

The End Of The World, With You AKA Bokura no Micro na Shuumatsu (Japan Sun Gaga ep 2 of 8 - This is way too high heat for them to end it happily. It’s all v weird. I guess I’ll keep watching? Even if everyone dies, this one is not gonna ruin me the way Eternal Yesterday almost did.

It’s Airing But I’m Not Watching it 

My Beautiful Man S2 (Viki & Gaga) - Because there are only 4 episodes, I decided to wait and binge this one. What can I say? I just do not trust Japan. Sorry I’m too scared, those of you braver than I must watch first - I salute you and look forward to the gifs.

Egoist (Japan) cinema - Japanese movies are notoriously difficult to get ahold of.

Marry My Dead Body AKA Ghost and I Becoming Family (Taiwan) - movie about a police officer forced to marry a ghost.

Cafe in Love - Can’t find it 

Finished this week

609 Bedtime Story 

An interesting time slip concept and a great set up ultimately disappointed. It opened strong, on one of my favorite under appreciated Thai actors: Plustor (as Vee) in a side bartender romance with younger bisexual king, Games. Unfortunately, it went downhill from there. OhmFluke’s solid chemistry and romantically soft kisses were ill served by a reformed rake meets rich-kid cheater pairing. While it was nice to see Ohm play a part with more animated facial expressions, his was the only character that remained consistent. All in all, this was a confusing show about disloyalty and parallel worlds that never made sense or stayed true to its characters. A promising start, confusing middle, and disappointing end. I don’t say this lightly, but Oh My Sunshine Night is better, and OhmFuke deserve better than either. 6/10

Individual Circumstances 

A second chance romance between a movie director who was once promising and a writer who disappeared due to past hurt. Stars JunQ (main rapper of MYNAME) and Han Jung Wan (Mr International Korea winner). Reunion romances are not my thing but I liked the bratty director despite his stalking (and prob because of his naked chest). Using a guitar to torture someone is entirely appropriate, in my book/BL world it happens all too often. I did want to know what happened in the past but the mystery got drawn out too much and the tsundere character became frustratingly mean spirited as a result. I like the resolution and explanation for the conflict a lot more than I liked the conflict itself. I could tell what this show wanted to be, and what it could’ve been, but it simply never got there. In the end, like a host of other KBLs over the last couple of years, it is serviceable but eminently forgettable. 7/10

Candy Color Paradox AKA Ameiro Paradox 

Innocent but talented gay tabloid journalist partners (and falls in love with) a jaded player bisexual cameraman. This is a solid JBL of the more emo, cringe, and navel gazing variety that never really resonates with me. The main pairs’ chemistry felt weak and their characters were pat (for live action yaoi, I’ve seen or read this couple a million times). Bringing Izuka Kenta in to guest star was a stroke of genius and also challenging, because he has a complex history with JBL which I could not forget as I watched him EAT up the screen so hard he made the leads feel insipid. There were a lot of aspects of this show that felt more KBL than JBL. I missed the kinky edgy pushing boundaries we usually get from Japanese office romances. It did have a stellar ending (featuring a decent kiss and 2 nice sex scenes, you go Japan) but for me CCP was fine, just no more than fine. 8/10

Look you know how I feel about JBL, when it’s good it’s some of my absolute favorite (Seven Days, Old Fashion Cupcake, Minato’s Laundromat, Takara & Amagi), nothing else whips me into wit and eloquence and film crit like it, but when it’s off, for me, it’s really off. And Ameiro never gelled with me. It was too much work to watch. I don’t like chewy BL - nourishing and necessary though it may be for others. 

Gossip

Issues and Controversies of Thai BL Actors - I get asked about these a lot, so I’m just gonna point you all at this YT henceforth.

Viki picked up Boys Planet so I’m watching it. I have FEELS but I’m not going to ruin a perfectly decent BL blog with Kpop reality TV, no matter how pretty. Just know I’m over here suffering for 4 hours every week. SUFFERING. Some of the singing during the first ep alone was SO BAD it put Thai BL boyfriends to shame. I am so glad they got 3 vocal coaches in this show. People better vote with their goddamn ears and not just (as they did with iLand) much lower down. (Oo, I’m salty already.) 

In Case You Missed It

Feb releases list is here.

2023 forthcoming BL master post. (see comments some are inaccurate, NOT UPDATED)

Next Week Looks Like This:

I am so spoiled these days, now I’m upset there isn’t a good KBL airing right now. Do you remember when we barely got one or two a year? What a demanding monster 2022 turned me into. Anygay, 4 more Thai BL starting this week... 

Destiny Seeker (Tues WeTV ) 1 of ? - Feb 14 we think, MDL is janky on this one. Engineering student Songkram is head of dorm 3, for "strong & athletic" students. Aye is head of dorm 2, for the "good looking" students. Aye used to be Songkram's tutor and friend, but they fell apart after becoming dorm heads. Aye is actually in love with Songkram but thinks Sonkram likes someone else. Songkram actually likes Aye. So, Bad Buddy the pulp rebirth meets that weird Japanese “girls-crossdressing-as-boys for love and infiltrating secret society of hotness” tradition. 

Boyband (Thurs YT) 1 of 10 - Feb 16, it’s on the tin, BL drama about putting an idol boyband together. AKA how to make ABL suffer by combing favorite (celebrity romances, Kpop) and least favorite (bad singing) tropes.

Bed Friend (Sat YT & iQIYI uncut) 1 of 8 - Feb 18, but we’re looking for the rerun/uncut, so not sure on drop date for those. Fuck buddies get messy, AKA Between Us the second cuming, this time in an office (and on a desk). I have been waiting for James to hold down (or be held down in) a BL for years! Watch out, new kings of high heat are heading our way. 

Chains of Heart (Sat Gaga) 1 of 10 - Feb 18 Suspense thriller about a forest ranger, smugglers, memory loss, and lost love. Stars Haii (Cirrus in TT2) and Poppy (Porpla in YYY). Adapted from a Y-novel of the same name by TJ Tommy. 

Supposedly, but I’ve no idea where to watch it:

Jack Frost (Japan) - Feb 17 After saying goodbye to his friend, Ritsu had an accident and lost his memory. His roommate, Ikuya, struggles to rebuild their relationship and help him regain his memories. In the process, Ritsu falls in love with Ikuya, but he was unaware that they were already in a relationship.

Moments Of Love (Thai) Feb 14 Foremorfilm Production movie for cinema release. Was originally Golf (Director of 609 Bedtime Story & The Eclipse) to direct stars SmartJames (LeonPhob from Don't Say No) in a series. Is now something totally different and a movie. We are all confused.

THIS WEEK’S BEST MOMENTS

Open boys are the best boys. Never Let Me Go

Moonlight Chicken with ALL the zingers, plus verse characters. Thank you GMMTV! 

Why so cute indeed. My School President 

(last week)

Current Kpop earworm? Villain by Key (Shinee) just on hard rotation. It’s great. 

[waitmyturtles]

Turtles Catches Up With Old GMMTV: The Bad Buddy Rewatch Edition, Part 3b -- More on BBS and Asian Cultural Touchpoints

[What’s going on here? After joining Tumblr and discovering Thai BLs through KinnPorsche in 2022, I began watching GMMTV’s new offerings -- and realized that I had a lot of history to catch up on, to appreciate the more recent works that I was delving into. From tropes to BL frameworks, what we’re watching now hails from somewhere, and I’m learning about Thai BL's history through what I’m calling the Old GMMTV Challenge (OGMMTVC). Starting with recommendations from @absolutebl on their post regarding how GMMTV is correcting for its mistakes with its shows today, I’ve made an expansive list to get me through a condensed history of essential/classic/significant Thai BLs produced by GMMTV and many other BL studios. My watchlist, pasted below, lists what I’ve watched and what’s upcoming, along with the reviews I’ve written so far. Today, I offer the second half of the third (ha!) of five posts on Bad Buddy. I'll look today at themes that myself and fellow Asian fans of Bad Buddy have caught and related to in this wonderful show.]

Here are links to part 1, part 2, and part 3a of the BBS OGMMTVC Meta Series. Today's post is a continuation of part 3a. Part 4 is here.

Yesterday, I began an unwinding about what I am calling the "Asian Cultural Touchpoints" of Bad Buddy -- the Asianness of Bad Buddy that is rooted and coded in the way people interact with each other.

As a quick recap from yesterday: I have been insanely lucky to engage in conversation with a number of legendary Asian BBS stans about the Asianness within Bad Buddy: huge shout-outs and thanks go to @grapejuicegay, @recentadultburnout, @telomeke, @neuroticbookworm, and @lurkingshan (who is not Asian, but has Asian relatives and is well-versed in the nuances of our cultures!). We captured a lengthy list of Asian cultural signposts in Bad Buddy and we've been having great discussion around them, including:

1) saving face, 2) intergenerational/inherited trauma, 3) the unique nature of secret-keeping in Asian cultures/societies, 4) enmeshed family boundaries, 5) setting up children to compete against each other for the sake of familial pride, 6) patriarchy, sexism, and the reversal of sexism among next generations, 7) the inset/assumed roles of family members based on patriarchy and elder respect, 8) assumed community within and external to one's family, usually based on where you live and where you go to school, 9) how one's identity is defined based on patriarchy and individualist vs. collectivist cultures, 10) how various cultures within an Asian nation live peacefully (or not) together (for example, what makes Pat and Pran different by way of Pat's Thai-Chinese heritage vs. Pran's ethnic Thai heritage),

and many more.

I unwound yesterday on the cultural touchpoints of saving face, intergenerational/inherited trauma (partly as a follow-up from my very first thesis on Bad Buddy), and the singular nature of secret-keeping in Asian cultures.

There's no way I can get through this entire list in two posts, but I do want to touch upon competition, enmeshed family (and friend, sometimes) boundaries, and patriarchy and sexism as three other cultural touchpoints that engendered quite a bit of conversation among our BBS mini-village.

Competition: ALL OVER BAD BUDDY. All over it, and we know it, and for the most part, we love Pran's and Pat's little love battles. Pat and Pran are constantly competing. Pat gets Chief Phupha into it in Our Skyy 2, dang it ("I'm Pha Pun Dao's top-notch," Phupha, psh). We don't know if the guys can function without having a competition going between them at any given point.

We know this structure started with their parents. As I talked about yesterday, considering the trauma that Ming and Dissaya faced in their young lives -- the trauma that they passed down to Pat and Pran, the rivalry and almost unbridled hatred that they expected Pat and Pran to embody -- all of that emanated through competition between the guys. Their parents asked them, daily, how the other kid was doing in school, making sure that their son was winning on top. As we know from Pat's rooftop monologue in episode 5, that was baggage he carried with him his entire life.

So many of these cultural touchpoints can be connected to the idea of saving face, as I wrote about yesterday. It is an overarching rule of any Asian child's life that Asian parents demand to be able to brag about their kids. Give me an Asian kid whose parents didn't do that to them, and I'll give that kid a huge hug, a gold medal, and a wish in an envelope that I could have had their childhood. Awards, top grades, top class positions, top university admissions: the need to be the best is neverending, for the sake of a parent not losing face for their child not succeeded at the top level of everything.

@telomeke notes the inherent cultural demands of Pran's and Pat's family in the competition paradigm that Pat outlines above.

[Re: Ming and Dissaya]: [E]very time [the children] do well, the bar often gets pushed a little higher. We actually see Ming doing this to Pat in Ep.1 ... when Pat tells him he was made class president. Ming says something like "get yourself a gold medal for rugby and then I'll let you brag"; Pat's achievement (though not dismissed) is downplayed rather than celebrated, and another goal is set. Anyway, my read is that both the boys had caliber to start with; it's natural to Pran (we don't see Dissaya really pushing him to excel), and I think he pushes himself to excel, to be the virtuous paragon of everything, as a barrier to the outside world, and to protect his vulnerable, secret interior. ... And Pat was pushed by Ming to match Pran's achievements, though not for the usual Asian parent reasons – it was to continue his own efforts to best Dissaya, IMO...

What @telomeke outlines here correlates perfectly with my own experiences of my Asian childhood: that even in the face of successes that my parents demanded, the reward was only a passive comment that I had to be doing more. There was never a moment where a parent's cup of happiness was truly filled from the child's perspective.

However, in the case of Pran and Pat specifically: @grapejuicegay had a further illumination that highlighted the utter pain and sadness of the outcomes and consequences of their lifelong competition. We know they were perfectly paired as a couple in love. But ultimately? Because of the pressures they faced as children vis à vis each other -- they also become the only people who could compete with each other. AND, because of that reality -- a new kind of empathy sprung up between them, what I called in part 1 of this series a radical empathy of a kind we don't always see between enemies to lovers. @grapejuicegay's thoughts:

I'm just thinking about the first family interactions we see for Pat and Pran and how Dissaya is framed as a concerned parent with her main worry being Pran taking on too much on his plate with being the head of the department. But also how that's so far removed from what her influence had made of him - an overachiever to the highest degree. ...[T]he whole point of Pat and Pran is that they're evenly matched in everything (which works so well because they're both such EXTRA little shits with so many lil' interests), and it's been there since the [original] trailer. They both keep competing to see who can get the most achievements to brag about, eventually settling down to a point where they help each other out because they're each other's only worthy competition because they're the only ones who can keep up with each other [emphasis mine]. So.... Dissaya's concern is nice and all, but she created this monster who not only can handle having so many responsibilities, but ENJOYS it. And Pat's help is always pushing him to do all of it, just have some help along the way so he's not doing it all alone. Wai helps, but he has to be manipulated into it. So the only person ACTIVELY helping Pran even when neither of them thinks he needs it is Pat ("I know you can do it, but I want to do it for you").

I was tremendously moved when @grapejuicegay shared her read with me on this, because not only did it land fully with me -- but it served to highlight the sadness and loneliness that existed in the gulf between Pran and Pat prior to their union. In other words, because they knew, so well, HOW to compete with each other -- if they needed help, they were the only ones who knew HOW to help each other. Pat showing up at the dilapidated bus station; Pran showing up at the empty auditorium. They could vibe when each other needed a little push. They knew WHEN and HOW to help each other, with the fluency they had ABOUT each other, even before their relationship began -- because they had been competing all their lives. As Pat said in Our Skyy 2: "we've been neighbors all our lives." They knew each other's ins and outs better than even their families did.

The competition that Pran and Pat engaged in had significant cultural roots. But the long-term impact of that competition? It rendered the guys on their own lonely island, a place where only the two of them could understand each other fully. It's a romantic conclusion -- to know your partner so well like that, it can fill your heart with nostalgic reckoning. But as Pat said above and to his father -- it was a bruising path, for the both of the guys.

There's a lot to enmeshed boundaries in Bad Buddy. The boundaries that SHOULD exist between two people that regularly get crossed. I definitely want to acknowledge, before I unwind on these boundaries, that Western vs. Asian viewers will have different expectations of exactly what enmeshment looks like and what it means. I'll have more on this in a bit.

When I think of enmeshed boundaries in Bad Buddy, I think of Dissaya having almost total control over Pran's physical placement. Of Ming knocking on Pat's dorm door, unannounced. Of Pat's expectation that Pa would do his laundry (which will speak to the sexism I'll talk about in a bit). @neuroticbookworm noted how hilariously Asian it was that Pat and Pa -- older brother and younger sister -- literally shared a dorm room. Pat could scuttle to Pran's solo room, to their love nest, to leave their shared room alone for Pa and Ink. But: what an Asian set-up, to have big bro sleeping on the floor, while little sister got the bed.

But besides what Western viewers might traditionally think of as "unhealthy" enmeshed boundaries, there's also a conversation about how Asian families engage -- or, don't engage -- with expectations of privacy. The biggest and most obvious example of a violation of personal privacy in BBS is that Pran's and Pat's parents forbid their children from having friendship with the kid next door. We know, in the end, that the parents cannot control that behavior of their kids, and yet, the parents try to do so anyway, with traumatic results.

@telomeke talked in our mini-village about the everyday functionality of Asian families crossing borders of assumed privacy. These are crossings that I fully relate to: for instance, I wasn't allowed to lock my bedroom door very often when I was growing up, to allow for complete access to my "private space," even and especially while I was in it.

I remember this as a thing growing up, that it's perfectly fine in [Asian countries] to drop in unannounced when it's family (though I think with widespread cellphone availability, people do check in beforehand now – however it could also be just to make sure there's someone in to receive them when they drop by!). It's a bit of a truism that the more traditional Asian parents will be in every part of your life and may not always know how to give you more distance when you grow older. ... For the more traditionally-minded, I think this phenomenon would be even more pronounced. And we definitely see this with Pat and Pa too.

The stories I heard about parents busting in on their Asian kids in compromising positions because the kids HAD to leave the doors unlocked? Stories about full-grown adults being interrupted in their intimacy because their parents came into the house? Countless stories. Us as Asians -- we might laugh about it, but there's also an unspoken and inherent sense of annoyance, of fear, of "how do I explain this now?" that's like a dull, permanent foreboding.

In thinking about how these boundary-crossings were inherited vis à vis Pat and Pran, into the next generation, of course -- all we have to think about are the many, many times we saw Pat crossing into Pran's threshold at Tinidee. That shot of Pat wrapped in his comforter as he shuffles to Pran's door.

However, @grapejuicegay flagged for me an utterly legendary Bad Buddy meta post written by @transpat now nearly two years ago, describing the Indian concept of haq, a concept I know very dearly well. To quote @transpat on the definition of haq:

in context of relationships, we use it to describe the entitlement ppl we keep close are allowed over us. in our culture, with every bond we form and built, we owe those ppl certain rights over us. like our filial duty to our parents, supporting our siblings and relatives emotionally and/or financially, the loyalty to our friends. lovers and spouses are ppl given all the rights of a family member by choice and obv other stuff like touching u in ways others can't, sharing worries and secrets you wouldn't indulge others w, the permission to carry and lighten ur burdens.

We know so well that Pat didn't just cross the hallway of Tinidee; he climbed through and over windows, over roofs, to get to Pran. And Pran... let him in. We know now what Pran's feelings were all that time, at least from 10th grade to university. Of course, Pran would let Pat in, because he had already let Pat into his heart. Maybe not into his psychological safety zone -- that had to take much longer. But in a much more primal sense, Pran had let Pat in, for so many reasons beautifully illustrated by @transpat in their piece, and for the examples up above, especially by way of the inadvertent closeness they achieved through their never-ending competing with each other.

I want to take a quick moment to highlight the two concepts I bolded above in @transpat's description of haq. I don't know if I have the words to describe this as well as @transpat, but to the point of entitlement and having rights over someone... there's a certain sense in Asian group dynamics, that one's business is everyone's business, if that makes sense. Think about cliques when you were growing up. Those cliques were formed on similar desires and interests -- being rich, beautiful, "cool," etc.

I feel like Asian group dynamics go a bit beyond this. Because you are in a group, it must go that any one single person's business is everyone's business. There is an entitlement to information about other people. In the States, we value individualism, and when these cliques are being formed in our youthful years, there's certainly a clash with people wanting to express themselves as individuals; very often, the group dynamics do not allow for individual expression. I would argue that that's even more strong in Asian circles.

If I could describe what I think was happening when Pat was climbing into Pran's window to, say, make that first deal about getting Wai to apologize -- I do very much believe that Pat felt it was his intimate right to go into Pran's room, as it had been established that they were, once more, schoolmates and neighbors, now that Pran was back in his family home. If Pran filled those roles -- schoolmate, neighbor -- it automatically clicked into Pat's social expectations that Pran was there to be talked to and engaged with, no matter if Pran would try to push him out. We know that Pran would give up on pushing Pat out, because Pran had feelings for Pat. BUT: what I love about @transpat's INCREDIBLE meditation is that Pat also clicked into unspoken social roles that allowed him to seek out a moment of friendly intimacy with Pran. (Besides the fact that it's more theorized now that Pat had unknown attraction for Pran during high school -- but I don't think attraction was what brought Pat into Pran's room to discuss that very first deal.)

I think this meditation on enmeshed boundaries, as I mentioned earlier, feeds nicely into the final points I want to make about the last cultural touchpoint for analysis, that of patriarchy and sexism in Asian families.

The BBS mini-village sliced and diced the incredibly overarching examples of patriarchy in this story, as emanating mostly from Ming: Ming's role as the head of the family and doling out roles; Ming ensuring that Pat would "not forget" Ming's reputation at university; Ming's parents doing nothing to interfere with Pa's role as serving Pat; Pat reinforcing that role to Pa in the family home.

Why Ming? As @telomeke broke it down for us: Ming is the head of the household of a Thai-Chinese family. It's not to say that patriarchy and sexism don't exist in ethnic Thai families -- but a patriarchal dynamic isn't shown in Pran's house, as Dissaya is the one who holds the emotional control over the Siridechawats. It's in the Jindapat household that we see old-fashioned roles of men and women doled out.

In traditional Chinese society (before the Communists came to power in China), sons had absolute pride of place in Chinese families, and we see Ming giving special treatment to Pat, while Pa was made to clean up after Mr. Jindapat Jr, doing his laundry, having the piece of chicken she wanted stolen by him in Ep.1, etc... Ming invited Pat home for a meal in Ep. 7, but didn't mention Pa, and Pat had to say he'd bring her along. But Pat and Pa, away from home didn't care for any of this, (e.g., when they were kids Pat let Pa win the bicycle race and skip washing up duties, in the Ep.1 flashback), and while Pa would begrudgingly do Pat's laundry, she would give as good as she got as well whenever they tussled (verbally). 

As @telomeke says above, we see Pat, within his generation, to Pa, in their own private space of bicycling outside or moving into his own dorm room, quietly dismantling that patriarchy and sexism of Ming's and Pat's mom -- letting Pa win the bicycle race; talking out of earshot of their parents about Pat protecting, instead of hurting, Pran. [Another great example, a little outside of the patriarchal example but still worth noting, is Wai's role, as a stand-in for Dissaya, sticking to the definitions of the role of Pran's best friend, but showing -- within the cohort of his own generation -- that he CAN change to accept Pat in Pran's life, as opposed to Dissaya's inability to do so (scroll down through the whole liveblog post for the commentary!).]

@telomeke mentioned in our conversation about patriarchy and sexism that he was surprised that he'd see a parent as young as Ming -- a parent to a student of Pat's age, much younger than myself and @telomeke -- keep up with these traditional, old-fashioned values. I think that's a great point, especially in the way that Ming ignores Pa only until the end of the series, when he's instead cut Pat mostly out of his caring reach for disobeying him. We know from the Soonvijarn analysis and reaction videos by Aof Noppharnach and his collegial community of filmmakers, that Aof took inspiration for Ming stealing the scholarship from Dissaya from a real-life occurrence of the same story. I think Aof intentionally had such strong patriarchal structures in Bad Buddy vis à vis the Jindapats in order to highlight what a stronghold old-fashioned notions of life have on generations -- and intended to have a conversation vis à vis Pat, Pran, Pa, and Wai, that the ways in which these old-fashioned notions are updated over time, is through the work of the subsequent generations of children growing up and learning and knowing better.

The coded Asianness of Bad Buddy... god. I could sit with my fellow Asians and talk about the coded Asianness of Bad Buddy for at least weeks, if not maybe even a year or two. We could laugh about the comedy of many of the experiences or traumas we have faced vis à vis the cultural touchpoints that I've listed and analyzed, and we could also share our shared pain, our shared joys, our shared ways in which we express emotion, love, our highs and lows, through our shared Asian cultures. Talking about this makes me tremendously glad that there's national and international fandoms watching Asian shows -- even if, say, Western viewers can't exactly pinpoint what's happening by way of a culturally contextual moment in Bad Buddy, at least there's a community of Asian bloggers out here that can unwind what might be confusing.

Once more, I want to thank @recentadultburnout, @grapejuicegay, @telomeke, @neuroticbookworm, and @lurkingshan for engaging me in such amazing and extensive conversation about the best show ever Bad Buddy. More than education -- the process was INCREDIBLY fun and rewarding.

(Tagging @dribs-and-drabbles, @solitaryandwandering, and @wen-kexing-apologist by request! If you'd like to be tagged in this series, please let me know!)

[WHEW! SEVENTH INNING STRETCH, FRIENDS, stand up and stretch yer arms as I crack my knuckles one more time for this fabulous show! My last post for the BBS OGMMTVC Series -- a breakdown of my theorized reasons and timing regarding Pran leaving for Singapore -- drops next week. Stay tuned!

And after this, I take the tiniest break from the OGMMTVC to review one of the most important shows of 2023: La Pluie. And then I'm back on my tip with Secret Crush On You and an end-of-the-year rewatch of KinnPorsche. So, much more to come!

Here's the status of the Old GMMTV Challenge watchlist. Tumblr's web editor loves to jack with this list, so please head to this link for the very latest updates!

1) The Love of Siam (2007) (movie) (review here) 2) My Bromance (2014) (movie) (review here) 3) Love Sick and Love Sick 2 (2014 and 2015) (review here) 4) Gay OK Bangkok Season 1 (2016) (a non-BL queer series directed by Jojo Tichakorn and written by Aof Noppharnach) (review here) 5) Make It Right (2016) (review here) 6) SOTUS (2016-2017) (review here) 7) Gay OK Bangkok Season 2 (2017) (a non-BL queer series directed by Jojo Tichakorn and written by Aof Noppharnach) (review here) 8) Make It Right 2 (2017) (review here) 9) Together With Me (2017) (review here) 10) SOTUS S/Our Skyy x SOTUS (2017-2018) (review here) 11) Love By Chance (2018) (review here) 12) Kiss Me Again: PeteKao cuts (2018) (no review) 13) He’s Coming To Me (2019) (review here) 14) Dark Blue Kiss (2019) and Our Skyy x Kiss Me Again (2018) (review here) 15) TharnType (2019-2020) (review here) 16) Senior Secret Love: Puppy Honey (OffGun BL cuts) (2016 and 2017) (no review) 17) Theory of Love (2019) (review here) 18) 3 Will Be Free (2019) (a non-BL and an important harbinger of things to come in 2019 and beyond re: Jojo Tichakorn pushing queer content in non-BLs) (review here) 19) Dew the Movie (2019) (review here) 20) Until We Meet Again (2019-2020) (review here) (and notes on my UWMA rewatch here) 21) 2gether (2020) and Still 2gether (2020) (review here) 22) I Told Sunset About You (2020) (review here) 23) YYY (2020, out of chronological order) (review here) 24) Manner of Death (2020-2021) (not a true BL, but a MaxTul queer/gay romance set within a genre-based show that likely influenced Not Me and KinnPorsche) (review here) 25) A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021) (review here) 26) A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021) OGMMTVC Fastest Rewatch Known To Humankind For The Sake Of Rewatching Our Skyy 2 x BBS x ATOTS (re-review here) 27) Lovely Writer (2021) (review here) 28) Last Twilight in Phuket (2021) (the mini-special before IPYTM) (review here) 29) I Promised You the Moon (2021) (review here) 30) Not Me (2021-2022) (review here) 31) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) (thesis here) 32) 55:15 Never Too Late (2021-2022) (not a BL, but a GMMTV drama that features a macro BL storyline about shipper culture and the BL industry) (review here) 33) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) and Our Skyy 2 x BBS x ATOTS (2023) OGMMTVC Rewatch (The BBS OGMMTVC Meta Series is ongoing: preamble here, part 1 here, part 2 here, more reviews to come) 34) Secret Crush On You (2022) (on pause for La Pluie) 35) KinnPorsche (2022) (tag here) 36) KinnPorsche (2022) OGMMTVC Fastest Rewatch Known To Humankind For the Sake of Re-Analyzing the KP Cultural Zeitgeist 37) The Eclipse (2022) (tag here) 38) GAP (2022-2023) (Thailand’s first GL) 39) My School President (2022-2023) and Our Skyy 2 x My School President (2023) 40) Moonlight Chicken (2023) (tag here) 41) Bed Friend (2023) (tag here) 42) Be My Favorite (2023) (tag here)  43) Wedding Plan (2023)  44) Only Friends (2023) (tag here)]

[namtanlovesfilm]

so far i got to say the trainee was a cute series very light hearted between off and gun and it was so worth waiting for and watching it. however the story between piploy, sea and kapook just doesnt seem right at all. i would love to hear more of your opinion on it. because i felt like in the end of the day they should all go their separate ways and focus on self love instead

I have SO MANY thoughts about the trainee lol, I almost wanna revive my youtube channel & pump out a video 😆 honestly the trainee had SO MUCH potential. I came into this show with no expectation apart from jane being hot af & offgun having flawless chemistry as always, and for most of it it actually blew me away by having a way deeper meaning than anticipated. the exploration of finding yourself & your career at the edge of entering the workplace was honestly really relatable and probably my favorite aspect of the show. I once said the trainee had some of the best writing I had seen from a gmmtv show... but sadly it didn't stick the landing for me. I feel like from ep 9 or 10 the writing really degraded slowly, although there were still very strong scenes in those eps. I HATED the 5 years timelapse in the finale, I've criticized the trope of sending a character abroad for years before but here I particularly hated it bc it honestly kinda destroyed jane's character imo? he was the greenest green flag ever, absolutely obsessed with ryan... but he's gonna ghost ryan & then come back and tell him he's leaving the day after & still kiss him?? and then not come back for FIVE YEARS and not even contact ryan during that time?? that's insane. jane could've easily went for a master degree in thailand & this whole trope was so bad I hated it, I feel like they just went for the easy way out. however, yes, the whole taebahmeejudy storyline was deffo the biggest flop of this show. I think it was obvious that the audience was gonna root for judy & bahmee more bc same sex couples are almost always more popular in the thai fandom, and also the show built up judy & bahmee's chemistry so much. even once bahmee & tae broke up, I personally thought bahmee should've spent at least six months single to learn to be by herself before jumping onto judy, but the storyline that just bc judy was slightly overbearing 3 times, bahmee decided to ditch her & go back to tae... was insane. also I think tae was a really weak character who benefited from being played by sea who's super beloved, but lowkey the only great tae scene is when he drunkenly scolds jane in the last scene of the show (and that's bc it's OOC & frankly should've been a pah moment.) but the whole situation felt unfair for everyone & I hate that judy's feelings were never explored after she cried once & then she was just shown to be okay like??? I don't think the writers accomplished what they set out to do at all. and also they focused SO MUCH on that love triangle that it robbed janeryan from being much more developed, be it the drama with nine or seeing ryan back with his family & tao-hu in the later eps... at the final ep fanmeet, pompam asked piploy what she would do if she were in bamhee's shoes, and piploy hesitated a lot but mentioned the idea of "what's right" before choosing tae still. so maybe it's a cultural difference bc tbh the whole crowd was cheering when tae proposed to bahmee during the fanmeet while I (a hater) was rolling my eyes lmao. so yeah overall I loved janeryan & pie & pah and there were so many amazing scenes, but... I SO wish I could turn back time, barge into the writers room and hijack the writing process for this show to make it stronger towards the end lol. it's definitely offgun's weakest show so far apart from puppy honey, but I still enjoyed it and, yes, sobbed like a little bitch when it ended 💚

xxx

[house-on-sand]

!!!

any comic you read recently that has been on your mind and you'd like to talk about?

YES ACTUALLY A FEW!

are you scared of darkseid? (2021)

its a halloween one-shot ft. damian n the titans! it's a silly little collection of "spooky" stories they're telling each other while they're out camping (presumably damian's idea) and its genuinely so cute? + the way the titans all vibe together is great & the stories are all pretty great! the first one feature harley quinn and darkseid akshsksv hunting down bloody mary & then the last one is rlly spooky, it's about clark n lois helping locate missing twins who are the kids of one of clark’s childhood friends & they find them at this weird house where a guy is like. finding people / kids to bring to his "wife" so it can drain them of their lives and the "wife" almost drains superman its so wild

my favourite story from it tho was kid flash's! it was rlly intriguing and i wish it was a full story somewhere. basically there was this set of stairs and a man who would come down them to bring people (usually anomalies) home as he told them. he leads a whole town of people away bc they've been exposed to magic and they're changing n stuff so it's not necessarily safe for them to be around and idk it's such a good story it had me gripped man

the question (1986) issues 9-11

idk man i can't think of what i want to say about these ones or the series as a whole other than it drives me fucking insane /pos

these ones were really good bc it kinda shows a different side of vic almost? like he's really self aware about how his friendship w tot was up until that point kind of one sided? in the sense that he knew hardly anything abt tot whereas like tot did know quite a bit about him! + yknow kind of aided in him becoming the question (provided the artifical skin stuff that makes him look faceless among other things!) so it was just really cool to see an arc where he went after him after tot had been kidnapped

+ the bad guy for it was? wild? he was trying to witness a miracle of like alchemy or whatever bc he thought it would change his soul essentially so he wasn't such an awful person anymore. and its kind of vaguely implied at the end that it did work

can't remember the issues exactly but booster gold (2007)!!!

the lengths he was willing to go to so he could bring ted back was so :(

even when rip tried to teach him that sometimes time really is set in stone and you can't change things, he still ended up going back to save ted (granted it was part of a whole Evil Plan and he didn't know that at the time but still)

like rip sent him back to the day that babs was shot, claiming it was never supposed to happen and it was one of the anomalies they were supposed to fix together, bc they both knew that ted cared about babs a lot! (granted pretty sure they only met after she became oracle but whatever) and booster tries so hard again and again, pretty much getting tortured by the joker just bc he's trying to keep this person who his person cares about so much from being hurt. even when it's so clear he can't change it! bc it's cemented in time and they world needs oracle! he still tries. to the point that rip finally has to stop him bc booster is hurt so badly and the booster is so fucking angry and hurt and he doesn't totally get why things have to be this way and he's angry with rip for lying to him and telling him if he helps fix time then they can go save ted and booster would have his best friend back its UGH

people don't understand how much booster gold cares! even in universe sometimes! no one can see past his outward persona n stuff to see that he cares so big and he was willing to fuck up TIME bc he wanted to save his best friend bc he didn't think he should've died! nd yes sometimes how big he cares n loves goes badly (once again fucking up time) and it hurts! ted knew what had to he done and knew he needed to die in order for things to be okay again and booster was so desperate to find some way around it. all signs pointed to that being the only answer but he didn't want to see it.

i also wanna talk about how rip hunter seems put out and annoyed by booster n their relationship is pretty difficult but he cares! bc that's his fucking dad! even though booster doesn't know that and can't know that (at least not yet), he's rip's dad!!

after everything with ted is resolved and he knows how badly booster is taking that n how shit he's gotta be feeling, rip surprises him with someone booster thought was gone forever!! rip was able to save michelle, booster's twin sister!! and they were both so happy to see each other (she was dead for booster, he thought she was dead forever) & one of their first adventures together involves them stealing babs' batgirl costume aksgakvsjs with michelle posing as batgirl (originally when i saw the preview image in the issue before it i thought it was BOOST dressed up as batgirl and i LOVED that, that's what we deserved)

^^ the aforementioned image. genuinely had my hopes up i thought it'd be fun tbh i loved the idea of him trying and failing to convince people he is in fact batgirl

OH AND!

alfred straight up tries to shoot him and michelle ajakbsksb that's the context for this panel if you've eever seen it before. boost n michelle break into the batcave bc their plan a was for them to steal the batsuit n boost was gonna pose as batman (terrible plan) but things go terribly terribly wrong. they do end up stealing the batmobile! which leads to a very confused dick coming down into the cave wondering if bruce left without him.... at day time.

still not over how down alfred was with potentially maiming these people who found and broke into the batcave like i get it i do but on god if it isn't a little funny. like my boss might not kill people but i sure will lmao

booster does end up posing as killer moth. and dressing like elvis bc somehow that was a good disguise to him

[alphabetboyluvr]

when b just stays over at kook's without sex

🪩 WORDCOUNT | 930 🪩 NOTE FROM HOLLY | There's a handful of instances within bd already and we're also getting more v soon soooo instead i'll tell you what their typical evenings at his look like, bullet point style!!

you will knock. always. you'll never invite yourself in, even though you've known the code for months now, and jungkook always tells you to. there's a formality that comes with front doors, and you enjoy the novelty of it. enjoy waiting as footsteps approach. the anticipation. the idea of him checking himself over in the mirror and tweaking his hair with a soft smile, before welcoming you in.

you're always greeted with a flippant remark - here again? / you're late / did you bring food? / you're so obsessed with me - but you're also always greeted with a smile so large it's a miracle he doesn't pull a muscle in his cheek.

shoes off by the door, your bag is tossed along with it. don't care to keep it with you- all you're really interested in is him.

the reasons for your visits will always be vague - bored / taes round our place / wanted to check you were still alive - and always bullshit.

in reality, you're just there to hang out because you enjoy his company, even when you're doing absolutely nothing.

these days, now that he's done with exams, you're often the one doing work - prepping for gallery showings. will set up camp on his bed, while jungkook is at his desk. he's got no need to be there, but the routine has been established.

it'll last for about half an hour - forty-five minutes if you're lucky - until jungkook gets restless.

it's his restlessness that makes way for his need to fuck around with you. he'll annoy you. throw things at you (gently). whine and whinge about the lack of attention he's getting.

play with your dollies instead / i told you already, they're sculptures! / dolls / sculptures / dolls.

one thing will lead to another and he'll be impossible to ignore. will insist you play a game, or cook with him, or at least be present while he's cooking.

you'll sit up by the kitchen island, glass of wine (that you brought along with you, 'cause all they have in their fridge is Cass and some half-finished soju) in hand, and mindlessly natter with him. together, you cook far more than you order take out. often you bring the ingredients, and tell jungkook to 'do something' with them - and he always manages to surprise you.

netflix will go on, and you'll binge your way through a series you both already watched, just not together. you'll argue about the characters, and when jimin gets home, he'll join in.

(jungkook always cooks enough to feed a football team (mainly because he can EAT (but also because he knows jimin'll help him polish it off, even when you don't)))

jimin'll head to bed earlier than you both (9-5 life

he'll put netflix on his desktop, or some music just so that there's something going on in the background.

you'll laze on his bed looking up at the birds, while he'll sit on the floor, or top and tail with you instead. conversations will go on and on, endlessly.

it'll hit midnight, and neither of you will notice. it won't be until he's laughing about a hypothetical situation you've posed that he'll glance to the clock on his desk. 2 am.

he'll say, we should sleep, b.

you'll say you'll sleep when you're dead - and then you'll end up discussing dumb ways to die for another hour or so.

morning will be breaking by the time you decide sleep is calling you. by this point you'll both be mumbling. lethargic. too lazy to set up a separate bed on the floor. decide to just use his, instead.

he'll take off his shirt, and throw it at your face. tell you not to be a perv. you'll tell him to fuck off and strip down to your underwear, and linger for a moment just so you can raise a brow and say, dont be a perv, jungkook.

the shirt thrown at you will become your nightdress, and jungkook will pretend like it doesn't drive him insane.

sleep will come quickly, for you're both exhausted. in the morning, you'll regret staying up so late - in all reality, it was an unspoken ploy from you both to get into bed with each other in the most innocent of ways.

you'll kick him when you wake up, and he'll kick you right back. footsies, for lack of a better term. you'll both be a little too aggressive, and then you'll be playfighting, as if that's not just another excuse for physical contact.

jungkook will be winning, because jungkook is jungkook.

one moment you'll be under the covers, then next you'll be half-hanging off the bed with him threatening to throw you off completely. you'll both be giggling, and you'll both refuse to give in cause neither of you will want it to end.

you'll call a truce. beg not to be dropped. as soon as he pulls you back, you'll be fighting with him again, until he ends up between your legs. you on top, maybe, or him. it doesn't matter. what matters is that you'll both know you should stop. both look at each other in such a way that friends shouldn't look at one another. chest heaving, lips ajar. eyes starry.

but then he'll clear his throat. avert his gaze. you'll nod. say, i should get going.

he'll agree, but then insist you stay for breakfast, too.

and you will.

because, again, neither of you will ever want this to end.

[illyrian-dreamer]

Changing Shadows (Part 17)

Azriel x Reader

Summary: Azriel has a chokehold on you that you can’t shake. When it’s clear you won’t be able to sleep, you head to the training pit to let out some frustration.

You and Azriel spar in a fight for your own dignity. Leading to smut, 18+ (Minors DNI). Dom Az is back (did he ever leave though?)

Thank you so much for the support on the series so far 💕

Image by koike9023

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5* | Part 6* | Part 7* | Part 8 | Part 9* | Part 10 | Part 11* | Part 12* | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15* | Part 16*

Warnings: Mentions of smut, minor violence, swearing 18+ (Minors DNI)

Word count: 930

Part 17:

∇

You hadn’t seen Azriel at all day the next day. Cassian explained he was out at a mission.

“And why, may I ask, are you so concerned with his whereabouts?” Cassian teased.

You rolled your eyes at him before telling him to shut it, throwing a playful swat which he dodged.

He raised his hands in surrender. “Hey, when you two sort out what’s going on between you, beyond the obvious fucking, you let me know.”

You shook your head before throwing a vulgar gesture. Subtlety was never Cassian’s thing.

It raised an important question in your head — what was going on between you and Azriel?

You had never spent the night in the same bed together, not after sex. It was an unspoken rule, as if being intimate after sex would make what you were doing too real.

Later that night, you found yourself tossing and turning in bed. You couldn’t stop thinking about the way Azriel had you fucked in his chamber, recalling how his pushed deep into you, taking you in the chair and against the wall. 

You squirmed at the memory, insides throbbing. You wanted him so badly tonight that you ached, but you were becoming too invested, too attached for something that could never be. This would have to stop.

Sleep did not find you, something deep within you screaming to be satisfied despite your many orgasms the night before. What the hell was wrong with you? This was torture!

You decided a workout would set your mind right, dressing and heading to the training pit at the top of the house.

You warmed up with a jog, before practicing swatting the sparring dummies, throwing jabs and quick kicks while dodging wooden limbs as they spun.

You could see your breath cloud from the cold, sweat running down your neck. This was helping, somewhat.

“Y/N,” a cool voice said from behind you. You saw shadows reach your boots.

Your heart stopped. This was no longer helping. Fuck.

Of course he was here. Could you not get one second alone to unwind?

You let out a quick huff, turning to face Azriel.

“What are you doing here?” You knew you were being unfriendly, your frustration answering for you before you could think twice.

“I thought I might fit in a quick workout,” he replied awkwardly, sensing your anger.

“Ok,” you said plainly. You turned back to the dummy.

“Did you- do you not want me here?” he asked.

You rolled your eyes, you couldn’t help the attitude that escaped you. There was no point in being shy. You had fucked in more ways than one.

You turned to face him again, expression cold. “No, I don’t.”

Azriel frowned, a touch of hurt in his eyes.

“You torture me, Azriel.”

“I beg your pardon?” he asked, crossing his arms defensively. His definition of torture was entirely different to yours.

“You torture me, because there is not one moment that I don’t want you,” you said, scowling at the male. “Every time we fuck, I leave needing more. I feel insatiable, like I’m going insane, and it is torture that you have that power over me.”

Azriel’s eyes darkened at your confession. He stalked over to your, chest moving in passionate breaths. He grabbed the back of your head, fingers lacing in the roots of your hair, the other pulling your hips flush against him.

“And what is it, that you think you do to me?” He growled, breathing on your neck. You snarled back. This was not affection, this was a battle for control. You would not let him make a fool of you anymore.

You pushed off him, bracing yourself defensively. Neither of you needed to say it, the Illyrian in you both taking over. You were going to spar.

He flexed his neck and narrowed his eyes on you, letting out a dark chuckle. Prick.

You launched at him, wings tight.

He was a better fighter than you, but you were faster. After a burst of limbs and grunts, you had a steady rhythm making frustrated passes that Azriel gracefully dodged. Not once did he punch back.

You snapped a right hook which he avoided again. You gritted your teeth annoyance.

“You’re going to have to try harder than that,” his deep voice teased. You were in no mood for jokes.

He went in for a low kick, trying to knock you off your feet. You used his imbalance to tackle him, rolling a few times before he got his grasp on you, pinning you to the ground. You were no match for his strength.

You grunted in frustration, squirming beneath him as you tried to free yourself.

“Is this what you wanted?” He smirked down at you, shadows seeping from all around him.

You had sparred plenty of times before, but never like this. Azriel would always empower you and show you how to beat the enemy, even from this position. But tonight, he enjoyed dominating you.

Quick movements were made, and he now straddled your waist, boots pinning your legs down as he gripped one wrist in each of his hands to the ground.

You continued to struggle, considering using your night magic. He saw the stars swirl in your eyes, moving your wrists to one hand before placing a firm, yet gentle grip on your throat.

“I dare you,” he warned, snarling in your ear.

You let your magic fizzle, your body slackening slightly.

“Good girl,” he purred.

And here you were again, wetness beginning to pool below you and scent changing from anger to pure animalistic heat.

Fuck.

--------

Part 18***>>>

AN: The next part coming tonight! I am SO excited to share it with you guys, it’s going to be steamyyy. I would love your feedback on the story so far, and comment to join the tag list 💕

Tags: @slvtherinseeker​ @judig92​ @kennedy-brooke @hyacinthoideshispanica @brekkershadowsinger​ @its-me-meg​ @acotar-thirst​ @5moremin​ @honeyrydernot​ @azzydaddy @lucyysthings @highladyofillyria @paasrin​ @starswholistenanddreamsanswered​ @littleshopofwhoress