#oh yeah some messages to the fans of this bracket

[pearlescentmoonshippingbracket]

I don't know if you're aware of this or not already but Pearl has said multiple times that she is incredibly uncomfortable with people shipping her, whether it be her real self or her characters. I know this is supposed to be "for the fans" but personally as a fan I find it kinda gross that people who are supposed to be fans will still purposefully go against boundaries that she's made clear many times over, fully knowing how uncomfortable it makes her. even if you go to the lengths to make it that much more unlikely that she'll see it, you can't guarantee that she won't see and/or hear about it.

I'm going to try to explain my thoughts as succinctly as I can because this is a mentality many people have and I feel like providing the viewpoints of the other side of this discussion is important.

I understand that it is important to respect the boundaries of CCs and to not actively make them uncomfortable. But the thing about boundaries is that it only applies in spaces where we are interacting with the CCs.

Boundaries are set to avoid CCs from coming into contact with uncomfortable situations in their personal spaces where they are interacting with their community. It's there to make sure their environment is comfortable for them.

I haven't mentioned this blog to cc Pearl in any way, shape or form. I haven't entered into her personal spaces to inform her about this bracket, or the fact that people ship her or anything to do with shipping, thus I have abided by her boundaries. Respecting Pearl's boundaries is not mentioning anything about this to her and not invading her spaces.

If you believe that abiding by her boundaries is by not making any of this then I disagree. Because fandom isn't her space. Fandom is a place for the fans. It's in the name, fan-domain. This is a place where fans exist and interact with each other and discuss things related to the creator but it's not for the creator. This isn't a place created for the CCs and the CCs aren't obligated to enter fandom spaces. If they are engaging in fandom spaces it's because they chose to and thus they need to understand that fandom doesn't operate on their rules, because fandom is a shared space and so they don't operate on any rules! Everyone enjoys content differently and it's not up to us to tell other people what's the right and wrong way to enjoy something. Fans shouldn't be expected or forced to make and share things based on what a small handful of people feel comfortable with because in that way it's them invading our personal space.

For example, a person shouldn't be forced to use an ingredient only in the way the manufacturer intended nor should be forced to listen to what a chef thinks is the right way to use it. If they like putting cheetos on a cupcake then they should be allowed to do that, sure some people would find it weird and the creator of cheetos wouldn't have intended it to be used that way but if they enjoy it then they enjoy it and if they post it on their socials saying how much they like it then they should be allowed to do that!

@/codgod's diagram is a good way to visualise this

Pearl does have a Tumblr that she is active on so as a way to prevent Pearl from finding this I don't use #pearlescentmoon for any of the shipping content (polls, propaganda or prizes) which is her main tag that she actively looks through, instead I use alternate side tags which allow people to find stuff related to Pearl while not being seen by her, thus I am not invading her space (I don't just do this with Pearl, if a cc is actively on Tumblr I make sure to only use their side tags). The event is also over which further reduces the chance of her finding it, and if she does find it, she can block this blog.

Blocking this blog will allow Pearl to not have to see any of the content here thus making her space comfortable again, she has every right to block me and shouldn't feel the need to tolerate seeing this blog on her dash. The same applies to you, if you don't like what's on this blog or my response you are more than welcome to block me, you shouldn't force yourself to interact with me if you don't like the space here.

This is also a really good post about this topic

This response isn't me justifying shipping, or me trying to persuade you to agree with me, it's just me showing my personal opinion on this topic. Honestly I expected an ask like this to come at some point and I don't blame you for not understanding why people continue to ship mcyt characters. I actually used to not like mcytshipping too back in the day, but I learned more about the community and realised shipping exists because of love for a CCs content. We see the stories they make and the interactions the characters have with each other and expand upon them. We get curious about what would happen if the characters developed feelings for each other, how would that affect the story, how well do their personalities balance each other, would their relationship be better if they were put in a separate context.

Creating new stories and new dynamics for these characters, and expanding them in ways the original media didn't isn't gross, it's beautiful.

At least that's what I think

[forlorn-crows]

Day two with DewTher where Aether uses his quintessence to have Dew fuck himself with his tail

this came to me in a vision that i had to voice message to @miasmaghoul while i was driving, it was that important

t4t dewther, quintosis + tailfucking edition. cunt/clit/dick/cock used for both of their anatomy

also, if anyone's interested, i've written many more flavors of quintosis if you're looking for a different pairing! hypno is one of my fav kinks so i have many to choose from :3

[aether/rain] [aether/mountain 1] [aether/ifrit] [aether/mountain 2] [aether/swiss] [aether/rain/mountain] [omega/mountain/aether]

kinktober day 2 under the cut!

thanks to @kroas-adtam for the ghostober list!

Dew’s thighs shake where they bracket Aether’s hips. He’s been humping the bigger ghoul for some time now, panting and whining as his fat clit rubs against his own arousal. 

“That’s it baby boy, doing so good riding my cock,” Aether hums, hands tightening around Dew’s sides. “Feeling good?”

“Uh huh,” Dew moans.

“That’s good, that’s very good,” Aether purrs. A telltale zing shoots up Dew’s spine, nearly making him double over. The quintessence is a warm weight on his mind, melting his thoughts like wax and leaving only Aether in its wake.

��C-can I—hah—can I put it in?” Dew groans, bouncing a little in the quintessence ghoul’s lap. “Wanna feel it inside.”

Aether smiles. Rolls his hips to make the little ghoul jolt and gasp. “Of course you can, darling. Need me to fill you up, huh?”

“Yeah,” he whines. His cunt throbs as he hovers over the thick length, standing proud between equally thick folds. Aether smirks and makes it jump towards his stomach, and Dew makes a wretched, needy noise. 

“Fuck, Aethe—” he sinks down without any more preamble, eyes rolling when Aether’s little cock slides into place. 

The quintessence ghoul lets out a pleased rumble. “Fits so perfectly inside you, firefly,” he purrs. He snakes his hands up to the twin silver rings through Dew’s tits, tweaking them once, twice. 

Dew’s stomach jumps with each flick. “Aethe,” he begs again. 

“I can’t do all the work baby boy,” he whispers. “Why don’t you bounce that handsome cunt against me? Lemme feel you throb.”

His words act like a switch, powering Dew into action. His thighs tense of their own accord, his hips lifting just enough to let the head of Aether’s clit catch on the edge of his entrance before falling back down, sheathing him once more.

“Oh Belial,” Dew cries, repeating the motion. 

“There’s a lad,” Aether praises. “Shit, keep going, beautiful.” He tugs on the nipple rings again, making Dew fall forward and plant his hands on Aether’s chest. His eyes flutter again, hands immediately kneading into his soft tits. 

“Yeah yeah yeah,” Dew chants. Little mouthfuls of hot air fan across Aether’s face as the fire ghoul huffs with each bounce, silver hair falling down and tickling against the stubble on his jaw. The quintessence flowing through his body leaves a pretty lilac blush across Dew’s cheeks, one Aether can’t stop staring at as he fucks himself on his cock.

And oh, he suddenly gets a very nasty idea. 

“Dewbug,” he says sweetly, smoothing his calloused hands down his ribs. 

“Mmhhmm,” Dew groans, very much still losing himself in the slide of Aether’s cock in and out of his cunt. 

Aether wraps one hand around to his ass, sliding two thick fingers in between his cheeks and petting at his rim. Dew nearly draws blood with how quickly he digs his fingers into the bigger ghoul’s skin, stuttering in his movements to push back against his fingers instead. A rush of slick dribbles over the digits, and Aether groans.

“Still look a little empty to me,” he mutters. “Could I see you try something for me, baby boy?”

Dew bites his bottom lip and nods fervently, no hesitation. 

“What I want to do,” Aether continues, eyes watching his face for any signs of discomfort, “is lie back and watch you fuck yourself silly.” He presses the tip of one finger inside, just a centimeter or two. Dew moans softly, mouth falling open at the feeling. 

“But I want you to fill yourself up here, too,” the quintessence ghoul whispers. “Want you to take that pretty tail,” he presses in more, “and put it iiinn.” Aether pushes the one digit in up to the third knuckle, curling it down to press towards Dew’s g-spot from the other side. “Just like this.”

“O-oh?” The end of the word pitches up like a question, but Dew’s eyes are closed, eyebrows upturned in pleasure and mouth hanging open to reveal a pretty pink tongue. 

“Right here,” Aether presses again, earning another whine from the fire ghoul. He sends a faint wave of magick right from his fingertip, smiling when Dew arches against him and his tail flicks upwards. 

“Yes, there,” Dew whispers. Aether watches his stomach clench and his clit twitch between his folds. 

He whines when Aether pulls his finger out, but it soon turns to a groan when his own tail takes its place. The leathery spade presses against the ring of muscle, rubbing in slow, deliberate circles. Dew starts to move his hips again, hesitant jerks of his pelvis as he adjusts to the feeling of his tail.

Aether lies back and puts his arms behind his head. He cants his hips upwards, chuckling when Dew grips his tits again to keep from falling forward. “That’s it, firefly,” he encourages. “Lemme see your face when you put it in.”

Dew’s thighs shake as he hovers and nods his head. He fights it from falling as the tip of his tail breeches inside, curling to slide right past that little bit of resistance. The fire ghoul chokes on his own breath, grunting as it nestles within. 

“Fuck,” he wheezes. “Oh fuck, Aethe—how do I—hnn—”

“In and out, darling,” he teases. “Just like my cock. All you have to do is bounce that pretty ass and let your tail do the rest.” 

[jisungscaramel]

voices | changbin

❀ genre; smut, college au, fwb ❀ pairing; changbin x reader (fem) ❀ word count; 1.6k

[warning] explicit sexual content, dirty talk, masturabation, (slight) ownership kink, (mild) dom changbin, phone sex, (which includes imagery of) oral (fem receiving), bondage, spanking, unprotected sex (stay safe y’all), overstimulation, creampie

Your eyes open to darkness, and you groan in utter annoyance - you just hate when this happens. You don’t even wanna know what time it is... but you check anyway, 2:20... am - not the worst. At least you have the opportunity to get some sleep, the slightest chance of closing your eyes to immerse in some obscure dream and certainly not the type of wet fantasy that dared to disturb your beauty rest in the first place.

The universe just loves fucking with the sleep schedule you work hard to keep regulated. But the not-so-random interruption to your slumber in it of itself is the least of your problems; the not-so-subtle throb of your clit is beyond irritating, especially since a certain someone isn’t physically there to help you with it.

Your adjusted vision wraps around the silhouette of the ceiling fan, sharpening in detail as you attempt to scrutinize it, five curved blades, metal brackets reflecting the moonlight, a simple ligh- not that a mundane distraction such as this would do anything to help, valiant effort though.

And then you turn your head to the side, fixing on the space where your phone should be laying on the bed side table.

“Should I call him...?” you ask yourself. You grab the device and go straight to the phone app, aggressively scrolling through your contacts ‘til you see his name: Changbin Seo.

Nothing fancy, nothing personal, it’s a deliberate choice to keep it that way, to stay firmly behind his boundaries, well, the boundaries you’ve assumed of him. In reality, he probably wouldn’t have an issue with you contacting him on a whim - even at this ungodly hour, but the idea still makes you nervous. That’s the prevailing predicament of a friend with benefits - sometimes there are too many boundaries and sometimes there are too few.

‘What if he gets annoyed with me? What if he stops talking to me? What if he thinks I’m crazy?’ The more time you spend in your own head, the more the shadow of your past experiences so rudely loom over you.

‘No, Changbin’s not like that. He’s not like that. He’s not like that. He’s not fucking like that.

‘At the worst, he won’t pick up ‘cause he’s asleep. That’s it. That’s all. Relax.’

Regardless, things would be much easier if he didn’t have to go across the state to be home for winter break.

And instead of making that single tap on the glass of your phone, you put it back down, placing it face down, reaching to open the drawer that lays beneath it. You pull out a little drawstring bag. In the darkness, you open it, unsheathing a silicone vibrator, light pink in the light, but rendered colorless in front of your eyes.

‘I should at least try by myself.’

Committing to your decision, you drown your ears in some dvsn - you gotta do what you can to self engage your senses. But you’d much rather hear his voice, much rather feel it vibrate against your skin, reverberate through your nerves. There’s just something about the way he growls when he goes deep, overwhelming the auricles of your ears in a crescendoing frenzy you can’t even fathom outside the moment, even if you try.

Your eyes close when you turn it on, trying your hardest to picture him in your mind’s eye.

The way he tilts his head back to stare at you, eyes half-lidded in the kind of carnal hunger, it makes you wonder what he’ll do next, body sizzling in desire, like it’s on fire. 

And then, there’s the way he lightly tugs at the corner of his bottom lip, tongue brushing over the reddened skin in a teasing lick, you just want them to dip into your slick, to indulge your clit with quick flicks. He loves to look up at you with a tinge of innocence that so eerily contrasts with the vulgarity of his actions, lips smirking against your heat ‘cause he knows exactly what he’s doing, and he knows exactly how to drive you crazy in the best possible way-

“Fuck!”

Even if your imagination is enough to get you there, it’s not enough to satisfy you; it feels like trying to fulfill a day’s worth of hunger with a measly cup of instant ramen when you know damn well you deserve a three course meal.

You haphazardly throw the toy to the side - you’ll clean it in the morning; it’s just too much effort now.

And here you are again, staring at the dark silhouette of your phone. At this point, the amount of fucks you have to give are rapidly dwindling.

And here you are again, phone shining bright in over your face, Changbin’s name and number apparent on the screen. But before you can actually contemplate the idea that you’ve begun to dub a “last resort,” your phone slips out of your hand, knocking you right on the nose, hitting - you guessed it - his number.

And… now you’re calling him. Of course the universe thinks it’s hilarious to mess with you - when does it not?

“Hello?” There’s a clear groggy sleepiness to his voice - clearly, you’ve woken him up.

Fuck. “Oh sorry, Binnie, did I wake you up?” 

“Hmm yeah,” he pauses, probably to rub his eyes, “what’s up?” As sexy as his gruff voice is, it’s the last thing you can think about, subtle embarrassment delicately wrapping your nerves.

“My bad… you know what? It’s nothing. I’ll let you sleep.”

“No, it’s okay, tell me what’s up,” he requests again.

“It’s nothing, I just…”

“Just what?”

“I miss you…”

“...Miss me where?”

“In…” you tighten your thighs together, “places where I shouldn’t.”

“Oh yeah?” You can hear rustling sheets, as if he’s sitting up, as if his attention’s focusing on you. “What would you want me to do if I was there?”

You bite your lip. “You already know.”

“Tell me.” His voice takes a commanding tone, attempting to bend you into submission even through the phone.

Your fingers trace the skin above your underwear. “God, Changbin, I want you to fucking cripple me.”

It’s simply astonishing as to how clearly his sinister chuckle comes through your line, and it’s all it takes for your hand to slip under the thin cotton covering you. “Damn, chula, I didn’t know you wanted me that bad…” a moan slips from your lips both in response to your actions and his words. “Are you touching yourself?”

“Yeah,” your flustered response sounds in the same pitch.

“Naughty girl. I’m gonna have to punish you next time I see you.”

“What are you gonna do?”

“First, I’m gonna tear your clothes off,” you peel the flimsy sleep shirt off your body, not being able to take the increasing heat radiating from your skin, “and then I’m gonna tie your arms up and bend you over my desk to spank you - one slap for every time you’ve touched yourself while I’ve been gone.”

“Where are you gonna spank me?” A sultry tone edges your words.

“On your ass… your thighs… your pussy, depends on how bad you’ve been.”

“What are you gonna do if I earn my reward?” By now, you’re reaching for the vibrator you so carelessly tossed aside not too long ago.

“I’m gonna throw you on my bed, then I’m gonna force your thighs apart and stretch out your soaking little cunt. I’ll fuck you so deep, you’ll feel me rearranging your insides,” he grunts, “Fuck, I’m so hard just thinking about it.”

“Would you let me cum?”

That evil laugh is back, prolonged in the most tantalizing of ways. “Yeah, but not just once. It’s gonna attack you back to back, until your legs go numb.”

You shudder, eyes rolling back. “What if your roommate tries to interrupt us?”

“I’m gonna fuck you harder to mark my territory.”

“Am I your territory?”

He snickers. “You know that pussy’s mine. All. Mine.”

All you can offer as a response is an array of mewls, your walls desperately tightening against the inanimate object inside you.

“God, you sound so sexy when you moan, you know that?” He grunts, and for a few seconds, no words are exchanged. The only thing you can hear is the rapid rustling of fabric, presumably around his hand movements, and the subtle hisses seeping from his lips.

“Are you naked?” he asks.

“Yeah…”

“Show me.”

You lower your phone to capture the sin you’re committing between your legs with a clear view of your bare body neck down, promptly sending the image to him.

And it’s obvious when he receives it because you hear that low, guttural growl you’re oh so familiar with. “You’re so hot.” His voice is strained. “Fuck, I’m gonna cum… are you close?”

“Yeah… I wish you could cum inside me.”

“I do too. Fuck, you look so gorgeous when your pussy’s swollen, dripping with my cum.”

His voice drops an octave, catalyzing the long overdue release that has been coiling inside you. His name rolls off your tongue in an unexpected increase in volume. The hypothetical fantasy momentarily becomes reality in your mind, simulations inducing tangible pleasure inundating you in waves that you didn’t know were possible in a setting like this; why on earth did you let the frustration marinate for this long?

“Fuck,” he curses.

“What?”

“...I made a mess.”

Your phone vibrates with a message from him - it’s a video... and you have the slightest inkling of what it is.

[star-killer-md]

Actus Reus, Mens Rea

@contesa-lui-alucard asked:

Hey hey happy sleepover my friend!! If it’s alright with you, I have two prompts from the Smut list that I’d love to see you combine for... mob Kylo and lawyer reader! Oh snap!! 15 & 37, if you please. If not, no worries, I still hope you have an awesome sleepover 😁 (“Make it hurt, baby.” + “Lay back and touch yourself. I want to watch.”)

Anon asked:

hello, may i request clingy/possessive kylo,, thank you

Thank you lovlies for your requests and sorry from the bottom of my depressed ass heart that it took me so fucking long. Anyway here ya go, hope you enjoy some mobster Kylo deliciousness. I’m so excited you liked him Contesa, and I hope you’re into it as well too nonny! Sorry it got long, I truly have no control over that. 

And thank you so much to @sacklersdoll for reading over this for me!

Word Count: 4.4k

Warnings: Angst (its me), Smut (its me), mentions of predator/prey dynamic (mostly as metaphor), possessive Kylo Ren, semi-public sex, no pronouns for the reader by they are afab, dominant Kylo Ren, some brat vibes, Kylo Ren is not nice, allusions to guns, some sorta stalking behavior

Ship: Mob Boss!Kylo Ren x Lawyer!Reader

Summary: You’ve started to take on some pro bono clients as a favor to a friend and Kylo Ren is Not A Fan™ of all the attention this guy has been paying you. After a few months of consulting on the side, you’re beginning to wonder if life working for a mob boss is something you’re really cut out for. Though you quickly learn that you very well may have passed the point of no return when Kylo shows up at your office to remind you just who exactly you work for. 

“I really can’t thank you enough.”

You shook the woman’s hands and returned her smile. Her son stayed quiet, looking at the ground, but mumbled his thanks as well. He was a good kid. Just pissed off the wrong neighbor. One of those ‘get off my lawn,’ ‘good ole American dream’ types who thought welfare was a sign of the devil, and had it out for everyone in the lower tax brackets. 

“Really, it’s no problem,” you walked them to the door, leaving her your business card. “I’ll see you both at the courthouse on Monday.” 

Evan was waiting in your office when you returned. His patent leather shoes rested precariously on the corner of your desk and you knocked them off with a huff. 

“See you’ve made yourself at home,” you said, crossing your arms and staring down at him in your chair. 

He shrugged and stood under your scrutiny, moving around to take the seat across from you. Evan Goodman was an old friend from undergrad. You often got the impression he was still that same cocky frat boy in the head. Still flashed the ‘my daddy has more money than you’ smile on occasion when he really wanted to get under your skin. With his slicked back hair, unnervingly straight teeth, and his annoying prosperity despite never putting in much effort it was somewhat shocking the two still spoke. He was simply not the type of person who had ever needed to try. Success came naturally to him, and much to your dismay.

“What can I say? You’re a very gracious host,” he mused and leaned forward on the desk. “So, how did it go?”

You sighed, “They’ll be alright, might get saddled with a fine but the charges aren’t that serious.” 

“Good, Rosa’s an old friend. I would have helped her out myself, but not really my deal ya know?”

“Yeah, Mr. Tax Attorney, I get it.” 

Evan was kind of a dick, but he was also the kind of friend who would sit on the bathroom floor with you, hold your hair back and sing horrendous parody versions of ABBA no matter who heard. So you couldn’t hate him entirely. That also meant that when he came to you with cases like this, a favor for a friend or whatever the situation may be, you had a hard time refusing. 

It was also a convenient front for you not-so-legal legal work you’d been invested in for the past few months.

“Seriously, I know I’ve been asking a lot of you recently,” he flashed you that god awful grin and kicked his feet up again. “You can tell me to fuck off if it’s too much.” 

He had been coming to you for pro bono work with increasing frequency, especially over the past month or so, but again, you didn’t wholly mind it. You went into this kind of work for a reason. Though, you were starting to get the feeling that a certain, brooding, less than lawfully abiding businessman did not feel the same. 

Kylo Ren dealt frequently with the shady, black market underbelly of capitalist society, but you were less accustomed to his world and not completely ready to throw yourself to the hounds just yet.

You had already missed more than a few meetings and canceled on dinner tonight to meet with Rosa. To be fair, it wasn’t as if he’d made any indication this ill-defined whatever-it-was going on between the two of you was anything serious. And you were only his consultant, for now, so this took precedent anyway. At least that’s what you tried to convince yourself of. Definitely not a way to avoid thinking about fucking your boss who also happened to be in with the mob. 

Definitely not.  

“I wouldn’t have agreed to help if I couldn’t manage it,” you yawned softly and stood to collect your things. 

It was late and you were beginning to fantasize about how soft and warm your sheets would be. If you got back in time you could pop them in the dryer and get in an episode or two before bed. 

“Hey, let me at least buy you dinner or something since I kept you out so late,” Evan parked his skinny frame in your path to the doorway. 

“You’re going to apologize for keeping me out late, by keeping me out even later?”

“Do you want free food or not?”

Pursing your lips, you stared at him for a few moments. He really did know all your weaknesses. You had skipped out on meeting with Mr. Ren—or Kylo or sir or whatever the hell you were supposed to call him now—already tonight, however, Evan was sure to take you somewhere nice and it wouldn’t be so morally repugnant if it was just as a ‘thank you….’

“Okay, fine,” you conceded and let him lead you out to the parking garage, locking the office up behind you. 

***

The next morning you stumbled past reception in a haze. Both from lack of sleep, and the bitingly cold winds battering your building despite the neighboring high rises blocking the brunt of the gale. The young woman at the desk informed you tersely that a Mr. Goodman was already waiting for you in your office and that you should really get here on time if you were expecting clients this early. 

You agreed that, yes you probably should but, you know, “trains and all that mess,” and tried not to judge her too harshly. After all, she was the barrier between you and the hundreds of calls this place received daily. 

Before slipping through the door with your name plate, you hung your coat on the rack and switched your phone on. It’d died on you last night amidst the allure of fancy, late night dinner and your sleep deprivation riddled brain had not cared enough to plug it in before bed. Fuck Amazon, but thank god for its speedy delivery of portable charges. 

You chewed your lip as the lock screen came to life. One missed call and a text. Both, of course from the most anxiety inducing sender, Kylo Ren. Because why would it be anyone else? His name menacing even typed out in standard black font. 

The text read:

Meet me at 8am.

It was very much like him—a command with punctuation and absolutely no details. The message receipt showed it was sent two hours ago, and it was already half past eight. Shit. Your fingers shook as you pulled up his contact and called. Every interaction left you coursing with adrenaline. Even now, miles away listening to the dial tone was nerve-wracking. Your heart pounded, hands slick in their grip on your phone. Maybe it was because you were never sure where you stood with him. Maybe it was because he was handsome and he knew it. Strong and he knew it. Intimidating and mysterious and closer in some ways to a Greek god than a man. He was all encompassing, and filled every available space in any room he occupied. 

Sometimes you thought you might choke on his presence. 

It rang once, twice, three times before cutting out completely. You stared down at the blank screen, biting your lip and shooting off a quick text. You were sorry, something important had come up, you would meet him the second it was convenient. 

Evan slapped you heartily on the back when you came into the room. He was holding a bouquet of flowers, evergreen with small white blossoms. 

“So, how many hours did you manage last night?” he asked, smiling his shit eating smile and seemingly unaffected despite the fact that he had to be running on just as little sleep as you.  

“I’m not even sure at this point,” you groaned as you tossed your bags down behind the little metal desk. “Time ceases to exist when you take trains past midnight.”

“Fair enough. Hey look,” Evan waved the greenery in your face, “courtesy of Rosa’s shop. She insisted I bring you something as thanks. I figured you could put them out in the front or something to brighten things up.” 

“They’re lovely. Please tell me you’re only here as a glorified delivery boy.”

His shoulders slumped at your lack of amusement, but before he could quip back the landline in your office rang. You answered, holding a finger towards Evan and leaning against the edge of the desk. It was the receptionist, Jess was her name? Maybe? You could never remember, someone else always addressed the holiday gift cards anyway. 

“There’s someone here to see you at the front desk,” she clipped, almost more exasperated than before. 

You told her you’d be right there and hung up. Evan grabbed his coat as you headed out, holding the door for you and following into the hall. 

“I’ll leave you to it if you’re busy, but give me a call after Monday and tell me how it goes,” he continued rambling as you came out into the front.

You had a smart comeback prepared, something about how simple the case was, he should have more faith in you, he was the reason you were busy in the first place, etc…but every word turned to ashes on your tongue when you saw him. 

Kylo Ren, standing right there at the desk and glaring at your receptionist. His suit was dark blue and ironed to perfection. Each leg was creased perfectly down the front and the jacket sat flawlessly on his wide set shoulders. He was a wall of unimaginably expensive fabric and what looked concerning like barely contained rage. You could see it in the twitch of his eye, the set of his jaw, and in the way his gaze landed on you the second you walked in. 

The way a predator immediately hones in on its prey. 

You froze just feet from him in the lobby, floundering like a fish on a hook. 

Evan, for his part, seemed not to notice the tension at all and continued to say his long winded goodbyes, placing the flowers in your hands and completely unaware of the slow, measured tightening of Kylo’s massive hands into fists at his side. 

“I’m free on Monday evening so we should—” 

“She’ll be busy.” 

Evan frowned, turning to face the man standing before him, “Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” Kylo’s voice was a dark thing, low and rumbling, “She will be otherwise occupied.” 

His words were punctuated by a step towards you, one paw of a hand easily gripping your entire jaw. Lucky he did too, otherwise it would have dropped straight to the floor when he shot one last cobra strike glare in Evan’s direction, and pressed his mouth to yours. Right there. In the lobby. For everyone to see.  

The absolute bastard.

His lips were pillow plump and softer than the silk lining of his suit—and even through the surge of shock and embarrassment and more than a touch of anger—you felt your heart throb at the way he licked into your mouth. 

The flowers tumbled from your hands onto the floor as everything in you went limp under his touch. This was nowhere near the first time you’d tasted him, but it was like this every time. Like drinking ambrosia. An otherworldly experience. 

But that didn’t stop the sharp pain of his crushing grip on your arm, the way he nearly lifted your feet off the floor when he pulled away to drag along behind him. You could hear Evan spluttering in the hall behind you, the receptionist going back to clacking at her keyboard as if nothing had happened. 

When Kylo opened your office door he just about threw you inside. You tripped as he tipped you in, stumbling and catching yourself on the edge of your desk. The power behind his hand alone was undeniable. You shuddered at the thought of the array of purple fingerprints he would leave behind. It made your mouth dry and your heart sink. Confusing and delicious. 

And left you seething nonetheless. 

“What the fuck was that?!” you were not calm, so you didn’t attempt any semblance of it. 

“You didn’t answer me,” he said, level as he always was. 

The quiet before the storm and all that. 

“About the meeting? I tried to call, my phone died—”

“Because you were out catching trains at all hours of the night, I’m aware.” 

You paused, glaring at the wall of muscle between you and the door, “How did you know that?”

“So you’re not denying it?”

Kylo stalked towards you like a beast in his tailored suit and polished leather shoes like talons. You could hear your heartbeat, hear the blood rushing in your ears. Just like a rabbit in the sightline of a hawk, you were clearly being hunted. 

“Why would I deny something I’m not trying to hide?” your voice came out horse as he caged you between the desk and his chest, arms on either side to block any route of escape. 

“No you are certainly not adept at subtlety,” he said and you couldn’t take your eyes off the way his tongue moved behind his teeth. “This is the fifth time that idiot in the hall has distracted you from work.”

“That’s not an answer,” you tried to spit the words but his eyes were boring into you. The honey of them spilled down your spine and made you shiver. “How did you know? You are not entitled to any information pertaining to my personal life, regardless.” 

“Watch your mouth,” he growled. “Entitlement has no part in this.”

You were entering dangerous territory, though stopping curiously did not occur to you.

“I don’t think you have the right to be throwing out commands right now, not after that display.”

“Have you forgotten who you work for?” Kylo hissed at you, hands wrapped around the metal of your desk so hard you thought it might warp under his fingers. 

“Of course not,” you desperately tried to keep your voice down lest anyone get even more a spectacle. 

“Then what is this?” one hand left the desk and pulled a phone from inside his jacket. 

The screen lit up, and you looked in horror at pictures of yourself. Pictures of yourself from last night. Pictures of yourself from last night at dinner with Evan, interspersed with shots of you crossing the street, waiting on the train platform, and stumbling back into your apartment. Each was clearer than you’d expected, presumably from some insanely expensive surveillance equipment. You had been out for hours, and you had been watched the whole time. 

You narrowed your eyes, flicking back and forth between Kylo’s face—the graceful bridge of his nose pointed down at you—and gaped. 

“You had me followed…” you breathed the words into the slowly shrinking space between your bodies. 

He simply nodded, as if, somehow, you were foolish for not having considered this before. Perhaps you were. Perhaps you had no idea what you had gotten yourself into. Perhaps you had signed on for much more than a paycheck when you agreed to work for Kylo Ren. 

“I can’t have my employees getting distracted.”

Kylo slowly drifted ever closer, shoulders bent so he was eye level with you. He pressed further into the desk, pinning you between his body and the hard surface that bit into your ass. Something long and thick and hard nudged your thigh. 

“I don’t know why you though having me followed was necessary—” 

“You’re an arrogant little slut who needs to be reminded of your priorities,” his hand snatched your leg and wrenched it open so he could stand between them, “ I am not something you do on the side.” 

You could hear the way his teeth grit out the words, the way they formed as a growl deep in his beast’s throat. The hand still settled on the desk, skimmed up your hip and chest, his fingers 

biting into your jaw. 

“Do you understand me?”

Your lips were shut tight in a thin line, eyes wide and staring up like the prey you were. The silence only provoked him more. Snarling, two thick fingers wrenched your mouth open, pressing hard on your tongue and making you gag around them. 

“Answer.” 

Kylo Ren almost always spoke in commands. Having power did that to people, and rarely did it ever compel you, but his words sunk deep into your bones. Dredged up some dark, instinctual need to obey. To submit to this show of control. 

“Yes,” you mumbled around his fingers in your mouth, drool slipping past your lips when they moved. 

“Yes, what?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

You watched him suck his teeth, grabbing your face tighter and dragging you close so he could spit directly into your open mouth. He slammed your jaw shut, nearly taking off the tip of your tongue and hissed into your ear. 

“Swallow.” 

Again, you did without a thought. And it was disgusting, but invigorating, sent off some spark in your stomach with how easily he bent your body to his will. There was no man like him, you decided. And maybe this was simply because Kylo Ren was not a man. That term alone would never do him justice. 

In one shockingly smooth motion, you found yourself flat on your back, ass hanging off the edge of the desk with his hands on your hips. He ground himself against you, the throbbing of his cock evident even through the layers of clothing. That feeling on its own had you soaked through, thighs sticking with liquid excitement. 

“Remember who you work for,” he growled into your neck, licking a long stripe up your throat and sucking at the exposed skin. 

But it was very clear to you what he really meant. 

Remember who you belong to. 

You slapped a hand over your mouth as he bit down on the skin just above your shoulder, laving his tongue over the stinging flesh. Kylo pulled back, frowning down at you and yanking the hand away from your face. One held both your wrists in a vice lock while the other ripped your panties straight down your legs and left the dripping fabric discarded on the carpet. 

“No, they’re going to hear you,” he grunted, and pulled one of your hands down, pressing it to your slit and running your fingers through your slick. “Go on, touch your fucking pussy and let them know what a little whore you are for me.” 

It was something about his voice. Something in the way it left him, its timbre, its wonder, unquestioning. You could never refuse him. 

So, with a small nod you parted your folds, head resting on a stack of files as you drew slow circles around your clit with a shaky hand. His eyes never left your cunt, tracing the movement of your finger and the trail of wetness that seeped from you to the desktop. Softly, you gasped as the familiar placement of your fingers made you clench and arch up. Kylo’s rubbed small circles into your inner thighs with his thumbs, kneading the flesh there. 

When the spark was there, the lovely pulsing in your nerves alight, you dipped down, teasing and slipping inside, grinding down as best you could on your hand. It wasn’t enough, but nothing ever was since you’d been ripped open on Kylo’s cock. 

Evidently he did not find your work sufficient either. 

Another finger joined yours, stroking your lips and circling your entrance. His touch made you whine, the promise of hands that were not your own never ceasing to illicit a new gush of pleasure. 

“I said,” he murmured, his touch so terribly feather light. “Let them hear you.” 

He was like a gunshot, sudden and forceful and almost instantly had you screaming. Kylo slammed his fingers into you, so full and so deep, curling hard against that lovely spot inside. 

“Kylo, god, please—” you moaned long and low, your face burning with the knowledge that the walls were barely thick enough to keep your phone calls private, much less the shameful noises he pulled from you. 

“What was that?” he panted, adding another finger and pumping them deep into your cunt. “You can do better.” 

Your teeth dug so hard into your lip you thought it might bleed, but you couldn’t take much more. The ledge was approaching—Kylo Ren knew it—and he was determined to push you straight into the fire. 

You choked when his deliciously thick fingers were ripped from you, walls fluttering around the awful emptiness. Your head lolled back as you listened to him work the buckle of his belt and slacks open, and when you did glance down your mouth watered at the sight. Kylo—impossibly long cock throbbing in his hand—stood between your legs, stroking himself from root to tip. You watched little pearls of precum bead at the head while his thumb swiped across to smear them along his length. 

“You are insane,” you hissed through gritted teeth. 

Did you need to keep this position? No, technically you would be more than well off on the salary Mr. Ren so graciously provided. However, you could not mentally deal with being terminated for getting dicked in your office during work hours. 

Kylo smirked, the edge of his perfect cupid’s bow cocked back and aimed straight at your chest. Without warning, he sunk into you, straight to the hilt and threw his head back as you sobbed with the sharp sting of being split in two on his cock. 

“This is what you do,” he growled into your ear, hands on either side of your head as he worked his length back out only to pound into you again. “You work for me and you take my cock and don’t ever fucking forget that.”  

Your legs were wound so tightly around his waist that had he been any other man, his ribs would have cracked under the pressure. His hair, falling in black, satin waves, was gorgeous even in the sterile office lighting. You threaded your fingers into it at the roots and held him while your body rocked against the desk. It’s metal surface pinched at your sink and made your back ache, though that was nothing compared to the burn of Kylo’s thrusts, sliding against your walls. You felt him in your throat. You always did. That was simply the way things were with him. He filled you painfully, thoroughly, took over all of your senses until it was just him. 

And, strangely, it was the most alive you’d ever felt. 

He was unlike anyone you’d ever known.

You couldn’t scream for him, but you could still let him taste the desperation, the willingness in your body to mold against him. So you kissed him, dragged him by the hair to meet your lips and licked past his teeth, gasping and moaning on his tongue as you sucked it hard and cried into his mouth. 

And he drank you down, picking up a punishing rhythm and breaking blood vessels where his hands gripped your hips. One drifted lower, thumb pressing down hard on your clit as your cunt clenched around his length. The desk was lifting off the ground with every thrust, the room filled with the wet sounds of your bodies and you were quickly melting under him. 

Warmth was spreading, growing, building out from your pussy, igniting in your veins. He was right. This is what you did. This is what he did to you. This toe curling, lip biting, bone shattering kind of pleasure. 

Oh you were so royally fucked. 

“I—oh shit—Kylo I’m,” you pulled back just enough to pant out a warning before the wave took you. 

So hot, it washed over your skin and made your legs shake and your hands leave his hair to dig your nails into his chest through the crisp white button down he wore. 

“Feel that?” he grunted as you convulsed and shuddered under him, “Feel how this pussy was made for me.” 

You nodded, buried your face in his neck and held on as he worked you through your climax and straight into his own. Once, twice he ground his cock deep in you, feeling how tight you were around him until he was spent and spilling hot, thick ropes of cum that coated your walls and dripped out around his length. 

He panted, lazily rolling his hips, fucking you slowly until finally, he came to a halt with his softening cock still sheathed inside you. Seconds past, or maybe hours, you couldn’t tell. Kylo tended to have that effect on you. Time slipped away so easily in his presence, like there was never enough of it. 

When he did pull away, you stayed with your back firmly planted amidst the mess of scattered paperwork and manila envelopes. He rose to his full, towering height and tucked himself away, straightening the wrinkles in his suit and eyeing you only once from the side. You admired his profile, you never understood until now what the meaning of the word “regal” truly was. 

Under the dictionary definition, his picture surely would be there, staring at you down the bridge of his marble carved nose. 

You sat up on your elbows as he stalked towards the door. 

“Was that all you came for?”

Kylo paused, broad back still facing you and leaving the room feeling irrevocably empty with just the intention of his absence. 

“We’ll reschedule for five tonight,” he said, filling the door frame completely. “Don’t be late.” 

The door clicked shut behind him and the sound of it made you collapse back onto the desktop. You laid there for a moment, leaking your combined spend and aching. The throb of him settled in your muscles and festered. But the worst part was the other ache, the pain of being without. And maybe you had been a bit avoidant. Maybe this work really was so you didn’t have to see him. Because if you saw him you’d end up fucking him—which was fine, which was good, which was great actually—but then he would leave. And you couldn’t decide which wanting was worse. The wanting before or the wanting after. 

Maybe it didn’t matter. 

You had more important things to think about anyway. Like securing the receptionist an incredibly large holiday bonus, assuming you still had a job here at the end of the day. 

Maybe that didn’t matter either. 

It might be high time you made a commitment to whatever the hell kind of mess you’d stumbled into. Kylo Ren was an enigma in the best kind of way. Maybe you should stop running from it. 

[everybodyscupoftea]

fbgm (fuck bitches get money)

pike jj x reader (plus: cody and tyler)

five times you text cody and tyler plus one time they text you

this is the origin story of you meeting cody and tyler + getting to know them, all taking place over the span of freshman year

(warnings: cursing)

One

You and JJ had been in the library for over 12 hours and were running on coffee and protein bars. He was laying on his back, laptop on his chest, asleep, and you were on your stomach, flipping through your highlighted notes to find the exact quote you wanted to use in your paper.

His stomach growled loudly and jolted him awake with a groan. Shoving his laptop to the side, JJ stretched before saying, “We need actual food. I can call some friends to bring us some Jimmy John’s if you’re down.”

“Fuck, that sounds fantastic right now.”

“Sweet. I’ll add you to our group message and you can send your order.”

Your body went cold for a second, “Wait, what? Why can’t I just type in your phone.”

“I need to look at the menu, just send them yourself.”

Mouth gaping for a few seconds, you protested, “I don’t know your friends. Isn’t that weird?”

“Nah, they’re cool dudes,” he reassured just as texts starting pouring onto your screen.

Maybank who the fuck is this number

Oh is it the hot girl from your English class. Right on dude

Dumbass she can fucking see this.

JJ we can just add whoever we want whenever now

Shut the fuck up and be nice, you’re the reason we don’t have any girl friends

Speak for yourself dickhead

JJ gave you an apologetic smile and said, “Well, at least you can order your food now.”

You sighed and typed your order out, thumb hesitating over the send button. Looking over at him, you asked, “Can you send something first, I feel weird.”

He gave you a look, “Dude, just send it.” So you did.

When the boys showed up thirty minutes later with the food, you could’ve kissed one of them from how hungry you were. The taller one dropped down next to you and held his fist up, “Nice to meet you officially, I’m Cody.”

You bumped it and the other guy handed you the food, “I’m Tyler, your savior, because Cody managed to misread your order, but I made sure they got it right.”

“Nice to meet you guys, thanks for the food.”

You thought they’d leave, but they stayed, fucking around on their phones for a while until JJ got up to leave. They all bid you goodbye and Cody winked, “Text me anytime.”

Two

JJ was driving the two of you to a basketball game and he swore under his breath. You looked up from your phone as he dug through his wallet. After a few seconds, the light turned green, and he told you, “Hey, text Cody and Tyler and tell them to bring me my Student ID please.”

“You text them,” you said, not really wanting to. You’d had the message on mute because they sent a lot, and you never had anything to add, so you left it alone. You didn’t really want to open it and see what they’d been talking about.

He gave you an exasperated look at the next red light, “I’m driving, plus you have their numbers.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know them.”

“And whose fault is that? That’s why were all going to hang out at the game.”

You sighed and sent it, not happily by any means.

Can someone grab JJ’s ID out of his booksack

Sure thing, tell him he owes me a milkshake for having to climb the fucking stairs

His phone lit up and he nodded, “See, not so bad was it?”

JJ told you Tyler was a huge basketball fan (specifically the Sixers), and he had Opinions on your school’s team. He bounced over to you when they parked next to JJ, “I hear you’re a basketball girl.”

“Something like that,” you huffed out a laugh.

“Look, neither of those chumps respect it, and I need you to know that we will be doing March Madness brackets this year.”

“Brackets are fun,” you agreed, “can’t wait to wipe the floor with you.”

“Oh, you’re looking to get beat, huh?”

“I never lose,” you told him confidently.

He smirked, “We’ll see about that one. I don’t know who you’ve been playing, but you’ve got competition this year.”

The game was fun. Normally you’d have sat next to JJ, but Tyler let you sit on the end and sat on the other side. He talked your ear off about player stats and made jokes about the other players which had you laughing hard enough to get JJ’s attention. JJ leaned around Tyler to ask, “You good over there?”

“Better than Notre Dame, that’s for damn sure.”

“Oh shit!” Tyler said, giving you a fist bump. JJ winked at you and you felt a lot better after the game, finally feeling like you could get to know at least one of those guys.

The next basketball game you went to was with Tyler. He wanted to go see the Duke versus UNC game, and the two of you got there early waiting in line with your student ID’s to get a bracelet and get in. Tyler was wearing a t-shirt with “In Zion We Trust” written across the chest, and he was Hyped.

“Take a picture with me so I can put it on twitter. I need Zion to follow me before he gets drafted.”

You agreed with a laugh and he handed his phone to the person standing behind y’all to take the picture. It came out nice. He smiled at it, “Sweet. Now I’ve got the pretty girl trap to get that athlete follow. You’re a great wingman.”

“Thanks,” you deadpanned.

He smiled, “Feels good to have a basketball friend. We’re going to have to drive to Charlotte when the Sixers come to town.”

Three

You slumped over on your bed and JJ looked over at you, “What’s wrong now?”

“I’m fucked. This stupid fucking theatre class. I didn’t buy the book and now I need it and I don’t know anyone in that class and I can’t afford it all in one sitting.”

JJ furrowed his eyebrows, “Wait, Intro to Theatre?”

“Yeah, do you have the book?” you asked hopefully.

He shook his head, “No, sorry, but isn’t Cody in your class?”

“What?”

“Yeah, if it’s Tuesday and Thursday at 9:30 Cody is in that class.”

You searched your memory, trying to remember seeing him at any point in the semester. He could’ve definitely set at the top and you wouldn’t know because you always sat about halfway up, not wanting to climb all those stairs to the top of the auditorium.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him there.”

JJ snorted, “Okay well I never said he actually went to class. Text him though, because I’m sure he’d be down split textbook costs and just share the e-book.”

“Can you do it?”

“You’re an adult. Plus, you’ve sent stuff in the group, I thought you were okay now?”

“I was drunk!”

“Text the group if you aren’t comfortable enough to text Cody separately. Your grade is more important than your strange aversion to texting my friends.”

You rolled your eyes, but he was right.

Cody are you in theatre 161 on Tuesday and Thursday morning?

Yeah ugh pls don’t bring it up

Did you get the textbook?

Okay I guess we’re bringing it up…no I did not

We have questions from the end of chapter 5 due online, do you wanna just split the book for the rest of the semester? Rent it online or something?

Wait we have homework in that class

JJ laughed loudly where he was reading the conversation next to you and you sighed, trying to not throw your phone across the room. You looked at JJ, “Your friends are idiots.”

“Careful, bud, you sound a little fond.”

We have homework every week and a quiz every other week…

Oh fuck, you think it’s too late for me to come back from this?

I think there’s a bonus essay for 30 points which might help some?

Let’s split the book.

Venmo me.

You rented the book and sent him a link before settling down to do your own homework, and you felt better about reaching out if you needed homework help again.

It didn’t really come up between the two of you again until he texted you one Wednesday afternoon out of the blue asking what night you were going to see Arcadia for class. You had a ticket for the Friday night showing, and after about 30 minutes, he texted you again that he’d cancelled his plans and gotten one too.

The two of you met for dinner and walked to the theater near the caf together. He was talkative, “I did some research on this play and I actually read the chapter on how to take notes on plays, so I have my tiny notebook and I’m ready.”

“I saw Arcadia with my sister a while back, so I kind of know what’s going on, and I can help if you need,” you said, holding your own tiny notebook.

“For sure. Might should get together to write our papers, that’s going to be what fucks me. If you don’t mind meeting tomorrow at 11, I’ll bring coffee and we’ll knock it out.”

“Sounds great.”

You weren’t sure how good of a theatre buddy Cody was going to be, but you clearly underestimated him. He laughed at the right time, turned his phone off and not just on silent, and didn’t even get up once besides during intermission.

Cody walked you back to your dorm at midnight, when it finally ended, and before you could get inside called out, “Text me your coffee order for tomorrow, I’ll run by Dunkin.”

Four

JJ said he might be at his dorm when you got there, but when you texted him to come let you up, you got no answer. After pacing a few minutes outside, you decided it was too cold for that shit, so you bit the bullet and texted in the group.

I’m supposed to meet JJ, can anyone let me in the dorm?

It didn’t take long for someone to get back to you. Tyler responded after a few seconds.

Fuck dude, are you outside? I’m coming down.

You were practically shivering when he shoved the door open, and he pulled you inside. The RA sitting at the desk didn’t even look up when the two of you passed and he shook his head, “Man, where the fuck is Maybank?”

“Not sure, was going to ask you the same question.”

Tyler swiped to unlock the door and you saw Cody coming out of the toilet area. He brightened, “Yo, long time no see. What are you doing here?”

“Supposed to be hanging out with JJ tonight,” you muttered, checking your phone again.

Cody shrugged, “Come watch Great British Baking Show with me and Tyler. We have popcorn.”

It was warm and you liked GBBS, so you nodded and kicked your shoes off to follow them into their room. JJ didn’t get back for another hour, and by the time he got there, the three of you had ordered pizzas, started another episode, and were laying on Cody’s bed which was closest to the TV.

JJ stood in the doorway, “What’s going on guys?”

“Where have you been?” Tyler asked, tone accusatory.

“I-“ JJ was caught off guard, “got some dinner with friends.”

“Good thing we ordered pizza then,” you laughed, not too upset that he’d forgotten. JJ had the tendency to do shit like that.

“Fuck,” JJ sighed, “I’m so sorry.”

“All good. Glad your roommates are ten times more clutch than you.”

JJ rolled his eyes as the other boys preened and held their fists out for you to bump.

Five

Changing a flat tire isn’t that hard. Changing a flat tire and realizing halfway through that you don’t have a spare is hard. You could’ve fucking cried looking at the empty compartment that the spare usually sat, and you almost did, but last minute pulled your phone out to text the boys.

Anyone free for the next like 45 minutes to an hour to take me to get a spare tire

No

Before you could send anything else.

Jk we’ll come get you

So, you decided to sit on the curb and wait. Tyler’s truck pulled up and you hopped up, grabbing your wallet and keys. Cody hopped out the other side, put the tire in the tailgate, and climbed in the back, leaving the front open for you.

Tyler cranked up the music as soon as you shut the door and tore out of the parking lot before you could even buckle up. You thought Cody was being nice letting you get the passenger seat, but you later found out he just wanted to sit behind Tyler because, “The driver always protects his side first.”

You held on to the door as he whipped into the AutoZone parking lot and got out of the car as fast as possible as soon as he parked. Cody was laughing as you sagged against the car, head spinning, and he clapped a hand down on your shoulder, “Bet you wish you’d have just taken an uber.”

“I wish JJ had answered my text.”

Cody and Tyler followed you into the store to ask someone to repair your tire. Tyler leaned against the counter next to you and Cody scrolled through something on his phone while you talked to the guy who clearly wasn’t taking you very seriously.

You huffed, getting Tyler’s attention, and he looked up from his hands, “What’s up?”

Before you could say anything, the man cut in, “I don’t think she knows what she wants.”

Tyler furrowed his eyebrows and nudged Cody before responding, “What do you mean?”

“She just needs to get a new tire.”

“We brought the tire, just look at it because she thinks it can be repaired,” Tyler defended, crossing his arms.

Cody moved to stand on the other side of you, “Why can’t you just look at it?”

“If you buy a new tire, we’ll send someone back to your car with you to put it on.”

“I can put it on myself,” you responded indignantly.

Tyler squeezed your shoulder, “I can’t change a tire, but she can. Show some respect and just give her what she’s asking for, man.”

The worker rolled his eyes but did as Tyler said, and your heart swelled a little bit with fondness at these two guys who you didn’t know all that well standing up for you. Throwing your arms over their shoulders, you squeezed them closer, “My heroes.”

Cody shrugged, “Now we know who to call if we need a tire changed.”

Plus One

You slept in one Saturday, finally happy to be through with a busy week, and when you woke up had over 50 texts from Cody and Tyler asking to come to their dorm to help them make a cake for JJ’s birthday. Cody was the last to text, so you responded to him.

Give me like ten mins to get dressed and I’ll come to your dorm.

Oh thank fuck you’re alive!

I wasn’t dead, I’m just tired.

Wake up sweetheart, busy day today

The boys had a recipe and the ingredients all spread out when you got there and the three of you took control of the dorm building’s kitchen on the first floor. Tyler pulled up some music and sat on the counter, content to watch you and Cody do the work.

It went relatively smoothly. Cody almost fucked it up by grabbing the salt instead of the sugar, and the tablespoon instead of the teaspoon, but you got it in the oven without too much extra struggle. Tyler made grabby hands at one of the spoons and you rolled your eyes but handed it to him anyway.

“Thanks, you’re the best. Better than Maybank,” Tyler told you before licking the spoon.

“I know I’m the best, but thanks for reminding me.”

Cody made a noise, “Oh, we’ve been discussing group chat names and we’ve narrowed it down to a few. It’s your pick.”

“Lay ‘em on me,” you told them, moving to sit on the cabinet next to Tyler.

“Fuck bitches get money, AutoZone annihilators, and Greek gods.”

“Oh my god, Greek gods? Think much of yourself, do you?” you asked between laughs.

Tyler rolled his eyes, “You know we mean because Greek life.”

“I know, but still. I like fuck bitches get money.”

Cody cheered, “Fuck yeah, my choice!” and changed the name immediately.

The timer went off and Cody reached down to pull the cake out. Tyler gathered up all the utensils and ingredients and followed Cody out of the kitchen. He cheered, “Come on bitches, let’s go wake up the princess!”

[razieltwelve]

Autograph (Final Rose)

"Wow! You’re Jaune Arc, right?”

Jaune looked up from the burger he was eating. “Uh... yeah?”

The teenage girl - who was really very pretty - smiled. “I’m a huge fan of Team JNPR! Would I be able to get your autograph?” She looked around. “Oh, and is the rest of the team around too?”

“Uh...” Jaune’s brain was still trying to wrap itself around the idea that someone wanted his autograph. He was almost tempted to ask if this was all a case of mistaken identity, but she’d known his name. “Sure.” He fumbled for a pen. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a pen, do you?”

The girl nodded and thrust a notebook and a pen at him. “Can you make it out to Polly?”

“Right. Polly.” Jaune took a deep breath. He could do this. All he had to do was sign his name and... “Wait... was there a message you wanted me to right?”

Polly giggled. “Just your autograph and ‘To Polly’ would be awesome.”

“Okay.” Jaune breathed a sigh of relief as he managed to sign his autograph without making any mistakes. “I’m kind of here on my own, but my team and I should be in town for at least a few more days. We’re taking some missions around here.”

“That’s great.” Polly nodded. “Thanks so much for signing!”

And with that, the girl ran out of the diner, waving her notebook around like a trophy.

“That was weird.” Jaune blinked. “Really weird.”

X    X     X

“Your autograph?” Pyrrha smiled. “This is the first time someone has asked for it, right? Congratulations.” She would have loved to see it, but she had been occupied with some maintenance issues for her weapons. Nora and Ren had disappeared to do some ‘shopping’ which she was fairly sure was just their cover story.

“It’s just... I mean... someone wanted my autograph. Mine.” Jaune shook his head in disbelief. “I’m not some superstar or anything, Pyrrha. I mean... I know people ask for your autograph all the time, but I’m not famous like you.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Pyrrha grinned. “We did very well at the last International Inter-Academy Tournament.” 

The IIAT was basically the world-championships of academy tournaments. Despite only being in their second year and with Jaune still doing his best to make up for his lack of training, they had still managed to come in the top 16 of the team tournament. It was a remarkable result, and Pyrrha couldn’t be prouder. Jaune might not have the most experience or skill yet, but he had proven to be a good leader, and Team JNPR just fit together wonderfully. Of course, Pyrrha had gotten further in the individual tournament - she’d placed third, losing to Averia in the semi-finals - but she was happiest about the team tournament result. 

“Was it really that big a deal?” Jaune asked.

“Jaune, I don’t think you understand how big a deal it was. More than five hundred teams entered the team tournament. To place in the top 16 is a magnificent achievement.” It went unspoken that Beacon had taken up most of the spots in the top 16 with their year, in particular, doing exceptionally well. “I’m sure you’ll be getting calls from sponsors and the like any day now. You are, after all, the team leader.”

“Yeah, but you kind of carried us for a lot of the tournament, Pyrrha.” Jaune was nothing if not honest about their relative skill levels. “I know we wouldn’t have gotten very far without you, and both Ren and Nora did way more than me.”

“Jaune, we are a team,” Pyrrha said firmly. “Our success is shared.”

“If you say so.” Jaune chuckled. “Do you think they’ll put me on a cereal box?”

“Not just yet,” Pyrrha replied with a laugh. “I think you’ve got to win a couple of tournaments before they do that.” Her lips twitched. “Although my sponsors were incredibly pleased even though I didn’t win.”

“Pyrrha, you were one of only half a dozen people who actually got Averia to try,” Jaune pointed out. “And you were one of only two people who actually forced her to use her Semblance. She basically ran through everybody else like some kind of dream-crushing, soul-destroying killer robot. Seriously, most of her opponents are probably having nightmares about her.”

Pyrrha giggled. Watching Averia at the tournament had definitely been an interesting experience. The other girl hadn’t used her Semblance at all until she’d faced Pyrrha, and she’d still run through her bracket like a chainsaw. It had to be at least a little depressing for some of her opponents to know that even with their Semblances they hadn’t been any threat to her.

Her brows furrowed. Still... their match had been everything Pyrrha had been hoping for. Even without her Semblance, Averia was incredibly dangerous. She was one of the few people their age that Pyrrha didn’t have to hold back against. So she hadn’t. By the time they were done, Averia had called on Saviour, and Pyrrha had essentially demolished the arena in the process of weaponising it.

It was, after all, so nice of the organisers to make the thing out of metal.

“And there’s always next year, Jaune.” Pyrrha patted his arm. “I think you’ll be ready to enter the individual tournament by then.”

“I hope so.” Jaune had wanted to enter this year, but Pyrrha had very gently pointed out that as much as he’d improved - and he’d done so well to improve so rapidly - he wasn’t ready for the individual tournament. “Even if I don’t do that well, I’d just like to see how I stack up.”

“That’s the spirit.” Pyrrha loved that about him. He might get discouraged for a while, but he never stayed down for long. “And don’t forget that there are lots of smaller tournaments too. It would be a good idea to try those first to get used to it. It’s one thing to spar, but being in the arena is a very different experience.”

“Yeah.” Jaune nodded slowly. “I remember how loud the crowd was when we had our matches.”

“It is certainly a thrilling experience to be in the arena.” Pyrrha still got nervous although she’d gotten much better at hiding it. “The special matches were a lot of fun too, weren’t they?”

Jaune laughed. “Oh, yeah. Watching professors from different academies face off was great, plus we got to see some veteran teams in action too. Team STRQ was awesome.”

“Yes, they were. It’s a shame they don’t take missions as a full team that often anymore, but there is rarely anything that requires all four of them.”

“Who knows,” Jaune said. “Maybe one day we’ll be part of the special matches.”

“That would be nice.”

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 265: Tamaki What Did You Eat

Previously on BnHA: The heroes began their invasion of the Ol’ Villain Marriott. Down in the basement, Re-Destro was all “what’s going my fresh villain citizens, what a beautiful day, well I guess we should start that meeting” and they were all “WE’RE UNDER FUCKING ATTACK” and he made a face and I laughed. Class 1-B, Edgeshot, and Midnight then jovially killed some people, and then we cut to Dabi and Hawks! Hawks was all “sorry it has to be this way Bubaigawara but I’m gonna have to arrest you” and Twice got all Harry Potter in that one scene from the Prisoner of Azkaban movie, and then he did the thing, and fucking Hawks just fucking stood there and DID NOTHING. So now he’s gonna have to fight 100,000 Twices I guess, and meanwhile Dabi is running up the stairs on his way to intervene and somehow make things even more chaotic. Also either Hawks or Dabi thinks heroes are scum, and I’m still not clear on which. But basically it’s safe to say that angst is on the way, friends.

Today on BnHA: Tamaki turns into a horse. I have questions. Dark Shadow fights fucking Re-Destro and fucking destroys him in like two seconds flat, like holy shit whaaaaat. Then Tokoyami just hops on inside of Fatgum like a goddamn marsupial, and spends several pages like this, during which I completely can’t focus the entire time but I do remember that we learned that Machia won’t be joining the fight because he apparently only listens to Tomura, so that’s convenient I guess. Then we cut to Twice and Hawks (I literally typed out “Dabi and Hawks” just now and had to go back and change it, so you can see where my mind is at), and Hawks defeats Twice and is all “guess I’ve got no choice” and is seriously going to kill him (hahaha what the fuck), but then DABI FUCKING BURNS THE ENTIRE ROOM DOWN WITH EVERYONE IN IT WHILE LAUGHING AND THEN THE CHAPTER JUST ENDS. I feel like I just got slapped in the face.

so before we start, let me just mention that I got a ton of asks and messages about the whole “HERO SCUM” line, and I appreciate everyone keeping me up to date on the twists and turns of our wild little fandom lol. so as you all probably know, in Viz’s translation of the last page they had Dabi saying the line (“Twice, this isn’t your fault. as always... scummy heroes are to blame”). so naturally everyone was either like “whaaaaat!” or “I KNEW IT!!”, but then Caleb went and deleted his original tweet saying that it was Dabi, and replaced it with a new tweet, the gist of which was basically “I don’t fucking know either” and admitting he wasn’t an authority on the matter. so to sum everything up, we basically don’t know and will never know until the anime airs this in about three years’ time, or until the only man who can actually clear this up decides to stop drawing weird mushroom men for five goddamn minutes so he can clarify for us

anyway, so in the meantime it’s time to see who’s having angst this week! probably everybody! let’s just assume it’s everybody and save some time

ohooo so we finally get to see why they had Tamaki and Tokoyami in the vanguard, eh?

(ETA: gotta say, “you” is an awfully impersonal way to address someone whose entire body you are shortly going to stuff inside your little quirk papoose and tote around like a fanny pack.)

honestly this isn’t much of a mystery though lol. Tokoyami is obvious, and with Tamaki it’s probably because of his kraken thing if I had to guess

...excuse me sir is this leading where I think it’s leading

sir. Mister Gum, sir. please do not tell me you are actually about to lead these children into the building and down into the basement. first of all the thought of you and Tamaki in yet another basement is already giving me PTSD so no thanks. and second of all, ???!?!?!?!?! [gestures incredulously to the two children] ?!?!?!???? [emphatically taps my computer screen with the wiki page showing their respective ages] ???!?!?!?!?!?! [gestures wildly toward a picture of Gigantomachia I pulled up just now in a google search. yeah that’s right. Gigantomachia!! you all forgot about him didn’t you!! well guess who didn’t forget about him?? that’s right. so you’d better explain yourself right the fuck now, Fatgum. oh wait I’m still talking in action brackets whoops]

holy crap is Tokoyami giving orders lmao

well look at you. a general, huh? somebody must’ve told them about his little maneuver at the Battle of Taanab

so now some generic villain guys are all “HOW’D THEY FIND OUR SECRET PATH” and “WE MUST DEFEND IT” and I sure can’t wait to watch them get their asses kicked three panels from now

OH LORDY

EVERYONE TAMAKI HAS JUST TURNED INTO A HORSE. I IMMEDIATELY HAVE SEVERAL QUESTIONS, THE MOST PRESSING OF WHICH ARE (1) WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO HIS PANTS, AND (2) DOES THIS MEAN TAMAKI ATE A FUCKING HORSE. PLEASE STAY TUNED AS WE URGENTLY INVESTIGATE THESE NEW DEVELOPMENTS

lol and the cow horns too. why though. just completes the look I guess

loooooool he’s all “apologies, but please remain still” who are you, Tuxedo Mask??

LOOOOOOL

by the way, I almost skipped right past this, but the text says Tamaki will be a sidekick at the Fatgum agency starting “next year”, which presumably means “in a couple of weeks because the school year is about to end.” our boy is graduating! I’m so proud, and also really pissed off about Mirio all of a sudden, just throwing that out there. how much longer must his dreams be put on hold. where is the justice. man I need a minute

okay! anyway so now Tokoyami is just running into the basement alone!! hooooo boy. I know it’s dark down there and that’s presumably why they’re sending him of all people, but still. hooooooooo boy

ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS NO WAY

IS TOKOYAMI GOING TO TAKE ON FUCKING RE-DESTRO AND IS THIS REALLY HAPPENING AND WHY THE FUCK IS NIGHT ON BALD MOUNTAIN SUDDENLY PLAYING

KDSFLK;L’LLL

AM I IN THE RIGHT MANGA. DID DARK SHADOW REALLY JUST GROW NINETY FEET TALL AND START WRESTLING THE SAME FUCKING GUY WHO ALMOST* BROUGHT DOWN THE ENTIRE LEAGUE OF FUCKING VILLAINS

*except he didn’t, let’s be real. didn’t even come close. but still, on paper the hype looks real good!!

AND DO RE-DESTRO’S ROBOT LEGS SOMEHOW FUCKING CHANGE SIZE ALONG WITH HIM. CHALK ANOTHER ONE UP FOR THE MYSTERY BASKET. PUT YOU RIGHT NEXT TO “BUT FOR REAL THOUGH DID TAMAKI ACTUALLY EAT A FUCKING HORSE”

OOOOOF

LOL DETNERAT’S MERCHANDISE REALLY IS TOTAL SHIT. CAN’T EVEN HANDLE A LITTLE CLASH WITH A GIGANTIC SHADOW DEMON

by the way, check out that one guy in the bottom right corner who just totally doesn’t give the least of fucks. he’s fresh out. he wants to know how much longer this is gonna last so he can go home and get back to playing the new Animal Crossing. did you know they added a new crafting feature. can’t believe he’s stuck here at this boring meeting. this man genuinely doesn’t seem to be at all aware of anything that is currently happening around him and it’s amazing. added to the box of questions

oh man. I don’t quite understand what is happening now but I keep expecting Gigantomachia to just pop up out of nowhere any second and I can’t fucking stand it. Horikoshi please stop showing us these close-ups of destroyed walls

OH GOD OH GOD!!!

(ETA: what a casual fucking line implying that Tokoyami genuinely believed that there was nobody in THE ENTIRE LEAGUE OF PLIFF who stood a chance against his latest super move. don’t mind him everyone, he’s just been lowkey biding his time to become the strongest member of class 1-A offscreen while his loser classmates were having dramatic family dinners. how many High Ends could Dark Shadow take out I wonder. why did I suddenly get a mental image of Toko losing an arm only to sigh and nonsensically quote Shakespeare or some shit before wrapping Dark Shadow around the stump and getting back to the asskicking.)

NO TOKO NOT THE ANGRY BALD MAN, HE’S TALKING ABOUT SOMEONE ELSE!! OH FUCK OH FUCK

LMAO

:) :) :) can we maybe get my solemn bird son out of this fucking DEATH BASEMENT right the fuck now. can we do that, please

holy shit!?

:) :) :) I can’t decide whether I trust these panels or not. why is he so confident. does this mean Machia really will be sitting out the arc, or is a trap. help

(ETA: I guess it’s okay for now. ... dammit I’m still suspicious sob.)

also, Tokoyami’s “?!” face is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen though. the fact that he’s physically incapable of altering his expressions no matter what is true comedy gold here

NEVER MIND, THOSE WERE THE WORDS OF A CALLOW YOUTH WHO KNEW NOTHING OF TRUE COMEDY GOLD

WHAT A FOOL I WAS. PLEASE PARDON MY IGNORANCE. SO HERE WE HAVE TOKOYAMI’S MONOEXPRESSION BIRD HEAD STICKING OUT OF FATGUM’S JOLLY BELLY FOR NO REASON, WHILE FATGUM IS ALL “DON’T YOU FEEL LIKE WE’RE KICKING TOO MUCH ASS AND SOMETHING TERRIBLE IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN”, AND SOME OTHER POOR GUY WITH SCISSORS HANDS IS JUST LYING THERE DEAD IN THE BACKGROUND. MY GOD. I’M IN AWE OF THIS

dfkjkjk oh noooo

“does this young man amuse you,” Horikoshi says as he darkly pencils in the disturbingly concave shadows of Fatgum’s ridiculous fucking quirk. “are his ‘magnificent fellow’ bird antics pleasing for you to watch. I guess it sure would be a shame if I gave him some... angst”

but for real y’all I genuinely can’t take this at all seriously when Tokoyami’s head is still stubbornly and persistently poking its way out of Fatgum like a goddamn baby kangaroo in every fucking panel

we are entering another Tokoyami+Hawks mentor flashback and this is still all I can think about. why is he even in there. why is any of this happening. Tokoyami really just flung Re-Destro into a wall and then climbed inside of Fatgum feet-first so they could run along to freedom. just fucking ensconced himself. do you think it’s cozy in there. do you think Aizawa would fall asleep

hey Toko please stop having ominous thoughts about my other bird son

have you ever heard of an announcer jinx. “now here’s a guy who the fans have loved since the moment he was first introduced. and if you look at the stats, fourth place in his first popularity poll, which was taken only ten chapters after his introduction. heck, he’s so popular they even went and gave him a role in the second movie even before he appeared in the anime! it’s undeniable that this young man has a bright future ahead of him, Al.” now you listen here. I don’t at all like where this is headed and it needs to stop right now

anyway so of course on that note we are cutting back to Hawks

so we’ve confirmed that Hawks has his hands full just melting all of the new clones as they come, and doesn’t have the speed or the excess feathers (or the conviction? :|) to go after the original and put a stop to all this

or you could just ignore everything I say ever because immediately on the next page Horikoshi is all “actually he’s winning lol”

anyway but it sure would be a shame if someone were to run in and set you on fire right about now. that probably sounds sarcastic but it actually would be really bad lol please don’t set Hawks on fire

(ETA: motherfucker. goddamn. fucking --)

and now Hawks is making clones of his fellow League buddies oh shit!! but right when I was about to scroll down I noticed that Hawks is carrying some sort of recording device?? or communications device?? in his hand very conspicuously in that last panel? and so what is going on here, exactly?

oh shit and never mind about those LoV clones

that’s all well and good Hawks, but I need you to please just be very cautious and aware and proactive about not catching on fire okay. watch your six

oh my god oh my god

“now here’s a guy whose rise in popularity was unexpected but just a real pleasure to watch. he just really cares about his friends.” “you said it; he really came into his own a couple arcs back. twenty-third in the most recent poll, and the fans all love him.” fffffff Hawks isn’t a killer Hawks isn’t a killer, I can’t hear you lalala

LA LA LA

maybe... he’ll just... punch a small hole through one of his lungs... ...

...

or... a large hole... ... ,,,

oh THANK GOD he’s jumping on top of him. so clearly he’s fine because Shounen Rules. that’s right, this is a manga where Toga survived blowing up from the inside out and Jeanist survived being murdered and stuffed into a tote bag. (right??) why am I so tense I hate this!!

HEY WHAT IS THIS

or you could just KNOCK HIM OUT??? ?????!??! did they not teach you that in peewee assassin league?! Hawks

I DON’T LIKE THIS I DIDN’T SIGN UP FOR THIS!!

STOP SHOWING US TWICE’S SAD THOUGHTS YOU BASTARD NO I DON’T LIKE THIS YOU’RE GOING TO MAKE ME CRY SO STOP!!

GODDAMMIT HORIKOSHI I FUCKING HATE YOU

“HERE’S A SERIES OF PANELS WITH TWICE CRYING AND THINKING ABOUT TOGA WHILE HAWKS HOLDS A FUCKING KNIFE RIGHT ABOVE HIS EYE,” HORIKOSHI SAYS WHILE IGNORING EVERYTHING I SAY AND DISABLING ALL COMMENTS ON HIS TWITTER, PROBABLY. WOW I JUST LOOKED IT UP AND APPARENTLY YOU CAN’T DO THAT? DAMN, TWITTER REALLY SUCKS, BUT ANYWAY

FINE THEN DABI YOU CAN SET HIM ON FIRE!!

JOKE’S ON YOU ASSHOLES, YOU CAN’T HURT ME IF I CAN’T SEE THE LAST PAGE OF THE CHAPTER THROUGH ALL MY TEARS

FUCK

[SLAMS HANDS ON TABLE] THE FUCK WAS THAT

DON’T YOU EVEN DARE, HORIKOSHI. I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ANY “BUT YOU GAVE HIM PERMISSION”, COME THE FUCK ON, YOU AND I BOTH KNOW THAT DIDN’T MEAN SHIT AND I WAS LIABLE TO CHANGE MY MIND YET AGAIN ONLY A PAGE LATER AS PER USUAL! WHAT SORT OF TWISTED MIND WOULD DECIDE THAT THE ONLY WAY TO SAVE TWICE WAS TO SET THE ENTIRE ROOM ABLAZE AND THEN HAVE DABI GLEEFULLY STOMP ON HAWKS’S FACE. WHAT KIND OF SICK MONSTER WOULD DREAM THIS UP. THIS ISN’T HOT AT ALL. HOW DARE YOU

ALSO WTF DABI, “HERE I COME TO RESCUE TWICE” WHILE BURNING HIM ALIVE AS WELL, JESUS CHRIST THESE FUCKING TODOROKIS I SWEAR TO GOD. DID YOUR BRAIN CELLS CATCH FIRE TOO

I CAN’T BELIEVE I WAITED ALL WEEK IN A FUCKING LOCKDOWN FOR THIS SHIT. THIS CHAPTER WAS A FUCKING TRAIN WRECK, AND I DON’T KNOW IF I WANT TO THANK ITS STUPID CONDUCTOR, OR PUNCH HIM IN THE FACE. it’s not the manga we need, but it’s the one we deserve. I guess

[silver-wield]

"These fans are really loud and...obnoxious."

Yeah, I mentioned the fans are a metaphor for certain people being annoying and now I'm gonna show why because the whole picture is hilarious!

The first one is enough to set me off with an oh that's shade, but then Tifa being all "Avoid at all costs" just did me in!

And behind the obnoxious fans, hidden almost from view is a genuine piece of summon materia. And not just any summon materia. It's chocobo and mog.

And the devs have absolutely associated Tifa to mog in Remake because of this

The moogle, which we hear from Aerith and Moggie represents those with a pure heart and a desire for happiness. It's made of white flowers which represent loyalty and has stars among the background. This is a message from Tifa to Cloud that she's remained loyal to him during the time they were apart and she wishes for their happiness. The mount shape, an octagon, refers to the tifaret, which is the root origin of her name. Cloud is also seen floating among white loyalty flowers when he drifts down into the church at the start of chapter 8, where we see real Cloud's first thought is about Tifa and soldier Cloud's last thought in the previous chapter was about Tifa.

Neat, right?

Back to the obnoxious fans, which Cloud and co give a bit of maintenance to by cleaning them out of some queen grashstrikes. Anyone else hearing a word mashup of gas and trash? These things only show up around Cloud and Tifa, right? Hmmm.

Anyway, once the monsters are done, which BTW are weak to ice. (Ice cold merc anyone?) We can disengage the time lock and collect chocobo and mog.

Quick aside, this is also where we can pick up the electric de chocobo song, which has a cover of chocobo surfing on a green wave with star accents and bracketed by yellow daisies. Because Zack ships them.

And Barret is literally exclaiming about this materia and Tifa says wow and gives Cloud a lil smile. So even though this materia might seem meh to players, to these three it's a big deal.

And it's a combo of Cloud and Tifa represented as a summon because Cloti is being summoned out from behind the obnoxious fans after the lock on their relationship has been turned off and the gaslighting trashy queens constantly striking at them have been defeated.

[allsassnoclass]

dude if you did #1 for mashton (or ANYONE) id literally love you forever but if you want a range im also highly in love with 16, 25, and 34 listen im here for the content i dont care what the content is

and here is #1 for mashton!!!!! 

1. There’s people chasing us and I pulled you into the alley with me and wow you’re close

Michael pokes his head out, looking left and right for any stray fans who may have made their way around the back of the venue.

"Okay, I think we're clear," he says, slipping out.  Ashton follows closely behind, doing his own check of their surroundings.

Michael has never wanted fries and to breathe some fresh air so bad in his entire life.  Ashton refused to let him try to sneak to a nearby fast food joint alone.  Once it became clear that no members of their team were going to accompany them out but that Michael would not be satisfied with someone else bringing the fries to him, it became a two-person operation.

"Okay, come on," Ashton says, checking the map on his phone and starting off in a direction.  Michael sticks close, because he keeps forgetting what city they're in, never mind how to actually get to the nearest McDonalds.   It's exhilarating that this time, they're here for themselves, not as a supporting act for One Direction.  The fans lined up around the front of the venue are here because they like their music.

"Michael? Ashton?" someone says.  Michael turns and sees a few girls looking at them from the end of the block.

"Shit," Michael says, because the three girls are joined by more, and more, and then the crowd is moving towards them at a pretty quick pace.  A few fans are fine, but they've got the attention of too many, and Michael panics.

"Run!" he says, grabbing Ashton's hand and taking off.

Running appears to be the wrong move, because the crowd gives chase.  Michael takes a sharp turn, but they come to a busy intersection and skid to a pause.

"This way," Ashton says, pulling Michael with him to the left.  Michael spots the mouth of an alley and pulls Ashton in after him, stumbling over a stray cardboard box before Ashton manhandles him behind some sort of massive electrical box attached to the building, pressing close to fit them both out of sight.

Ashton's breath puffs against his cheek and Michael fights a shiver.

Michael has been close to Ashton before, because there aren't too many boundaries in a band and there's not too much space on a tour bus, but not like this without Ashton complaining or squirming away.  He can feel his body heat where their arms touch, Michael bracketed in, knees knocking.

"You're really close," he whispers.

"It's not a very big space to hide," Ashton whispers back, right into his ear.  Michael doesn't think he's successful in suppressing the shiver this time.

He hears the crowd near the mouth of the alley.  Michael grabs on to Ashton's shirt, pulling him just a little bit closer.  If he turns his head just a little bit, their noses would touch.  They'd be close enough to kiss.

Kissing Ashton is not a thought he allows himself to entertain often, but it's crossed his mind.  He can't help it: Ashton is magnetic and passionate and has sunshine coming out of his dimples.  He's pretty sure everyone who meets Ashton develops some sort of a crush and wonders what sort of a kisser he'd be.  He sealed his fate the minute he sent that Facebook message at 2 in the morning asking for a drummer.

He glances at Ashton out of the corner of his eye to find the other boy already looking at him.  When he swallows, Ashton's eyes flick down to follow the movement.  His fingers flex involuntarily where they're gathered in Ashton's shirt.

"Am I reading this right?" Ashton asks.

Is he?  Is he?  Is Michael?

"Yeah," he says, voice feeling weird and scratchy.

"Good," Ashton replies, and then they're kissing.

Ashton kisses like a drums, like he writes, like he argues about the state of the bathroom after any of the others shower, passionately and with every part of him completely focused.  Michael feels like he's been out in the sun too long, hot all over and a little light headed in the best way, but he gives as good as he gets.  Ashton makes a little noise in the back of his throat and Michael makes it his mission to hear it again, but Ashton pulls away before he can, chest shuddering with each breath he pulls in.

"Fries," Ashton says after a moment.

"Hm?"

"We were going to get fries."

"Oh," Michael breathes.  He leans forward and kisses Ashton again, because he still hasn't moved away.  It's just as good the second time around.

"Mike, we have to get back," Ashton laughs once they part again.

"We have some time," Michael says.

"We have a dressing room with a couch that isn't a few feet away from a dumpster."

It's a good argument.  Michael blinks and tries to peer at the entrance of the alley.  He only sees cars, not people.  The coast is as clear as it's going to get.

"Lead the way," he says.  It takes a moment for Ashton to move, and once he does Michael immediately misses the feeling of them pressed together.  Ashton takes his hand and it helps.  As they make their way back to the venue, Michael can't wait to get inside and get even closer.

[gorogues]

Johns and Kolins interviews, part 3

Cut for length.

Part One and Part Two are available at the links.  This was supposed to be posted more three years ago, and it’s been sitting in my Drafts folder all this time.  Oops.

I occasionally clarify things or add my comments in [ ] brackets and italics.

Geoff Johns

CBG: Here's a fanboy question: One of the familiar aspects of the Silver Age Flash was silly plots and transformations taken with utmost seriousness. Is this light-hearted element toast in today's grim-and-gritty environment? Or will you sometimes turn someone into a puppet just for fun?

Johns: You know, it all depends on the story. For Flash: Rebirth, there's going to be a lot of heart in that series, but we're not going to go back to 1960s-style stories where we have stand-alone stories where Barry Allen turns into a puppet. That stuff's fun and if you have Abra Kadabra, you can have a story incorporating those elements. But it's certainly not the main thrust of where I'm taking the book.

CBG: So you're saying there's no editorial edict, you're just following your story.

Johns: Yeah, there's no editorial edict saying “you have to do this or that.” I'm just kinda exploring what I want to explore with The Flash. For me [Flash] being turned into a puppet or being turned fat, those are `60s stories that are the same thing like with Superman, where they did a lot of great Superman stories back in the day involving red kryptonite, and since then they've done kinda modern-day versions of that.

<<snip>>

CBG: Another topic: I guess the Rogues are no longer guilty of murder with the return of Bart? Maybe just attempted murder?

Johns: They're all each guilty of murders multiple times over.

CBG: And they're still going to be a major element of the title?

Johns: Absolutely. For my money, I can't do a Flash book without the Rogues.

CBG: And Flash: Rebirth #1 brought back Mr. Element. Haven't seen him for a while.

Johns: I used him in my Flash run.

CBG: Which name was he using?

Johns: Dr. Alchemy. But I never really got into him and he's a character that might be coming soon.

CBG: Well, with the Philosopher's Stone, he's not exactly a lightweight.

Johns: No. To me, he's always the character that the Rogues were kinda like "We don't want to be anywhere near him".

CBG: Because he's crazy? Or dangerous?

Johns: Yeah, he's psychotic. The Rogues each have their issues, and they're all psychotic in their own way. But they're also sane enough, and lucid enough, to understand camaraderie and loyalty and stuff like that. They have their own code, and that's something Dr. Alchemy....he's just too far gone. The Rogues think they have honorable motivation at times, especially Captain Cold -- he knows he's a criminal, but he has standards. Alchemy doesn't have standards.  He's scary.

CBG: I guess they regard Professor Zoom the same way?

Johns: Professor Zoom -- when's this [interview] come out?

CBG: June.

Johns: I can't really talk about Professor Zoom yet.

CBG: OK. But just in regard to how the Rogues think of him, though, do the Rogues kinda exclude him from the ‘clubhouse’ because he's kinda wacky?

Johns: Absolutely. But he also doesn't want to have anything to do with the Rogues.

CBG: Because he considers himself a hero, he helps heroes grow-- 

Johns: He has his own motivations.

*****************

Geoff Johns

Geoff Johns: I got a Facebook message today from someone who had never read a Superman comic book, even though they work at a comic store, until Superman: Secret Origin #1. And now, for the first time, she is reading a Superman comic and enjoying it. There are so many discussions about accessibility to today's monthly comics and my purpose with both Green Lantern: Secret Origin and Superman: Secret Origin is to introduce them, and in the case of current readers re-introduce them, to these characters. My hope is to continue these, most likely with The Flash: Secret Origin, which would include the beginning of the Rogues as well.

[Something we've never gotten, at least yet.. --Lia]

******************

Scott Kolins

Q: You've done a bit of work with The Flash of late with "Rogues' Revenge" and the upcoming "Blackest Night: The Flash," but are you excited to be back with The Flash on an ongoing basis?

Scott Kolins: Yes, very much. Working with Geoff is always a dream job, but it feels really nice right now to be back in the Flash universe for a while. It's very exciting. I love drawing Flash and the supporting cast. And he's got some of the best villains.

Q: Of The Flash's rogues do you have any favorites to draw and will we be seeing him during your run on the book?

SK: Grodd's always been my favorite and Geoff has planned a special Grodd story for me somewhere along the line. But really, I like them all. I'd love to do another Weather Wizard story. And of course Cold and Zoom are incredible so anytime to draw them is special. Geoff even mentioned another Cicada story he'd like to get to sometime. And there are others I haven't really gotten to, like Computron, or even bring in other aliens, like the Dominators.

*****************

Geoff Johns

CBR: The other project you announced this weekend was "Blackest Night: Flash." When you were developing "Blackest Night" as a maxiseries, was a Flash tie-in series always in the plans?

Geoff Johns: Yes. It's always been part of the project. There's so much you can do with 'Blackest Night' and the Black Lanterns. If we were going to explore other characters, it was going to be Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, JSA and Titans. And so I always knew Flash was going to be a part of it. And I knew Scott was going to do it. We have a lot of dead Rogues and a lot of live Rogues, and Flash has to fight them, so it should be fun.

CBR: You and Scott obviously have a special bond. I mean, you always have a great relationship with the artists you work with, Ethan [Van Sciver] and Ivan [Reis] and Dale [Eaglesham] and Gary [Frank] and all the others, but you and Scott, appear to anyway, to feed off one another. Is it the character of Flash that you both love? Or just similar takes on storytelling? What is it that makes Scott such a perfect fit for you?

Geoff Johns: I think for me and Scott, it goes deeper than that. Scott and I started off together. We started off working on "Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E." So we did issues of "Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E " and then we did "Flash" when nobody else wanted to do it. They said, "You and Scott are following Mark Waid." And it was going to be a disaster. But we did our own take and our own spin and took Flash in a different direction, especially with the Rogues and Keystone and everything else.

With me and Scott, it's almost like a childhood friend. It's a different kind of bond, and I think with the Rogues, and Flash in particular, we're just extremely comfortable together in that universe. We're really happy to be working with those characters and we feel like we helped usher in those characters and again, especially with the Rogues.  We actually first worked together when I first got into comics. So there's just something special about working with Scott.

In "Blackest Night: Flash," it's the Rogues versus the Black Lantern Rogues and Flash is caught in the middle. And Captain Cold will be facing off against Black Lantern Golden Glider. And Scott can do that. Scott can excel at that. There's just something about working with Scott that's just really a lot of fun and kind of magical for me. I love working with Scott Kolins.

CBR: When you were plotting "Blackest Night," were the dead Rogues characters that immediately came top of mind as possible Black Lanterns?

Geoff Johns: Absolutely, because there are so many dead ones. You've got Mirror Master, you've got Trickster, you've got Captain Boomerang, you've got a lot of dead Rogues and a lot of speedsters too.

***************

Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver

Geoff Johns: For a lot of the work, both on the Flash and his villains and surroundings, what we're harkening back to and looking at are the original comics by Carmine Infantino.

Ethan Van Sciver: Oh, and he was a genius! Geoff, I wasn't a big fan of that stuff until you turned me on to it.

GJ: He's a genius.

EVS: Really, you go back and you read those first 25 issues of Barry Allen, and that guy created some of the most original, interesting, compelling-looking characters, and not just The Flash, but all those Rogues were so...

GJ: They're so varied. I love that you've got, like, Abra Kadabra from the 64th Century, you've got Gorilla Grodd and the Gorilla City.

EVS: As good as Spider-Man villains, at least.

Newsarama: Will the Flash Rogues be in The Flash: Rebirth?

EVS: A few of them.

GJ: It can't be a Flash book without his Rogues, in my opinion.

****************

Geoff Johns

Q: Mark Bailie is a long-time fan and was wondering about a plot thread from your previous run on "The Flash."   "At the end of your run on "The Flash" Vol. 2, we see Captain Boomerang dropped into the future during The Flash/Reverse Flash battle, and we also have the re-animated Captain Boomerang telling Ashley Zolomon that Owen's mother is Meloni Thawne; thus making Bart Allen the half-brother of Owen Mercer/Harkness. Has this been touched upon at all, and if not, will this be an eventual topic in your new run on "The Flash?"

GJ: It has not been touched on at all. But yes, that happened.  

Q: Frank W. wanted you to know that he recognized Paul Gambi from "The Flash" #239 on the last page of "The Flash: Rebirth" #5.

GJ: Thanks, I'm glad somebody recognized him. Gambi will be in "The Flash" in 2010. For those of you who don't know Gambi, he's a tailor in Central City. He was the guy who created the Rogues' uniforms, and one thing that I am really proud of that Scott Kolins and I did in "Rogues' Revenge" is the subplot where he gets the hell beat out of him by these fake Rogues and Heatwave confronts one of them and says, "Did Gambi make your uniform? Because he made mine and it can withstand insane temperatures."  

And he burns the other guy's costume right off because Gambi is the guy who makes their uniforms. And though his tastes are a little wacky, you can tell by their uniforms, he builds them to last and to take the kind of beating the Rogues usually take on a daily basis.  The Rogues will be a major force in the new "Flash" book.  

***************

Geoff Johns

Alex Segura: Geoff, first off -- thanks for doing this. The Flash is a special character and it's only fitting that we make his return to monthly comics special here on The Source. Now, being a huge fan of The Flash myself, and Barry Allen in particular, I have a very vivid memory of my first encounter with the character -- what about you? What's your earliest Barry/Flash memory? What made him a cool character for you even then?

Geoff Johns: My first encounter with Barry Allen, outside of comics, was in animation in the Challenge of the Super-Friends cartoon. I guess that's where I also met Captain Cold. Those two characters, the Flash and Captain Cold, became my favorites. (Oh, and does anyone remember how Hal Jordan had that weird tan? I guess because he was from California? :) ) Anyway, those are my very memories, along with the Flash Super Powers figure, but when I finally got into comic books one of my very first comics was CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS #8, which featured the death of the Flash. I don't remember the details well, but I do remember I was blown away by the issue. From there, I started buying back issues of the Flash. It was before everything was collected, before eBay, so I really had to hunt those comics down to read the stories. The powers, the Rogues and the uniform were what always drew me in.  

AS: It's often said that you can judge a hero by his villains, and one of the things I remember most about your initial Flash run — and was very thankful for, being a fan of Barry -- was how you not only brought back and polished some of the classic Flash villains -- Captain Cold is a great example -- but also reinvigorated the Rogues with some great, creepy new additions like Murmur and most notably Hunter Zolomon/Zoom. What makes a great villain? What do you look for when you sit down and create one? And, in addition to reuniting Barry with some of his deadliest foes, are we going to see new ones appear in your first year?

GJ: The Flash has arguably the best villains in comics. Batman's are amazing and psychological, but the Flash's are from the far future and super scientific Gorilla Cities. Not to mention the core group of Flash's foes, the Rogues. They were always a massive part of what made the Flash cool to me. He fought all these guys, sometimes at once because he could. When I first worked on the Flash the Rogues hadn't been touched really more than an odd appearance here and there. I knew that they were going to be a huge focus for me and I continued using them in Rogues' Revenge and Blackest Night: The Flash, but now with the new monthly book they'll be playing a bigger and ongoing role in Barry's life. There are some pretty big changes for the Rogues coming up that tie in to the very center of the DC Universe. Barry will be meeting some new villains, one in particular that is going to be the strangest killer he's ever faced. And I think with 64th Century magicians and talking gorillas that's saying a lot.

*****************

Scott Kolins

Q: What can you tell us about the Blackest Night: Flash mini you’re working on with Geoff Johns?

Scott Kolins: That’s it’s gonna be great! Geoff has really moved into high gear with this Blackest Night stuff and he’s got some amazing stuff planned. Both and Wally and Barry will be in the story – and the Rogues! Dead or Alive! How awesome is that?! I’ve been waiting years to draw a book like this! This will be even better than Blitz or Rogue’s Revenge!

Q: Who are some of your favorite characters to draw?

Scott Kolins: I have very few I don’t like to draw. I love super-heroes and monsters and fun stuff and serious stuff. Monsters like Grundy, Bizarro and Grodd are pure delight. Villains Zoom and Cold are great too. I’d love to get to Sinestro or Brainiac. But I’m dying to do a big Wonder Woman story or Shazam! Hawkman or Aquaman! I LOVE Kirby stuff, so Omac, New Gods, or I’d love to do a Mister Miracle & Big Barda book! Or even the Legion of Super-heroes! I love it all. Plus I’d really love a chance to add to some of the mythologies. I wanna create incredible villains for Hawkman or Aquaman!

****************

Scott Kolins

GL SPOTLIGHT: Well first let’s dive into Blackest Night: Flash, the miniseries that reunites the highly praised Flash team of you and writer Geoff Johns. How different were these three issues than your time on Flash previously? Have Geoff's scripts become any more visually demanding than before?

SCOTT KOLINS: Rogues Revenge was only loosely connected to Final Crisis. The Blackest Night Flash series story is tied more to the central plot of Blackest Night. Barry is a pivotal figure on Blackest Night and he's 1/2 the story in Blackest Night Flash. The Rogues 1/2 of this story is a little looser but still connected as they fight some Black Lantern Rogues. Geoff's scripts are about the same - which means great and very much based on the core story being told. In Rogues Revenge was about revenge (Duh!), and here it was more about survival - against undead friends and villains! The only new thing - which is actually very old school is that Geoff was so busy working on all aspects of Blackest Night that he would sometimes call me on the phone and we'd discuss the next page or scene and break it down over the phone. Then I'd rough out the page or pages and email that back to him for his approval. It was actually kinda fun this way and we got the book done on time!

GL Spotlight: It was definitely a fun read. We know that Flash: Rebirth artist Ethan Van Sciver designed many of the Black Lanterns for this event. Were you able to design the Black Lantern outfits for the Rogues, Reverse-Flash, and even Solomon Grundy, yourself?

SCOTT: Yes I did. Design may be a bit too big a credit because they’re all working off the basic Black Lantern design already set up – but I did sketch out Solomon Grundy and Black Lantern Reverse Flash. Grundy’s was a natural as he is already a walking dead creation - just add the triangle and some pants stripes. I played more with Black Lantern Reverse Flash. The five “fingers” on top of the inverted triangle were squared off at first but I showed a pointy version to Geoff which he preferred. Then balance out how much lightning would work with the extra pant Black Lantern lines and he was done. The Black Lanterns are an awesome concept and were tons of fun to draw.

******************

Geoff Johns 

Q: Will Barry face any new villains in his series?

Geoff Johns: You will see new characters in "The Flash" #1.

Q: But he asked about new villains?

Geoff Johns: I will not say anything other than you will see new characters in "The Flash" #1. But they're kinda villains. Kinda.

[He's talking about the Renegades. --Lia]

********************

Geoff Johns

Q: Let’s start with “The Flash.” The first story arc is a lot of fun and Francis [Manapul] is really bringing his ‘A’ game.

Geoff Johns: Francis is a genius. And that’s the tone I wanted to do, very accessible and a lot of fun. That’s what The Flash is all about. I wanted the book to have a lot of heart, a bit like our run with Superboy in “Adventure Comics.” I love writing that book. Coming up, we’ll see a new supporting cast member, a new villain, the return of the Pied Piper, more on Captain Boomerang and, of course, the Flash Family as we race towards “Flashpoint.”

[I'm including this because we did not in fact see Piper in the book. --Lia]

Q: William Schwartz had a question about continuity. He asked that you explain the continuity of Professor Zoom, a.k.a. Reverse Flash, between “Blackest Night,” “Blackest Night: Flash,” “Flash: Rebirth” and “Brightest Day.” He's alive and then imprisoned in “Flash: Rebirth,” which also hints at his soon-to-come resurrection. He's a Black Lantern in “Blackest Night: Flash” but also alive and imprisoned before being frozen by Captain Cold. He's then resurrected at the end of “Blackest Night” and escapes, yet he is still in prison. Is that right?

GJ: You’ll see more with Reverse Flash in “Brightest Day” and then “The Flash.” But he definitely has the timeline right. I mean, if you look at it from our point of view, in a linear timeline, he was resurrected by the Black Ring, brought back to life by the White Lantern, he then time traveled, brings Barry Allen back, gets stopped by Barry Allen and he’s get imprisoned in Iron Heights. I know. [laughs] Does anyone have an aspirin?

********************

Geoff Johns

WILSON: Do you still draw and do you include thumbnails with your scripts for artists?

JOHNS: I do thumbnails when I write my scripts, but I never send them off. It’s just for me really to get a visual sense of how the pages are going to lay out. I make these grids that are divided into six sections that essentially represent six pages and I take a stack of them and staple them together, and it then represents one comic book. From there, I draw it out, very bare bones, just to see what it’ll look like visually flipping through it because you want it to vary anyway. You know, where is it going to open up because there’s a big moment? So I illustrate that way.

I do some design work. I designed Pied Piper’s current costume. I’ve done some other design work here and there. I leave the illustration to the professionals. I just like doing it for fun.

WILSON: With such an avid love of comics and putting so much of yourself and your time into producing them, what is the most important thing you would like readers to take away from your body of work?

JOHNS: Well, I hope a positive message. I think superheroes are positive and have positive messages. I’ve never thought about it in that way, but people are going to take what they’re going to take; I hope it’s something they can apply to their life. You meet a lot of people who are inspired by heroes to be better people or to live a certain way. I hope they love the heroes. I do it because I loved Captain Cold. Great character, but crazy, so why do I love him? He’s this blue-collar, down-and-out super-thug, but he has a weird moral code and he has a heart deep down in there despite the cold exterior. He has a heart that is beating and I explored that in an issue with Scott Kolins in The Flash #182, which is one of my favorite issues I’ve ever written. Scott did a great job on it and I got to explore Captain Cold.  People are always asking Scott at conventions for sketches of Captain Cold, and I still get to work with the character and I think he resonates for people. I hope they take away a growing love and appreciation for these characters and what they represent, but what they take away is going to be up to the audience.

******************

Scott Kolins

Q: Well the big thing to talk about is Citizen Cold. That’s a three issue mini-series?

Scott Kolins: Three issues that are self-contained but are part of the whole Flashpoint hoopla this summer.

Q: I know it has already been hinted in the books that are out that Cold may not be the hero that everyone thinks he is. Can you hint a little more about what to expect?

SK: You’ll find out in the first issue (out this week!!) that even Iron Heights that was the prison for the Flash villains before had an area called the Pipeline. It was a special place for all Flash’s super villains. Now it’s the special place for all of Citizen Cold’s villains and they call it the Freezer. And you’ll see a bunch of the Rogues are in there and you’ll see they’ve all suffered for the fact that Citizen Cold is now the hero.

He’s not a nice guy who puts them in prison. They’re all hurt pretty bad for tangling with him and being villains in his city. One of the fun bits is that you’ll actually see that the Rogues form because of Citizen Cold. That’s part of the plot of the story is that they really aren’t happy with him at all.

Q: Since this is an alternate reality story or a kind of reboot did you think about tweaking Captain Cold’s costume or did you know you wanted to keep it the same?

SK: No, that was definitely part of the process. Should I tweak stuff, how much should I tweak stuff? I did do some changes to Trickster; his pants and even his color scheme. I added some red to it, where before it was mostly yellow and blue. I got to do something that Geoff Johns laughed about; I gave Weather Wizard that goatee. It’s a reference to when we had originally changed his costume in the Flash books years ago and made his pattern green with yellow stripes on it. At that time when I did sketches for him to show DC what we wanted to do I had given him facial hair; at that point it was a handle bar mustache. Geoff was like, “This looks great...lose the handlebar mustache.” So this time when he saw the goatee he was like, “All right, fine. You finally get to put it on him.” I also think he looks more like a wizard this way. Stuff like this is mostly just fun for me, but they can either use it later if they think it’s cool or we can just use it for this one time thing.

Q: You mentioned the Trickster, is it going to be Jesse or Axel?

SK: No, it’s still Axel the kid. I know everyone likes James Jesse and I do too. That was one of the fun, personal things I got to add to the Flash universe. When we were working on the Rogues, James Jesse was already set up as an FBI agent. So he was definitely in the good guy camp, so we couldn’t use him as a Rogue. So I suggested what if we made Trickster like an evil Robin. Wouldn’t it be cool to have a kid with all those tricks, toys, and everything? Geoff thought it was an awesome idea, so we went with it from there. So when ever we can use him, I push him because he was my idea.

Q: The surprise to me when the new Trickster came out was you had a full grown Flash socking a teenager and no one objected, “Hey you’re hitting a kid!” Obviously he was a villain, but you never saw a reaction to that.

SK: That is an issue that we’ve kind of side-stepped. It is something I wanted to get into with Citizen Cold, but I don’t think I’m going to get into that one since I have so much going on with Cold himself. In my mind even though he looks young, but he might be on the cusp of 18. At least 16, so in some areas he’d be tried as an adult.

[More details on Axel’s age. --Lia]

Q: You probably can’t say what it is, but do you have your next book lined up?

SK: Yeah, I do have my next assignmnt lined up. It’s nothing I can talk about at this time. But I will be doing more writing and drawing. They’re very happy with that, Geoff was extremely happy with how Citizen Cold has come about and fit into the whole Flashpoint package. DC has been too. They’re like, you’ve really come a long with Grundy and everything else you’ve been doing and they are really cool with it.

Q: Any new Rogues popping up in Citizen Cold or just the established ones?

SK: Mostly just the established. There are some changes for them. Not even just Weather Wizard’s goatee. I don’t want to spoil the real cool one. But one of the favorites of the bunch that I changed, it’s just the context of the story they are stuck in. There are hints on the cover as to how it is different for one of the Rogues. It’s big time different, but no new Rogues.

*****************

From Geoff Johns’ AMA on Reddit

Q: Why do you love Captain Cold so much?

Geoff Johns: I love Captain Cold because he doesn't want to rule the world or kill people. He's just some dude who stole a cold-gun and is trying to get by in this crazy, insane super-powered world.

*******************

Geoff Johns introduces some of the Rogues for new readers

Leonard Snart was a career criminal who would pull heists and often work with a crew, until one day this blur, this speedster, shows up and suddenly he has to contend with this brand new thing called a super hero who’s stopping criminals like him from doing what they do. In order to continue, Snart has to up his game. He’s not a scientist. He’s not a doctor. He’s a career criminal. So he steals a cold gun that’s capable of slowing things down to absolute zero.

The thing that makes Snart so interesting to me is that cold is actually the opposite of speed. We talk about this a bit in the [Captain Cold] episode. Speed is defined by how fast things are moving. Temperature is also defined by the same thing—how fast things are moving at the atomic level. The faster they’re moving, the warmer something is. When things stop moving at the atomic level, the lower temperature it has. It’s called absolute zero when there’s absolutely no movement at all.

That I found very fascinating. Temperature and speed—it was all connected. Cold was essentially the opposite of Barry Allen in every way. He was a normal person who had to equip himself to become more than he was.

The character doesn’t want to rule the world. He doesn’t necessarily want to kill the Flash because, at the end of the day, the Flash is celebrated by everybody, and killing him would bring a lot of heat. Also, he’s not a killer. He just wants to pull his jobs and continue doing what he’s doing, and in order to work in a city that’s protected by a super hero, he has to become something more than he is. Until finally, working alone isn’t enough and he has to gather with others that are in the same situation. Like Heat Wave, a pyromaniac who Snart’s worked with before.

Everyone knows that Mick Rory, AKA Heat Wave, has a problem. His love for fire and the arsonist that he is will often divert him away from the mission at hand. But Cold is able to wrangle that pyromaniac. He gives him a heat gun and basically gives him a gimmick. He tells him that if he holds on to the gimmick, he’s not going to be sick anymore. He’ll fit in and belong.

He does that with each one of the Rogues. When he brings in Axel Walker, the Trickster, he’s a kid who’s out of control. He doesn’t have any focus, and Cold brings him focus. Same with someone like Mark Mardon, the Weather Wizard, who’s obsessed by guilt because of the way he got the weather wand. His brother’s death is really a big part of who he is.

It goes on and on with all the Rogues and we’ve talked about a lot of these characters and bringing them onto the show. They work for The Flash because only someone like the Flash could take on five guys at once.  What Greg Berlanti, Andrew Kreisberg and I are trying to do is slowly bring in these wonderful villains, and really they become characters all their own. They have their own stories. They’re more than just villains-of-the-week characters. They’re a part of this world. They live in this world, and we’ll be seeing them again and again.

[buckv-barnes]

Ace Comic Con Panel - Sebastian’s Q&A

full video - part one | two | three

note: i’ve put brackets around some of the fan questions that you might have heard about or you don’t want to read :)

Kevin Smith: -Give it up for Bucky Barnes himself - Sebastian Stan.

Sebastian Stan: What an intro, thank you so much. Thank you.

KS: Don’t be weird, sit right here man.

SS: This couch-

KS: Come on closer, it’s not like we’re in a movie theater like, you sit over there. How are you sir?

SS: No, i’m good. I’m just seeing this couch is big for three. But of, course there’s only one. You know, I’m the only one here, of course, because Tom Holland is two hours behind. “Two hours behind.” And he’s not gonna be here with me. So, I wonder why that is?

KS: He doesn’t like sharing the stage with you?

SS: No, no he doesn't. I actually heard a rumour from Joe that said, you know, he was like Holland doesn't want to have any scenes with you and Mackie. And I was like c'mon that's a joke. Like you know, the whole things a joke. There might be some truth to it, but I don't know.

KS: It was after that first experience in Civil War like, 'I’m done with these guys?'

SS: Yeah, maybe. That might have been it, or just any other times we walked into each other sort of, you know like, on the lot, or on the set or whatever. He doesn't, you know, he just seems to be very after his own needs.

KS: He's not looking after Bucky's needs is what you’re saying?

SS: No, he's looking at the Downey camp like, 'When am I going to have that camp?' That's kind of what he's like. Anyway.

KS: We're gonna tell him when he comes out here and see if he cries.

SS: Please do.

KS: What, er, take us back to the beginning, when you first find out you're going to be in 'Captain America: The First Avenger'. Did they tell you, this character, could keep going? Was there plans at that point?

SS: Yeah, I mean they, you know, they did talk about that, and-, but it was a very strange kinda conversation, because there was nothing definitive about it, just sort of like- 'Look we'd like to see this go that way one day, if we're lucky enough and the movies doing(?) well.' And I was like, 'Great, that sounds great. Let’s do it.' But, yeah, I didn't necessary think that was going to happen. I just, it was good they told me because I, tried to think about the future when we were shooting that first movie and just hopefully, lay in stuff that may, be able to track later in the movies and the character.

KS: So, when you were shooting, ‘The First Avenger’, and ‘Bucky, dies’, for all intensive(?) purposes, there is no guarantee you can come back, you’ll be like, ‘this may be my death scene’.

SS: Well, you know I had a little guarantee, I’ve said this before. The first time I fell off the train, I did only have the one arm. I had a green sleeve, meaning that they were going to do something with it. And I was like this is good, that means we could probably, maybe, that’s where it’s gonna go. And then we ended up re-shooting that scene without the green sleeve, and I was like, ‘Oh’. Maybe, I am dead. Which is kind of- am now?

KS: Apparently, I’m not Bucky as much as I Sucky(?) and they cut me out of the movie. So when do you find out though, like hey man, next movie your character’s right in the title with the main character?

SS: Well, I pretty sure, the way I found out about that title was, a friend of mine called me from Comic Con and said, ‘Dude, you’re in the movie.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, really?’ and they were like, ‘Yeah! Because the title is your characters’ in the title.’ (note: that is how he said it!) And that’s how I found out.

KS: What was it like as an actor, I’m sure you were never ‘Man, I wanna be in blockbusters’, but eventually it happened. What was it like, when somebody’s like you’re going from playing a very sporting character in the first movie to, it’s going to be your movie, your co-sharing that movie, the second time around?

SS: It’s probably a lot of pressure when but not, you feel a little scared, I certainly was. I don’t- You rise up to the challenge, I mean, it’s good to be scared. Right? It’s good thing and there was a real opportunity there for me and, in a sense of like taking the character in that direction. I welcomed it. But again, I never- I’m used to it now, I never know where they’re going to take that situation. I didn’t even know what happened in the last movie (Infinity War) until we were shooting it.

KS: I spoke to Elizabeth (Olsen) and Paul Bettany this morning, and we were talking about the ending in Infinity War, and they were like, the Russo’s pulled them into a van and just before they shot the scene they were like, this is the ending of the movie. That’s how they found out about it. Did you get the van treatment as well?

SS: I know the van they’re talking about. I said, I’m not going in that van.

KS: You were raised right, you had smart parents.

SS: I was like, I wanna be around people when they tell me this. But yeah, this is when you disappear. I was like, ‘what does this mean? Really?’ or, I don’t know, it was right on the day. It’s kind of amazing, the Russo’s, if you think about it you have- If you think about it my character makes sense to be in the dark, in a way, he sort of is in the dark. Just the way they were able to put that movie together is fascinating. It was kind of exciting for all of us because when we were sitting there at the premiere, we were seeing it for the first time.

KS: Something as spiralling as that, I imagine, it’s hard to keep track of a movie, you’re almost in every scene, something like Infinity War you’re like ‘Wait, we’re in Wakanda. What’s going on in space? Don’t worry about it.’

SS: Yeah, which is what the character sort of got as a message anyway. It was sort of like, you’re needed again, so if you wanna gain anybody’s trust, you better go with the flow.

KS: The movies like this in terms of other performances an actor gets to do, a lot of it is physical, there’s a lot of action and what not. How long in advance, I’ve always wondered, everyone in these movies is in impeccably in shape. Sooner or later they’ll be like, ‘Take you shirt off!’ and we’ll see dudes with their shirts of which I know makes me feel bad. (Crowd screaming) He’s not going to take his shirt of.

SS: They’re not asking Anthony Mackie to take his shirt off. He’s up on those wires anyway.

KS: How long before the movie begins do you have to start getting in shape? Getting physical? Or is that normal a part of your regime anyway? Or do you have to double it up in a marvel movie?

SS: No, I mean it becomes an all-around routine because when you’re not working that’s kind of what you’re doing for your sanity. Depends, you start out with a goal and then when you start shooting, there’s no way you make it to the gym at like 4 in the morning. You still try but you shoot all day, your sweating a lot and losing a lot of weight. So, by the end of the movie everybody is at least 10 pounds less when they started.

KS: Is that right? Making one of these Marvel movies is the good way to lose weight?

SS: It kind of is. Here’s the thing, if your shooting in Atlanta, it’s really hot down there and then you’re strapped in these really tight outfits and your moving constantly, running around. Your body is like a furnace burning, burning, burning.  We all go through some stress your making a movie.

KS: Bro, look at me. I never lose weight.  On movies it’s the opposite, I gain 10-15 pounds like, this looks good. It’s free? I’ll take it.

SS: I’ve definitely done the- Because you’re waiting around too, so that’s the other thing. You’re always waiting around. I’ve definitely done that part, I know what you’re saying. Fortunately with these, it’s the moving around, and you start having a lot of- your ego is pretty high and you’re like, I’m gonna do the stunts, I’m going to do as much as I can. But then when you’re doing it on the eighteenth take, your body is kind of wrecked by that point.

KS: So you, ‘Bring in that stunt person, please.’

SS: They might bring them in a lot earlier than that but they’re also the best of guys. I mean those guys really make those action sequences, Sam Hargrave and James Young were just, all the way back to the ‘Winter Soldier’. In a way they reinvented the Captain America fighting style.

KS: That second one is badass, it sorts of, it’s the boat at the beginning and just takes everybody out (?). There has been 3 Captain America movies, and you’ve been in each one of them. You got to have a favourite, which one? Is it ‘The Winter Soldier’?

SS: Yeah, I really liked that one, that one has-

KS: It’s got a lot of Sebastian in it, so yeah

SS: The Winter Solider? No! I mean the Civil War does. The Winter Soldier was cryptic and was like strange. The whole process for that was a fun for me, I’m saying this and they’ll be like ‘perfect! Lets never write a line for him again.’ I didn’t have a lot of lines for that movie. It was all kind of like, trying to tell a story physically and it was interesting in a way, I guess.

KS: I haven’t thought about it, you have way more dialogue in Civil War than you do in The Winter Soldier.

SS: Yeah.

KS: The Winter Soldier was like ‘Who the hell is Bucky?’

SS: That’s it! And then you’re haunted by that line. I was haunted for a long time. I really think I was going in circles forever, like ‘who the hell, who the hell is Bucky, who the-‘ It’s just saying-

KS: You got one line in the movie and you gotta get it right man.

SS: It’s like the Aviator, where you’re like ‘show me the blueprints.’ ‘show me-‘ ‘who the hell is Bucky.’

KS: Excellent pull on the Aviator, man. Alright take us into the world of making marvel movies. Who are you friendly with? Who do you spend a lot of time with on set? Who’s your buddy?

SS: I mean, I think, Anthony and Chris obviously were the guys im closest to and I’ve spent the most time with and I genuinely feel like, we could not talk for a year and we’d pick it right up like nothing happened. Paul Bettany’s become a friend and I just love interacting with him, anything that I- I’ve got two scenes with him barely in the last movie and I just loved every minute of it. Chadwick’s actually really funny as well, he has a sense of humour that many don’t see right away. It’s a good group of people. I don’t know. Paul Rudd is a- Can’t keep a straight face around him. A lot of great people.

KS: It’s awesome to hear, you just call him Chadwick. The rest of us calls him Chadwick Boseman and you just call him Chadwick, and you can just leave it right there, because ‘I actually know the Black Panther.’

SS: Well, in Civil War, he was kinda doing his own thing- may have done it in Black Panther- he was doing a bit of a method acting situation. He was not interacting much with people, he was off on his own.

KS: Oh really, so he was like the character, I got to stay disconnected-

SS: I was like, we weren’t really talking very much and I remember on that rooftop scene in Civil War they we kind of going head to head. He and I didn’t exchange a lot of words, all I remember is that mask coming at me and these long arms coming at me, sweeping at me. So maybe it was effective, I don’t know. He’s just really, really talented.

KS: Take us into the airport sequence in Civil War which is the greatest comic book sequences ever put into film. There’s like 928 superheroes in this scene, so it was like a real clusterf-ck. What was it like to shoot it? Did it take place over the course of a couple of weeks?

SS: Months. It was months. We was always coming back to it. There was always another sequence in that bit that we hadn’t shot yet or needed to come back to. It’s surreal when you did have a bit of down time, I mean everybody was there interacting and kind of- you didn’t always have everybody there- but the few days you did, there was a couple of shots where we had everybody like the line-ups, and that was pretty special. I didn’t want be- I was always concerned like I was going to be the slowest runner and I was like, I can’t be the last guy getting across.

KS: Making a marvel movie is like a high school gym.

SS: Yes! It is, it is.

KS: I’m not letting Evans bet me!

SS: No. It gets a little bit like that… You didn’t have Hemsworth so that was a plus. He gets on set and you’re like I don’t even know why I go to the gym. Why would I even do that. I guess that it’s mental strength!

KS: I’m not even ‘Hemworthy’ enough to be here!

SS: Yes! Definitely not! He’s insane. It’s amazing.

KS: During the course of making these movies a lot of physicality, do you ever get hurt? Ever get injured?

SS: Yeah, for sure. You’re always getting something, some hit. You never know until later because the adrenaline is really high and you’re in the middle of it and want to keep doing it and its usually the next day, your trying to get out of bed and you can’t. You feel it. Yeah.

KS: At that point you’re like f-ck Marvel? Or do you work through it like money is good.

SS: You’re like, ‘I like my job.’ No! You’re always grateful, of course! The thing is you remember what it was like when you were little, like the cowboy and Indians thing. It’s sort of that thing that never leaves you in a way, you go to work and you go ‘wow’ this is my job.  You wanna try and sell that fight as best as you can and you can’t really sell it once in a while without landing a- something.

KS: You watch something- having worked in production, I know they edit it and stuff and I know they throw fake punches. Sometimes these cats go together so hard you had to have connected.  

SS: Oh! I’m sure, it’s happened a million times!

KS: What is your best memory of making a Marvel movie so far? Happiest moment, best day so far? Or in post, cause selling the movies seem like you have a lot of fun and going out on the press circuit and stuff.

SS: I’ve never been on a press- world press tour, for anything before, that was pretty special. Just going to different places and going to Asia for the first time is still a big memory for me cause I’ve never been and you see how everybody is so excited about the movies over there and then the same in Europe. You never get over that, you never get tired of that. I think that at the end of the day going home at night and feeling like you know your part of a good goal and everybody is on the same page. You wanna make the best possible product- the thing you can. And people are looking out for you that way, it doesn’t feel like- you can be in an environment where you feel like people are competitive, where it’s weird and something. Other than trying to run fast you don’t really feel- everyone’s on the same team with this one.

KS: Alright, I’m going to open up to these cats. We’ve got two microphones right there, and people are jumping up to them right now. We’re going to start on this side…

(Fan gets attacked by the mic, Kevin replies with don’t let it break your nose. Just a fyi.)

Fan 1: First of all, I love you.

SS: I love you too.

Fan 2: What’s the worst part of being an actor? What’s the worst things that happen.

SS: Oh god, probably, falling in love with a project and then not seeing it happen and having it fall apart right before you’re shooting. That’s happened to me a few times. Or hearing the word ‘No’ over and over again, that happens a lot too.

KS: A lot of rejection in this business.

SS: Yeah, you do, you have it but there’s a way to use that to come back to it. Stronger or something.

Fan 1: Ok, cool. Another question, what’s it like working with Robert Downey Jr.?

SS: The guy is a legend. I don’t know, I grew up on Chaplin and all those movies, you never know with him, you’re gonna end up with a real reaction, you never know what’s coming at you. He’s so quick and witted, in the moment it always amazes you.

KS: How close does he stay to the page? I’ve always wondered. He sounds like he (makes it up?) dialogue. Am I wrong?

SS: He does and he doesn’t. He will do it a few times. That’s the thing, he says it so naturally, you go ‘was that even written?’ once he’s done it a few times, I feel he can’t help himself, he’s got to do something different each time. He keeps it new, that kind of thing.

(Sketch book fan!)

Fan 3: I was wondering if you wanted to look at my sketch book?

SS: I would gladly look at your sketch book. Come find me after? (looking at Kevin) Is that what you say?

KS: Can we pass it up here? While we answer the next question? We can use everybody just passing forward. If you don’t get it back, Sebastian stole it.

SS: Yeah, it would be me.

Fan 3: That’s fine as well.

KS: Send it up! We’ll get it into his hands. Meanwhile, we’ll jump over here and jump back to you for a review of your portfolio.

Fan 4: If Bucky got hold of the infinity gauntlet, what do you think he would do with it?

(Background fan: Deep important question!)

KS: It’s a great question.

SS: It is a great question. There’s only one place he would go and that’s back in time! (sebastian’s now received the book) Yeah, he’d probably go back in time. Try to fix all the things he’s done wrong, for starters. Maybe… Not get on that train? I don’t know.

SS: (towards sketch book fan) This is really great, by the way! (looking through) Oh my god, hello!

KS: Flip it this way.. This is legit, man! I know you didn’t ask me, but excellent job!

SS: A lot of complex things going on there. Oh my god, you’re very talented. Nice recurring theme.

(Kevin notices Loki as a snake)

SS: Each one of these pictures is like my worst nightmare. Pretty much.

KS: Want him to tag the book for you, while he’s got it?

Fan 3: Sure. Why not.

KS: (Sebastian signs the book) He wrote, ‘I drew this.’

SS: This is really great. Keep drawing! Don’t stop!

(Here’s one of my warnings! Slightly awkward)

Fan 5: Before I ask my question, my brother is a huge fan of the Captain America franchise. He has a group that he cosplays with, a group of friends. He plays Captain American and his friend, N, is Bucky, obviously. I was wondering if you could give a quick, hello to my brother and his friend?

SS: Hello-

Fan 5: Wait, not ready!

SS: This is amazing. Hello N, and the brother!

Fan 5: My question is: I fell in love with you first when I saw you as Jefferson at the time. By the way, I love you.

SS: I love you too.

Fan 5: You play a lot of characters that, deal with a lot of heavy-

SS: Issues?

Fan 5: No! They really deal with hard emotions. It’s sometimes difficult as an actor to reach that place and it’s hard to come back from that. So I’m wondering, actor to actor, how do you not let the negative emotions that you portray in characters affect you and how do you translate over to- you! How do you keep them separate? Cause you’re always this happy puppy.

SS: Wow, that’s…

KS: Well happy puppy, what do you say?

SS: Yeah, exactly. I don’t know if I’m a happy puppy all the time. No-one really is right? I think you have to try and not isolate yourself. It’s who you keep around in your life, that’s why it’s so important, your family and friends, who you trust. You can’t lose that sense of ground that is you, yourself. If I’m away somewhere on set, I try to check in with people and it’s ok to check in! I think people are so scared sometimes to admit that ‘I’m not having a great day!’ like, ‘what’s up, what’s going on?’ I think it’s okay to say that, and one of your friends is going to call you back.  Please tell people when you’re not having a good day! That’s what I do I guess.

KS: I’m going to ask you a quick question. When you play Bucky, you’re playing a character that carries expectation with him. People be like, ‘I’ve been reading this character in the books since I was a kid.’ So, there’s a certain amount of pressure there and there’s freedom because nobody knows what Bucky sounds like, until they put him on film for the first time and it’s you, so you get to set the tone. But recently, you were on I, Tonya, right?  And so, in that case you had to play a person the world knew, somebody who was well documented on film and stuff. What was the difficultly in that and the marvel stuff?

SS: That has its own weird expectations, in its own way. Expectations is the biggest enemy no matter how you cut it. I think you have no choice to- it’s more mechanical, I just watched what I could on the guy (Jeff), over and over, I just listened to any audio I had of him over and over again. Until I could feel like it was becoming me. It’s tough because you have to adjust to something that already exists. But sometimes that’s good too! You know where you’re going. Bucky had source and material. But in the movies, like you said at the beginning, in the comic books, he was a kid.

KS: Yeah, there was nothing you could go off of.

SS: They came in and we like, okay we’re going to have him more of a bigger brother and have this guy whether or not enlist. It’s sort of it’s own pros and cons.

(LGBT fan)

SS: Hi, what’s up?

Fan 6: Nothing much.

SS: How’s the German Shepard? (Dog the fan has.)

Fan 6: The German Shepard is great. His name is R. As a gay man, I really appreciate it when you play gay characters. Do you feel like you’ll ever go back into playing and LGBT character?

SS: Yeah, why not? I would in a second. It’s always about the script, the story telling, what kind of obstacles a character has in their life and what they’re trying to get through and that doesn’t matter. We’re all fighting against something and we’re all facing something. We all want to change and get better at, that’s universal. It’s just about having the right story. If it happens, why not?

 (End of part one. Part two with Sebastian and Anthony Mackie)

note: sorry for typos and grammar mistakes. I tried getting this out quickly!

[clnriswood]

KAI PARKER X READER

Starry

Request: Could you do a oneshot with Kai taking care of his stressed out gf in college? Thank you! ❤

gif cred @ximaginingkaiparkerx

x

You lay on your back, staring up at the ceiling where you’d stuck a bunch of tacky old glow in the dark stars. They sparkled an ugly green color, but it was the closest thing you’d get to the real ones back in mystic falls. You were still in your clothes from the day, some blue jeans and a knit sweater, and your hair was a tousled mess. Multiple notebooks and textbooks lay scattered around your body, and you groaned and rubbed at your eyes before promptly sitting up with an exaggerated sigh. It was one in the morning, and exam week, which meant little to no sleep for you, and late nights sipping on old cups of coffee. You grabbed at your mug and took a swig of the cold drink, letting out a sigh of agitation and throwing a highlighter across the room with a short scream of frustration, but before it could hit the wall, a hand snapped from around the wall and plucked it from the air.

“Kai?!” you breathed in surprise, “is it really you, or am I so tired I’m seeing things?”

“It’s me,” he chuckled, wooshing over to your side in a second and causing you to drop your mug in surprise.

“I’m delirious, don’t scare me like that!” you laughed. Then you relaxed with a little smile, “you’re really here.”

“I really am.”

Kai bent down beside your bed, his bright blue eyes narrowing as he scanned you over. His eyes flickered across your paled skin, dark circles, and chapped lips, and your makeup less and exhausted self had never felt more self conscious.

As if reading your mind, he stated, “you look-”

“I know,” you grumbled, “atrocious.”

“Actually I was gonna say beautiful,” his lips twitched.

It was dumb how something so simple could make your heart do flips in your chest.

“I don’t know, it just makes you look a little…” he paused, searching for the right word, “rougher.” Then he gave you his cute little wink, “it’s hot.”

“Kai!” you squealed shoving him playfully, to which he smiled wide and climbed up onto your bed.

He wore a dark black coat and tattered grey jeans, his dark boots dangling off the bed. He smelled faintly of the forest from back home, and a little like rain, too.

“Come here,” he scooped you up into his arms, wrapping you into one of his bear hugs. You burrowed into his front and nuzzled your face into the crook of his neck, breathing in his aroma, your body instantly relaxing under his touch.

“So, tell me what’s been keeping you up, sweetheart?”

“Says the one who hardly sleeps,” you scoffed into him.

“Well why would I when I could be keeping you up all night and until morning, princess?” he smirked, his eyes flashing.

“Kai,” you blushed furiously and tried to claw your way out of his arms, but he just held you tighter and chuckled, his chest rumbling beneath you.

“Kidding,” he laughed. “Well, unless-”

“I’m a bit busy,” you cut him off with a chuckle, shifting your body so you could blink up at his big blue eyes.

He hummed and trailed his fingertips gently through your hair, “why’s that?”

“My finals are this week, so all I’ve done is study, and I’m beyond stressed, you grumbled, lip jutting out.

“Aw, I’m sure you’ll do amazing,” he cooed gently.

“Easier said than done,” you sighed.

“Come on,” he tilted his head like a puppy, “I know you. You always overthink, and you always over stress everything.”

“That is so not true,” you said unconvincingly.

“Mhm, sure,” he smiled, dimples alighting his cheeks. “And I also know that you always try your best, so you will succeed. And hey, if you don’t, you’ll know you did what you could, and that I’m proud of you either way, okay?”

You sighed, brushing your nose against his jaw with a sigh, “okay.”

“So, maybe you should get some sleep for once, you need it,” he reassured, scooping you up and gently rubbing his fingers rhythmically into your shoulders.

“Mmm, but that feels good,” you rolled your head to Kai’s shoulders as he massaged you.

“Okay, fine,” he said, “but first tell me about those horrific things on the ceiling.”

“The stars?” you laughed.

“Sure,” he said, digging his knuckles into your spine as you spoke. It hurt, but in a good way.

“I put them up there after I moved into the dorm. I don’t know, I guess it’s just a reminder of how bright the stars would shine back home, how we’d lie under them and tell stories,” you sighed.

“Yeah,” he responded, moving his hands to your lower back, “I miss that.”

“Me too.”

You turned, Kai releasing him as you pushed him gently back onto the bed, so you both lay looking at the faded ceiling.

“What’s this?” he laughed.

“We’re stargazing, just like the old days.”

“Oh,” he beamed, “of course!”

“Look,” you said, pointing at one of the half broken and uglier of the stars, “that one looks like you!”

“Oh shut it,” he snorted, nudging your side.

You laughed and rolled to your side, and Kai was already there, doing the same. His eyes shone through the dark, brown hair slightly ruffled, and that smile he wore melted your heart.

“You remember what else we used to do under the stars?” he whispered.

“Nah,” you obviously lied, “I might need a reminder."

Kai’s full lips twitched as his hand cupped your face, body rolling into yours like a puzzle piece as his mouth found your own. You curled your knees into him, Kai’s arm scooping you into his front and closing the gap between your bodies as you kissed each other, foreheads touching, noses squishing against each other as you lost yourself in his taste. And so you lay, tangled together on the old mattress, in the tiny dorm room, beneath the crappy stars, and it felt enough like home.

Kai sighed and pulled away from you, “shall I let you sleep then?”

“Wait,” you tugged his collar before he could move, “stay? Just a little while?”

“Okay,” he smiled as you turned around, your back to his front as his arms went slinking around you and you cuddled into each other. “Just a little while.”

And so you pictured the mattress beneath you being fresh green grass, the ceiling a canvas of diamonds, and the fan a cool night’s breeze, and you drifted away just like that.

.  .  .

When you woke up, he was gone, and not a trace of him was left, almost as if he’d never been there in the first place. You yawned and rubbed at your eyes, heart sinking because you already missed him. Your alarm blared beside you, and you knew it was time. But as you threw on a jacket and sneakers, hands scooping up your textbooks, your eyes fell on something. A cup of coffee sat beside your bed, and it was still steaming hot, and a part of you wondered if Kai had enchanted it to stay hot for you. He’d scribbled a note on the cup in his messy handwriting.

“Go get em.’ I love you. Also I figured you could use some hot coffee for once.”

You chuckled, heart lifting as you put the cup to your lips and took a slow sip, it tasted really good. As the warm liquid hit your throat, your eyes caught another message written on the other side of the cup. You took a swig as you read the message;

“Also, you’ll need the pick me up and lots of sleep, cause’ I promise you, you won’t be sleeping much when you get home.”

He’d scribbled a winky text face and a bracket heart by his words, and you almost spat your coffee everywhere in surprise.

“Love you too, Kai,” you laughed into the empty room.

[qqueenofhades]

Ah yes, the tired old saw, oft repeated by people who know absolutely nothing about fanfic/fan culture, that all fanfic readers/writers are 12 years old.

It has been said many times before, usually in regard to the occasional attempted policing of older fandom members, but like... everyone I know in fandom is an adult. All the teenagers are like... 17 or 18, which, while younger than me, is not 12. Tumblr and Twitter don’t even allow you to have an account if you’re under 13. I’m a thirty-ish professional woman, and most everyone I talk to on a regular basis is in that late twenties/early thirties bracket, with some who are older (40s, 50s, etc). It sure as hell isn’t 12-year-olds who are running AO3, and it sure as hell isn’t 12-year-olds writing most of the content on it, and it sure as hell isn’t 12-year-olds making professional-quality fanart. Because oh yeah, fandom is and always has been created by people of all ages, and when I was 12 or so, yes, I discovered fic and fandom and it taught me about all kinds of things that I had nowhere else to learn about. I have talked about how fic taught me about sex and race and LGBT people and other ideas I didn’t encounter as a sheltered kid in a middle-class white town. So by all means, I have no problem with 12-year-olds encountering and producing fic and fan culture. But this idea that it is even remotely limited to middle schoolers is, of course, nonsense.

In this case, however, I suspect that the putative age of fandom and fic writers has nothing to do with what our friend up there, “Ove81212,” who looks as if they made this account specifically to say something stupid and entitled to a celebrity on Twitter, is actually getting at. I suspect they’re mad that Michael Sheen has, at every opportunity, shipped Ineffable Husbands as hard as possible, yelled IT’S A ROMANCE at the top of his lungs whenever an interviewer asked about the “bromance,” validated and loved on and supported queer Good Omens fans, openly admitted to reading IH smut fic and using it in his performance, talked thoughtfully about gender roles and gender transgression in his body of work, and otherwise done The Most to ensure that Aziraphale/Crowley is read as/confirmed as a romantic love story. He has never once walked it back or tried to play down the obvious message or tried to go the Straight People Pleasing route with it. So by calling it the “12 year old fanfic universe,” our friend is implying that “clever adult entertainment” is by definition, not queer, and that is really what they would like Michael Sheen to shut up about. Which, bless him, Michael Sheen is having absolutely no part of. We stan.

Amen.

[ytsthepodcast]

Bonus Episode: Your Transformation Live

Bonus Episode: Your Transformation Live

Infinite Paths - Leading Yours With More

We eat whenever and whatever we want but always question why we struggle with our overall health. Have you ever thought about the tableware you buy at your local store- have you ever questioned the portion size of tableware and looked into what is the right amount of food for healthy consumption? What about questioning why we have a lazy eye? Check out my assumption of why we have one and Larry's rebuttal. Or catastrophizing the likely outcomes that help pass the time as you stand in line at your local 7-eleven. 

Enjoy!

      Click to Subscribe to your podcast player of choice. So you'll be first to know when new episodes arrive.

      Connect with Your Transformation Station:   

Facebook | Instagram |Twitter | Website | YouTube               {DONATE}

Consider leaving a brief review on Apple Podcast/iTunes if you have enjoyed this episode. Only a matter of seconds it will take, and it helps bring together potential guests and listeners.

    Transcripts for this episode can be found at the bottom.

  Get an interesting take away from this episode? Let me know about it in the comments section.

   Interesting episode here

May 14 2020:Winning Small Moments Beyond the Linear Progression (#9)

Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Audio file

 Paul Fritsche, Owner, Lead Instructor at Midwest Krav Maga. Paul and I discuss the curriculum at Midwest Krav Maga. Realistically, fights do not happen in a linear progression. That is why Midwest Krav Maga is incorporating a well rounded hybrid self-defense system that incorporates numerous different fighting styles—addressing real-world defensive scenarios that are simple yet very effective.

RATE THIS PODCAST HERE

(( Check out this episode on our YouTube channel )) 

LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE

Host Greg Favazza:

About Me 

Book your interview today

Facebook

Co-Host Larry Oliver

Email

Website 

Facebook

  Do you want to get heard on Your Transformation Station? Leave us an audio review here.

      Are you interested in getting on the show?

Previous Episode

Aug 18 2020:Disputing the Depths of Face Value (#26)

Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Audio file

Sign up to Your Transformation Station email list; you'll be updated on our latest content.

    Sign up to our patron page, help support others in their transformation,

(SMART) - $2 PER MONTH - Help spread the message of Your Transformation Station. Make Guest Recommendations on our monthly "Guest Suggestions" post. Submit questions for upcoming guest interviews.

(BRAINY) - $5 PER MONTH - All Perks from the (SMART) bracket, plus. Our Bi-weekly "Blooper Reel" and video recordings of podcast episodes.

    Transcription

8/31/2020

Bonus Release  Livestream

Intro/Sweeper

  We're tapping into surpassing expectations from the most successful people in the modern day and honing in on new foresight, methodologies and clairvoyance. You never knew this is your transformation station with your host, Greg Favazza

  Show

  GREG

[00:00:24] I have been overwhelmed, as you can tell my shit's not even up in the background. Cause I had to re wipe the computer because this brand new computer I bought somehow got a fucking virus on there and fucked everything up. So I had to delete that. I've been. I'm writing two books. I've finally finished my design for my third book.

That's going to fucking punch a hole in Stephen Kobe's work, where I'm going to go. I am going to take those next seven habits to a whole new fucking level. 

  LARRY

Wow. I need to be patenting this shit, but I believe that cost like around 200 bucks. I just can't spend it. However, there's no, you, you could always, uh, print the concept of it up and then mail it to yourself.

And keep the envelope sealed and you have a postmark on it. So it's better than nothing at all. That's genius. That's fucking genius. Yeah. I mean, I've, I've heard that. That's one way to deal with that. I, again, when push comes to shove, I don't know how valid, but at least you have here. Well, when did you come up with it?

  GREG

Cause here's when I came up with it. Okay. Yeah, I came up with the bouts, I want to say four months ago, and I've just been, I'm trying to work on numerous things and I'm creating a course for podcasting. I'm creating a course for your transformation station that will. Open up people's minds on creating a character similar to mine, because it stuck with me.

GREG

When you told me about my character, it's like, this is what I want my character to be out in the world. Cause I feel like men today need to adopt a higher standard of themselves. And I feel like that will actually ripple out into people's actions. It will impact those to the people that they're interacting with and it will just continue to disperse.

GREG

If people were to just act like that. And I think just having that as a good giveaway, as far as you do this course, you take, you vowed this, this little cheat sheet that I have, all this stuff that I've been creating, finding it will be great to get people on the email list. It will be great to continue to.

Grow with your transformation station. And then also we're doing a podcasting course. We're going into that as far as, or I'll do stuff to review as far as reviewing my microphone, reviewing my camera. And I want you to participate with that because you get a lot of knowledge on that and it's just for, it's just different ways for you and I to continue to grow.

With your transformation station, but also to grow with our audience. Like I haven't connected with them. I haven't done shit with them. And it's just, it's really important that I start doing that today. It's something that I just noticed, you know, a couple of my coaches in the voiceover world, uh, tell me that I need to.

  I have and participate in a real social presence. And I just, it, at the end of the day, that's when I think, Oh shit, I didn't do anything. Anyway. What's really interesting. 

Greg is in the last two weeks, I've been more social media oriented than I've been in several years. And I will tell you about myself.

Facebook business page, you know, the professional page, fan page, whatever you call it. Okay. I hate it night just under 2000, uh, interactions, uh, which was up from the previous month. Uh, and, and this was over a seven day period. It was like a thousand, 2000%. It was crazy just from participating a little bit.

And I mean, a very small amount with those people that, um, stumbled onto me every now and then I was surprised what a difference it makes. So yes, the point of coming back to what you spoke of is, is that interaction. Yes. Um, people really, they, they they're into that. It's definitely something that I have struggled all my life with and I believe doing this will help me grow and be able to get the message out to people.

  [00:05:06] I know we, I know I have a lot of great valuable information to offer this world is just this. Internal barrier that I put between myself and everybody else holds me back. And I know it's just, I created it. It's nothing, nothing more than that. Thinking that, Oh God, if people know that I'm human, then I'm fine.

You know that you are human and, you know, I'm curious, like, what do you, what do you even talk about with your audience as far as that goes to work or live sessions as we go? So I am sure. Sure. So here here's what, um, For example, yesterday was a beautiful morning. I woke up, had my breakfast, my coffee, uh, and I got dressed on Saturdays in tower Grove park, which is just a block or two away from me.

There's a farmer's market and I needed it. I was out of local honey. So, uh, I figured I'll just walk over to the farmer's market and pick that up. And anything else that I really don't need, but I want. Um, so way over once I got into the park, I still have, you know, a good mile, three quarters of a mile to go to where the farmer's market is.

Anyway. Uh, I just turned on my phone and I didn't have a steak or anything. I mean, I'm holding it out here and walking, trying not to, the trails, all crooked and broken. So trying to make sure I don't fall like an imbecile. Uh, and then I can't get up because of my age. And then I have to push my button around my neck, you know, I followed it.

I can't, what is that call or that thing? Like your hip, you can't get up. I figured. Great. And so I was just, I just kind of went on and said, Hey, it's a great morning. I'm going to the farmer's market. I'm going to pick up some high, you know, and people respond to authenticity and just. You know, it was short, I don't think it was two minutes.

Maybe it was two minutes later that day I went back on line and they didn't go. I think this is, I did go live on this one and I think it was the first one I'd ever gone live on. Um, I had been thinking about what am I going to do for dinner? And it was two o'clock in the afternoon, but as I said in the video, just being authentic old people, you know, at two o'clock in the afternoon, they start thinking about what are we gonna do for dinner tonight?

So I was thinking I'm going to have this pasta, but, um, for weight control purposes or actually, you know, portion control, I did, I would actually look at the box of pasta to determine what. A portion is. And so I talked about that. A portion of pasta is two ounces. I mean, that's nothing, it's actually 56 grams, which is two ounces.

There's 28 grams of amounts. Anyway. So I showed them what it looks like. It's three quarters of a cup of dry pasta. And it was even more terrible when I actually made it for dinner and then put the cooked pasta into a pasta bowl. And I mean, I kept looking at her like, where's my pasta, you know what I mean?

Just like four pieces of it. And, but I will tell you, what's interesting is when I was done with dinner. Can I just, I had a little salad, one slice of garlic toast in my pasta. I noticed fall by the end. Weren't you? I was satisfied and I wasn't miserable and uncomfortable and burping and farting. And did, Oh, I didn't eat so much.

And then later too, I can enjoy a couple cooks. Jeez. Cause I had the room. So anyway, but I talked about that. It's amazing how many people popped in and watched it and commented on it. And again, it might've been two and a half minutes long. So I'm curious about that. Did you make, did you make it appealing to you and also trick your brain in a way, as far as.

Setting this pasta and a smaller dish versus an average dish. I feel like, like all the silverware, all the tableware we buy is for extremely large portion sizes. I think that's why we're all beasts in America today because it reads acceptable. That is such a great point. And what I, what I did is I have a digital scale.

  Because like I I'm a coffee nut. So if I try a new bean, you can't really go by your scoop. You go by the weight of the beans, how much weight you need for the water you use anyway. So. I actually weighed out two ounces of pasta. I weighed out in grams cause that's how it was listened. So I weighed out 56 grams of pasta.

I was just using little medium shells because I like those. Uh, and, and I put them in what I call a rice bowl. Just like getting ready to cook them. So I wouldn't have to deal with it. Uh, you know, when I got ready for dinner, I just threw it into a pot with boiling water and his great Fazio's meat sauce. Um, and, and then I just put it in a regular pasta bowl, pasta kind of bowl.

But, um, what you say is so true, um, It's mostly marketing. I think that's affected the way everything's supersized in how we expect stuff to be super-sized in the old days, pre COVID when you'd go into a really nice restaurant and you order something on the menu and they would bring it. And I mean, it looked really pretty.

But, you know, you got like medallions of beef and there's like three bites of beef, you know, instead of if it's you and me and we're going to go a charcoal grill, a steak outside, you know, we're going to go get a 12 or 16 ounce steak and slap it on the grill, man. People really, I mean, assuming you have something else to eat with it, you know, you only need three or four ounces of beef.

When you sit down and eat anyway, I don't mean to get off on that. But what you said is absolutely correct. Also with the fact that like, I mean, we're not using, I guess people aren't used to the fact that yes, we adapted. We don't, we don't go how it used to back then, where we would have to survive. Off one meal that would last us for days.

Now there's an abundance of food. I believe it's just way too much as the fact that we can go to a grocery store and get anything we want at any time of the day. And we do, we even have to go to the grocery store with a cell phone and Instacart. We'll bring whatever the fuck we want. I'm guilty. I'm guilty.

Do it again. So we do that. Or sedentary, you know, we're not moving and people wonder how come there's so many people with aches, pains, diseases, illness, they don't feel good. They have no energy and they're overweight, fucking Amazon and Instacart and fucking, yeah. What do you call that place that delivers food?

  [00:12:40]Uber eats. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, door dash or door dash. You know that shit. Huh? But not with fucking reminders. Say, Oh, we got a special for you today. That's you covered? You know, and you get a free cookie if you, you know, do it in the next 12 seconds. Oh my God. And I get a free cookie. Yeah. But the other thing is.

That's all fine and dandy. If we'll each make ourselves move and get some physical exercise every day. All of that's okay. But if we're not in addition to that, if we're not getting out and being physical and enjoying the way our bodies are put together, which requires movement to stay in. Optimal shape, you know, just like a car.

If you don't start it for five or six days and you wonder how come the battery's dead. Cause it's meant to be turned on and the alternator is going to keep it all char you know, however that stuff works. I don't know. But. Yeah, we need to, uh, exercise is so important as to what we do each day and how we feel and how our bodies work.

Yes. So anyway, I'll get off that soap box. No, no, you can keep going. Cause right now you're buying me time as I try to figure out. Cause right now we're live on YouTube and I'm trying to get us live on fucking Facebook and, uh, So, do you have a special software or a special piece of hardware that allows you to stream from, for example, YouTube, and then it streams out live to other platforms.

  All right. I have a buddy who actually specializes in that in live streaming, but no, I do not have that. I'm actually utilizing zoom. Okay. Yeah. Provide you with three avenues to get out there. And this is the first time I've ever used it before. Is it working pretty smoothly or fucking YouTube? I believe so.

I mean, I'm trying to think. I don't even know. It's just showing a picture of your face with the lazy eye going. So it looks like, yeah, it looks like it's your left one. Oh yeah. That's probably because I always forget to look at my webcam. Like I looked down here where you are. But then that makes everything go down here versus.

Especially when I'm talking, I need to be looking, I suppose, into the camera, which is really not placed in a good place. That's part of why it looks like I have a lazy eye. So w lazy. Yeah, this is what's interesting to me. Cause I was, I was thinking about this today as far as, why do people have a lazy eye?

And then you really gotta look into it a little deeper as far as, okay. Is there a vision off by chance? Let's say w. Somebody has like a 20, 20 and the other one and the other, one's like a hundred by 20. I don't know. I don't know that it's astigmatism and yeah, that's my issue. Uh, but generally with one eye that's lazy.

It's like, is that the one that's that's straining all the time? Like that's a shitty eye and the other eye is good because it's constant. Like open and just kind of relax. Well, several years ago I had LASIK surgery. So none of that's really true. What you're seeing is. The end result of two things, one a just average web cam.

Uh, and two, like I said, where my camera's placed and what I have to do is concentrate on looking directly at the camera lens. But if the camera lens is off axis, it's like when your microphone's off axis, depending on your microphone. Your voice will sound considerably different when you're off axis, you will appear in things that will appear totally different.

And especially on this camera, when I move, whatever I move the movements all messed up. So as I moved my eyes, you know, it looks funny like this. Okay. So I think as I look at the television, the television, the computer monitor, um, it's this right eye that looks funky. Uh, no I'm done. Devily listening to it. No, that I know that.

And I'm just, you know, talking as you're trying to make these adjustments so that too you'll have the whatever adjustments you need. And as I told somebody yesterday, Um, I like to talk. And so what I've determined is, you know, we all have about 50,000 words. We speak a day over a normal day, most people.

So what about those people that can't, and don't talk for physical reasons and mental reasons somebody has to use up their 50,000 words. Otherwise those 50,000 words are still hanging. And need to be used. And if too many of them are hanging around in the ether, well, then our ether will get all clogged up with these unused words.

So I use everybody's words that don't use their words. That's why I talk so much. I believe it's my excuse for today. Good excuse. And the fact, I liked that as far as people that need to use up this ether, the fact that they don't do it, do you think that creates some sort of anxiety? The fact it's just.

Energy that's inside them. That's not being expressed that they really don't know how to express it. And that's why they get uncomfortable. That's why they're just like awkward kinds of things going on. But then you're coming in kind of just to feed off that energy because that's what I do, use it, um, in an effort to, to.

Utilize all my pent up energy that I could otherwise not use. Um, yeah. For people who chime in right now, they hear you saying, just using your pent up energy. I think that consent is a red flag on how you are a creeper. Oh, well, you know, there's probably many people that find that I am angry. Yeah. But I think part of it, part of that has to do with the fact that we're usually in the mornings.

I like to get out of the shower and just put on my London fog, trench coat, and a big fedora. And I like walking around, outside in public and every now and then when it seems appropriate, opening up my trench coat, um, and people honk and scream and wave and throw stuff and you know, others give me thumbs, thumbs up.

So I don't know. Maybe I have a little creepster to me. No, but, but that's what makes it okay. I like to be weird. Like I want to approach a situation in public and do it in the most abnormal fashion where I can break people's autopilot. I feel like if I can do that, then I made an impact in somebody's day because.

No shutting their brain off. They're dissociating just to get through their day. And I don't want them to do that. I want them to not suffer, but I want them to embrace this awkward, never before seen experience. And did their life because they need that more than anything right now, because that's a way to grow.

And I will tell you back in the day when I was in the corporate world and I'd go into office buildings and walk into an elevator, the door would open and there'd be five or six people, you know, all facing out naturally and all very quiet. So here's how you break it. You are sitting in an elevator. I walk into the elevator and I don't turn around.

  [00:20:20] So I'm facing everybody that's facing out. And I don't say anything. I just look, you know, like around it, everybody's standing there and somebody will say something and it'll break the ice, but it's really funny. The expressions you mean? Yeah. You can see in their mind. Why isn't this fuck turning around.

He needs to be, I don't want to be looking at him. We're all supposed to look at the door until it opens and then leave. And it's really funny when you do stuff like that. The responses you get. And generally it's a lot of smiles and laughing and that's always fun. Yeah. Or just ripping ass in the middle of that 32nd, like enclosed room for a second and just have them like, Whoa.

Exactly. Or again, the opposite too is true. You know, you were just in a long business meeting and you got in the elevator and nobody's in the elevator with you and you really got to kind of, or, well, you know, the middle of the day, nobody else is going to be getting in here. And I only got to go down six floors.

So, you know, you let it rip. And the next floor, the door opens and somebody walks in, they know it's you, there's no dog. Yeah, just cut out. They guy just got far and got out on the floor. Yeah. Own that shit. When that happens, you gotta embrace it and just be good. I think people are really weird and awkward. I think if you own it, it would actually make you a more respectable individual.

Absolutely. When they walk in. Sorry about the stink. I just farted. I didn't think anybody else would get him here. There we go. If you can hold your breath for 42 seconds, we'll make it to the lobby. Just this light. Oh shit. Oh, that's weird. Whoa. Stop it on this. Fix that. Okay. Display up to no. Hi, non video.

Are you still there? No, I left. Oh, you got, you got really quiet. Like I just fucked something up. No, not at all. I just decided to take a breather every now and then I actually do that. I don't try to do it often. So it says like everything's running on like all three platforms. However, I'm only seeing we're live on YouTube, which isn't showing.

Facebook at all. So on the Facebook page, is that your transformation station? Facebook page? I'll grab it up here on my cell phone. Yeah. Yeah. And I added you as a, a fucking editor. So you have the ability to do anything on there. But I'm going to copy a link to YouTube, the streaming link. I will post that on the page as well.

Right.

Sometimes I have really fat fingers, I believe. I think that just happens with age. Thank you. Uh, you know, I was wishing you could come up with so many things, but you chose to tell it comes with age. I thought I liked the fact that it shows your creepy face when it's the initial YouTube streaming, like part it's going to look, I'm going to post it just because.

Yes. Cause it's just, it's really funny looking it's like, Whoa, really see the premier cause most wanted right here. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. Now I'm actually on the transformation station page. Ah, dammit. I posted on my personal page. We gotta fix that. So I don't want you on there and too late you're there.

See here. What do you listen to in the background? We live there, where we went to your post, to your post office, to your eyes. Your personal Facebook page. Yay. I just posted on that. Were there, but none, but that's the, this is just YouTube. That's the YouTube link that I copied, right? Oh, so this is not what I'm seeing.

No, no, no, no. This is live. If you click on it, it'll take you to YouTube. I think what I need to do is through your Facebook page. So I think we're streaming. Let me. And it shows zoom, so that's right. Yeah. I don't know. Okay. Maybe it's a plane. Yeah. I just switched back to YouTube, but here's your, hang on this, if you, I don't know.

Yeah. I can see that. I know. I don't know what to do. That's a weird guy. That's there. The guy that looks like Brad Pitt that's. Yes. No. Yeah. That's what, yeah. People confuse us all the time. It's embarrassing. Actually. It's quite exhausting. You have to literally wear a hat and fucking, just sunglasses. Yeah.

And you need a pen. Could you do it? I don't want to disappoint people. So I go ahead and give them the autograph. Wish I had that experience. How does that, like when you wake up and you piss XL, you know, I'll tell you. I see us there. Page, but I don't know if it's, so I just switched it now. Now it's on your transformation station.

I'm going to put it on the group next. I know. I should have, I had this set up. I really did. And this is confusing cause I was actually going to try to do this before, not today, but I mean, before. Last week, actually. Okay. That is confusing because you're 90 years old. I want to listen to it any other way. I couldn't use it so easily.

It's unbelievable. I just want to put a VCR in front of you and watch you struggle. Well, let me tell you. Yeah. And there's people listening to you on CR. You know, what's that you just stuck in that big slot? Mmm. Yeah, no, it's funny. My, my daughter was telling me it was a few years ago when my grandsons were a little bit younger, but she was cleaning out some old stuff.

Um, and there was a box of, uh, videotape and you, one of my grandchildren said, WhatsApp, mom. And, you know, she goes, well, you know, it's a video tape. It's like a movie. Oh, cool. Let's watch it. We don't have a VCR player anymore. We see our players who still have DVD players, but you know, today really, if you don't have one, do you really need one?

You know, everything, you can stream everything or find it in a video, an MPV MP for. Format or whatever. So, you know what I was thinking, I think this would be like a great like idea for like a TV show is to actually have like a competition between, let's say a one year old putting in like the little like boxes or the little squares into the square hole, the little circles into the circle hole.

And then we have like a, what do you call it? Maybe like them. Like a 15 year old trying to learn stick shift. Okay. So we do that. We timed that and then we do an older man say 32 37, trying to figure out a fucking Rubik's cube. And then we have your ass right there on there, trying to work like a DVD player.

Right. Who is the first one that is able to get to the end of the taskings? I think that would be really interesting. It's like that. What is it? American gladiators where people go through obstacle courses. So this would be like, Techno something. Um, you know, uh, I think that interesting cancer is this group here.

I don't know how to pull it out. They updated this Facebook app, mud jigger, and I'm trying to, Oh, they did. But they did actually get to this and it's like, no, What is going on here. Fuck. I will get to our Facebook page. No problem.

Right. So what are you even up to this weekend? Anything exciting, extraordinary, uh, before we even go into that, cause I don't want to, let's go into what the plans are with your transformation station. Um, I have been, I have sucked so badly at entertaining with the audience. Just you have to engage when you're running this sofa, soulful social influence.

I would say lifestyle this podcast, and I want the audience to know that I've been working extremely hard. I'm writing three different books. One will actually be focusing, excuse me, around your transformation station. And. That'll allow you to adopt these principles that you can apply to your character and move forward with a higher self awareness in yourself, but able to recognize the flaws in other people.

So you can distinguish people that will help you in life versus people that will only bring you down. And then the other book. That is focusing with a podcasting course. I've learned so much as far as I started researching how to podcast back in November, 2019 and. I'm the guy who spends every day from morning tonight on how to do something.

And I have links to everything. I got links to fucking Britain. Like this podcast is going globally in 17 different countries. Excellent. And we're in 32 different States of the U S and that is me being at the bare minimum because I'm trying to write a book. I'm trying to create this online course for your transformation station, as well as another course for podcasting yet, I haven't even come up with the names for it.

[00:30:44] I'm just right now, creating these stupid slides, recording these videos of myself, which is extremely exhausting. And then I got links to. Over like 60 days, different locations where you can publish a podcast. I actually have more than 60 in the world, actually. How many places you can, but I know people will find that very interesting and want to know more and that'll be put out there.

As well as you and I doing a product review over equipment on how we can just inspire the world to stop buying this useless crap that Amazon's populating with. Oh, this is the number one seller. Get this one. This one's fantastic microphone. No, no, no, no. There's a reason why it's number one seller is because people that bought it returned it and it's just complete nonsense with all these comments reviews.

Yeah. And you know what, what's really interesting. When you talk about microphones or you talk about a camera or you talk about a light, or you talk about a nutritional stuff supplement, or you talk about a body weight exercise, or the latest fad in anything, you know, there's no one best thing of anything.

So, what I'm suggesting is, for example, in voiceover, one of the most common questions you'll see on different, uh, Forums or Facebook groups, whatever you want to call them is what's the best microphone to get or video people. What's the best camera to get? Or, you know, if, if you're wanting to get a bicycle, you know, what's the best road bike to get?

Well, you know, it depends. It depends on your size. It depends on your voice. If it's a microphone, it depends on your recording area. It depends on your lighting. If it's a camera, there's no best of anything, but then people don't want to hear that depends that there's a gray area because to me that makes me mad because I want a fucking microphone.

Now I'm impatient. I'm an impulsive individual. I want it. I like that. I'm the guy at the store that suffers when I come across an impulse little section in the middle of the aisle. Ooh, what is it? Candy. I didn't want it, but now I do. Yeah, absolutely. So that's why I think when you talk about reviews, the reviews, I really like, and respect and believe are the best or not the, the.

You know, opening box recommendation, you know, this is the only smartphone to have. This is the best smartphone. No, you need to have three smartphones there, or you need to have three microphones there and review them and review why you really liked this one for this purpose and this one for this purpose and this one for this purpose.

And then my question is, and what you can address in those is, you know, what are you going to do with this microphone, Greg? Are you going to be on the street, interviewing people with noisy traffic behind you? No, I'm going to talk to myself and my lonely little place. That's what I'm going to do. Do you have a good recording environment?

So that's, that's when it depends, but you don't have to tell people. It depends. You can take it. Three popular uses of microphones today, you know? And like you wouldn't have this microphone that I'm using for a podcast microphone. Cause it doesn't, it could do. Okay. But you want a large diaphragm. Make our phone, just like when you start talking about DSLR is for doing video, you know, do you want a full frame or, you know, one of those small frame chips?

Yes. It, it, so it does, depending on the kind of work you're in or the play you're going to do, do with so much of this technical equipment, just like, well, should I get a Mac or a PC? Well, first of all, what's your budget. That's a big question, you know? Yes. And even at that, you also Linux, I mean, as far as open sources, it's definitely technologically advanced to understand that like with my research, as far as podcasting I've actually come up with so much information within this book that I'm writing.

That it will expand to every platform it's marketing, it's advertising. You're utilizing RSS feeds you utilizing similar software with the same end state goal. And that's what your transformation, that's what your transformation station is about. As well as this book of podcasting, where it's a universal standard that you can apply from one focus, being podcasting to another focus, being on, being a YouTube influencer to another focus.

That's all. Useful stuff and it's all out there and it's all fucking free yet. We were all buying this shit because people will say, Oh, I have all the special answers and all this nonsense when really it's out there. If you know how to look, if you know how to research, do you know how to read and take time and learn what you're actually trying to find?

You can find it. You can, but most people too, the reason why. Having the knowledge and putting the knowledge into a book or a podcast or whatever media you may use. It is people, you know, they don't want to take that time to learn. They want to grab a book and read or watch a video and learn how to change my words.

Um, you know, whatever it is, wanted time, same time and information are the two. Two commodities that are so important today. And of those two, there's only one that's really unique and that's time, because time is the only asset that everybody shares equally. Nobody gets any more or any less time each day, assuming you make it through the day, you get 24 hours just like everybody else.

And how can you use that time? What makes a difference to you and really the world around you? Um, because again, you know, this minute we're in right now, we'll never be here again and it'll be gone. Why is that? Why, why, why are we losing time every day? Why can't we have that many back? Tell me about that.

Well, and again, I don't know that we can't, at least in the dimensions in this part of the universe that we live in. Uh, you know,

unless you have that time machine and you don't get it back saying that that doesn't exist or won't Larry, are you suffering the oddball effect at this point where you get too old, you start to look back at all the good times you've had. Yeah. Yeah. That was the oddball that's as you get old, I don't believe that to be an oddball cause my old friends were constantly sharing in the algae romance.

And you remember when, back in, you know, three, uh, you know, that kind of stuff, but I'm an oddball. So I have oddball events going on. Most every day in my life. Um, and I'm so thankful for those, because if I wasn't on the spectrum, if each of us weren't on a spectrum of some sort, it'd be a really boring place.

We'd live there. You know, if we were all bots. Um, you know, although we'd have different algorithms, but you know, no, I'm weird. I just, I can't handle how normal people function. Like I'm, if we're standing in line waiting for something to happen, I'm the dude that's thinking about random things that could be possibly happening.

Right. It's like, what if, okay. I'm in a convenience store or something. I'm number five in line. I'm already going through. These thoughts in my head, like, okay, if somebody were to come into this building with the fucking AR it starts shooting the place up, how would I react to this situation when I just run towards that individual, take those bullets into the chest and keep trying to go forward or what I put this old woman that's next city next, or standing next to me, pick her ass up.

Right. And then use her as a shield throw with her. So I'm going to ask at the dude, take the weapon, or even a sense would have a horse where to just Gallop in from the rear out of the storage room, you know, like what the fuck is a Clydesdale doing in seven 11? Yes. The whole situation quicker, faster and easier.

And you call those individually mandatory. It's like half man, half horse. Oh, what if I was one of those, like those shoes, motorcycles that, uh, Progressive or Geico. There we go, we're back. Yeah. I'm trying to do five different things at once and I'm just going to say, fuck it. With Facebook. We have YouTube.

[00:40:37] Why I'm going, right. You just, do you have one monitor going or do you have two? I have two monitors. Set up. Oh man. I wish I had my other computer next to me because then I can just jump on that and see what the fuck is happening. Gotcha. And how you were monitoring all this video was. Yeah, no, I, I was set up before, but I had a virus on my fucking computer and it's like, dude, like this is 2020.

How the fuck you let this shit happen to you? And. Put a mask on each one of your computers, viruses. I'm just.

That is definitely perfect timing to use that. So what do you think about what's happening today? Do you think it's complete nonsense? We've had this conversation in our last recording, but I just really want to go over it again because it's really fucking hilarious to me. I don't know why it's there when you're talking about the situation you're talking about the COVID.

Yes. Yes. The COVID no Cummins, real Cummins. Very real. Are the people's approach to dealing with it? Yes. Are, this is unreal. It's it's uh, Do you think the mask actually even holds anything back because it's just, if you, if you follow the science of it, um, you know, there's special lighting that science has used so that they can see particles and stuff.

And so when they, when we're like, I'm talking right now, of course it's just me in my studio. Uh, but. Droplets are coming out of my breath and they are given the right light. And I don't understand the technology behind it, but these chemists are scientists that are constantly analyzing stuff. And, you know, they use carbon dating to tell you, well, this bone is 5,300 years old.

I mean, the science is there that they can look at the, the size of, and the amount of, and how far your droplets go. When they put a mask on, unless it's in 99, which most people don't wear out to the retail stores. But if it's anything other than that, yeah. Droplets are still going to get out, but far fewer droplets get out and they don't travel, but a couple inches.

And so if you're six feet away from somebody they're not gonna. Get one of your droplets. So from that standpoint, wearing masks, number one, again, if you follow the science, the scientists major. Well-respected scientific minds and organizations have found that if we now in the end of the year, I think it was 60 to 80, 60 to 80% of our country would wear masks.

So it's not even everybody, just 60 to 80%. The people wore masks when they couldn't socially distance. Yes. If that took place, we could lower, we could save approximately 70,000 lives between now and the end of the year. Now some might say, well, 70 thousands of drops in the bucket. It is, but if one of those 70,000 people were your significant other, your child, your mother, your brother, your best friend, you know, to put a mask on why would I not?

To make a political statement. That's absurd. If I could save a life, I would, you know, when I'm driving my car, if somebody is in the crosswalk, walking across the street against a red light, Well, legally, I should just run them over. They shouldn't be in the fucking crosswalk. Yeah. In the middle of the road.

Right in there, again, throwing a tantrum out in the middle of the road, trying to get there, getting people's attention. I mean, the prompt, I hate the fact that I would have to stop because these individuals want to stand in the middle of the highway. Well, that's protesting. Totally. I mean, that's, now I'm going to still run them over.

It doesn't matter where we're running them over there. I, you know, And again, that's, you know, that's why there's vanilla, strawberry and chocolate ice cream. Everybody's got their own way to approach things. Like I said, in my humble opinion, um, I wear a mask when I go outside, not for me, but for somebody else.

And I get tested every week. You know, why is that on Wednesday? Uh, because I, well, I have a bubble and, and you know, my family and those closest to me and we have our bubbles, if you will. Um, we all step outside of our bubbles. Yeah. But I mean, I always have my mask on when I walk into the grocery store, you know, wherever, um, I can't socially distance.

And, uh, but, uh, you know, you just never know if you're walking around with COBIT I don't. And again, I'm a symptom. I don't have any symptoms, but again, Wednesday I'll be back at Walgreens getting, you know, sticking. I don't stick that fuck that, you know, swab up my nose until you, um, and you know, three, four hours, I get the email that says, Hey, negative, cool.

Then I just know I don't have it, but again, next hour I could have it depending on, you know, and because COVID, here's the other thing. Um, you know, I hear people debate about how serious COVID is, and I don't know if it is or not. I know that 180,000 people have died from it. Would they have died?

Otherwise? I don't know. Did they have other issues? I don't know. Probably, but here's the thing, right? It's called a novel virus because the world's never seen it before. So nobody really knows how it works. That's why at the beginning of this thing, which really was back in December, but you know, if you listened to 45, as in, in his administrations, it really didn't, they didn't know about it until January or February.

And then we only had 15 cases and no deaths and it'll disappear magically. And if it doesn't, all you gotta do is take a Lysol enema and you'll be okay, or inject Lysol into your system and that'll take care of it. Um, the fact is we don't know how it acts and we don't even know if. If you have the antigens, because you've had it, how that will affect your immune system.

We don't know shit about it. It's only a few months old for the whole world, since it appeared back in December of 19, you know, well with five G are you familiar with that? And possible like side effects that could have on our own health? Well now, okay. I'm, I'm done, you know, reading. Um, about five G I never really bought into any of the microwave damages to health relative to cell phones, cell phone technology.

I personally seldom keep one up to my ear. I'm generally on ear buds. Excuse me. Or, um, speakerphone five G E in Ghana. I don't know. I just think that our overall exposure to five G. It is far less damaging than our overall exposure to the ship. That's in the air from the carbon emissions that are out there and an ultraviolet ultraviolet.

I gotta stop playing with it. So, you know, look, if, if we tried to isolate ourselves from everything that can hurt us, I mean, we'd live in a cave and die probably at age 30, most of us. Right. So we have to take each risk. Each person has to evaluate. Their risk tolerance and in what they're willing to, to expose themselves to then make their own decisions.

But when it comes to public safety, when it comes to, um, a mask. Everybody should be wearing a mask. I had a spectrum come to my house last week, a couple of different times. And again, they're coming Monday. They fucking hate you. Don't they? We do. And I want to, I want to touch one thing on that and get your opinion, but let me finish this story.

You know, I look, there's a knock at the door. It's the technician. I knew that because you know, spectrum says he'll be there in 12 seconds and sure. If there's a knock at the door, I look out the window. And the dude standing there without a mask, he's a stranger. I don't know where he goes at night, how his family's act and he's going to be in my house less than six feet away from me breathing and touching things.

I don't know. And I just yelled at him through the door. I go, do you have a mask? I said, where's your mask? And he goes, do you want me to wear one. Yeah, fuck. Yes. You know, and I got mine here. I'm going to put mine on you. Put yours on it. Dumb. Fuck. Literally use a come up there. Like, you know, what's going on outside right now.

Yeah, no. Does it help? I think it helps. I feel safer when I'm in close proximity, especially to strangers that, you know, so you believe you believe in this. I believe that you minimize exposure. You minimize your risk. I think. Everybody has different risk tolerances, but everybody minimizes the risks that they're not comfortable dealing with, whether it's financial risk, whether it's safety risk, whether it's health risk.

I mean, I lived my whole life, never using a fucking rubber. I don't even know how to put one on or, you know, instructions in those packages, how to put a rubber on. Larry. Are you Catholic? No. Okay. I definitely know that it's definitely a Catholic thing. That's what our family, like, that's what any of us Catholics that I knew in high school said that they, um, they use, you know, Pull out.

[00:50:12] Yes, it was not, but it does matter. Like I said, my, my point is my risk tolerance and I wasn't talking about pregnancy. I was talking about venereal disease, but again, when I was a kid, You know, there was just a couple, there were no herpes, there was no AIDS. There was no committee, you know? So you got gonorrhea. civilians should go back to you, get a couple shots and you get, well, yeah, the outcome is still detrimental to your own perception, truth of a child or.

COVID, you know, definitely leads somewhere into a different state of mind. Yeah, exactly. And again, I guess the point I was making is risk tolerance. You know, w what, how much risk can you tolerate in every aspect of your life? We go to a restaurant pre COVID. How many people thought about the number of restaurant people?

If you piss him off, spit in your food before they deliver it a lot, or. If you've never been in the restaurant business as a waitstaff or owner or chef or whatever, you need to realize that while they meet minimum health standards to keep their. Doors open again, pre COVID and now even more so, but if you go back into a restaurant kitchen, I mean, for the most part you look around, you're probably not going to go back to that restaurant, even a fine restaurant.

I mean, it's 30, it's weird how employees are doing shit. You see an employee come out of the bathroom. Did they wash their hands? My own nail. You know, uh, so every day we, we, we deal with risk and, and, and I was just talking to my sister about it earlier today on the phone because she wants to fly to New York to see her grandkids and her son.

And she gets behind, I don't want to be on a plane and she's seven years older than me. And, and I go, you know, what, if you stop and think about it, it's probably okay, you're going to have a mask. They're not seeing people in the middle of, you know, in the middle. See, you know, it's a three hour flight from her place to New York.

Uh, it, you know, you gotta decide, is it worth it? And she has a whole bunch of other medical issues, you know, is that risk worth it, or just wait a couple months and have Jeff and the kids come visit you, you know, cause to. If she goes to New York, according to law, she would have to quarantine for 14 days.

And then she could visit, she could quarantine in their house, I suppose. Why does she have the quarantine just tell the brain I saw she's good. Well, yeah. I mean, as long as you, you know, inject it into your yourself and take a handful of that drug that fuck it is. Yeah. Now it's a movie. You'd be good at mostly, like I said, the UV light up your ass in a, in a Clorox bleach if I'm old.

You're anything it does for me. You know, it's, uh, it keeps you feeling clean all day. No, like going through a carwash in a weirder way. Okay. You're going to tell me, okay. You go ahead. You go ahead. You answer that. You send me the question. I'll answer. So here's the question. How do I know if I have fiber optic internet?

Okay. The, so now this is interesting. So if somebody tells you, you do, usually people will take that as okay. I believe you, because you work for this company, so we don't have, it goes without questioning. We don't challenge that information that's being presented, which definitely could ripple out as far as what's happening right now.

Well, so here's my question, you know, if. My speed was anywhere close to 940 Mbps. Right. It wouldn't matter to me, but when my speed is 19 and the PS, what the fuck is Mbps? I don't know what that means per second. And what does that matter to me? Well, okay. So when you pay $110 a month, because you're allegedly getting one gig 1000.

You're getting 1000 megabits per second. Yes. What a gig is, right? It's a thousand megabits. So, um, and, and you pay $110 a month for that, but you only receive 19 megabits. So you're receiving less than 2% of what they promised you in, what you paid for. When it's that slow. I got a question. Is it really fiber optics, number one, number two.

Um, how do you take regular coaxial cable that has no fiber optic tubes in it or pipes, whatever you want to call those things, the light codes through how light goes through regular coaxial cable? Okay. So it wasn't me coming up. As I listened to you, what I'm going to be Googling as you speak here.

Excellent. Um, and then when I Google it, according to what I could find in my area of spectrum, it doesn't have fiber optics yet. That's what they sold me. And the speed is so slow. If it was half of what they promised, I'd allow myself to get screwed up the ass. Um, but on purpose, On purpose. Yeah. Okay.

And over if they could consistently deliver half of what they promise, they're delivering two and three and 5%, but I'm paying a hundred percent. What I propose to them is here's the deal at the end of each month at the end of each billing cycle. Okay, whatever speed you actually delivered to my abode.

Okay. Whatever percentage of that speed is to the 940 Mbps, you promised me is the percentage of the $110 a month that I'll pay you. And they all know it doesn't work like that. And he'll really cause the fucking Amron Amarin in the electricity and the gas company. That's how they charge. You know, they just charge me for the electricity.

I just charge me for the speed that you deliver. Wait, are you doing budget billing though? Cause they have that feature we're right, but it doesn't matter. That's still budget billing on, on the electric bill and gas bill. It's still based on your usage. All they do is they look at your usage historically.

They average it out over 12 months. Then at the end of the whole 12 months cycle, you make adjustments. Okay. But I mean, they don't, it's not a flat rate charge. It's a flat rate payment system, you know, to make budgeting easier and the gas. In the winter months, when you get stupid gas bills, average it out in the summer where, you know, they're just charging the minimum $35 a month.

Cause you're hooked up. Um, same with the electricity, you know, in the summer when you're going to use a lot of, yeah. Air conditioning and you get stupid bills, but in the winter, all the only thing that's really costs me a lot is, is you're heating, uh, primarily gas in this area. But, but all I'm saying is there's nobody for me to check with and determine if I have the fiber optic that you promise me other than the people that sell it to me.

Right. Well then also you can do is basically what you just described with Amarin as far as they look back on your history, as far as you can use that method, looking back on what you've been receiving, recording it, and somehow showing proof to that, that this is what I've been getting. Why the fuck am I not getting what you promised me when I'm painted at this price?

Exactly. But that, that, that involves then our legal system and, and the FCC and the attorney general making a complaint, uh, and dealing with that, uh, when really I like here, here's my favorite example. Yeah. Akron would have to agree to that billing. Otherwise they say, you know what, we'll just discontinue service and you go elsewhere, you know, I mean, if you don't like it go elsewhere, you saw our terms and conditions.

You read them. Barely fucking read when you're 90 years old. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you need to fucking magnifying glass, the size of the world to see some of those fine print. And then you don't understand that a Philadelphia lawyer wrote it and then it doesn't matter. Or cause they're not responsible.

They're not accountable for it. Yeah, we just think about this. Okay. Walk into Ruth. Chris. This is pre COVID. So you walk into Ruth Chris or, or, you know, the Capital city grill, whatever your favorite steakhouse is, and you sit down and you order an eight ounce Philemon Yon. Of the finest prime age beef they have, and it's $125 again with the fucking steak layer.

I'm getting hungry. Now I know this, the waitress in 40 minutes, the waitress brings out this little, well done crispy piece of meat that looks like, you know, the size of a bugger that came out of your nose and it's hamburger. And she starts walking away and you go, Whoa, excuse me, just for a second. What's this, she has a piece of hamburger, but I ordered, and I see here on the bill, you charged me $125 for a filet mignon.

Yeah, well, no, I'm not gonna do it. That's what doing, you know, I mean, they're, they're charging me for Philemon Yon. It's the fastest service available to residential places here in my zip code. And they're delivering whatever the fuck they want. We've been working on it almost 10 days now. Four times a day.

[01:00:23] I do two different speed tests on my internet, just so I have this paper trail when I make a stink, you know, and I'll make a stink. I'm making a stink with them now. They don't even answer my phone calls anymore. Now I go, fuck yourself all over. Call it, dude. Oh my God. You know, you take it, give it to the brand.

That's exactly. What's fucking happening too. Cause I would be doing it if I was working there like this fucking man, what did you know? Here's what's really cool though. Greg, if you delivered half of what you promised, I wouldn't be calling up. It's true. You know? I mean, that's, I'm not asking for some special, you know, I'm asking for what you promised in your terms and conditions, except if you read the terms and conditions, which unfortunately being old and just nothing but time.

I actually read to make sure I wasn't out of line and I am. If you read Spectrum's terms and conditions, they're just like every other internet service provider around, they say we can't promise or guarantee any rate of speed. Interesting. Wouldn't that be cool. Not think about this. In your whole life, just take a wild ass.

Guess it doesn't matter how accurate they are, but try to be closed in your whole life. About how many, about how many commercial airline flights have you been on? I want to say at most 12, were they pretty good flights? I mean, you know, you got some of them, we were over military flights, they were shitty. I wanted to kill myself on those, not literally, but metaphorically and the commercial flights, you were on the commercial flights, more so than the military.

That's something different, but the commercial flights, if I told you, and it was a fact and you believe the fare that 50% of all commercial airline flights will crash and burn it, killing everybody on board. Would you still be apt to get on those 12 flights? No, it wouldn't bother me one bit. Do to get on him.

And, uh, yeah, I guess I'm just fucked up in the head. Like that word. No, I mean, some people, like I said, we talked about risk tolerance briefly a few minutes ago. A lot of people, because people read statistics of how safe it is to fly today. And I believe it is right. I mean, think of here. Think of this. How many people do you actually know whose homes have burned down to the ground?

Two. Okay. I know too. And I'm just, this is just a guess, cause you may or may not be aware of this, but out of all the people, you know, that have a mortgage on their home, how many people do you guess have fire insurance? Oh, It's a loaded question. Yeah. I literally present a table with anybody they hire and we'll force place fire insurance on your property if you don't have it, because you agree to keep it insured.

Okay. So, uh huh. Percent of those people have fire insurance unless they let it lapse. And the mortgage lender doesn't know about it yet. But out of all those people, you know, I mean, it's a fraction of a percentage of whose houses burned down to the ground. You just, it doesn't happen the same with commercial airline flights, the same, primarily with prescriptions.

If the people filling people's prescriptions only got it half right. Half the time they gave him the wrong dose, the wrong medication. I heard that's pretty frequent. That happens pretty frequently with them. It's 50%. I mean, yeah, it could happen 60, 70, 80%. All I'm saying is that. Pharmacists have accountability to provide you with the correct medicine.

The commercial airlines have accountability because if you've ever followed any of the major crashes of commercial airlines, where they killed 230 people. Um, you know, it's a three year investigation to figure out what the fuck went wrong, you know? And, and then the airline has to pay out tens of hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements.

Cause there's accountability. You fuck up. There's accountability. Yes. In the military, you fuck up. There's accountability in everyday life. You fuck up a speed. You you, you know, you're, you got 63 in a 45 miles out there's accountability, but with internet service providers, there's no accountability. Why is that?

Well, we're going to charge you a hundred dollars to call it one giga service, 940 Mbps, but you say you're only getting 20. Okay. You still always $110, even though we didn't even. Do half of what we promise. All right. I gotta get off that soap box. Yeah. Yeah. And then when you say what statistics, I mean, half the population isn't, isn't even a statistic individual, like when it comes to numbers, Holy shit.

Like you are drowning me in my own. As transgressions, Natalie, just like what? Those were. All those statistics or atmosphere leak expressions. I just made them up. It's all good. It's all good though. I forgive you. Yeah, no, it's part of being old. You just fucking can do whatever you want. Like just drive fast and then you get pulled over and you're like, I'm old.

I don't know what I'm doing. Dementia. I forgot there was a speed limit. Sorry, you ran over three people. I'm sorry. I was playing the game of five points, 10 points. Don't you know, that game. Well, yeah, there are people whose lives are more valuable than others, you know, obviously look at the world we live in today.

Yes.

I didn't mean to take us way off topic, but I was just, I'm curious, you know, if anybody is watching this and wants to make comments at some point in time, I'd really like to know how one. Can know if they're really getting fiber optic service, whether it's from spectrum or anybody else. I don't know that there are other providers here in st.

Louis residential. I know business is something different, but I can't. I mean, I'm not going to pay for business service, especially seeing what I get in residential service, but these people need, um, you know, to be punished. Somehow, you know, but there's no way to punish him. You know, I, I agree. Um, I need to stop playing with these buttons over here.

Like literally I get over. I just go because it's just like, I second guess, like it says we're live on YouTube and I'm not seeing too much happening. It's like, but then there's this button like upload video or go live, but it's like, wait, it says we're going there. Yeah. So if you're on YouTube, yeah. If you already pushed to go live, you're alive.

If you push the upload, um, I don't know if it'll keep this stream going, but it will be looking for you to upload a video that's on your. Computer somewhere, somewhere. I think, I think it's definitely working because I just pressed this button and it shows me talking right now, explaining what I'm explaining to you.

And I'm like, Holy shit, I'm fucking losing my mind. But is that you? Or is that somebody else? It looks like you, it could be anything. Cause it's like, it's what we perceive as our own reality. Like, try to look at this, like we're. Our bodies are like a vessel. We are submarines underwater. Literally. We don't know if there's water surrounding us.

Can we just open the hatch and find out, I mean, there's that possibility that we open it, we might drown and die. So what do we rely on that tells us what's happening around us? Our own perception, our little, little tools inside there. That's scanned. Well, but,

and you know, you know that we all live in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine. Why is it yellow? I dunno if you know that or not, but I don't know. I don't know what's happening now, Larry. Yeah. Well, it's true. The Beatles said we all live in a yellow somewhere. That's yes, we must because the Beatles would never be.

Not to us for double negative. That's fucking wonderful. So no, what you said about the submarine? It, it really got it, uh, really hit a special area in my brain. When you said they could we open up the hatch and would water come pouring in or is there any even water outside of us? How do we know until you, um, you know, which is interesting.

I've often wanted to get a submarine with screen door hatches and see if it would still be able to sink and rise. And if the water would come in through the screens or stay out because it's a submarine, so there should be no water in it. Know that it's not supposed to go into a submarine, whether there's a screen as a hatch or being steel.

Pneumatically sealed hatch. Yeah. I'm thinking like the old school ones where you can just kind of like to twist and then push it outward. But then all that pressure, I don't know. Do you think there's somebody strong enough to be, you know, if you're 300 feet down and you got the, the hatch undone and no water came pouring in.

[01:10:23] Would be able to push that hatch open against all the water pressure. That's 300 feet down. I think if we could take, I'll say our nigger in his prime, when he was Conan the barbarian, we bring him into this situation and have them open that I think he might be able to get it. Do you think you, do you think you would need Rocky Balboa's help?

Yes, but Robbie, I don't know if he can get up there. He's kind of short unless we give him like a little step. Yes he is. Yeah. Well, you know, probably now I will tell you I'm gonna make something up potentially, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's not true, but 45 is stronger than anybody in the world. I bet he.

And Arnold could do that together now. So they have the strength to do that, like strength as in connections or strength, as in,

Yeah, let's go into that. As far as width 45, who, who is 45, just so you know, For everybody who's listening. Cause when we're saying that it's like, what the fuck are you talking about? That wouldn't be the 45th president of the United States. Yes, that is correct. I guess I'm not going to say his name. I would not, um, give him that.

Uh, but if somebody needs to, if they, if you Google 45th president of the United States, his name will pop up. Yes. Uh, I'm pretty sure, unfortunately. And why do you, why do we, what is your own view on 45? I think we can pick that up based on not saying his name, but we would love to go into your own specifics as far as why you feel the way that you do?

Was there something personal? Was there something w w what, what is the takeaway? Can we all happen? This. And again, this is just one old guy's opinion, everybody news junkie, but I am a news junkie. Um, and something in this is gonna be a direct answer to your question. I liked very early on on today's episode, you mentioned you discussed your character.

Okay. 45. Is devoid of anything like character. It has no character. And I will tell you that if you look up the three most important leaderships or the five or seven most important characteristics of a leader, Okay. 45. Doesn't have one of them, but you'll find stuff that's like maybe in a boy scout oath.

I mean, to be a leader, number one, you gotta eat the last leaders. Fucking Ryan, let me tell you, 45 is the first at the table, you know, and he's elbow when people out of there, you know, cause he's going to eat first. Fuck you guys. No. All right. So he doesn't, he doesn't eat last. He doesn't respect truth because he never speaks it.

He doesn't respect facts because he just makes stuff up. Now, again, all politicians lie, actually, everybody in the world lies. And if you know somebody that says, no, I don't want it. I never tell why they're lying. Everybody has told and continues to tell lies of certain degrees of magnanimity. But every time you open your mouth that you lie and you lie about shit, you don't even have to lie about.

That's what I'm telling you comes out of 45 to be a leader and be surrounded by people that are frightened, that if they tell you the real facts about many different topics that you're putting your job at risk, because 45 doesn't want to hear that. He only wants to hear what he wants to hear. Don't tell me that shit about the coded shit.

Tell me something good. So I went online and I asked him, tell me about something good, Larry, I'm going to talk over you for just one second. I found the top 10 leadership traits that a. Individuals should obtain or strive for, and I didn't just type that in to see what first self-help bullshit would actually pop up.

But I went into what the military kind of requires. Cause I think that's kind of a, somebody, anybody should be striving for something much bigger than themselves. And, uh, dependability is number one, the integrity, making a decision. Being skillful of that professionalism, teamwork, drive, building to understand direction, organization, safety skills, and adaptability.

So it looks like he has one. He is one of those 10. He does have drive. I don't like this one either. I wonder if I'm going to find a date, it doesn't matter. Whatever, whichever I promise you. I've already done the search. I wouldn't have said that if I hadn't done the search several times, I mean, I've looked at hundreds of books, articles, white papers.

Dissertations case studies. What makes a leader? What doesn't make a leader, the five, the seven, the three, the most important qualities of a leader. So does this make you an expert? Larry? What can you, the definition of what an expert is? Absolutely. I probably. No more than the average guy about what I'm talking about only because I sit here and go down these rabbit holes and do the research.

And if in fact, the research I use is, is accurate and objective to some degree. Um, yeah, I would say that the majority of people, uh, leaders of course do authors of course do psychologists do. Um, but we're all experts when it comes to. You know, can I tell you what I could get a census of a hundred random people on the street would say is the five most important characteristics in a leader?

Yeah, I know what they are in, like I said, 80, 85% of random people that I would walk up to the street and say, tell me the five most important characteristics for a good leader, you know, 80% of time, I'll be right on with those five. And I will promise you. I will promise you that 45 doesn't have one. One of those five characteristics.

Now you brought up driving. He does have drive and that's important for a leader. Yes. I want to just update the listeners with actual good characteristics. When we look into army values, I've definitely researched and. Took to heart over a long period of my time. And that comes down to loyalty duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity and personal courage.

Now I would like you guys to imagine that 45 possess that. Fuck. No. Yeah. And here's the other piece of 45, especially when you start talking about military and comparing his leadership qualities to leadership, uh, values, uh, and best practices in the military recognize here's a guy that during the height of the Vietnam war, conflict, whatever you want to call it, this is a guy who paid or his family paid.

Some shyster type doctor said he had bone spurs, which he doesn't so that he could avoid the draft. Now, I don't know what you call that when it comes to character other than full lack thereof. But so here's a guy you can't, it's really hard to compare. Somebody to military values when the guy was scared to death to be anywhere part of a military, you know, he paid somebody to make up a lie about a physical condition.

That he didn't even have bone spurs on his feet. And that's what kept him out of the draft. Um, interesting. I'm trying to think it wasn't Cassius clay, Muhammad Ali. He didn't, he tried to avoid the draft as well. Oh, probably. I'm just saying, you know, and a lot of people, you know, uh, I have nothing against him, but I would have ended up in Canada, but I'm also not president of the United States.

You know, this is true. And I also have one value every now and then I tell the truth and I have another value. I mean, I, I respect people. I don't, you know, constantly, you know, hack on people that are my enemies, you know, or hack on people that don't believe the way I believe or hack on people. Because they look different.

You know, I, I mean, And like I said, most important. I'm not president. It doesn't matter what anybody else does. It doesn't matter what past presidents did or do that might still be alive. He's president now. And he's what people are supposed to emulate. You know, when I was growing up, parents would constantly, you know, when the president of United States appeared on television, A lot of times from the oval office talking about nonpolitical shit, but crises that are going on, you know, your parents looking at you now, you don't, you want to be like him when you grow up.

Well, yeah, but how many parents can look at 45 and say to their five year old son or daughter don't you want to be like the orange baby when you grow up? You know, they want to sit there and have orange makeup alone and fake hair. But more importantly than physical characteristics of the fat slob that doesn't take care of himself physically as the past four or five presidents did.

I mean, Reagan wouldn't be overweight. He was fed, he rode around in horses and picked up bales of hay and shit. Could you imagine ready to pick up a bale or him wearing

blue jeans that I just say, Oh my God. Um, I think I may have, cause like, yeah. Yeah, like twitches and shit. Let me look at you. You're getting all excited. Like you just met your first girlfriend. You're all just all happy, add in different ways for that. Um, I'm actually on my second one, you know, after, uh, 70 years, that's not bad.

No, it's something kind of creepy and weird, but okay. Yeah. Now, I'm even thinking maybe I can find one that I might be able to have physical intimacy with. Um, but you know, I know a lot of virgins that are still virgins at 70. Um, so, uh, it's not so unusual. Uh, Anyway. Uh that's so don't get me started on Trump.

You got me started. Dammit. You said his name again? You're in trouble. Well, yeah, they'll let you know how, how off my center I am and I'll, I'll pay dearly for that. I have a, a, a little short, multi strand whip with little, um, Hooks on the end of it. When we get done, I'm going to go outside, take my shirt off and flagellate my back until I rip the skin.

If we're punishing myself for, ah, you're giving me chills down my spine because I can just imagine that happening. Yeah. I'll record it and put it up on the internet. You can definitely have that as bonus content to people who say, who actually subscribed to the Patreon page. There you go. We try to upload videos.

I'm working out the kinks. I just, I really want to apologize as to everybody cause I'm struggling at doing this, but I am not quitting. I am trying to run all the social media. I'm trying to run the podcasting, the videos, the patriarch on the courses I'm working on writing the books. It's just like. Right.

When the fuck do you take a break? I don't take a break and I have two puppies and they drive me nuts because, okay. My question Greg is when can we expect to see maybe your first, your first book? I want to stay within. I want to give, I want to give it a month. I'm going to say one month or less in case something happens, I always want to plan for the worst, just because of theirs.

It's life shit happens. Absolutely. To having the availability of, of actually. Taking part of your expertise, you are knowledge, uh, learning about character and then yet in a totally different, uh, module, if you will, uh, learning about podcasting, how to put it together, how to know all the ins and outs, how you get it.

Oh, they're in the, what do they call them? Podcast players like, Oh, Oh. So if we were to look at the technical terms, it's called an aggregator or Icatcher or another one, but it is a directory. Those are ones that you do not pay that will host your show for you. There are so many in it and it's like, I feel honored because I.

Can just utilize all of these different search engines and go past the 20% that Google actually allows us to. So I can bypass that and find shit that's all over the place. And that will be all linked into. The podcasting book that I found, I'm an I I'm going above and beyond. This book will have more links than any book you will ever come across and it will link you to free shit.

If you were, I was doing research on actually how much it costs to pay somebody to do your podcasting for you. You're looking at 50 bucks too. As much as they want to charge you to host your show, to host an episode. And that's based on their quality, which I don't want to rely on somebody to do because I'm weird.

I like things done. Right. That's why I rather do it. And I found every single source. You could do that for free when people are charging this shit. And it just makes me mad because I'm a victim of that I'm spending money left and right when I shouldn't be, when there's things out there that are free for us.

Yeah. Well that that'll be valuable information, especially today because so many people have things they want to share with others, whether it's specifically in your community or. Um, outside of their community expose, whatever it is to whoever's interested, um, in podcasting is, is conceptually. It's pretty simple.

I mean, it's, it looks like we're just, you know, talking on the microphone and it's out on the internet. It's just, you push a couple buttons and boom. It happens. It doesn't. Um, as you were experiencing earlier today, checking, are we vibe? Is this stream there? Um, and that's just one tiny facet of it. The important part is what you just mentioned, make sure that it's out there so people can find it.

Um, and make sure you're doing some relevant stuff that people want, um, exactly adapting to the needs of what people want and how we, how we deliver content. I mean, it's now becoming a live streaming anxiety and. Me. I don't like being in front of the camera. I was just who I was as a kid. I was a fat kid back in the day, you know, just the youngest of seven.

Right. I always got my feelings hurt, you know, and it's something that I have to go through. Those are past transgressions and those are just things in your head that you hold to you don't that, that haunt you to this day. And it's just something. I was in the fucking military. I did so much shit. There's nothing.

There's not a stupid thought. It's not going to hold me back. Right. Kick that thoughts ass, just shove it down. Well, do you, how do you feel some of those childhood memories and events have helped shape the character you are today? I would say it definitely. Made me a very resilient person, but also able to dissociate from reality to push myself much further than any individual I've come across.

I'm able to get lost in my head and think more complexly and understand the connection to different things that may seem completely irrelevant, but somehow I can find a way to. Bypass that and connect it. And then would that ability to make those connections? I can almost paint like a memory palace where I can learn new things and start storing things between those connections and make like them.

Weird mind map of a bucking spiderweb kind of thing. Wow. That's impressive. Well, it's weird, but I think if you can transfer that in, in your piece, on your character, uh, so many people can benefit from that because we all have our idiosyncrasies. Yes, we all have our fears. We have stuff that's from childhood stuff.

We, and it is, you know, deep in our. Brain and thought and negative it's negative shit. It holds us back unless we can find a way to overcome that. And unless we find a way to, yeah. You know, I'm scared to be on camera, but I'm gonna, you know, put my big boy pants on and do it. Fuck. Yeah. I need to, for other people so that other people won't have to deal with shit that I dealt with, that is, you know, just negative shit.

You don't need to. So that will be extremely helpful in I, for one, I'm looking forward to seeing that me too, and it POS it provides people an outlet to fuel questions that they can't articulate in their own heads, as far as things that are happening. And they just aren't aware of the things that are happening, that we can spark that thought as far as why didn't I think of that or.

That really makes a lot of sense. Now I have some place. I have something to base the situation off of where I can do research on my own time. That's what I love about your transformation station is to be able to be a voice for those that don't have the voice. Exactly. Exactly. And we need so much more of that today.

Uh, I can tell you as an old guy, how important that is, but it doesn't really make sense to a lot of people until they get to a point where 40 or 50 years ago, they wished they would have had that information, had the ability to, uh, overcome so many of the. The fears or the things that just hold us back from being all we can be.

Oh, I'll leave you with one final thought. Cause I'm looking at the time and I've got a three 30 appointment, a meeting that I've got to be at. Oh, beautiful.

What I believe now. Yeah. We've talked about this. I'm very spiritual. I'm not religious, but I'm very spiritual. And so in, in that spirituality, what I truly believe is that each one of us is meant to take advantage of all the abundance that's here in this universe. Um, but the vast majority of us don't take advantage of it.

We don't feel that we're worthy. We don't do what's necessary to take. I mean, it's not going to be handed to us, you know? Oh, here's all the abundance we promised you. No, I mean, you got to go out and grab it and you gotta work for it. But if you know you're worthy and you're willing to work hard for it, uh, with a burning desire, I call it a burning in your belly.

Yes. Then you can have it. Uh, you can have all of that abundance, any and all, all of it. And that's what we're supposed to do. I think it's just purely opinion. That's what we're supposed to do while we're here in this part of the universe, um, that we see in this physical. Nature, uh, and a combination really of the physical stuff we see, feel and smell the stuff our mind does, and then the stuff, stuff, our heart and soul and spirit does.

And it's all combined, and this is not getting religious, but it, yeah, spiritual, but I think it's real, you know, we see it everywhere from. You know, the protozoa, the little oneself thing too, to us and beyond outer space, to, you know, stuff that's so big, we might not be able to imagine, uh, that's all there available for us in with that.

Cause I thought I'll be quiet. Uh, yeah. And talk to you. Well, in the next couple of days, kind of wrap some of this stuff up that we need to wrap up on. Yeah. Using these things, uh, efficiently, effectively. Yes. Quality. You want consistency? We'll get it down. Instancy and. Topic transitioning to a new season where we will take new approaches.

Exactly. Exactly. And I look forward to that and I know as we build people that are following us around and listening to our craziness, that they'll appreciate that. So hopefully they'll make a leave comments for you and you can respond or at least if nothing else, I guess the tried saying is they can leave their thumbs up, print and subscribe, you know, probably nothing bad will happen.

Exactly. Well, Larry, I do appreciate you as always, and I look forward to seeing you on the next show. All right, I'll see you then have a good one. You too. All right, man. Wait, they will.

Well, that is it for today with your transformation station. This is our first episode where we look into the nonsense of life and our first live episode here on YouTube. I do apologize. I try to get it on Facebook. I try to get it everywhere. However, technical difficulties as always here with me. And let me know what you guys think.

Let me know what I can improve, what I can do for you guys. Don't forget to subscribe to your transmission station, the podcast. I will provide links in the show notes as well as check out our social media besides YouTube. Of course. And I will see you in the next episode. Thank you. You've been listening to your transformation station, rediscovering your true identity and purpose on this planet.

We hope you enjoyed the show and we hope you've gotten some useful and practical information. Join us weekly on Monday for the YTS challenge. And biweekly on Wednesday for the exclusive interviews at 8:00 PM central time. In the meantime, connect with us on Facebook and Instagram at Y T S the podcast we'll be back soon until then this is your transformation station signing off.

Consider leaving a brief review on Apple Podcast/Itunes if you have enjoyed this episode. Only a matter of seconds it will take, and it helps bring together potential guests and listeners.

  Connect with Your Transformation Station

Facebook |Instagram |Twitter |Website

    Your Transformation Station, signing off!

Check out this episode!

[everybodyscupoftea]

if you don’t want to get hit, stay off the tracks

frat jj x reader

i have several requests and i promise i’m working on them. so, for all you anons who left them, i’m not ignoring them! but i’ve been watching the playoffs and i couldn’t stop thinking about this.

this is dedicated to every girl out there who’s been on the receiving end of misogyny and gatekeeping as a sports fan :)

(warnings: swearing, misogyny, not proofread even a little)

You were a huge sports fan in general. Football, college baseball, basketball, and especially hockey. Growing up in North Carolina meant you were a Carolina Hurricanes fan. You remembered watching them win the cup in ‘06 and then all of the struggles since.

When they finally found success again, you were ecstatic. Hockey was way more fun to watch when you could scream in happiness as opposed to frustration. JJ was a Stars fan, and you didn’t understand it, but you didn’t hate the Stars and they rarely played your team so you didn’t really care.

Regular season was pretty chill, and you didn’t quite catch every game, but you watched as many as possible. Some of JJ’s frat brothers had a fantasy league, and after about two weeks of bothering the GM, they let you join. It was mostly as a joke for them, but you knew your shit and wiped the floor with some of them. It was fun scamming them, and JJ found great joy in taking the piss out of the sore losers.

Playoffs, though, were a whole different beast. Most of the season you didn’t really chirp their favorite teams. Except for the one guy who liked the Red Wings, but he took it well. Otherwise, you settled for destroying them in fantasy.

Some of the guys made brackets and taped them to one of the walls, and they let you join, this time definitely not underestimating you. The TV they had in the house was so much bigger than yours, and you spent a lot of time there to use it for games.

One of the boys complained once and you looked him right in the eye and said, “Don’t think I didn’t notice you take a picture of my bracket and copy it exactly for yours.” He kept his mouth shut after that. 

Essentially, you were one of the boys. You chipped in on the beer and snacks fund, screamed at the TV with them, and argued strategy with some of them who mistakenly thought they knew more than you. It was therapeutic, especially finally having some Canes fans to celebrate with. One of the boys in the house, Drew, was also a diehard Canes fan, and you frequently messaged him on Instagram to talk shit about whoever they were playing.

The second round started around the same time of finals, but you let the excitement from a first round sweep carry you through all-nighters and long study group sessions. The weekend after your last final, you finally made the trip to the house to watch game three with the rest of the guys.

You were a little grumpy from lack of sleep, but pumped because of the two-game series lead the Canes had. Drew gave you a fist bump when you got to the house, already wearing his Martinook jersey and you held up your Williams one with a huge grin.

JJ took you upstairs to his room to “catch up” for the first time in over a week, but you made sure to keep it on time, you didn’t want to miss puck drop. He complained a little bit, but went to grab the two of you some beers while you cleaned up.

One of the guys there for the game was a fan of the opposing team, and he gave you a look when you and JJ walked down from his room, you wearing your jersey, already a beer and a half in. You took one look at his jersey and said, “Oh, hope you’re ready for an ass-whooping.”

“Fuck yeah,” Drew crowed from the couch, and the other boy rolled his eyes and made a comment under his breath that you couldn’t hear, but you didn’t care. You pulled JJ to sit near Drew and he laughed, when you sat on the floor between his legs, leaning back against the couch.

“You don’t want to sit on the couch?” he asked.

“Nah, I sat on the floor most of the first round, so I don’t want to change things up and jinx it.”

JJ shrugged as you got hold of the remote and turned the volume up for the announcement of the starting lineup. The game started and you were immediately chirping the other boy. Drew kept popping open beers for you and the more you drank, the more targeted they became.

“Damn, y’all got a goalie out there or did you just sign swiss cheese.”

Or, “God, I could do a better job than these forwards, can’t score to save their lives.”

For the most part everyone was laughing along. You were reveling in the laughs, not really paying much attention to the guy you were talking to, until he snapped. After your comment about the GM being the worst in the league, he turned to say, “Pipe down, bitch, you barely know what you’re talking about anyway.”

The room went silent, and you blinked a few times in shock. JJ’s legs tensed, and you put your hand on one of them to keep him from saying anything. You looked at him for a few seconds before snapping, “Didn’t I kick your ass both weeks in fantasy. The only thing worse than your fantasy team is the one whose jersey you’re wearing.”

His cheeks went red at the oooh’s coming from the other boys in the room. JJ relaxed under your hand and put one of his hands in your hair, scratching your scalp lightly to calm you down a little. You thought that was it, but the boy just had to have the last word, “Bet you got someone to draft for you, no way a girl knows that much about hockey.”

You stood, albeit, a little shakily, and glared at him. JJ’s hand fisted the back of your jersey, whether to make sure you didn’t fall or to make sure you didn’t attack him, you weren’t sure. You glared at the guy and reached behind you without looking, “Babe, give me a few of your rings so when I beat the fuck outta this guy, he’ll have a reminder to show me some damn respect.”

Someone in the room coughed, probably trying to hold in a laugh, and Drew snorted, “I say she does it.”

“Take a lap,” JJ warned the guy in a low voice and you crossed your arms.

“Pussy whipped,” the guy mumbled under his breath and that time JJ stood.

“Take a fucking lap, I won’t say it again.”

The boy stood and left the room, slamming the front door behind him, as the buzzer signaling the end of the second period went off. You watched the Canes skate off the ice, heart pounding pretty hard.

“Fuck,” you muttered, seeing the score, “I missed a goal. Can someone rewind?”

All the tension drained out of the room as everyone laughed. Drew handed you a beer and you clinked it with his before sitting back down. JJ placed a hand on your shoulder and you looked up at him. He smiled softly, “You good?”

“Yeah, I think so. Not the first time I’ve heard that shit.”

“I know, but this should be a safe space for you.”

You smiled, “You are pussy whipped.”

JJ laughed, “Yeah, yeah, I just love you, okay?”

“I love you too,” you told him, pressing a kiss to the inside of his knee.

Drew cleared his throat, “Thought I should let you know, you missed the goal.”

“Oh, fuck, can you rewind it again?”

***

tagging: @girlsru1eboysdroo1​ @socialwriter​ @diverdcwn​ @peypip​ @stfukie​

[junker-town]

NFL Dad, Week 5: The fleeting joys of apple picking and the Browns' first lead

Relive Sunday's action with one dad, two toddlers, and six hours of the RedZone channel.

I went apple picking with my daughter and her preschool on Friday. It was three joyful hours at a beautiful farm in the Hudson Valley bracketed by a six-hour round trip on a school bus full of toddlers. This was (A) not nearly as bad as it sounds, but also (B) NOT GREAT, BOB. A rule of parenting: any place worth taking young kids to requires a trip that at one point will make you regret your decision to leave the house.

Now, if you haven’t gone to an orchard recently, one of the perks is eating freshly picked apples as you fill your bag. And the progression typically goes like this:

(eating the first apple) HOLY CRAP! THIS IS JUICIEST APPLE I’VE EVER TASTED, WHY DON’T I EAT MORE APPLES?!?!?! I WANNA MOVE SO WE’RE CLOSER TO A FARM!

(apple #2) Mmmm, so good!

(apple #3) Honestly, I’m good on apples for the season.

Anyway, I came home with more apples than any reasonable family would choose to eat, so my wife is making a pie today. APPLE PIE AND FOOTBALL, LET’S AMERICA THIS SUNDAY UP!

EARLY GAMES, FIRST HALF

— At 1:00, I put my son down for his nap. By the time I turn the TV on, it’s a few minutes into the games, and the first thing I see on the RedZone channel is ... Browns celebrating? That can’t be right.

Then the camera cuts to a wider view that shows they’re playing the Jets, and it makes a little more sense. The celebration is for Myles Garrett, finally making his NFL debut today, who sacked Josh McCown on his first NFL snap.

Cleveland Twitter is celebrating like the Browns just got their first lead of the season (they have not).

— “Can you look at my treasures, Daddy?” says my daughter. Assembled on the table are two acorns, a penny flattened by a hand press, and several rocks sized perfectly for a child’s palm. Eric Ebron drops a pass in the end zone.

— A.J. Green hauls in a 77-yard bomb for a touchdown in the Cincinnati rain. Green may be the odd Hall of Fame receiver who is somehow underappreciated his entire career. He’s not as electric as Odell Beckham, not as physically dominating Julio Jones, less elusive than Antonio Brown. But he’s perfect! He’s fast and graceful and has amazing hands (he’s a skilled juggler), and his only sin is playing in a small market for one of the most underwhelming teams in the NFL.

— A shotgun snap flies past Philip Rivers. He flails to push the ball out of end zone and oh my god it’s beautiful. It’s like the Zion National Park of of Rivers flailing.

YOUR 2017 Los Angeles Chargerrrrrrs!!!!!! http://pic.twitter.com/GjtX4SNJTm

— Kyle Brandt (@KyleBrandt) October 8, 2017

Philip Rivers is the master of finding the balance between the smart play and self-preservation, and the result is looking like a total spaz. Like, he got BOTH hands on the ball, but covering it up in the end zone would mean a defender falling on him, and Rivers is too smart to take unnecessary hits. That’s why he’s willing to look so dumb. You ever see him get the snap when a lineman jumps offsides? He throws the ball into the ground like it’s delivering 120 volts into his body.

Phil Rivers throwing a ball rugby style out've the back of his own endzone while screaming at his center is why ill never stop watching nfl

— PFTCommenter (@PFTCommenter) October 8, 2017

— There’s not much to like about the Tennessee-Miami matchup (Matt Cassel versus Jay Cutler, yikes) but the mix of Dolphin teal and Titan sky blue is incredibly soothing to me. Stop the game and make them do tai chi on TV, I’ll be perfectly centered.

— Carson Wentz has thrown three touchdowns in the first quarter, and Philly leads Arizona 21-0. In the seven other games being played, only three teams have managed even a single touchdown.

— Matt Cassel is strip-sacked for a Dolphins touchdown, and there’s the answer to “How on earth can this Dolphins team score a touchdown with Jay Cutler at quarterback?”

— Christian McCaffrey’s first NFL TD is a shovel pass on an option play, and the Panthers and Lions are tied at 10. I am not opposed to widespread use of wide spread use in the NFL.

— DeShone Kizer just committed his SECOND red zone turnover of the day, an interception thrown at a well-covered receiver. That seems bad.

DeShone Kizer is the first player to have multiple giveaways in a game inside his opponent's 5 yard-line since Josh Freeman in Week 13, 2009

— NFL Research (@NFLResearch) October 8, 2017

Confirmed: bad. The Cleveland fans in attendance break out the rarest of surrender cobras: the scoreless first half surrender cobra.

Smart of Cleveland fans to rock Cavs and Indians gear, though. You wanna display your love for the home squad, but you also want plausible deniability after the game.

— The Jets kick a 57-yard field goal as the half expires. They lead 3-0, and the Browns have still never led this season.

— At halftime, the Matt Cassel and Jay Cutler stat lines are ... not good. CBS made a nearly perfect graphic for them, and I have tweaked it only slightly to highlight the inherent emotion of a combined 75 yards passing at 2.7 yards per attempt.

Matt Ufford

the anthem standers

EARLY GAMES, SECOND HALF

— Fifth-round sophomore Kevin Hogan is in for the Browns. RIP DeShone Kizer, you will be lovingly added to the joke jersey that lists all of the Cleveland quarterbacks since Tim Couch.

Also: where is No Cody Kessler on the depth chart? It seemed like he wasn’t complete dog crap last year. I mean, as Browns QBs go.

— Jalen Ramsey versus Antonio Brown is a ton of fun to watch. Roethlisberger goes deep down the sideline to Brown, who makes a leaping catch — but he’s out of bounds because of Ramsay’s positioning. That subtle boxing out is only done well by the best in the game.

— BROWNS SCORE! BROWNS SCORE! A great one-handed catch by David Njoku for the team’s first lead all year!

He followed that with a sumo celebration that ended with him spiking the ball into his own butt.

— Matt Cassell has thrown a TD pass to Phillip Supernaw; it’s tied at 10 in Miami. Incidentally, “Supernaw” is my response to a game featuring Cassel and Jay Cutler. This is an easy joke that thousands of people have already made, but I am incapable of not making it. I’m protected by dads’ rights, you can’t stop me.

— Some bird-on-bird crime in Cards-Eagles:

Nelson Agholor just destroyed this Cardinals DB in every way possible #Eagles http://pic.twitter.com/4v1aFCVEDd

— Clay Wendler (@ClayWendler) October 8, 2017

That is rookie Budda Baker, in case you’re the one chiseling the headstone. He didn’t just get burned; he got burned, then juked, and then he missed a tackle. And then watched as Nelson Agholor took the Nestea plunge into the end zone to cap off a 72-yard touchdown that put Philly up 31-7.

By the way, are we still calling it the Nestea plunge? I know I’m a hundred years old and that ad campaign was forever ago, but do the youths know about it? Attention youths: Please Snapchat me about your awareness of the Nestea plunge. I’ll check my messages in 3-4 days.

— Ben Roethlisberger has thrown CONSECUTIVE pick-6s to the Jaguars and I am HERE for the Steelers getting dragged at home. Did I pick the Steelers to cover more than a touchdown in a win? Yes, I did, and I will happily be wrong forever if it means that hairy sentient ham suffers a public humiliation every time he uses the media to chastise the star wide receiver who makes him look good every week.

Well, almost every week.

— Here’s Melvin Gordon stiff-arming Janoris Jenkins into the turf.

Melvin Gordon stiff arm on Janoris Jenkins http://pic.twitter.com/91tFxByWKU

— Steve Noah (@Steve_OS) October 8, 2017

I include this because one of the best things SB Nation makes is a show called “Will You Be My Friend?” and you should watch the episode with Gordon. Here, I’ll embed it and you can watch it right now. Go ahead, kick your shoes off and luxuriate on this webpage a little longer.

— My son is up from his nap. He sleepily staggers over and throws his arms around me in a big hug. I know that doesn’t really pop off the screen as anything special, but trust me when I say my brain is FLOODED with dopamine from his carefree smile and chubby arms.

This is the bone that human biology throws to parents. “Oh, is every day with a young child the hardest thing you’ve ever experienced? FINE, bathe in the warmth of infinite love.” And all of us stupid parents are like, “Oh, yeah, that’s good. This is worth surrendering my house to childproofing measures and chiming plastic bullshit.”

— Jermaine Kearse is wide open for a TD, and the Jets lead 17-7. Good night, Browns. You were powerless to protect your home turf from the juggernaut Jets as they cruised to 3-2 for a share of the AFC East lead. Fire up the Josh McCown Pro Bowl campaign!

— Odell Beckham gets open behind the defense for a 48-yard touchdown. He celebrates by performing CPR on the ball.

Giants are on life support but @OBJ_3 is trying to bring them back. http://pic.twitter.com/wWVXXldt0n

— Clay Wendler (@ClayWendler) October 8, 2017

OK, this is just a disastrous mockery of life-saving procedures. First of all, he didn’t even check his ABCs: Airway, Breathing, Circulation. He didn’t perform any rescue breathing. And he performs chest compressions by pumping his arms, which wastes energy; he should keep his arms straight and let his body weight to do the work. No wonder he spikes the ball; his life-saving efforts hastened its death.

— Ben Roethlisberger has thrown his fourth interception. And now a FIFTH! Merry Jagsmas!

— The Lions are attempting a furious comeback against the Panthers, but they started it too late to have any realistic chance of victory. In Cincy, with the Bills trailing 21-16 and two minutes remaining, Tyrod Taylor throws a pick. My daughter wakes up and, noticing the smell from the kitchen, asks what we’re cooking. “What did Mommy say she was going to make?” My daughter is lost in thought for a moment, then her face lights up. “APPLE PIE!!!”

— Leonard Fournette rips off a 90-yard sprint for a TD, and the embarrassment is complete. 30-9, Jacksonville.

— The Colts have managed to blow their two-touchdown lead. Leading 23-16 with 24 seconds left, they were a goal line stand away from the W. Instead, on 4th and goal, the Niners get a tight end open with a rub route and he just BARELY breaks the plane. Once again, we are saddled with overtime between two crap teams instead of sending them home with the tie they earned (or ending with a do-or-die two-point conversion, which would likely be more exciting, and certainly faster).

— Oh no. Odell Beckham is injured and crying. You can tell from his face that he knows his season is over. UGH.

The Giants are up 22-20 late in the game, but they already don’t have a rushing game, and Beckham is the FOURTH Giants wideout to leave with an injury. Eli Manning is gonna have to run the wing T from a goal line formation.

My daughter, who is almost healed from her broken collarbone, is looking at the screen with concern. I say, “He’s sad because he hurt his leg, sweetie.”

My wife adds, “Where’s he going to go to make his leg better? Who’s he going to see?”

My daughters face brightens. “To the DOCTOR!”

On the next play, Manning is strip-sacked. The Chargers recover and take the lead on a touchdown pass to Melvin Gordon, his second score of the day. The Giants have no response. They deserve to have the dignity of running up a white flag and packing it up for the day; instead, Eli Manning throws an interception on 4th-and-10. Even for a team that entered the game winless, the final four minutes of this game were especially gutting for the Giants.

LATE GAMES, FIRST HALF

— Ahhh, my beloved Seahawks! The first play RedZone shows of them is third-and-14 for Russell Wilson and the offense, which is the most Seahawks down and distance possible. Alec Ogletree sacks Wilson. Excellent. Yes. This is the good shit I choose to watch every week.

— In Oakland, Jared Cook’s fumble is returned for a Ravens TD, and Baltimore is up 14-0 less than 4 minutes into the game. With Derek Carr out, E.J. Manuel is responsible for getting the Raiders back into the game. With all due respect to Joe Flacco’s crappiness, this game is effectively over. I will not write another update about it unless Marshawn Lynch, like, crowdsurfs in the Black Hole after scoring a touchdown.

— After an easy drive down the field, an apparent Todd Gurley touchdown is wiped off the board when replay shows that Earl Thomas’s goal-line chop knocked the ball loose short of the goal line, resulting in a touchback for the Seahawks (it’s the second time Thomas has done this against the Rams). The end zone fumble/touchback foible remains the most inexplicable rule in football, and I love it very much in this moment.

— Jacoby Brissett throws a pick in end zone. Hey! What are the 49ers and Colts still doing here? This is late game territory, busters. I may have to start organizing this column under different headings. Let’s wrap this one up: The 49ers will do nothing with the ball, punt, and lose on an Adam Vinatieri 51-yarder.

— My daughter wants me to summon pictures of Rapunzel from Tangled on my computer screen. She has never seen the movie or even read the kids’ mini-book. her only familiarity with the story is the generic fairy tale. But she has an electronic reader with a picture of the Mouse’s Rapunzel, and that is enough to stoke the flames of curiosity. (shaking fist) DISNEEEEYYYYY!!!

— Following a methodical Dallas touchdown drive, Aaron Rodgers leads the Packers downfield and throws a perfect strike to Davante Adams. Mason Crosby, however, misses the extra point, and Packers trail 7-6. This game appears to be just as good as Fox had hoped.

— After the Seahawks throw an interception on a trick play, the Rams drive deep into Seahawks territory. On 3rd and 11, Jared Goff hands off to Tavon Austin, who goes untouched for a 27-yard touchdown. I had hoped that whatever Jeff Fisher-brand Seahawks poison the Rams employed over the last five years would be gone from this Rams team, but apparently not.

— I am starving. I haven’t eaten since a late breakfast, and my entry into our small kitchen puts me on the hook for making the kids’ dinner. While I toast a bagel for myself and cook quesadillas for the kids, the Seahawks recover a muffed punt, only to blow easy points by throwing an interception that flips the field position.

Thanks to Russell Wilson’s touchdown-saving tackle, the defense is able to hold the Rams to a field goal and a 10-0 lead. But you know what’s even better than hustling back to save a touchdown? Not throwing 40 yards across the field so a safety can undercut your throw with an open field ahead of him.

While I cook, my daughter is “reading” an illustrated Bible. She’s quiet and content for a long time, until she wants to know why some people are crying. Those are just Lazarus’ friends, sweetie. Don’t worry, he turned out fine.

— Dallas goes for it on 4th and less than a yard from the Green Bay 21, and Dak dives ahead to move the chains. A few plays later, he throws a perfect pass to Dez Bryant for a diving TD. The Cowboys lead 21-6, and are totally dominating time of possession.

— My daughter: “I’m going to the bayou!” She must have gotten her mitts on The Princess and the Frog again. I would love to thaw Walt Dinsey’s head just to punch him in the face one time.

— On second and goal from the Rams 4, the Seahawks throw a jump ball to Jimmy Graham, who uses his height advantage to pull in an easy touchdown. This is the sort of thing that Seahawks fans expected would become commonplace when the team traded for Graham three years ago, but has almost never happened because the coaching staff is allergic to exploiting potential mismatches.

The touchdown caps an impressive, time-consuming 75-yard drive. I didn’t take any notes on it, though, because I didn’t want to jinx it. I am sane.

— The Seahawks tie the game at 10 with a 48-yarder just before the half. Unprompted, my daughter sings, “There is nothing else, and I love you anyway.” That’s it, young lady. No more playing with haunted dolls.

— In Dallas, Green Bay scores on a 7-yard run from rookie Aaron Jones, who’s getting the start in place of the injured Ty Montgomery. The score is 21-12 after another missed extra point. Bad day for Crosby.

LATE GAMES, SECOND HALF

— My son has finished his dinner, and he is singularly focused on playing with bubbles, even though that’s strictly forbidden in the apartment. The kid is WILD about blowing bubbles. It’s not enough to blow bubbles FOR him; he needs to hold onto the wand AND the soap solution himself, even though he ends up immediately dumping the solution out EVERY TIME, which results in tears. So I’ll usually try to hold on to the container with the solution, but he’ll grab at it and start crying.

Please believe me when I tell you I hate these motherfucking bubbles. I am THIS CLOSE to banning all bubble-related objects from the apartment. NO ONE GETS ANY BUBBLES UNTIL YOUR FINE MOTOR SKILLS IMPROVE.

— “Daddy, do you want to go in the hallway?” my daughter asks. My wife is taking the kids to the end of the hall to set up the bubble machine (one of these doohickeys). I tell her I’ll join her as soon as I get a little more work done, and in my head “Cats in the Cradle” plays.

The Rams face a 3rd and 10, the Seahawks blitz their linebackers, and Goff runs more than 20 yards through the space they vacated yards for first down. UGH. In the hallway, I hear the shrieks of delight.

A few plays later, the Rams convert another 3rd and 10 conversion to get into the red zone, and you know what? I don’t really give a shit what the stupid Rams and Seahawks do.

I go out into the hallway. My daughter is shouting “BUBBLES!” and her brother is saying “BUH-BUH!” because he is a tiny diapered caveman. The stress I had from watching football has evaporated. Bubbles, man. I gotta rethink my stance.

— When I go back to the apartment to get some paper towels, I see Jordy Nelson drop a slant that would be a touchdown. Green Bay kicks kicks a field goal (hey, a kick that worked!) to cut the lead to 21-15.

My daughter followed me back inside and, seeing her untouched dinner, suddenly realizes she’s hungry. She eats better when we read to her at mealtime, so I read to her a rugelach recipe from a Smitten Kitchen cookbook. She makes odd requests, OK?

— Hey, the Rams and Seahawks are still tied! How did the Rams blow that scoring chance? Bubbles, man. I ran a bubble screen on them.

— My son comes back into the apartment, and I pull him up into my lap while reading my daughter a marbled pumpkin gingersnap tart recipe. His heart is racing from the excitement in the hallway, and he’s clawing at the neck of his tee shirt. I take it off of him to get him ready for the bath; he’s soaked with sweat. Little dude raved too hard.

— This is too many Seahawks-Rams updates, so let’s wrap this one up, even if it messes with chronology: the Rams can’t stop turning the ball over, and the Seahawks can’t do anything with the ball when they get it. After my kids go to bed, Cooper Kupp drops what would have been a game-winning touchdown. Seahawks win, 16-10.

The lesson: never try to stretch the ball over the goal line if Earl Thomas is in the same ZIP code.

— In Dallas, Green Bay has mounted a comeback despite strategically trying to blind Aaron Rodgers.

The Dallas plan to blind Aaron Rodgers is working http://pic.twitter.com/qWGEOKmX00

— SB Nation GIF (@SBNationGIF) October 8, 2017

YOU FOOLS! Blindness can’t stop Aaron Rodgers! He quarterbacks mostly by echolocation and proprioception.

The light streaming into AT&T Stadium DOES look cool as hell, though. It reminds me of some Getty photos from a few years back:

Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images

Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images

Hard to believe that’s Brandon Weeden under center, isn’t it? Nevertheless, it’s no surprise that a Weeden offense could only look good in still images.

— Dallas has bled a ton of clock with an epic drive to retake the lead, but Rodgers gets the ball back with a minute left and a timeout. He takes the snap staring straight into sun … and throws a perfect back shoulder pass to Davante Adams. On the next play, with the sun still in his eyes, he completes it to Martellus Bennett for another first down. See? He’s like a bat, or a dolphin.

— Anyone who’s ever played the Packers knows how this ends: with an Aaron Rodgers touchdown pass, and your heart broken. Mike McCarthy should be jailed for only going to one Super Bowl with this demigod.

— Time for pie!