#maybe unironically maybe to mock her idk

[jameslongforjimshortforgabriel]

someone should draw lestat with the jojo siwa makeup. just feels like something he would do.

[free-spirit-roses]

south park oc origins (pt.3)

prev: pt.2

okay now the fun shit starts.

what's a South Park oc without a silly name? meet Page Write, named after the fact that she is literally a concept on a piece of paper for the purpose of fanfiction in my brain. with every oc i write theres a story theyre meant to be part of, and the name of Page's story is Seasons of Colorado (the tag makes sense now doesnt it).

in the starting concepts i wasnt sure if i liked naming her Page Write so for a time she was Page Ryan, but that was extremely short-lived. her original design had more red-brown hair and tanned skin, but i decided against it to embrace being more of a copy-paste self-insert.

she was, at some point, a new kid. she moved from New Hampshire to Colorado in either elementary or junior high. primarily my focus for her story is high school, where she is easily summed up as a tsundere emo tomboy.

fun facts!!:

her middle name is Shirley

she likes witchcraft!!

good friends w/ Stan but when theyre depressed together its like fire and gasoline it only gets worse

has a vendetta against Kyle (hes pretty and shes mad about it)

wants to hate Cartman but just cant?? they probably bond over music and teasing Kyle together

she and Craig are like soulmates but in a sibling way (gosh i wish best friends were real)

friends w/ benefits situationship thing with Kenny?? idk its complicated

has a hard time getting along with the girls, maybe its the repressed femininity

hangs out w/ Tweek a lot, wants to go apeshit and spray-paint highways with him or smth. unhinged partners in crime <3

philosophy & anthropology nerd

active Marsh fam hater :(

is simultaneously scared of & wants to fight Butters' & Kenny's parents

protects Butters like a younger sibling

unironically thinks Clyde is the funniest person on the planet

"if anyone mocks me when i stutter they get punched in mouth no hesitation"

her parents are friends w/ the Broflovskis

did ballet before she moved to South Park

if she ever participated in a sport it would be swimming or ice hockey

sings a LOT

[geasthewritingrat]

Pet Names

Pairings; Leon x reader, Ada x reader, Wesker x reader, Piers x reader (separate) Gender Neutral! I call Leon a little shit in his part but I think that's the only swear word Note; for Leon, Ada, and Wesker I’m going off of the original games from 1996 & 1998, because I personally don’t like the personality changes they made for the remakes, so this may be a little different from other works.

Leon - (pre RE4) Baby Leon is just really sweet idk man he uses a lot of “babe”, “baby”, maybe even “sweetie” or “honey”. (post RE4) I feel like he’d call his S/O a bunch of sickeningly sweet nicknames just to mock all the cliche movie stuff that everyone talks about, but when he’s calm and relaxed he uses softer ones like “love”, or “baby”. Would 100% call his S/O “beloved” unironically. (post RE6) Little shit used “your highness” in a teasing way so much that it became his go-to pet name, even if his S/O hates it. In fact, he’d use it MORE if his S/O hates it, unless they told him seriously to stop.

Ada - (pre RE4) I honestly can’t think of any pet names baby Ada would use? Maybe “darling”? She’s pretty emotionally distant in RE2 so I don’t see her using anything other than her S/O’s name. (post RE4) She’d probably still use “darling”, but maybe “dove” or “honey” too. Honestly she’s more likely to make up a pet name based on her S/O’s actual name or an inside joke. (post RE6) 100% uses “sweetie” and “honey” because at this point she’s more in touch with her feelings and if she wants to be cute with her S/O she’s gonna be cute with her S/O. She may even throw in a “darling” or “dear” to catch them off guard.

Wesker - (pre RE5) Jumping on the “Wesker calls his S/O dearheart” bandwagon, all my bags are packed, I’m fully ready to accept that as canon at this point. Literally only calls them by their actual name when he’s pulling the “I’m not mad, just disappointed” face. (post RE5) In this household, we say no thanks bro to the ending of RE5. He’s living with his S/O, still calling them “dearheart”, but now that he’s not destroying the world anymore he’s calling them other soft things, like “my beloved” and “little dove”.

Piers - (pre RE6) Dog boy arf arf he calls his S/O such sweet things, pretty much every pet name under the sun, but his favourites are “baby”, “sweetheart”, and “hon”. He does also come up with his own sweet little pet names for his S/O, like ones based off of their name or inside jokes, but he never uses them in public because to him they’re more intimate and soft. (post RE6) He can’t call them anything if he’s dead, so lets ignore Chris’ chapter 5. Literally nothing changes he calls them the same pet names as he did before, just now he’s saying them with his face buried in their neck because he doesn’t want them to disappear like his teammates (thanks Chris).

-

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed! Remember to take care of yourself! <3

Masterlist

-

[bomberqueen17]

bearselkie lifestyle accessories

so for various long story reasons involving his grandfather’s pocket knives and being locked in a house for twelve months, my dude recently purchased a pocket knife, and after his normal fashion, this was preceded by excessive research, after which he bought a kind of overengineered example of the genre from a specialty retailer. none of this is crucial to the story, except--

well yesterday in the mail a catalogue came, from and please understand that if i new how to do fancy font effects I would, SMOKY MOUNTAIN KNIFEWORKS.

While dude was cooking dinner-- his specialty, which is to take a hunk of fillet of salmon and pan-sear it to perfection in this stainless steel braising pan we have that has to be heated with the oil in it just right or it’s a sticking nightmare but if you do it just so you get this gorgeous sear and the fish slides right out the pan onto your plate like *chef’s kiss*

anyway I was sitting at the table in the eat-in kitchen chortling like a feral goblin as I leafed through this catalogue.

cut entirely for length, please join me on this ride:

Please understand, though, I wasn’t mocking it at all. I kept saying I need this every page and I was completely unironic. Possibly the best part of all this is that Dude had somehow despite being in an exclusive relationship with me for eighteen years had before this moment never quite realized that I am

super into knives

and have held myself back all this time out of sheer desperate clear-eyed understanding that I am a suburbanite now and it is inappropriate for me to own a machete. But understand that when I was growing up a machete was a perfectly normal thing for a child to possess and even use fairly regularly.

It came out in conversation that dude has never even held a machete, and like, who are we.

anyway. The item I have fixed my beady little eyes upon (after a suitable detour to howl at the tin signs featuring guns and the slogan Curious About Life After Death? Try Trespassing, And Find Out and weeping eagles with slogans about freedom and such, and several with slogans about hunting; I admit those were reactions of a possibly-mocking sort) is this:

it is a mock-abalone-decorated POCKET KNIFE shaped like a LADY’S LEG IN A HIGH HEEL SHOE this is the most amazing thing i have ever seen?????

I am consumed with a passionate need to own this, and yet, I already own a keychain knife and a boxcutter and several other cutting implements. I have no real need of a pocket knife shaped like a lady’s leg in a high heel shoe.

I need it, though, and I’m not even sure why.

But around this moment, like a lightning bolt, it came to me, that this creature, who is now I guess an OC?-- the version of me that is a selkie who is also a bear, who lives in a cabin in the woods with a hot tub on the deck, and who eats salmon by the bucketfull while lounging in her hot tub with her tits out--

the bearselkie would own this knife

and would also have one of those trucker hats with the slogan about women wanting me and fish fearing me

and would own several machetes at the very least, so

IDK that she’s an OC but she’s sort of veered off just being my platonic self-actualized ideal a bit, what with, like, one thing and another, so really maybe she is

anyway, I don’t have a conclusion for this, just take a moment and wistfully imagine this bearselkie in her cute woodscabin with its deck and hot tub, and the cute postal carrier arrives with a package and since this is a better world there’s a moment for the bearselkie to answer the door for her package wearing her hastily thrown-on cargo shorts and an open flannel shirt with nothing under it and the fish fear me trucker hat and she signs for her long-anticipated package and then proceeds to excitedly open it with this in-context incredibly gay lady’s leg-shaped folding knife right before the cute postal carrier’s dazzled eyes, and idk what’s in the package that’s so great but this has veered off into a slightly more pornographic place than I’d intended on going but boy I sure have been kinda isolated and under a lotta stress this past year idk about y’all

but prolly they eventually fuck on the bearskin rug by the fire which is actually the bearselkie’s skin and maybe there’s plot at some point when the cute mail carrier finds out but maybe nobody really questions anything and it’s just hot because let us have nice things.

[friendly-peep]

Which Homestuck characters would read Homestuck and their opinion

idk i’m bored. What’s Homestuck^2? What’s epilogues? We’re strictly Homestuck in this house. Also only doing main characters, I’m not going to dive into the Felt or caparacians, I want this to be done today.

Beta kids:

June: Avid reader. Got in early and read the whole thing. Got shirts, unironically liked it.

Rose: Got in late, but got into it. Loved the tarot deck, uses it to pretend she’s reading while she just tells people their truths. Noticed some narrative issues but overall liked it.

Dave: Got in shortly after June did, read for a while, but his irony poisoning led to him sassing the HECK out of it. Made a diss blog. Kept reading it “ironically” and cannot tell if he actually likes it or not. Got a god tier hoodie he wears at home. Sampled some of the soundtracks for his raps.

Jade: Loved it. LOVED IT. Got the full soundtrack. Made remixes. Got all the shirts. One of the blogs that posted “UPD8!” whenever an update happened. Big fanartist during the Gigapauses.

Beta Guardians:

June’s Dad: Tried to get into it to connect to his daughter’s interest, but the memes were too much, so he became the “Are ya winning, daughter?” dad. Very supportive but would need fifty slow paced “Homestuck explained” videos.

Mom Lalonde: Read it, but was too intoxicated to remember most. She holds obscure knowledge and will remember minute trivia, but don’t ask her about any of the large plot points.

Bro Strider: Too busy being A Mess Of A Human Being to sit down and read.

Poppop Harley: Too busy being A Dang Explorer to sit down and read.

Alpha kids:

Jane: Takes time to read it slowly. Has a blog of theories she constantly updates. Was upset about how some plot points got dropped and underdeveloped.

Roxy: Much like Jade, loved it. While Jade made remixes, Roxy cosplays. She has killer cosplays of most characters. Screamed about updates on twitter. No filter, accidentally drops spoilers left right and center.

Dirk: Deep, DEEP character examinations. Draws diagrams, writes essays. Unironically liked the potential of Paradox Space, may have even submit his own stories to be a guest artist.

Jake: Read the whole thing, liked it, missed many connections and plot points, was satisfied with the ending. Got some merch, can say “I read Homestuck” in public and be blissfully unaware of any positive and negative baggage that comes with saying so.

Alpha Guardians:

Jane’s Dad: Much like June’s Dad, tried to get into it. Unlike June’s Dad, watched and read his daughter’s theories (and Dirk’s explanations when Jane linked them to him) and became A Walking Homestuck Encyclopedia. Jane is unsure how to feel about this. He, however, does not reference it.

Roxy’s Rosemom: Too busy fighting the good fight to read. It’s in her radar but didn’t get the time to read it.

Dirk’s Davedad: Read it as a novelty. Sent Hussie a gold-plated Bad Dragon dildo. Put offhand references to it on his movies, but they were so oblique that even readers didn’t get it.

Jade English: Too busy running her own baking good company to read Homestuck. Not even in her radar.

Alternia Trolls:

Aradia: Much like Dirk, got REAL DEEP into it. Makes youtube vids explaining classpects and narrative points. Actually wrote a dissertation on Homestuck.

Tavros: Tried to get into it, but the first few acts were not to his taste so he never got to the trolls ironically enough. Likes the character designs though.

Sollux: Next level Dave. Critiques the FUQUE out of it on every platform he can. If Hatedom is a thing, he made it. He’s the founder. It’s him. But he read it to the end.

Karkat: Read it, loves it, does some interesting character relationship examinations. Predicted who would end up with who with 100% accuracy. Wasn’t a vocal fan, didn’t get merch, but still liked it.

Nepeta: The shipper who launched a thousand ships. She writes crackfic but with deep care, making sure it makes sense that characters would end up together. Got one of every homestuck shirt. Very into it.

Kanaya: Got into it only because her friends got into it. If Karkat hadn’t talked about it she would not have gotten into it but she did because she wants to be able to carry a conversation with her friends. Not a huge fan.

Terezi: She can and WILL correct you if you get trivia wrong. She did not sit through hours of text-to-speech pesterlogs for some scrub to get it wrong. Defiant Homestuck defender. She’ll cut you if you say you don’t like Homestuck (she won’t, but she’s judging you from the other side of the room)

Vriska: Skipped the first acts and jumped right into Alternia. Little context, little care. Pretends she didn’t, gets facts hilariously wrong which Terezi takes as an invitation to tease her. Fanartist.

Equius: Another fanartist. He made physical media as opposed to drawings. Slow reader, got into it late and didn’t finish until way after the comic had ended. Did not get to experience the comic without Random Paradox Arms all over the place. Loved by the community for his short reaction posts about what happened at the point he’s at.

Gamzee: Either first person to post “Update” when comic updated, or doesn’t read for months and then catches up in two days. Skips many chat logs, but still gets most of the plot no problem. Remembers exact phrasing of the posts he does read though.

Eridan: Another Character Analysis blogger. He dives into (pun unintended) why some characters are The Absolute Worst and writes fanfic of how they would be if they had a chance to be in a different circumstances. The Problematique fan, but only because people assume the worst of him. He’s actually pretty chill.

Feferi: Superfan, and Super Content Creator. Started making plushies and charms and eventually started selling them. Her stuff became a badge of honor and people posted themselves hugging their plushies during the gigapause.

Ancestors:

Too busy caught up in their personal turmoils to read any of it. Except the Condesce. She sent Hussie a diamond-studded Bad Dragon dildo.

Beforus trolls:

Damara: Big fan, but doesn’t express it because of the crowd she’s with. But she has a blog where she tries to get in touch with new readers and is always open to answer questions others might have. Not a Big Name fan, but she’s much more vocal online than in person, and even then it’s through an alt account.

Rufioh: Got people into it, but he himself didn’t finish reading after the Scratch. Said he would but he just never got to doing so.

Mituna: Prone to ranting when updates happened. Very emotionally invested, nearly died when Game Over happened.

Kankri: The nitpicker to end all nitpicks. He critiqued everything, and hated that there were hero mode, simplified and silly drawings. Genuinely disliked all characters for faults that he himself has, yet never self-examined. Got a following that  consisted three-quarters of people who made fun of his rants and one-quarter of people who were as intense as he is.

Meulin: Big, BIG fan. Prolific fanfic writer, if a character pairing exists, rarepair or not, she wrote a fic about them. Likes all characters and as such thinks she must devote roughly the same wordcount for everyone she can. Disappears for months then reemerges with twenty new fics.

Porrim: Moderate fan, great cosplayer. The more complex the outfit, the more she wanted to make it. Routinely goes out in Jade’s Dead Shuffle and Three in the Morning dresses because she is incredibly proud of them.

Latula: Not a big fan. Knows most of what she knows through cultural osmosis because her friends got into it, but she’s not likely to ever read it herself. Likes how into it her friends are though.

Aranea: Much like Jane’s Dad, she’s the walking encyclopedia, except she memorized the content of almost every page, and if she doubts her knowledge, will immediately go to her computer and look up what she is unsure of. Tries not to talk people’s ears off and will only talk about Homestuck when asked about it.

Horuss: Super into it. To a maybe creepy degree. Doesn’t show in public but if you get access to his secret blogs it’s more like character shrines. Don’t dig too deep into it.

Kurloz: Read it, kinda into it, but not that big of a fan. He will talk about it but he’s pretty lukewarm about the whole thing.

Cronus: Read it to impress a crush, got genuinely into it, but isn’t a vocal fan.

Meenah: Didn’t read it, much like Latula learned about it because everyone around her talked about it. Unlike Latula, she mocks everyone for liking something she says is “for nerds”. Still kinda wants to read it to be part of the conversation but her pride of Not Knowing About Homestuck is too great to overcome that hurdle.

[its-my-little-dumpster-fire]

I just want to ask you anything you want to tell me about Benjamin Greene.

Anything? Oof. I’ll start small.

Benjamin Greene has definitely unironically made someone a mixtape.

The real deal. The whole shebang.

Waiting for the right songs to come on the radio, hitting record just before it starts (and getting really upset with himself if he missed the window).

He spent hours on this mixtape, wanting it to be perfect, wanting it to say everything he hadn’t the words for yet in his starving adolescent vocabulary.

Coming up with a title took even longer. Everything was either too boring or too honest or too weird to scratch onto the lined white sticker that sat mocking him between the tape wheels.

After all that? He never gave it to her.

Didn’t have a good reason for it (not that he could actually articulate), but everytime he thought about passing the plastic container to her, he stopped himself.

17 years later, he still has that mix tape. One of the few things he does have from that time of his life.

Doesn’t have a good reason for keeping it (not one he wants to actually articulate). Pulls it out and flips it between long fingers. Runs his thumbs over the exposed teeth of the tape wheel, twisting and rewinding it again and again.

Does it remind him to be brave? Does it remind him to move quicker? Does it remind him to savor the simple things before the world complicates itself to the point of no return until your stomach turns with the desperate longing to just pull the shiny black ribbon from its plastic house and start over fresh?

Idk. Maybe it’s just a tape.

[youngerdrgrey]

okay but shouldn’t we be the epicenter? // a Dear White People fic, part 1

full title: *lionel voice* okay but shouldn’t /we/ be the epicenter of black life on this campus?

chapter title: shouldn’t we be (idk) calling out our friends?

or, a further exploration into these black lives on Winchester’s campus, making my way through the season for further depth and hilarity

/

about: what happens when Defamation ends and Jo pauses in her screaming with her heart still racing to go and get her boy. Or, the time Jo calls out Reggie for letting his jealousy get the best of him on a sacred night.

references include Scandal, Orange is the New Black and the completely unnecessary fucked up death that I will never forgive them for, the 100 and the death that I don’t have an opinion on bc I never watched that show, and casual use of both dicktamized and heedlessly in the same sentence #codeswitching

+ this chapter takes place at the end of episode one; read on ao3?

/

/

Honestly, even the Defamation live tweets coming from AP got interrupted today so people could throw in their two cents about Sam, Reggie, and the white boy coming between them and the movement. And it’s not like Joelle would normally care that much about the gossip. Everyone on campus knows that race relations at Winchester are like the pre-teen child Sam and Reggie adopted just when a group home or juvie were closing in on ‘em. But there’s a difference between the normal talk about Jo’s friends and the talk tonight. Normally it’s just a few direct tweets, but tonight, half her timeline’s subtweets about just whip it out already #nottalkingDefamation or  #loveitwhen bae meets activist!bae for the first time or just a simple *Crazy Eyes voice* swiiirl swirl swiiiirl swirl. So fine, Jo can’t even scroll through her timeline without having to address this, so she needs to address it in person. Even if all she can do is snap at Reggie about growing the fuck up.

She gets out her chair to stalk over to him at his. “You couldn’t wait, could you?”

Reggie peers up at her, still too deep into his feigned nonchalance to lift his legs back off the arm rest. As if she doesn’t deserve the full extent of his energy, or a head to head showdown. Honestly, his mind’s probably still on whatever ‘girl you better watch’ text he just sent Sam about the end of the episode. He flips his phone onto his stomach without even killing the screen.

“Wait for what?”

To whip his fucking dick out and wave it in Gabe’s face. Seriously, what’s with that impulse in guys? Jo’s not out here in booty shorts and bandeaus to prove she’s got more going on than Sam does. (Not that she does. Not that it’s a competition. She’s not competing with her best friend; she’s merely pointing out that she doesn’t have the same need to constantly battle anyone that her crush is into.)

(( Not that it’s much of a competition anyway. Guys always go for girls like Sam, don’t they? Girls who don’t really have to try to summon all the light in the room and can go on without necessarily having to know what it’s like to be black in ‘post-racial’ America. ))

((( Sam knows what it’s like. She knows what her experience is like, anyway, and Jo’s really not trying to get too deep into the whole color-ism of it all. European beauty standards are bullshit and forced on everyone. Jo’s got a banging body that works for a lot of guys who might not want to fully claim her, but she’s not all too interested in guys who unironically use ‘females’ to describe women and call her Queen before they ever even think to ask her name. )))

(((( Wait, what was the point again? ))))

Reggie cocks his head to the side. Assured and righteous as he normally is. But he’s the one in the wrong right now. The one pouncing instead of giving Gabe two seconds to try being in their lives.

“Come on, Reg. He—“ and Reggie groans and rolls his eyes immediately, so Jo just talks louder “—he was here for all of two minutes before you jumped down his throat to make sure everyone in the room could see how down he was.”

Reggie nearly snorts, singing lightly, “‘He ain’t really down.” But it’s Reggie playing those games you do, not Gabe. Reggie throwing his name in the Goblet of Fire for no fucking purpose but to run into the maze and get spat back out for doing it. “Come on. Not even a chuckle? You love old house music.”

She also loves getting to enjoy her hate-watch without being constantly reminded of their stupid relationship drama. “Be serious. I’m not happy either, but you don’t see me picking fights during Defamation.”

He shrugs. “You would if you weren’t so busy snapping at everything Olive does."

“Not everything.” Olive could literally control the whole world if she wanted to, but she keeps on going back to that trash ass president she put in the oval. Plus, the shit they do in there? Five seasons in, there’s probably permanent grooves on the rug that her knees put there. Which, whatever, but it’s been years, and Olive won’t leave someone who’s no good for her. “She needs to wise up, and so do you. Jumping all around the point.”

Reggie sits up so straight his shoulders level out. The steel in his eyes snags the light from the TV while his jaw locks up for a beat. “What’s your point then, Jo?” He asks as if he doesn’t already know.

Everybody on this campus knows how Reggie feels about Sam. Including Sam, on some level; she’s just somehow deluded herself into thinking that Reggie only wants her mind, or her activism, or a partner in the movement. But Reggie’s been into every piece of Sam since she still had a relaxer and shared a room with Coco Conners. He’s been trailing after her since the first time she spoke up in class freshman year, and if Jo has to hear about how Sam was like a blacktivist Hermione Granger one more time, she will Obliviate herself, him, and anyone else who’s had to listen to it. But none of that knowledge changes anything. None of that brings what’s been subtext to the forefront quite like this does.

“Sam brought him here on Defamation night. She’s serious about this.” Serious enough that she didn’t tell either of them. And Jo’s not quite sure if Sam’s ashamed of his whiteness or their unapologetic blackness or maybe just that she got dicktamized into a relationship with the very sort of guy she normally mocks heedlessly, but here they all are. “I mean, we’ve supported her through worse.”

“Like what?”

Like the time she single-handedly tried responding to every single person who justified Poussey’s death in Orange is the New Black, dedicating a whole episode of DWP to debunking its use in the narrative. (It’s still a great episode, complete with gems like, “Dear white people, if you fix your mouth one more time to tell me why Poussey’s death was okay but you’re still crying over Lexa from The 100, I honestly don’t have the time to deal with you.” Top ratings, top notch, though it led to some serious rifts within the LGBTQ community on campus.)

Or the time she dated Troy. She planned yacht trips over rallies and acted like Jo and Reggie were both in the wrong for wondering if everything with them was just some dalliance in danger, like a pre-approved trek through the blackness of Sam’s identity before settling in to a non-confrontational future. But even then, Troy was the heir to respectability at Winchester, the crowned prince of how to be the right kind of negro who everyone can rally behind when something goes south and they wind up dead. He couldn’t so much as choose a cereal without his dad’s approval, so Sam and him were never gonna last. Not at this part of her life anyway.

“Just — Sam’s no Olive, Reg.” She won’t be with Picture Frame Gabe more than a few months, not when his true politics start coming out. He might be ready on paper to be part of this, but nobody understands the work until they’re in it. “She won’t choose some white boy over everything else she cares about.” Sam loves them.

Reggie leans up so his chest meets his knees at the armrest. It puts him at her level for the first time this conversation. He asks her, “You sure about that?"

Sam helped Jo take out her braids the night her Hulu trial ended and all they had were YouTube videos for filler. Sam missed her own midterm for psych last semester to help Reggie study for his midterm in poli sci. (Never mind the fact that Sam’s psych class dropped the lowest midterm score; the girl needed the points with the number of events that she kept scheduling during that class.) Sam’s their girl, for more than the movement and for nothing less than life. And if Jo has to fight against the need to widen her eyes and has to run these memories through her mind to convince herself that all of that still matters, then she’s not going to tell him.

“How can you not be?” she asks. Sam’s not going anywhere, even if Jo has to hold her down herself. Friends don’t let friends fuck the president. (And friends, real friends, tell you if they are, don’t they? Real friends let you in on the stuff they’re ashamed about, or wondering about, because if they don’t talk about it, then it’s not real, and if you’re not the one they go to, then maybe your whole friendship was just one of convenience. Maybe it’s high school all over again and the fact that your friends now are cool black kids instead of cool white ones doesn’t actually make a difference. Maybe you’re nothing more than the Coco of junior year.) “I’ll talk to her. Can you just hold off on vilifying her boy until then?”

Reggie plucks at a thread on the seam of his pants. “‘Her boy.’” He yanks the thread a little too hard, but it doesn’t go anywhere. Just leaves him with his fist clenched in the air over nothing. “He said, ‘it’s not worth it,’ then left.” Back in that fight? Seriously? Reggie glances up at Jo again. “He mean her when he say that?”

Because that’s what actually eats at Reggie, isn’t it? That someone on this planet could see his almighty love Samantha White and think she’s anything less than pure perfection.

“Of course not.” Everyone loves Sam; it’s them that everyone else seems unsure about. Because Reggie’s smart and brilliant, but he’s millitant in a way that can chafe at people who want to just enjoy themselves. And most people don’t know that he’ll talk shit for two seconds about the lives they’re ignoring by binge-watching The Get Down all day but that he’ll give himself over to it just a few minutes later. Or that he hasn’t missed a single night of Defamation since the first time Jo dragged him along after Open Mic let out two seasons ago. “Gabe just meant fighting you wasn’t worth sticking around tonight.” She swats a hand at his knee, batting at him as playfully as she can get. As casually as she can make this right now. “Good thing too. You too damn stubborn to ever stop.”

Reggie grins, but his eyes still have this shade over them. His brow crinkles while his nose scrunches up. He’s probably wondering, is it worth it to keep fighting? Think Sam will ever notice? Think Sam will ever fight for me too? At this point, it’d take an act of either God or the devil to get a reaction out of Sam, and after this blackface party, it sure seems like the devil’s more likely.

Jo swallows that comment down, scans the room to get away from soft eyes that never seem soft just for her. “Now get up. Walk me back to my room.”

He groans, but he pushes up off the chair. Throws his arm around her and tugs her into his side. Her eyes flutter closed, and she gets a whole three seconds of imagining that this could be about them. This could be them. Soft smiles and warm arms wrapped around each other. “You think she’ll ever leave him?” Then he opens his mouth and says that. His voice still comes out a little too heavy. He clears it while she blinks away the three second fantasy. “I mean, the oval’s got to have dents from her knees in the carpet at this point.”

“Oh!” She cackles — quick and bright and like the Defamation flashes are going off inside of her. Olive. Does she think Olive will ever leave the president? Not Sam. They’re finally done talking about Sam. And, okay, seriously, “That’s exactly what I said. Like power to her, get some, but does it have to be with Mr. President?”

“No eyebrows having,” Reggie starts.

“Disrespectful ass,” she continues.

“‘I know what you taste like’ Gerald Grant III.” They shudder together, and if she nestles in closer to his chest on the rest of the walk, they don’t talk about it. Maybe that’s how their little trio works — talk about everything but the big three: how Jo feels about Reggie, how Reggie feels about Sam, and how Sam might not be theirs forever.

Or maybe that’s just post-Defamation overdramatic thinking.

Yeah. (Maybe.) 

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