#plenty of people at this company have rich parents who will pay for their shit

[the-ocean-is-trans]

last year i was afraid of losing my job because of (potentially illegal, i never got to find out) ableism from HR and my boss telling me she didn't know if this job was the right fit for me/generally being a dick. this year both of those situations have improved (director of HR who said the potentially illegal thing to me left and boss has been much happier with our work/nicer, but now im afraid that my coworkers and i will lose our jobs because of loss of funding from the federal government. yeehaw.

[arcticdementor]

Stefanie Gray explains why, as a teenager, she was so anxious to leave her home state of Florida to go to college.

“I went to garbage schools and I’m from a garbage low-income suburb where everyone sucks Oxycontin all day,” she says. “I needed to get out.”

She got into Hunter College in New York, but both her parents had died and she had nowhere near enough to pay tuition, so she borrowed. “I just had nothing and was poor as hell, so I took out loans,” she says.

This being 2006, just a year after the infamous Bankruptcy Bill of 2005 was passed, she believed news stories about student loans being non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. She believed they would be with her for life, or until they were paid off.

“My understanding was, it’s better to purchase 55 big-screen TVs on a credit card, and discharge that in a court of law, then be a student who’s getting an education,” she says.

Still, she asked for financial aid: “I was like, ‘My parents are dead, I'm a literal fucking orphan, I have no siblings. I'm just taking out this money to put my ass through school.”

Instead of a denial, she got plenty of credit, including a slice of what were called “direct-to-consumer” loans, that came with a whopping 14% interest rate. One of her loans also came from a company called MyRichUncle that, before going bankrupt in 2009, would briefly become famous for running an ad disclosing a kickback system that existed between student lenders and college financial aid offices.

Gray was not the cliché undergrad, majoring in intersectional basket-weaving with no plan to repay her loans. She took geographical mapping, with the specific aim of getting a paying job quickly. But she graduated in the middle of the post-2008 crash, when “53% of people 18 to 29 were unemployed or underemployed.”

“I couldn't even get a job scrubbing toilets at a local motel,” she recalls. “They told me straight up that I was over-educated. I was like, “Literally, I'll do your housekeeping. I don't give a shit, just let me make money and not get evicted and end up homeless.”

The lender Sallie Mae at the time had an amusingly loathsome policy of charging a repeating $150 fee every three months just for the privilege of applying for forbearance. Gray was so pissed about having to pay $50 a month just to say she was broke that she started a change.org petition that ended up gathering 170,000 signatures.

She personally delivered those to the Washington offices of Sallie Mae and ended up extracting a compromise out of the firm: they’d still charge the fee, but she could at least apply it to her balance, as opposed to just sticking it in the company’s pocket as an extra. This meager “partial” victory over a student lender was so rare, the New York Times wrote about it.

“I definitely poked the bear,” she says.

Gray still owed a ton of student debt — it had ballooned from $36,000 to $77,000, in fact — and collectors were calling her nonstop, perhaps with a little edge thanks to who she was. “They were telling me I should hit up people I know for money, which was one thing,” she recalls. “But when they started talking about giving blood, or selling plasma… I don’t know.”

Sallie Mae ultimately sued Gray four times. In doing so, they made a strange error. It might have slipped by, but for luck. “By the grace of God,” Gray said, she met a man in the lobby of a courthouse, a future state Senator named Kevin Thomas, who took a look at her case. “Huh, I’ve got some ideas,” he said, eventually pointing to a problem right at the top of her lawsuit.

Sallie Mae did not represent itself in court as Sallie Mae. The listed plaintiff was “SLM Private Credit Student Loan Trust VL Funding LLC.” As was increasingly the case with mortgages and other forms of debt, student loans by then were typically gathered, pooled, and chopped into slices called tranches, to be marketed to investors. Gray, essentially, was being sued by a tranche of student loan debt, a little like being sued by the coach section of an airline flight.

When Thomas advised her to look up the plaintiff’s name, she discovered it wasn’t registered to do business in the State of New York, which prompted the judge to rule that the entity lacked standing to sue. He fined Sallie Mae $10,000 for “nonsense” and gave Gray another rare victory over a student lender, which she ended up writing about herself this time, in The Guardian.

Corporate creditors often play probabilities and mass-sue even if they don’t always have great cases, knowing a huge percentage of borrowers either won’t show up in court (as with credit card holders) or will agree to anything to avoid judgments, the usual scenario with student borrowers.

“What usually happens in pretty much 99% of these cases is you beg and plead and say, ‘Please don't put a judgment against me, I'll do anything… because a judgment against you means you're not going to be able to buy a home, you’re not going to be able to do basically anything involving credit for the next 20 years.”

…

The passage of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 was a classic demonstration of how America works, or doesn’t, depending on your point of view. While we focus on differences between Republicans and Democrats, it’s their uncanny habit of having just a sliver of enough agreement to pass crucial industry-friendly bills that really defines the parties.

Whether it’s NAFTA, the Iraq War authorization, or the Obama stimulus, there are always just enough aisle-crossers to get the job done, and the tally usually tracks with industry money with humorous accuracy. In this law signed by George Bush, sponsored by Republican Chuck Grassley, and greased by millions in donations from entities like Sallie Mae, the crucial votes were cast by a handful of aisle-crossing Democrats, including especially the Delawareans Joe Biden and Tom Carper. Hillary Clinton, who took $140,000 from bank interests in her Senate run, had voted for an earlier version.

Party intrigue is only part of the magic of American politics. Public relations matter, too, and the Bankruptcy Bill turned out to be the poster child for another cherished national phenomenon: the double-lie.

…

Years later, pundits still debate whether there really ever was an epidemic of debt-fleeing deadbeats, or whether legislators in 2005 who just a few years later gave “fresh starts” to bankrupt Wall Street banks ever cared about “moral hazard,” or if it’s fair to cut off a single Mom in a trailer when Donald Trump got to brag about “brilliantly” filing four commercial bankruptcies, and so on.

In other words, we argue the why of the bill, but not the what. What did that law say, exactly? For years, it was believed that it absolutely closed the door on bankruptcy for whole classes of borrowers, and one in particular: students. Nearly fifteen years after the bill’s passage, journalists were still using language like, “The bill made it completely impossible to discharge student loan debt.”

…

The phrase “Just asking questions” today often carries a negative connotation. It’s the language of the conspiracy theorist, we’re told. But sometimes in America we’re just not told the whole story, and when the press can’t or won’t do it, it’s left to individual people to fill in the blanks. In a few rare cases, they find out something they weren’t supposed to, and in rarer cases still, they learn enough to beat the system. This is one of those stories.

…

Smith’s explanation of the history of the student loan exemption and where it all went wrong is biting and psychologically astute. In his telling, the courts’ historically sneering attitude toward student borrowers has its roots in an ages-old generational debate.

“This started out as an an argument between the Greatest Generation and Baby Boomers,” Smith notes. “A lot of the law was created by people railing against draft-dodging deadbeat hippies.”

He points to a 1980 ruling by a judge named Richard Merrick, who in denying relief to a former student, wrote the following:

The arrogance of former students who had received so much from society, frequently including draft deferment, and who had given back so little in return, accompanied by their vehemence in asserting their constitutional and statutory rights, frequently were not well received by legislators and jurists, senior to them, who had lived through the Depression, had worked their ways through college and graduate school, had served in World War II, and had been paying the taxes which made possible the student loans.

Smith laughs about this I didn’t climb the hills at Normandy with a knife in my teeth just to eat the debt on your useless-ass liberal arts degree perspective, noting that “when those guys who did all that complaining went to school, only rich prep school kids went to college, and by the way, tuition was like ten bucks.” Still, he wasn’t completely unsympathetic to the conservative position.

…

This concern about “deadbeats” gaming the system — kids taking out fat loans to go to school and bailing on them before the end of the graduation party — led that 1985 court to take a hardcore position against students who made “virtually no attempt to repay.” They established a three-pronged standard that came to be known as the “Brunner test” for determining if a student faced enough “undue hardship” to be granted relief from student debt.

Among other things, the court ruled that a newly graduated student had to do more than demonstrate a temporary inability to handle bills. Instead, a “total incapacity now and in the future to pay” had to be present for a court to grant relief. Over the course of the next decades, it became axiomatic that basically no sentient being could pass the Brunner test.

…

In 2015, he was practicing law at the Texas litigation firm Bickel and Brewer when he came across a case involving a former Pace University student named Lesley Campbell, who was seeking to discharge a $15,000 loan she took out while studying for a bar exam. Smith believed a loan given out to a woman who’d already completed her studies, and who used the money to pay for rent and groceries, was not covering an “educational benefit” as required by law. A judge named Carla Craig agreed and canceled Campbell’s loan, and Campbell v. Citibank became one of the earlier dents in the public perception that there were no exceptions to the prohibition on discharging student debts.

“I thought, ‘Wait, what? This might be important,’” says Smith.

By law, Smith believed, lenders needed to be wary of three major exceptions to the non-dischargeability rule:

— If a loan was not made to a student attending a Title IV accredited school, he thought it was probably not a “qualified educational loan.”

— If the student was not a full-time student — in practice, this meant taking less than six credits — the loan was probably dischargeable.

— And if the loan was made in an amount over and above the actual cost of attending an accredited school, the excess might not be “eligible” money, and potentially dischargeable.

Practically speaking, this means if you got a loan for an unaccredited school, were not a full-time student, or borrowed for something other than school expenses, you might be eligible for relief in court.

Smith found companies had been working around these restrictions in the blunt predatory spirit of a giant-sized Columbia Record Club. Companies lent hundreds of thousands to teenagers over and above the cost of tuition, or to people who’d already graduated, or to attendees of dubious unaccredited institutions, or to a dozen other inappropriate destinations. Then they called these glorified credit card balances non-dischargeable educational debts — Gray got one of these “direct-to-consumer” specials — and either sold them into the financial system as investments, borrowed against them as positive assets, or both.

…

Smith thought these practices were nuts, and tried to convince his bosses to start suing financial companies.

“They were like, ‘You do know what we do around here, right?’ We defend banks,” he recalls, laughing. “I said, ‘Not these particular banks.’ They said it didn’t matter, it was a question of optics, and besides, who was going to pay off in the end? A bunch of penniless students?”

Furious, Smith stormed off, deciding to hang his own shingle and fight the system on his own. “My sister kept saying to me, ‘You have to stop trying to live in a John Grisham novel,’” he recalls, laughing. “There were parts of it where I was probably super melodramatic, saying things like, ‘I'm going to go find justice.’”

Slowly however, Smith did find clients, and began filing and winning cases. With each suit, he learned more and more about student lenders. In one critical moment, he discovered that the same companies who were representing in court that their loans were absolutely non-dischargeable were telling investors something entirely different. In one prospectus for a trust packed full of loans managed by Sallie Mae, investors were told that the process for creating the aforementioned “direct-to-consumer” loans:

Does not involve school certification as an additional control and, therefore, may be subject to some additional risk that the loans are not used for qualified education expenses… You will bear any risk of loss resulting from the discharge.

Sallie Mae was warning investors that the loans might be discharged in bankruptcy. Why the honesty? Because the parties who’d be packaging and selling these student loan-backed instruments included Credit Suisse, JP Morgan Chase, and Deutsche Bank.

“It’s one thing to lie to a bunch of broke students. They don’t matter,” Smith says. “It’s another to lie to JP Morgan Chase and Deutsche Bank. You screw those people, they’ll fight back.”

…

In June of 2018, a case involving a Navy veteran named Kevin Rosenberg went through the courts. Rosenberg owed hundreds of thousands of dollars and tried to keep current on his loans, but after his hiking and camping store folded in 2017, he found himself busted and unable to pay. His case was essentially the opposite of Brunner: he clearly hadn’t tried to game the system, he made a good faith effort to pay, and he demonstrated a long-term inability to make good. All of this was taken into consideration by a judge named Cecilia Morris, who ruled that Rosenberg qualified for “undue hardship.”

“Most people… believe it impossible to discharge student loans,” Morris wrote. “This Court will not participate in perpetuating these myths.” The ruling essentially blew up the legend of the unbeatable Brunner standard.

Given a fresh start, Rosenberg moved to Norway to become an Arctic tour guide. “I want people to know that this is a viable option,” he said at the time. The ruling attracted a small flurry of news attention, including a feature in the Wall Street Journal, as the case sent a tremor through the student lending world. More and more people were now testing their luck in bankruptcy, suing their lenders, and asking more and more uncomfortable questions about the nature of the education business.

In the summer of 2012, a former bond trader named Michael Grabis sat in the waiting room of a Manhattan financial company, biding time before a job interview. In the eighties, Grabis’s father was a successful bond trader who worked in a swank office atop the World Trade Center, but after the 1987 crash, the family fell out of the smart set overnight. His father lost his job and spiraled, his mother had to look for a job, and “we just became working class people.”

Michael tried to rewrite the family story, going to school and going into the bond business himself, first with the Bank of New York, and eventually for Schwab. But he, too, lost his job in a crash, in 2008, and now was trying to break the pattern of bubble economy misery. However, he’d exited Pennsylvania’s Lafayette College in the nineties carrying tens of thousands in student loans. That number had since been compounded by fees and penalties, and the usual letters, notices, and phone calls from debt collectors came nonstop.

Now, awaiting a job interview, his phone rang again. It was a collection call for Sallie Mae, and it wasn’t just one voice on the line.

“They had two women call at once,” Grabis recalls. “They told me I’d made bad life choices, that I lived in too expensive a city, that I had to move to a cheaper place, so I could afford to pay them,” Grabis explains. “I tried to tell them I was literally at that moment trying to get a job to help pay my bills, but these people are trained to just hound you without listening. I was shaking when I got off the phone, and ended up having a bad interview.”

Two years later, more out of desperation and anger than any real expectation of relief, Grabis went to federal court in the Southern District of New York and filed for bankruptcy. At the time, he, too, believed student loans could not be eliminated. But the more he read about the way student loans were constructed and sold — he’d had experience in doing shovel-work constructing mortgage-backed securities, so he understood the Student Loan Asset-Backed Securities (SLABS) market — he started to develop a theory. Everyone dealing with the finances of higher education in America knew the system was rotten, he thought. But what if someone could prove it?

The 2005 Bankruptcy Act says former students can’t discharge loans for “qualified educational expenses,” i.e. loans given to students so that they might attend tax-exempt non-profit educational institutions. Historically, that exemption covered almost all higher education loans.

What if America’s universities no longer deserve their non-profit status? What if they’re no longer schools, and are instead first and foremost crude profit-making ventures, leveraging federal bankruptcy law and the I.R.S. code into a single, ongoing predatory lending scheme?

This is essentially what Grabis argued, in a motion filed last January. He named Navient, Lafayette College, the U.S. Department of Education, Joe Biden, his own exasperated judge, and a host of other “unknown co-perpetrators” as part of a scheme against him, claiming the entirety of America’s higher education business had become an illegal moneymaking scam.

“They created a fraud,” he says flatly.

…

Grabis doesn’t have a lawyer, his case has been going on for the better part of six years, and at first blush, his argument sounds like a Hail Mary from a desperate debtor. The only catch is, he might be right.

By any metric, something unnatural is going on in the education business. While other industries in America suffered declines thanks to financial crises, increased exposure to foreign competition, and other factors, higher education has grown suspiciously fat in the last half-century. Tuition costs are up 100% at universities over and above inflation since 2000, despite the 2008 crash, with some schools jacking up prices at three, four times the rate of inflation dating back to the seventies.

Bloat at the administrative level makes the average university look like a parody of an NFL team, where every brain-dead cousin to the owner gets on the payroll. According to Education Week, “fundraisers, financial aid advisers, global recruitment staff, and many others grew by 60 percent between 1993 and 2009,” which is ten times the rate of growth for tenured faculty positions.

…

Hovering over all this is a fact not generally known to the public: many American universities, even ones claiming to be broke, are sitting atop mountains of reserve cash. In 2013, after the University of Wisconsin blamed post-crash troubles for raising tuition 5.5%, UW system president Kevin Reilly in 2013 admitted that the school actually held $638 million in reserve, separate and distinct from the school endowment. Moreover, Reilly said, other big schools were doing the same thing. UW’s reserve was 25% of its operating budget, for instance, but the University of Minnesota’s was 29%, while Illinois maintained a whopping 34% buffer.

When Alan Collinge of Student Loan Justice looked into it, he found many other schools were sitting atop mass reserves even as they pleaded poverty to raise tuition rates. “They’re all doing it,” he said.

In the mortgage bubble that led to the 2008 crash, financiers siphoned fortunes off home loans that were unlikely to be repaid. Student loans are the same game, but worse. All the key players get richer as that $1.7 trillion pile of debt expands, and the fact that everyone knows huge percentages of student borrowers will never pay is immaterial. More campus palaces get built, more administrators get added to payrolls, and perhaps most importantly, the list of assets grows for financial companies, whether or not the loans perform.

…

“As long as it’s collateralized at Navient, they can borrow against that,” Smith says. “They say, ‘Look, we've got $3 billion in assets, which are just consumer loans in negative amortization that are not being repaid, but are being artificially kept out of default so Navient can borrow against that from other banks.

“When I realized that, I was like, ‘Oh, my god. They’re happy that the loans are growing instead of being repaid, because it gives them more collateral to borrow against.’” Smith’s comments echo complaints made by virtually every student borrower in trouble I’ve ever interviewed: lenders are not motivated to reduce the size of balances by actually getting paid. Instead, the game is about keeping loans alive and endlessly growing the balance, through new fees, penalties, etc.

There are two ways of approaching reform of the system. One is the Bernie Sanders route, which would involve debt forgiveness and free higher education. A market-based approach meanwhile dreams of reintroducing discipline into student lending; if students could default, schools couldn’t endlessly raise costs on the back of unlimited government-backed credit.

Which idea is more correct can be debated, but the one thing we know for sure is that the current system is the worst of both worlds, enriching all the most undeserving actors, and hitting that increasingly prevalent policy sweet spot of privatized profit and socialized risk. Whether it gets blown up in bankruptcy courts or simply collapses eventually under its own financial weight — there’s an argument that the market will be massively disrupted if and when the administration ends the Covid-19 deferment of student loan payments — the lie can’t go on much longer.

“It’s just obvious that this has become a printing money operation,” says Grabis. “The colleges charge whatever they want, then they go to the government and continuously increase the size of the loans.” If you’re on the inside, that’s a beautiful thing. What about for everyone else?

[lazyxlazer]

Shit Church Experiences Pt. 1

As the pandemic continues, I’ve been thinking more and more about shit that I never had time to think about before. It weighs on my mind as I try to sleep every night, and since I process by writing things out, I decided this would probably be a good first step at getting it the fuck out of my head. Nothing has affected me quite as much as my church experience. None of my current friends went regularly as a child, so I’ve become the go to for Bible related questions. Unfortunately for them, I’ve blocked a lot out from my memory as far as Bible memorization goes. A lot of the other shit persists.

I had never heard of church until I was probably 8 or 9. My aunt, uncle, and cousins lived in an apartment complex in my hometown, so I was over there frequently being watched by my aunt and uncle. I remember one day being asked if I would like to go on the “church bus” and go to Sunday School with my cousin. She was probably around 5 and my aunt was putting her on this “church bus” alone to go to some unknown church. Mind you, this wasn’t a traditional bus but a large 14-seater van. Don’t worry, it had windows! I’m not sure if I was supposed to keep my cousin company or if my cousin was just encouraged to bring me along.

The church was about five or so miles away from the apartment complex and sat on a mostly empty highway. It was surrounded by lots of trees and the road with the entrance to the church was kind of treacherous. Since there was not much else around, people driving on the highway weren’t very good at paying attention to cars slowing down to turn into the church. When I first started going, it was large but pretty modest inside. It had red brick walls and a tall white steeple. The inside had a cafe and an area for kids. Sunday school rooms were upstairs. The sanctuary was covered in thick maroon carpet. I should have taken it as a subdued warning; everything in that place was a shade of red. A few years later they would build a brand new, extremely massive sanctuary and a school onto the side of the old church building. The adults had church in the new sanctuary and the kids used the old building.

I don’t remember what that first time was like, but after that, I was in love with going to church. We sang songs and danced around, they gave us SNACKS, we played fun games, and the best part was that I was being told how good of a child I was for going to church. 

The church bus started coming to pick me up at my own home every Sunday. I took my mom with me one time. Then the next time my dad came. After that, we went to church every Sunday without fail. This comes back to haunt me to this day. If I hadn’t gotten on that stupid bus, I never would have gone through all of the pain and suffering that it caused later down the line.

Even though my parents were church regulars, I still rode the church bus. I got to hang out with kids, sing songs, and goof around without my friends. Also, if we brought friends, then we were rewarded. Whoever brought the most friends on the church bus at the end of the month got to go out to lunch with the bus driver, Jake. What a reward, huh? He took us to Wendy’s for burgers, fries, and a frosty. I won that prize SEVERAL times.

The thing about me is that I’m very motivated by praise from authority figures. I’m also very motivated by food. Naturally, church was a dangerous environment for a person like me. There’s always food, and there are plenty of people that have authority and use it to the fullest extent. It wasn’t even hard to look up to them because everyone was always so kind, or pretended to be. 

In Sunday school and in kid’s church, which they called “Adventure Land,” I was very subservient. I memorized all of my Bible verses, I did my daily devotional, I prayed. I wanted to be the best, and I wanted God to love me the most. I thought that if I showed them and God how good I was then I wouldn’t end up in the scary, fiery place called Hell. I had to prove I was good enough to be in heaven. I also wanted to prove to everyone else that I had worth and was meant to be there.

I was quickly pulled into the church “family” and my parents were too now that I spent every Sunday and Wednesday at the church. My dad joined the church choir and band. He played the saxophone, and he loves nothing more than to sing his heart out. My mom cleaned the church every Tuesday. I would usually go with her then, too, to help clean. When I got a little older, I got roped into doing puppet shows and teaching kids how to do the dance moves for the songs. The adults trusted me to help teach others what to do, so I felt the worth I wanted so badly. I knew all of the words and motions to all of the songs! I raised my hands and swayed to the music. I closed my eyes and pretended to feel the Lord’s presence. I knew how to do this stuff. Therefore, I was perfect for indoctrinating younger children!

I don’t recall a lot of the time I spent “witnessing” to other children, but I have a strong memory of something I did for Vacation Bible School (VBS). In the summer, there was a weeklong camp that parents sent their kids to so we could learn all about Jesus and be entertained so parents could have a break from their kids. I went up on stage with two adults in front of the entire congregation and sang a song and danced as a preview for that year’s VBS called Amazon Outfitters. I still remember the song. Now, I see how racist and fucked up it is. It went:

Amazon Outfitters,

We’re on a mission for the one true God.

We cannot be quitters, 

We’re on a mission and we will not stop.

Amazon Outfitters, 

We’re giving everything that we’ve got 

To help others discover

The wonders of the one true God.

And at the end of that verse you made a guttural “HUH!” noise like Edwin Starr in his song “War” because that’s exactly what that song needed. The song is poorly written, but at least it has the imperialistic undertones! Colonization, anyone?

So yeah, a person who is now painfully introverted went up on stage to advertise to parents and their children how they could be cool, just like me, if they went to VBS. Where was my shame? I desperately needed it then, but I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I was important.

I was also a perfect candidate for indoctrinating others because of  how “inspiring” my story was to others, at least according to the adults. I came to church for the first time WITHOUT MY PARENTS and CHOSE to keep coming back. Heck, I BROUGHT THEM WITH ME!! I was the pride and joy of several Sunday School teachers and youth pastors. I was also “saved” before my parents were, so it was because of me that they got saved too.

It’s an absolutely riveting story, let me tell you. One of the church members was an actual cowboy. He had a farm, he owned horses, he had a cowboy hat, he had a handlebar mustache, the dude had it all. On a very special day of church, he brought one of his horses with him to show all of the children. While he talked to us about Jesus, I was enraptured by that horse. I’m not really into horses, although maybe I could have been in another life, but at that moment, nothing was more important to me than touching that horse. He had rich brown hair and a diamond shaped white spot on his nose. Luckily, if we decided that we wanted to ask God to forgive our sins and to follow him no matter what on that very day, we were allowed to come and TOUCH THE HORSE!!!! Like fuck was I passing up that opportunity! I was the first kid to stomp my happy ass up to that horse. I touched it and asked God to forgive me of my sins without a second thought.

I was informed soon after that I would have to get baptized, you know, because we have to wash away our sins in a chlorinated pool before it’s official. I did that without question. It was on a day in April in the old church building. It was still cold outside, enough to wear a jacket. I’m pretty sure I wore a dress that was white and lacy. You wouldn’t catch my gay ass in something like that now-a-days, which is why I bring it up. Upon arrival at the church, we were told that the heater in the baptismal wasn’t working, but it would be okay to go ahead with the baptisms. 

It was not okay.

That water was so cold, that everyone that got baptised that day was a shivering mess for the rest of the service. My legs turned purple. I will NEVER forget how cold I was and how foreign my legs looked on my body. I also recall keeping my eyes open when the pastor dunked me into that water.The pastor laughed at me and told me I was weird. Then, later in the day, my parents threw a little party for me where everyone brought me gifts for being baptized. It made me feel proud and WORTHY.

I give myself a lot of shit for following so blindly, for not questioning, for believing every adult I encountered had good intentions, but there was absolutely no hope for me then. I’m a people-pleaser, I’ll admit it. I know how to listen, pay attention, be quiet, obey. I was taught to always respect adults no matter what. I never questioned them or talked back. I once asked my parents what I was like when I was younger, beyond my memory. My dad said to me, “You were always such a good little girl. You were so...meek. If another kid was throwing a fit because you had a toy they wanted, you would just give it to them and do something else.”

He’s not wrong. That behavior persists to this day. I find it interesting that my parents weren’t more concerned about it. I was such an anxious child. I identified with cartoon characters like Piglet from Winnie the Pooh and Chuckie from Rugrats. Miss Frizzle from The Magic School Bus, too, but that’s just because I’m a weirdo nerd. Maybe they found it endearing and sweet. Maybe they liked how cautious I was because they never had to worry about me doing something dangerous. Honestly, I don’t blame them. I’m sure I was an easy child to handle. However, at a time when I needed more than ever to have ideas and opinions, I was indoctrinated into an extremely toxic church environment. Something that was supposed to give me meaning, purpose, and worth actually left me with nothing when I no longer followed without question.

I still have plenty floating around in my head and MANY STORIES that I believe need to be told. Later I’ll be talking about:

The Youth Barn - are you ready teens?! AYE AYE, JESUS!

The Baptist Church Break-up

The Truth About Bob (spoiler: it’s not good)

The Pizza Church

Noah and The Wonderful World of Technology

Ken Ham and Creationism

Youth Group

Church Band

“Dude, your pastor is a little creepy…”

HOW I ESCAPED

[crue-sixx]

Kiss The Bride

Title: Kiss The Bride

Author: tiddly-winx

Fandom: The Dirt (Motley Crue Movie)

Summary: You are getting married to Lucas, who you think loves you for you but Tommy informs you that he only wants your money.

Warning: Swearing, death of a parent, smut and the reader's fiancee being a dick.

You met Lucas through a business connection with your father, who was an oil tycoon.  He was different from the other rich assholes, in the country as he insisted he pay his share in the community.  He helped build schools, housing and playgrounds along with paying off student loans for people who deserved it.  He imparted those values on you, but he'd only gave you a trust if you fulfilled his requirements of going to school, getting good grades and marrying the love of your life.  You agreed to these terms, getting into university on your own and a part time job at the library to help pay for semesters.

There you met Lucas, who seemed to have been having a hard time with the card catalog.  He was trying to find a book about business planning, when you said "Can I help  you?"

"No, sweetheart" he said condescendingly "but if I ever want to learn about cooking and cleaning, I'll be sure to hit you up!"

You bit your lip at that, knowing that if you flipped your lid at another dude who thought he was smarter than you, you'd get canned for sure.  You hadn't told anyone who your father was, having been known around campus as Y/N M/N (middle name).  You weren't ashamed of your last name, you just didn't want anyone to treat you differently because you were filthy fuckin' rich.  Just then, your father paid an unsolicited visit.  You were happy to see him so you went up and gave him a big hug.  Lucas was perplexed at first, but the family resemblance was uncanny.  Your father spoke up "Lucas, this is my daughter Y/N" you then gave him a comical wave out of spite.

"O-oh" the younger man stammered "I was unaware..."

"Y/N, this is Lucas" he introduced you "he's the son of my new business partner.  I hope you get along swimmingly!"

"Don't worry, Daddy" you said to him "Maybe I'll come over and clean his house and cook a meal or two for him!"

Lucas was so ashamed of his behavior that he offered to buy you dinner.  When your father was out of earshot, you said to him "Hell no" and went back to placing the books alphabetically on the shelves.

"Why not?" he whined.

"Because of the way you talked to me before you knew I was the daughter of an oil tycoon.  You talked to me like I was worth less than the worms inside the dirt" you raised an eyebrow at him.

"But most people ARE worthless" he said, to which you looked at him in total shock "the only people who are worth anything are people like us-well to do" he insisted on taking you out, but you shoved him off.

It was then a tall skinny young man with drumsticks in his belt came up and said "She said she's not interested, dude.  Leave 'er alone" he looked the type not afraid to throw down, but from the scared expression on the younger female behind him's face he didn't want to resort to violence right away.

Lucas looked at him like he was the scum of the earth.  But he relented and backed off.  You turned to the young man and said "Thank you, I was about to get fired from throat punching him..."

"No problem" he smiled at you, his height not bothering you at all.  "I'm Tommy" he looked over to the younger female "and that's my sister Athena" the younger female smiled and waved at you two.  'She's applying to go to school here!"

"What about you?  Are you applying too?" you asked him.

"Nah" he laughed "I'm too dumb for school.  I'm a drummer in a band!  We're playing at the Troubadour later!  You should totally come watch us when you get off!  We go on stage at 11!" you did like the rock and roll scene, but didn't have many chances to go since you had both work and school, but one night wouldn't hurt.

"Sure thing!" you said "I just gotta clean up a little and I'll be right over!"

"Cool beans, dudette!" he was corny, but that was what you liked about Tommy Lee.

You had a blast at the show, and an even better time at the after party where Tommy gave you his full attention.  Thankfully he hadn't seen or heard the conversation that Lucas had tried to continue with you, so you had a chance at making some new friends.  You were immediately fond of Vince, Nikki and Mick-they were like a fucked up version of The Brady Bunch on everything that could be snorted, injected or drank.  But they never pressured you to do anything you didn't want to.  You were thankful for that.

Over the next few days, Lucas tried to talk to you but you shut that shit down quickly when he started that whole "holier than thou" speech.  Sometimes Tommy would come and scare him away, but you were able to do the job just as effectively.  Eventually, he had learned that he in fact did not shit gold.  It had seemed like he was being pulled down to earth.  "Y/N, I'm sorry for being a horse's ass..."

This grabbed your attention, you never expecting a sincere apology from some douche bag with a silver spoon in his mouth.  You stood silently, looking expectantly at him for him to continue. "My life isn't worth any more or less than anyone else's...can we please start over?"

You were a believer in second chances, so long as the person looking for said second chance was willing to put in the effort you deemed worthy of your time.  "Sure, Lucas" he was a total gentleman to you and the waitress, being sure to leave a sizable tip.  After that night, you'd made it official.

Tommy was surprised that you'd date such a dickhead but after you explained that he did a complete 180 and was so much better than he used to be.  He seemed suspicious but he accepted it, the whole thing not taking his time with you from him.  He was up and coming in his band-they had just signed a record deal and were on their way to the top.

You and Tommy stayed close friends, you disapproving of his many girlfriends playfully.  But the one that got your goat the most was Roxy.  She was a total slut-sleeping with a different band before getting together with Tommy and you suspected that she was banging the whole of Motley Crue as well.  On a day where Lucas and your father were busy working a deal, you went onto the set of "Looks that Kill" to visit with everyone.  

"Y/N!" Tommy scooped you up and twirled you around "How the fuck are ya?" you both laughed and he put you down.

"I'm good, just working a whole lot at the library" you had told him and his friends that your dad was an oil tycoon and about the trust you had waiting for you on his death.  They were understandably pissed off at first, but after they had seen random dudes trying to discuss dowries with your father, they understood why you didn't say anything. The degree you had been working on and eventually gotten your Masters in was library science, running a library and ensuring everything was in tip top shape.

"Neat-o!" he ruffled your hair like a big brother would do to his little sister, but you felt that he wanted it to be more-and you did too.  You had excused yourself when Tommy was introducing Nikki and Roxy to his parents, but you overheard him introduce her as his fiancee your blood ran cold.  You know you shouldn't have ease dropped on the conversation, but you couldn't resist.

"So how did you and Tommy meet?" asked Tommy's sweet mother.

"Well I was actually hanging out with this other band, then I met Tommy and it was just meant to be!" she said happily.  To you, her voice was like nails on a chalkboard.  You wanted to say the word out loud, but Mrs. Bass said it for you.

"I know this word" she thought only a second "groupie!  Is that how they call you?" you snorted with laughter, Roxy looking so angry with Tommy and Tommy so annoyed with his mother.

"Mom!" he scolded "Not cool!"

"You say this word like its the best thing in the world!" he mother retorted.

His father chimed in with "Why not date Y/N?  She actually went to school for something!' Tommy hadn't told his parents about your family, so they had no idea.  You had been over to his house for family dinners plenty of times, you being nothing but polite and perfect table manners.

"She's dating Lucas!" he hissed.  "I can't mess with that!"

"I see the way you look at Y/N" his dad put an arm around his mom.  "It's the exact same way I still look at your mother".  Tommy blushed deeply and just walked away.

You were about to turn the corner when you bumped into Roxy, who viewed you as competition.  "What's got you all giggly?" she asked sarcastically.

"Nothing!" you assured her "just watching Mrs. Bass get confused over words.  English isn't her first language and sometimes our lingo gets her caught up!" you tried to play it off as ignorance, but you knew better.

"Well she's a cunt" Roxy spat out hatefully.  "Why're you hanging around Tommy anyway?  It's not like you two are datin'!"

"Because he's my friend and I've known him longer than you" you defended yourself "plus I already have a boyfriend.  If I really wanted Tommy, I would have taken him off the market when I had my chance!"

"Really?" she raised an eyebrow, then smiled wickedly "Tell Lucas that I think the birthmark in the shape of a warped heart right behind his right ear is adorable" your heart stopped hearing those words.  Lucas did indeed have a tiny heart shaped birthmark behind his right ear, but that wasn't visible to the naked eye.  You had to be in sex having range to see it.

"Did you fuck my boyfriend?" you quietly asked her.

"What else do you expect?" she mocked you "I am after all just a groupie" she then left you there, cackling like the witch she was.  You felt sick to your stomach, you had to get out of there.  That was the only time you left Tommy without saying goodbye.

A few weeks after that, you had stayed away from Tommy.  Lucas had in turn stayed away from you while he was closing the biggest deal in the company's history.  You knew he was lying to you and seeing other women, but you felt like you couldn't do any better than him.  You twirled the beautiful  diamond engagement ring he had so ceremoniously given you around your finger when you got the phone call that broke your heart-your father was dead.

His lawyer said he had a fatal heart attack, that he was dead before he hit the ground.  You sat in stunned silence for a while, then asked Mr Potts for make all the funeral arrangements.  All the details were set in your father's will so there was no question as to what he wanted.  You then called Lucas at the office "Lucas?" you sniffled.

"Babe, what's wrong?" he sounded like he was forcing concern.

"My father is dead" you wiped your eyes "please come home.  I need you now..."

With no hesitation, he responded "I can't.  I'm about to close this deal" you went silent with disbelief, then exploded.

"Your fiancee's father just died!  I'm sure they'll understand if you explain the situation!"

"I'm sure they will, but if I dip out now the company's future might be at stake!  With your father gone, the company's as good as mine!" you then heard a sound of shock from the other line, he had just given himself up.

"FUCK YOU AND FUCK THE COMPANY!" you slammed down the phone and sobbed to yourself, taking off his ring and throwing it out the window.  He played you like a cheap banjo for two whole years.  Your father had already paid for the venue, the reception and even the fucking wedding attire.  Now it would all go to waste.

You took a moment to yourself and did what you should have done in the first place.  "Tommy?" you called his house, where his maid answered the phone.  He was at The Hellfire Club, a private club for the higher end of Los Angeles.

When Tommy came to the phone he said "Y/N?  What's up?  You alright?"

"My father is dead" you said through sniffles "I need you..."

He took a moment to digest the information and asked "Where's Lucas?  Did you call him first?"

"We broke up" you flatly said "He loved my father's company more than he loved me" that was all he needed to hear, and he promised he'd be right over.  He was there in half an hour and with a hungry look in his eye he started kissing you like a lover the minute you opened the door for him.

You had no desire to stop him, your only protestation being ":What about Roxy?"

He stopped for a second "We broke up too" and in between kissing your neck "She stabbed me and called my mother a cunt" you had to stop at that point.

"What?!  Are you okay?!" you took of his shirt to see the wound, a small pen sized puncture that was already healed.

"We can talk about that later, baby" he continued kissing you, working his hands up your shirt and feeling your breasts.  "All I need right now is to be with you..." he tore off your shirt and pulled down your bra, exposing the nipples and sucking on one.  You let out a sigh of pleasure as you gently held his head in place.

"Tommy..." you sighed, him switching nipples and licking them "fuck me..." he threw you over his shoulder and you pointed him to your bedroom.  He laid you gently on the bed, kissing you down your body starting at you lips.  He trailed down your neck to your cleavage, then your belly and finally he was at your entrance.  Just staring at it like it was the holy grail.

"Fuck, you're so gorgeous..." he lifted your legs over his shoulders and began kissing your inner thighs "I've waited so long to be with you like this..." he dove right in, his tongue working its magic on you.  The sensation was nothing you felt before, and your body responded naturally.  Your hips began to rock back and forth in time with his tongue.  He chuckled and said "It seems like you've been waiting too."

You blushed at this, remembering the time you had said his name when you and Lucas were having sex.  "Please don't keep me waiting any longer. Tommy" you begged him.  He grinned, going back to work and adding his fingers.  It didn't take you long to cum all over his face and hand, but that only seemed make him even more hungry for you. 

He laid down on the bed, working his pants and underwear off and tossing them aside.  You marveled at his length, the girth was average and you just looked at it.  "Is it going to fit?" he laughed, clearly having been asked this many times before.

"If it's hurting you, we can stop" he leaned forward and kissed you softly, tasting your juices on his lips.  "That's why I got you so wet, so it would just slide right in..." he grunted, you having moved your hand to jerk him off.

:"How do you want me?" you asked him, your turn to kiss his neck and pump his dick.

"I need you to ride me" he groaned, his head going back on the pillow.

"Do you want me to suck you off first?" he took a second to answer.

"A little, but don't make me cum" you trailed kisses down his body, just like he did for you "I want to give you my A- Game after all" you had to laugh at that, even after all this time he was still that corny drummer boy you met at the university library.  That's all you ever wanted, or needed him to be.

You licked the shafted and teased his slit, him being unable to form any sensible sentences.  "Ohhhhh fuuuucccckkk..." you took him into your mouth fully and moved your head, humming with his cock in your mouth.  He jolted at that "SHIT!" you felt his dick twitch and he stopped you.  "I gotta calm down..." he panted.

"Okay Tommy" you laid next to him, just kissing him.  Your tongues exploring the other's mouth and surrounding skin.  After a few minutes he let you know he was good to go and you straddled him.  You reached down and guided yourself onto his erection, the both of you releasing a string of curses.  When you had adjusted to him, you leaned forward, touching your forehead to his and asked "Ready?"

"Oh God yes" he answered, taking hold of your waist as you sat up and began riding him.  He felt wonderful, your walls slick enough to allow him to slip in and out easily.  At first you bounced slowly, appreciating his length. "Do I feel okay, Y/N?" he was worried that he was too big for you "Am I hurting you?"

You looked down at him with your best bedroom eyes "No baby" you rode him slowly "You feel amazing..." you began to ride a little faster, to which he cursed more often and louder.  The squelching sounds from your love making were audible, and only fueled the fire even more.  You felt his hands move from your waist to your arms, eventually locking your fingers with his.  

Tommy was nearing his limit, so in one swift motion he flipped you on your back.  He gripped onto the headboard of the bed as he gave you the final hard thrusts "Holy shit, Y/N I'm about to cum..." followed by quick shallow thrusts "where do you want it baby?"

"Wherever you want to put it" your eyes rolled in the back of your head, a silent scream escaping your lips as you came hard around his cock.

He let out a whine and a strained "Fuck, fuck, FUCK!" the feeling of you cumming on his cock sent him over the edge and he let his own release erupt inside you.  He stayed inside you as he shuddered, giving you every last drop of what he had to offer.  When he was done, he'd pulled out and steadied himself over you on his elbows.

After catching your breath, you both leaned forward to a tender post love making kiss.  He flopped beside you, opening his arms to you for a cuddle.  You fell into him, and it felt so right.  You looked up at him and said "I love you, Tommy Lee.  I just don't know why it took me so long to see it..."

He chuckled and said "I love you too.  I just thought I'd never be good enough for you..."

This intrigued you "Now what moron told you that?"

"Lucas" he rolled his eyes "he tried to intimidate me from seeing you as a friend."

"Roxy did the same thing to me!  But she told me an intimate detail about Lucas that only a person who had sex with him would know!"

Tommy did a mock soap opera gasp "That bitch!" and you both had a laugh.

The next morning, your father's lawyer Mr. Potts stopped by to tell you everything was in order with your father's final arrangements.  Before he was leaving he mentioned "So is the wedding still going according to plan in three months?"

You sighed and said "We had irreconcilable differences and broke up..."

Mr. Potts was surprised "So you broke up with Tommy?"

Both you and Tommy looked up and said "What?"

"Your marriage license says Y/N as the bride and Tommy Lee Bass as the groom" he produced the document to show you.

"You gotta be shittin' me..." Tommy said in disbelief.

Mr. Potts smiled "Your father submitted this when you first applied to get a marriage license.  It has both of your signatures on it and everything!"

You didn't question it, so you looked at him and said "What do ya say?  Wanna get married?"

He grinned widely and said "Fuck yeah I do!"

Three months later, you walked down the aisle with Tommy's father, his mother and sister sitting in the audience both bawling their eyes out.  Tommy was waiting for you, and he too burst into tears at how breathtaking you looked.  Mick, Nikki and Vince were his groomsmen while their wives or girlfriends were your bridesmaids.  When it came time for the vows, Tommy wiped his eyes and said "Y/N, I've loved you since that day I saw you in the library.  I was such an idiot for waiting to tell you, then I saw you be snatched away right from under my nose.  I tried to be happy for you, but then I realized that I want to be happy WITH you...I promise to love you above all else and make you the happiest woman you could ever be..." he slipped the wedding band on your finger.

"Tommy" you began your vows "my sweet boy.  I never should have let that man come between us.  I knew I wanted you since I saw you play on stage.  I was just too stubborn to see you for what you're worth.  I love you, and I promise to be the best wife I can and to make you the happiest husband ever" you looked into your husband's eyes and saw only love.

The minister smiled at the both of you and went on with the ceremony and said "I now pronounce you husband and wife.  You may kiss the bride" Tommy did just that, sweeping you off your feet.

After the honeymoon, Mr. Potts called you and Tommy into his office to read your father's will.  "I (your fathers name) of sound mind and body bequest to my daughter Y/N one American dollar and this small note" both you and Tommy laughed at that "my business and my assets are to be dissolved, and the proceeds given to the charities that I have specified within this will" Mr. Potts handed you a small envelope.

"To My Darling Y/N,

You're wondering why I changed the names on the marriage license.  I saw the way Tommy made your face light up, then saw how dull it was when Lucas was around.  All a person needs to be happy is a home, a bag of gold and a love to make it all worth while.  I love you, and wish you and Tommy health and happiness.  Signed Daddy"

You wiped a tear from your eye and held Tommy's hand.  You had all you needed right in front of you, and you'd be damned if you let it slip away twice.

[atimefordragons]

IN THE NAME OF THE MOON, I SHALL PUNISH YOU! || EHS

☾♔; May 19, 2020 ☾♔; 2:19am ☾♔; sotd: Man of the World (Takanashi Yasuharu) ☾♔; cotd: Kuruma ☾♔; Elite Highschool ☾♔; Audition

𝐓𝐢𝐭𝐥𝐞: Sailor Moon, the Champion of Justice!

𝐀 𝐋𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐑𝐚𝐦𝐛𝐥𝐞 (𝐌𝐚𝐲 𝟐𝟑, 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟎): Finally done, I'm soz for taking so long! I've just been Narutoing. He's my boy, dattebayo!  

☆──════ ⋆ ☽ ⋆ ☾ ⋆ ════──☆

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐁𝐀𝐒𝐈𝐂𝐒

➤TITLE: S̶p̶o̶r̶t̶y̶ ̶S̶p̶i̶c̶e̶  The Sports Star ➤OC NAME: Katarina Văduva ➤AGE: 16   ➤BIRTHPLACE: Brăila, Romania ➤BIRTHDAY: December 31 ➤FACE CLAIM: Bruna Marquezine ➤USERNAME: @.dracarysbitch

𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘

➤LIKES: football (soccer, not the american one), eurovision (obvs), tennis, volleyball, basketball, ice hockey, figure skating, anime, manga (loves shoujo, but would rather die than admit it), a song of ice and fire (of course), russian literature (tolstoy is a fav ofc), winter, blizards, snowstorms, fresh snow, sweet foods, video games (dragon age, assassin's creed, the witcher, until dawn, pokemon), sailor moon, pink, blue, stitch, disney (sleeping beauty is her fave, even though she doesn't really match her personality, it's more that her parents gave her away for her safety, and Kat used to imagine it was the same for herself when she was a kid), space, faberge eggs, sanrio (her favourites are Kuromi and Pandausa)

➤DISLIKES: sasuke uchiha (fucking bitch), supercilious people, the lodge (lol, grow up you fucking losers), shows that go on forever and never end (please, please just end), shows that have shit endings, game of thrones (fucking dumbfucks), americans, right-wing politics (it's so stupid, just grow a heart), religion (what a scam), being alone (either physically or with her thoughts, let's bury that shit), losing, being wrong, having to concede any ground on any matter whatsoever, not knowing things

➤HOBBIES: anything that is physical (fucking jocks, amirite?), she's loves going for jogs (can't relate - secretly naruto runs during night time jogs 'cause no one can see her being lame), and playing streetball, etc. watching anime, reading manga, ranting on the interwebs about her shows and books (in general she avoids the bigger internet drama 'cause it's stupid, but sometimes you gotta put a bitch in their place, 'CAUSE DAENERYS IS THE PRINCE THAT WAS PROMISED, FUCK YOU!), watching reruns of pro-games (can't relate, so boring)  

➤STRENGTHS: determined, perseverant (is that even a word?), passionate, relentless, protective, observant, straightforward (usually ends up insulting people though, so it's more of a weakness tbh), goal-oriented, independent, self-reliant, has enough self-awareness to not go off on weeb/otaku interests in front of most people, but if it's like a "smart" anime, she'll discuss it (like Death Note, she's not gonna fucking admit to still loving Naruto at this age, shut up), diligent, loyal, a bad bitch (lol, not so much, but she likes being perceived as a strong girl who can and will stab you with her stiletto. the image only lasts for a few seconds, she more just comes off as rude).

➤WEAKNESSES: stubborn, very blunt, which tends to come off as brash and rude, though she's not always intending to be mean, despite that rude, blunt nature, she's also a bit tsundere, and struggles admitting her to deeper feelings. Gets flustered when complimented (outside of sports, there she's fine 'cause I'm the best bitches, or so she says), and she just can't admit it when she needs someone, whether it be a friend or romantic interest, especially if it's a romantic interest, 'cause she's also of the mind of who needs a boyfriend when there's food? while she's observant when it comes to changes in people's behaviour, she in general lacks the capacity to act well on her observations, and is awkward when trying to comfort someone or cheer them up. When it comes to her own feels, part from rage, annoyance, or "Jock Mode", she can barely admit to them, let alone discuss them with other. Speaking of "Jock Mode", she is competitive AF, somewhat dismissive (this usually only comes out in games, but she tends to ignore weaker opponents in search of stronger ones who pose a challenge). Also tends to display some arrogance in the sports she's most talented it, particularly volleyball. It's not quite a personality flaw, but she's weak for loving parents, or just a loving family in general (in life and when watching movies, it makes her fucking cry every time, which really puts a damper on her tough girl image, it's not usually a visible one, but she can't hide the longing in her face when she watches a parent and their child being a normal, happy family). Definitely has tunnel-vision, once she has a goal in sight, that's all she sees. Can even be paired down to dumb things, like C-grade trashy alien movies. She tends to notice only the aliens and revel in their destruction, while ignoring everything else, including the plot. Has plenty of issues; abandonment, trust, ptsd - none of which she is dealing with. She's just ignoring it and hopes it goes away once she becomes a cool, reliable adult™️ (lol, good luck that, adult life is a lie).

𝐁𝐈𝐎

➤SHORT BIO: Katarina is half-Brazillian, half-Russian, though she is under the assumption that she is Romanian, she is biological the daughter of Vasily Raevsky, a Russian Oligarch, and Xuxa Amalia Reis Moreno, a Brazilian businesswoman and all round bad bitch. For reasons unknown to her, Katarina was in effect abandoned at birth and placed in a Romanian orphanage in Brăila, which is also presumed to be her birthplace. Her birth certificate lists both parents as unknown, the orphanage named her. Having no parents or known family, and raised in an orphanage has given Kat many self-reliant skills, and allows her to live independently, but it has also left her with a deep sense of loneliness (not to mention PTSD 'cause Romanian Orphan life is a nightmare). She recognizes that much of her yearning is still childish fantasy, and often covers up that desire with her brash nature or jock hobbies.

Growing up in the orphanage was... not easy. The Brăila Home for Children was not the best, to say the least. Though it could've been worse (*shudders at the case of the Sighetu Marmației institution for disabled children* - do better Romania, oh my god). The orphanage was under and poorly staffed. They would often neglect and abuse the children, one year shaving every childs head so they all looked the same, and often chaining rowdy children to their beds. During Katarina's time, many of her fellow orphans died from minor illness or injuries such as cataracts or anemia, which were treated poorly or simply ignored, and a number also starved to death. Because of this, Katarina has a habit of hoarding food, and keeping snacks under her pillow. She also has difficulty sharing, and despises headboards that are railed(? the ones with gaps, idk what to call them).

When she was around eleven, the orphanage received ample anonymous donations, leading to much improvement, and the arrival of a new Director, Ileana Cojocaru, who, over time, earned the trust of Kat and her fellow orphans, and became something of a surrogate mother. Ileana did a nearly complete staff overturn (fun side note, some of the staff, especially those who harmed Kat have gone missing in the past few years, coincidence? no), as well as hiring accomplished childcare professionals from all over the world to help the children. It was Ileana who sparked Kat's, or rather Rina as Ileana called her,  interest in sports, though Ileana was more into football herself, she encourage Kat to explore whatever she wanted, though particularly team sports so that Kat could foster dependent relations. Kat herself particularly enjoyed volleyball, joining a little league team and winning a number of competitions. Due to her skill both in setting and spiking, she usually plays in the Opposite Hitter position.

Katarina entered EHS in Highschool, on what she assumed to be the Elite's scholarship program, arranged by Ileana, who even said as such, though in truth, her entry and tuition are all being handled by an anonymous benefactor. This fact was revealed to Kat last summer after Ileana died (of p̶l̶o̶t̶ ̶d̶i̶s̶e̶a̶s̶e̶ cancer), whose lawyer was put in charge of the bank accounts meant to pay for all of Kat's needs. The lawyer refused to divulge whom the anonymous benefactor is, citing a non-disclosure clause, though the need to discover who has given Kat a whole new mission in life.

➤FAMILY: On Katarina's part, she doesn't believe she has one, though she does consider Ileana to be her family, and has grown to care somewhat about her fellow orphans from the Brăila Home, while growing up they were rivals struggling to survive. Ileana's death devastated her, and she's dealing with it by straight up ignoring it. Lol, I'm not sad, my eyes are just glistening with the ghosts of my past.

Biologically, despite her complete lack of knowledge of it, Kat comes from rather a rather illustrious family. Her mother, Xuxa Amalia Reis Moreno, is a Brazilian Businesswoman, herself the daughter of a self-made millionaire, Xuxa is expanded the Moreno parent company, MC Inc., an oil and mineral company in origin, into numerous side ventures, owning and operating businesses ranging from restaurants to magazines and clothing lines. Her father meanwhile, Vasily Raevsky, is of the (former) noble House of Raevsky, now oligarchs in modern-day Russia, who virtually control Russia's diamond and precious stone industry, currently owning controlling shares of ALROSA, the largest diamond mining company in Russia, and accounting for 95% of the countries diamond production, as well as 27% of the global diamond extraction, and the House of Fabergé, which they purchased after the fall of the Soviet Union. If she remained in the care of either of her parents, her name would technically be Katarina Vasilyevna Moreno Raevskaya, which is a fun and utterly useless fact.

Her parents met at a rich people conference (idk, Davos or some shit like that) and engaged in a short lived affair. Her father was already married and could not accept her, and her mother had no interest in being a mother at all, let alone a single one, leading to them choosing to give her up in Romania, an arbitrary choice that fucked her up, lol.

Via her father, she has an elder brother, Viktor Vasilyevich Raevsky, who is in fact her anonymous benefactor. Viktor discovered her existence after Vasily had an accident and was close to death, so he confessed his sins and what not. Viktor eventually tracked her down and sought to improve her life. Though he wants to bring her into the family, he doesn't for the sake of his mother who cannot deal with the affair, though she refuses to divorce Vasily for appearances sake.

𝐄𝐗𝐓𝐑𝐀

➤MOODBOARD: https://tinyurl.com/y8a2gjy8 ➤SCHOOL WARDROBE/AESTHETICS: https://tinyurl.com/ycodubrb ➤PLAYLIST: https://tinyurl.com/y6wwmp74

➤TOP 3 CHARACTER PICKS: the Sports Star, the Princess, The Rebel(de) <-- lol, see what I did there? I'm so funny.

[bleached-d-soul]

Bad Gone Worse

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When you are a kid, gettin called to the principal's office could have meant a lot of things. Detention, expulsion, award, praise, and many things in between. But it was almost universal for all the students to experience this growing sense of dread as they stepped inside the room and were asked to sit down.

And although Jaune was a teacher himself, the same heavy feeling remained at the pit of his stomach.

"Jaune, do you have any idea how much trouble you are in?"

Mr. Alabaster, or Alan as he asked everyone to call him, wasn't what Jaune would call your typical principal of a prestigious academy. Where you'd expect the man commanding respect and authority, the elderly headmaster was rather soft-spoken and nonconfrontational man. Though, Jaune figured, it came with the territory of being in charge of the school as prestigious as this one.

You had your usual elite schools and then you had Atlas Academy. The place was the school for the highest of the elites, compared to which the other fancy places might as well have been inner city. Politicians, celebrities, business titans and tycoons all had their kids enrolled in this place. And, needless to say, everyone, his present company included, was intimidated with the sheer power some of the students wielded here.

"Alan, I-"The man silenced him with a raised hand, eyes and voice tired. Judging by a small glass of expensive whiskey by his side, the man had already had his ears told off. The man offered Jaune a glass of his own and he accepted it. He never liked alcohol much, but the situation seemed appropriate for it. With both glasses empty and the tension in the air a little bit thinner, Jaune began to speak.

He told Alan of the circumstances which led to the incident. How one of his students, Oscar Pine, had approached him about the multiple instances of bullying. Without much investigation, Jaune determined that it was at the hands of his classmate, Cardin Winchester. Jaune wanted to resolve it as peacefully as possible. He had to make it clear that bullying would have consequences. And, for a while, it seemed that Winchester actually understood that. Bullying stopped and Oscar seemed to act just a little bit less anxious.

But as it turned out, all of that was just leading to the punchline of a very cruel joke.

Jaune sighed as he recalled the events of weekend's trip to the Emerald Woods. The massive and thick forest was a frequent site for the locals. Nice thick woods with a giant lake full of things for young men and women to enjoy. They were supposed to stay there till Monday, but circumstances didn't allow for that. It happened so fast. A peaceful day relaxing near the lake was interrupted with the cry for help. Oscar was drowning, begging for someone to save him.

Jaune wished he could say it all ended after he pulled Oscar out, but he couldn't. The danger passed but the question of circumstances leading up to the incident remained. So Jaune demanded to know what Oscar was doing in the middle of the lake. Especially after he spent the whole time staying away from water.

Unsure and doubtful, the boy pointed at Cardin. And as the boy described how he had been grabbed and thrown into the lake, the bigger guy didn't even try to deny it. Once the truth was delivered, Jaune turned to Cardin, expecting... Y'know, something. An apology or at least some show of regret. Instead, the bully just scoffed and gave Oscar a wolfish grin:

"The day ain't over," Jaune stood in shock as Cardin cracked his knuckles. "Plenty of chances to get the job done."

The next few minutes were a blur. All Jaune can remember is how he was on top of Cardin, his fists slamming into the bastard's face with all the viciousness he didn't know he had. Then he was being pulled off by the students. And the next thing he knew, he was taken by the police. He only got out today and the first thing he got this morning was a message from Alan, which brings him back to now.

The elder man sat silent before downing another glass. As he offered Jaune a second one, he could faintly hear the principal softly curse under his breath.

Jaune chuckled at that, albeit humorlessly. His situation was, to put it lightly, was shit. He knew he had done the right thing. But right or wrong, it mattered little when you assaulted a minor. In the eyes of the law, everything was painfully simple: A teacher assaulted a student. A student with quite rich and influential parents, who had their own powerful friends. Jaune was still surprised they hadn't pressed charges against him yet.

"This is very serious, Jaune," the man sighed. "You know that, as teachers, we must never lay a hand on a student. Especially in this place!"

Not when the parents of students could squash you like a bug. He knew that, "I remember the guidelines, sir," Jaune said with a bit more bite than he intended. He apologized, quickly reminding himself that the principal wasn't at fault. Bigger men than him would be cowed under the pressure this place had. Still, it didn't make him hate the situation any less. "I just don't think that Winchester deserves to be let off that easily after endangering another student's life. He must learn that there are consequences."

Oscar was a good kid. A talented young man, wise beyond his ears. He was honest and cared for others. Wasn't this the kind of people they wanted the future leaders to be? Wasn't it the reason why Jaune became the teacher in the first place? If not any of those things, then what did he work so hard for?

After a few minutes of silence, Jaune decided to cut the chase. He knew, from the very first night in the slammer, that he wouldn't be defending his case today. He knew that the reason why the principal invited him was not to hear his side of the story.

"I suppose my resignation is already filled in, huh?" Jaune chuckled as the man placed the form before him. A simple piece of paper, but it meant giving up on teaching here. The place had it fair share of spoiled brats, but there were just as many good kids as well. Pyrrha, Velvet, Ren, Ruby, Oscar and so many more of the people he would never see after signing it.

But what else could he do?

"It's not as bad as it might seem, Jaune," Alan said. He actually sounded like he believed it. "Many of your students were ready to back you up if needed. They respect you, something you should be proud of. To have your students respect you... Most of us never achieve that in our entire careers. But unfortunately, Winchesters are petty and prideful. Even if your students testified against Cardin Winchester, his family would make sure to ruin you otherwise. If you resign, they agreed to let the issue go, with their signatures and all."

And didn't that sound just generous, Jaune frowned. He could have done something about it. Go to social media and expose Winchesters for what their son and, by extension, their entire family was. Jaune doubted he could actually win against them, not when Winchester Network pretty much ran the news. He could hurt them. He could get people to criticize them or even call for Cardin's expulsion.

But in the end, it didn't matter. The daily life was filled with so many controversies and scandals that his would be forgotten within a week. That is, if Winchesters didn't use their PR team to spin the tale and paint him as a deranged child abuser. With a final stroke of his pen, Jaune handed in his resignation form and extended his hand, "Thank you for everything, sir. I am sorry for causing you so much trouble."

"Don't apologize. You did the right thing, Jaune," the man smiled sadly. "I just wish we all could do the right thing as well."

BGW

"I am sorry, but we don't think you'd be a good fit."

"You lack experience."

"There are no available positions right now."

And countless variations of the same rejection were all that Jaune thought about these days. He tried at every school he could find but was met with rejection every single time. Was he really that inexperienced ot inadequate that he couldn't teach at any school in this area? A small part of him hissed that it had to be the work of Winchesters. Saying they wouldn't do anything was one thing. But honoring that agreement was another.

Jaune sighed in exhaustion as he fell on the couch in his new apartment. Smaller but cheaper, the only thing he could afford right now without proper job on hand. Was it how his teaching career ended? Over not even two years in because he wanted to do the right thing? Was it universe telling him that he should search for his calling somewhere else?

He could always try and find a job at some company. He could learn how to do the job there and it would pay his bills better than the odd jobs he'd taken up in time not spent getting rejected. All he needed to do was to give up on his dream. After all, who needed teaching anyway? It was hard job with zero respect for it. Unless you mentored the next Nobel Prize winner, who'd care about you? Who needed the job where, for all the time anf effort you put, people would always look down on you because of different paychecks. Who needed any of that? Who wanted any of it?

Jaune did.

And no matter how much he might have hated some parts of the job like grading exams or assigning detention, he just couldn't imagine himself doing anything else. He wanted to be a teacher. It wasn't just the job for him, but rather his passion. He wanted to share his experiences with the younger generation and make an impact in their lives.

That was what being a teacher meant to him.

But he could get back on track? Should he change his name? Maybe change his hair and wear glasses? He could always try and look for the job in another state. Yes... He could do the last one. Winchesters might have been powerful but there had to be a limit to even their reach. And once he found it, he could go back to doing his job. Yes, all he needed to do was just hold on a little longer.

He would find a new job. And then he would forget all about this black line in his life.

All he needed was...

A phone call.

"Huh?" Jaune picked up his phone, confused by the unknown number. Let alone at this hour. "Hello?"

"Mr. Arc," not a question. A statement. Done in the voice and tone that sent shivers down his spine. "My name is Cinder Fall, I am calling you on behalf of Grimm Academy. Are you free to speak to right now?"

"Of course," Jaune answered, sounding a bit more eager (and desperate) than he wished to. "I am free to speak."

"Your resume has impressed our Headmaster, and she wanted me to conduct an additional interview with you. Will you be available this Monday, 8 AM?"

"I can there at 7," he joked, feeling relieved at the invitation. When the woman on the other end didn't laugh, he coughed awkwardly, "I mean, I will be there on time."

As he wrote down the address and her contact number, Jaune felt the confidence return to him. He reminded himself not to get too full of it quite quickly. The others also invited him for an interview only to turn him down there and then or, in some cases, by a phone call. The job at Grimm Academy might be his last shot at teaching without moving somewhere far away and he was sure not going to waste it.

Even if he didn't quite remember applying for it.

"Must be all the stress from job searching," Jaune reasoned with a deep sigh. There was no way the school would contact him if he didn't apply. And anyhow, he didn't have time to check if he did. He had the whole weekend of preparing for the interview. Whoever this Cinder was, she sounded like someone who would judge him from the very moment she saw him.

He had to make sure that interview went perfectly.

No doubts. No distractions.

BGW

The place was full of distractions.

Jaune buried his face in his phone, trying very hard not to look at any of the girls passing through the hall. Which wouldn't be much of a problem if every single one of them didn't look like the most gorgeous person he'd ever seen. Jaune was proud to say that, in all his years working as a teacher, he never looked at his students like that. He loved them, but in the same way he felt about his sisters.

Never more than that.

The girls here were different. Not just in the way they looked, but they way they carried themselves. There was something powerful - something dangerous - about each girl who passed him by. And by Gods, he could feel their eyes on him. Some were amused. Some were indifferent. Some judged him. Some looked at him like a prey - a lamb to the slaughter.

Maybe he was better off leaving?

"Mr. Arc. Punctual, I see."

Too late. He couldn't run now.

"Miss Fall," Jaune smiled, doing his best to look confident. "Pleasure to meet you."

And he wasn't lying. From the voice, Jaune knew that the woman was young, hardly older than him anyway. But he didn't expect the woman to look like this. Long silky black hair, the skin that seemed so smooth and pure of any flaws, the hourglass figure hugged tightly by her suit. But above it all, her eyes were the true focus of his attention. Full of the cold fire and burning ambition, even from behind her glasses, those eyes seemed to peer deep into his soul.

And she didn't seem impressed.

"Pleasure is all mine," the woman said, not sounding particularly sincere. "Shall we go to my office?"

He nodded and followed silently, not daring to speak lest he says something wrong and gets in trouble. As they walked towards her office, Cinder decided to give him a brief tour and history of the Grimm Academy. And Jaune found himself more and more surprised by how rich the school's history was despite how he found nothing about it on the Internet the night before.

It was an all-girls boarding school. And, similarly to Atlas, it was the school for the society's elite. The daughters of the rich and powerful. He was surprised by that, seeing how little resemblance there was to the students back at his old school. And how high the truancy and delinquency were here. You'd think that the kids at such elite school would be more concerned with keeping up reputation and whatnot.

"Now, let's begin the interview."

Jaune took a deep breath and relaxed himself. The questions were, surprisingly, ordinary. Where did he study? Beacon University. What classes had he taught priorly? Literature and Drama. Why did he want the job? He chose to omit the fact that he wasn't being hired by anyone else. The interview went on like this for good fifteen minutes before Cinder made the last mark on her checklist.

Taking her glasses off, the woman stared into his eyes long and hard. The brief few seconds the eye contact lasted seemed to stretch into hours of her searching his very soul for something. A flaw. A leverage. A weakness to exploit.

"One last question, Mr. Arc," the brunette finally said. "How good are you with women?"

What?

"What?" he said out loud. "W-What do you mean?"

"Exactly what I said," Cinder smiled. A smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "How well are you with women?

Jaune sat silent, waiting for Cinder to tell him it was some joke. When she didn't, he wrecked his brain, looking for a way to answer that question without sounding like a pig of some sort of sexual predator. "I-I would say I am quite good at that. I grew up with seven sisters so I know a lot about most of the stuff girls have to go through today. I am also a pretty good listener so I would say I am pretty good with women."

Cinder looked him up and down, eyes again searching for something. Something he didn't quite understand. And, judging by the way her lips curled into a small smile, she found exactly what she was looking for.

Though Jaune's wasn't sure whether it was a good thing or not.

"Congratulations, Jaune," the woman smiled, this time with her eyes as well. "You are officially hired. Welcome to Grimm Academy."

He let out a sigh he didn't know he was holding back. "Thank you so much, Miss Fall. You won't regret it, I assure you," he said. Quickly though, he decided to ask the question of his own. "If it is not a secret though, why did you ask the last question?"

"You may call me Cinder. As for your question," Cinder smiled, this time her smile much more mischievous and amused. A smile that a villain had when the heroes fell right into their trap. "Tell me, Jaune, what do you know about our school?"

He raised an eyebrow in confusion, reciting the information Cinder gave him along with what little pieces he found on the Internet. An elite school. High salary. Away from the big city. Cinder seemed amused by it so he asked, "Is there something that I missed?"

"You are quite correct, Jaune. But you did miss one thing. There are countless boarding schools for society's elite, but only Grimm Academy provides the parents with what they are seeking. Do you have any idea what that is?" he stood silent. Cinder answered for him, "It is secrecy."

"Secrecy? Like from paparazzi?" It would make sense. The school was pretty secluded in this area, guarded by walls and some very intimidating-looking guards. One of the bigger challenges was keeping media away from them. Somehow though, the extent to which they went didn't fit in with that thought. "I am missing something, aren't I?"

"Not exactly. You see, Jaune, Atlas, Vae and Mistral are the kinds of schools the elite send their kids to uphold family honor and reputation. Those who graduate from there will enjoy all the positive presumptions that come with the diploma of the school," the brunette smiled. "Grimm is the other side of the coin. We do not Parents send their kids here to preserve what honor and status they have. We are the school where parents send rebellious and disobedient girls to make sure they don't hurt their reputations. In short, we are-"

"The delinquent school," Jaune whispered in shock. That explained the attitudes and the general atmoesphere in this place. "All the girls here are delinquents..."

Delinquents with money, power and connections, Delinquents who could squash him on a whim.

"They might be very handful," Cinder smiled. This time, her smile spoke of all the pleasure she took in his horror. "They have gone through quite a lot of teachers before you. Which is why I am looking forward to working with you."

Her eyes flared dangerously. Hungrily.

"For however long you may last."

BGW

"Alright, settle down, class," Miss Fall said with the voice that accepted no disobedience. "Let me introduce you to our new Literature teacher, Jaune Arc. Please, make sure he feels welcome here."

While Jaune didn't expect any actual warmth in welcome, he at least counted on a few complimentary claps. No such thing, apparently, as the gathered girls simple sat silent, either staring at him or busy with their own things.

"Well, my job here is done," Cinder said as she left the class, "Don't eat him too fast, girls."

Jaune honestly didn't doubt that they could. After a moment of awkward and defeaning silence, Jaune said, "Alright class, I know, the Fall Semester just started and you already have a new teacher. So how about we use today's class to get to know each other better? Back in my last school, we had this game which really helped in this. So, who is up to play?"

The girls gave him a collective look, some annoyed, some apathetic and some actually interested. Not good kind of interested, however. Rather, it was the same interest one watched a person fall down the stairs. Then, as if connected in a single hivemind, the girls exchanged glances and the identical smirk spread on their lips. This didn't seem good. One of the girls, with short brown hair and fox-like grin, raised her hand and spoke, "Cool, we'll play. What are the rules?"

His instincts told him to forget the game and run. To get his things in the car and get the fuck away from this place. Then again, if he was the type to listen to his instincts, then he wouldn't be in this mess in the first place. He was in too deep now. He couldn't just run away. He had to push through this class and establish himself as a trustworthy and open teacher.

And hey, just how bad could this backfire on him?

"Well, the rules are pretty simple. You say your name and tell a fact about yourself. Something fun that could let us know each other better. And in exchange, you may ask me a question to which I must answer," Jaune smiled, seeing that some of the girls perked up at the idea. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad. "Of course, whether the answer or the fact are true ot force depends on both of us. But I really would like if we spoke only the truth here. Any questions? No? Then let's begin."

A couple of hands rose. The girls here seemed more open about this kind of stuff. He could still remember how awkward the kids back in Atlas were around him when he suggested this game. Poor Ruby quite literally froze when he picked her to answer.

"You," he pointed at one of the twins, the girl with a red feather in her headband. The girl stood from her seat and smiled charmingly. "Your name is...?"

"Miltia Malachite," the girl curtsied, getting a few laughs from the class. Ah, nothing like good friendly ribbing. "The fact about me is that I really like submissive guys. I enjoy making the guys moan and cry and beg for a sweet relief. So are you Dom or Sub, Mr. Arc?"

He choked on his spit as his brain processed the question. For a brief moment, he wondered if it was his ears playing with him. Surely, a student couldn't ask her teacher such question in broad daylight in front of her classmates, right? Right? However, as he looked at the room, he saw neither surprise nor shock, only the growing amusement the girls had at his expense. All eyes on him, Jaune couldn't help but feel naked. Naked... Along with the classroom full off such attractive young women... "Shit, stay down, boy! Now is not the time...!"

"I guess I am neither?" Jaune managed to blurt out awkwardly. "I-I mean, uh... Next question, please?"

More hands were now up in the air. And now they didn't seem that innocent. Or harmless. Still, he had to continue. Eyes searched through the classroom, Jaune purposedly ignoring Miltia and her sister. After a couple of minutes, his eyes landed on the girl with bright orange twintails with neon blue highlights, "How about you?"

"Hi, my name is Neon! And I like partying, the harder and longer the better" the girl grinned cheekily, fully aware of the words she had just used. "What about you, teach? You like partying long and hard?"

Shit, was everyone's mind in the gutter here?

"Sure," he did his best at hiding any embarrassment as he answered. "I am not much for raves but hey, if the party is decent enough, I will surely join in!

"Even orgies?"

Jesus Christ!

"Next question, please!" Jaune begged not so subtly.

More than the half of the hands stood proud and eager, no doubt waiting to ask him their own embarrassing question. He knew that whoever he asked next would pull the same stunt. The best he could do right now was minimize the damage. Eyes desperately scanned the room, looking for someone innocent. Or the closest thing to innocent among the girls here.

Finally, he saw the small girl with hair of pink and brown. She looked innocent enough. "You. Yes, your question?"

The whole room fell disturbingly quiet. The air suddenly felt heavier and colder. Some girls even gave him sympathetic and pitiful looks. The girl stood up from her seat and walked over to him. And with each tiny slow step she took, her smile grew wider and bigger, filling him with dread. As the tiny girl stood in front of him, Jaune felt infinitely smaller than anyone here.

She started typing something on her phone. A second later, female monotone spoke, "Hi, my name is Neo...," Jaune stood in surprise as he listened. Was she mute or just shy? Probably mute. No way a shy girl would get that kind of reaction out of her classmates. "I love ice cream, clothes, knives and night city life. Now for my question, Mr. Arc..."

Her grin turned devilish.

"How big is your dick?"

Jaune groaned in frustration as some of the girls whistled and laughed, "It is average, Neo. Now go back to your seat." It was clear that his game didn't work. He'd need another way of breaking the ice with the girls here if he wanted to have a proper influence on their lives. Preferrably, one without such exploitable rules. "Now let's change the-

"You mind if I check for myself?"

The voice came out of nowhere. Was it Neo's? He turned around fast, but not fast enough. Just as he was about to say something, Neo was behind him, her hands firmly on his belt. The shock - the sheer disbelief at what was happening to him right now - stalled him enough for the girl to unbuckle his belt and, in one swift motion, pull his pants along with his underwear down to his knees.

In that moment, Jaune's entire brain just froze as he started to think over where his life had gone so wrong. Or how much worse it could become now. Nobody would care if he was pantsed by the girl. Hell, he would be lucky if anyone actually believe that the girl half his size managed to to do it without him noticing. One call... It would take one damn call and he would be led out in handcuffs before locked away for God knows how long.

His life... was over.

"E-Excuse me," Jaune choked out as he shakily pulled his pants up. The bell rang but none of the girls moved from their seats. Figures, they were probably wondering when he would run. Well, he wouldn't give them the satisfaction! "Time for lunch so... Have a nice meal."

He kept his face as straight as he could as he watched the girls slowly leave. Once he was all alone in the class, he let the mask slip and shatter as he felt his spirits crashing down. Feeling like he would collapse any second, Jaune went to the teacher's lounge. There was no point in waiting for the next period. The girls no doubt had already called the police on him. If he was going to be taken by them, he might as well have some nice rest. One final power nap before being locked up in a cell in shame and humiliation.

Coming here... was the biggest mistake of his life.

BWG

There were many things Vernal disliked. Rules, authority figures, that Yang bitch who thought she was some tough shit, the list went on and on, being extended every time Vernal found something new to feel angry or pissed about. But the top spot on that damned list could only belong to one thing and one thing only.

Boredom.

It was just a tough fucking luck that she ended up here in the first place. She had a great thing going on before. With her mom, one of the biggest punk rock stars, she has been free for most of her life. Mom drank, took drugs and slept around, never listening to anyone or anything. And, by extension, Vernal was free to do the same. It was a good life. Freedom and hedonism incarnate.

But then he came along and had to ruin everything. That man - that fucking snake - invaded their lives and talked her mom into placing her in this damned school to try and reform her. Said that she had to do better. Be better. Fucking asshole, who was he to talk to her like that when he was just a lawyer? Hell, her mother's scandals were pretty much why dickbags like were needed in the first place.

Needless to say, she used any and every opportunity to stir up some trouble if only to annoy that old fart and show him he couldn't control her. Unfortunately, none of that went as viral as she could hope, seeing that the bitch that ran the place had vice grip on what made its way out of here. And in her free time? Vernal was just looking for something to entertain herself with.

"Holy shit, did you see the size of it?"

"How the fuck is he walking straight with that thing between his legs?"

And it seemed she found herself something new. Vernal was no virgin, of course. One of the first things she chose to do to piss off her dad was getting fucked as soon as she could by the first guy she found. Said guy was all that her dad hated about guys: loud, rude and one leg in a juvie. Needless to say, the guy turned out to be just talk and nothing more than that.

The guy was loud, quick and weak. It didn't help that he thought her choosing him made them an item. As if. Even if she was looking for some long-term thing, it wouldn't be with some toothpick.

Especially now that she had found herself a nice meat rod around this place.

When she first heard they were getting a new teach, Vernal wasn't all that excited, just like the rest of their class. They had gone though so many of them that it wasn't fun anymore. Ignore them. Sit in your phone. Or play the same game they did with the blondie. Eventually, they all quit and ran in tears. But it got boring and old really fucking fast. So when the fresh meat walked in, she gave him around a month before he ran home.

Then Neo showed that nine inch long four inch thick meat popsicle. And now Vernal planned to make sure he stayed around. She was just getting tired of all the toys she managed to sneak in. Plus, the guy looked like a total wuss. She could have him as her personal dildo with legs without any mushy stuff. Which is why he needed to stay. It wouldn't be any good if she lost such catch.

"You think we should gang up on him?" Melanie suggested, licking her lips in anticipation. "I mean, everyone loves twins~"

"Oh, we definitely should," Miltia agreed and did the same, clearly imagining being rammed in by that thick cock. "But how do we do that? The guy seemed really shaken up. No surprise if he runs off the moment the class is over."

It was a problem, Vernal mused to herself. For a guy that big, this Jaune certainly lacked the confidence or any self-esteem. He seemed idealistic, which was dumb, and honest, even dumber. Not someone she was looking to hook up with for something serious. She needed a real man. The kind who knew how to do things right and kept his head high.

Then again, she wasn't looking for anything more than a living dildo right now. Now, all she needed to do was claim him first.

"Think we should wear matching panties?"

"How about none at all?"

And that meant making sure the twins didn't even come near him anytime soon.

"Eh, I don't think he would go for that," Vernal said simply, putting just enough disinterest to make it seem like a random comment instead of planned one. She sat silent for a few moments before she 'noticed' the twins were waiting for her explanation. "I mean, have you seen that guy? Hell, have you heard the guy? He looks like he wouldn't kiss you till your third date or something. I doubt he'd have the balls to fuck any of his students."

All true, if anyone asked. But to Vernal, it didn't matter if he had balls for it or not. She would get that dick for herself regardless of that.

"So what do you think we should do?" Miltia asked annoyed. "Sing him a serenade or some shit?"

"I think you should start slow," Vernal smirked at how the girls seemed to eat it up. Yes, getting fucked by that log would be nice. But doing so while leading the others on a wild goose chase would make it even better. Like eating the last dessert after telling the girls they were out. "Apologize for those questions and play perfect little students this guy dreams about. Turn in your homework in time. Show eagerness to learn and shit like that. I bet he'd fall in love with you in a month or so. And then you could have your way with him."

When Vernal got up from her seat, the twins were still in deep thought. Could they really wait for months until they got that thing inside of them? Was it worth the wait or holding out? In the end, it didn't matter to Vernal.

Because she was planning to stake her claim tonight.

BGW

"Is that what's bothering you, Jaune?"

He sighed as he took a cup of coffee from Cinder. He couldn't keep silent and confessed. Surprisingly though, Cinder offered to listen to his side of the story and, if possible help him out. So he talked and now he waited for her to say what he could do.

"I think you should show them you are not to be messed with," Cinder said, without a hint of joke or sarcasm. "The girls here are as problematic as they come. Soft approach will not work with them. Trust me. many have tried and failed. The only way to succeed here is to be ruthless."

Ruthless? But he was nothing like that. "And how can I do that?"

"Try it on me," Cinder suggested, a strange fire dancing in her eyes. "Give me an order."

An order? "Uh... Raise your hand?"

She rolled her eyes, "Seriously?"

"Sorry, never tried that before," he took a deep breath and focused. "Cinder, raise your hand."

She smiled.

"No."

What?

"And what are you going to do about it?" she asked, getting closer. Her soft silky breath tickling his neck. "What are you going to do now that I have defied you, Jaune? Will you back down and surrender? Or will you push through and conquer those that disobey?"

"Conquet," he whispered, inching closer to her. "I will make them listen."

"I don't hear the confidence, Jaune," she pressed herself against him. Her body was hot, his own heating up. "Show me how you will do it. Show me how you will dominate those girls!"

Everything happened in a blur. Her clothes were torn off and thrown away into the corner. Like a wild animal, Jaune descended upon Cinder, attacking her neck with his mouth. Biting into her soft smooth skin felt intoxicating, but not as mindblowing as was locking tongue and lips with her. His hands were left free to explore every inch of her body. Her supple breasts, her toned and firm ass, her drenched and dripping pussy.

He was surprised when she pushed him onto the sofa. Eyes burning like that of a predator, Cinder licked her lips before mounting him. He watched her push herself down his cock, the soft and heated moans escaping her lips. Very soon, she was thrusting herself up and down his cock with wild fevor.

"Oh yes! Oh yeah, just like that! Don't you dare stop! Keep going!"

Jaune grunted and moaned as Cinder rode him like there was no tomorrow. Her toned ass slapped against his crotch, the sound of their unrestrained sex filling the whole room. The tight walls of her pussy burned like wild fire, her hissed pleas and challenging to fuck her even harder making it impossible to hold on for long. After what must have been an hour of constant fucking, Jaune felt his cock throb.

"Cinder, I am going to-"

He was close. So close. Any second now he would-

"Wake up!"

A harsh slap and Jaune was back to reality. Vision fuzzy and head slightly ringing from the sheer force behind it, Jaune forced himself to look at the person in front of him. It was Cinder, but not as naked or horny as in his dream. Dreams... Oh Gods, he wasn't talking in his sleep, right? "Uh... Hello? Is everything okay?"

Amber eyes narrowed, "Okay? No, everything is not okay. Do you have any idea what you've done?"

What he has... Oh right. Guess it was time to face the music. The police was probably waiting outside for him. Might as wellleave with as much dignity as he could. But not before saying his piece, "It was an honor working here. I really wish you the best of luck in the future."

Cinder looked confused for a second before scoffing, "Oh please, don't be so dramatic, Mr. Arc. You wouldn't be fired over such small thing. Honestly, it used to happen to me a lot as well."

W-What? Jaune looked at Cinder, for a brief moment imagining her without her skirt and panties, standing in front of the whole class. Damn it, not now, libido! "What do you mean?"

"Teaching by its nature is not an easy job. You try to give each and every student as much focus and effort as possible, but even then some slip through your fingers. The mental strain that comes from trying to get and keep them interested in the class is nothing to laugh at either. And the girls here can be particularly exhausting with some of their antics. Plus, I am aware of how the circumstances of your resignation took tool on you," Cinder nodded in understanding. "So it's natural you fell alseep in here. It happens to the best of us as well."

Fell... asleep? Did that mean she didn't know about him getting exposed to the whole class? Wait, the girls had an entire lunch period to tell someone or post about it on social media. And if they didn't, did that mean they had no intention of doing so? But why? They didn't seem to particularly like him, so wouldn't getting rid of him one of their main priorities right now?

Guess he only could find out for himself.

"Yeah," he said, feeling much less weight on his shoulders. "Sorry about causing trouble, Cinder."

"No problem," she smiled candidly. "But do keep in mind: this was your first, last and only warning," the warmth left her voice, eyes drilling into him without mercy. "While I may understand your situation, it is no excuse to slack off here. You've been given an opportunity to be an educator once again. Make sure to not waste it."

He felt like he had done that already.

BGW

Jaune was not a pervert. Sure, like pretty much all the guys he knew, he watched some porn. And yes, he did have a dirty fantasy about a girl or two he had known. But he was not a pervert.

So was it him or were the girls in his class acting sexy all of a sudden?

"So when the protagonist chooses to sacrifice himself, is he truly being selfless?" Jaune talked, hoping the lecture would distract him. That he would get so swallowed up in one of his favorite stories by Ozma Oum. Didn't work. He gulped as his eyes stayed on girls a little longer than he would feel comfortable telling anyone about. Did they always keep four buttons loose? And was it him or did some of the girls wear shorter skirts than before?

"Keep in mind that, at this point, he has lost his allies and home. His name is stained and the world is against him. So is his sacrifice final act of his selfless life or is he just putting an end to his life in the only way he knows he will gain recognition?"

He looked away and up from their blouses and skirts. From their exposed cleavages and thighs. He would focus on their faces. That's right! If he kept his eyes on their faces, there was nothing suggestive that he could find. Just focus on their eyes. And mouths... Sucking and chewing on the pencils and pens.

"Mr. Arc?" one of the twins, Melanie, asked in concern. A genuine, which was even more surprising. "Are you okay? Do you need a glass of water or something?" Her sister nodded, which was strange. Good kind of strange though. The girls acted different from how they acted before, which should have worried him but didn't. "We could bring some medicine if you want."

"N-No, thank you though," he smiled. "Really, thanks."

The bell rang. The class came to an end. And so did the torture and testing of his limits. "For your homework, try to analyze the ending of the book and come up with your stance on the main characters' fates. No need to write anything but be prepared for very intense discussion."

The class dispersed, though not without some of the girls swaying their hips on the way out. He paid that no mind, instead focusing on getting his things and going back home as soon as he could. He was just about to leave when someone tapped him on his shoulder. It was the same girl who asked him about the rules of the game he tried having this morning.

Vernal Wennbar if he remembered right.

"How may I help you, Vernal?"

The girl massaged her neck awkwardly, the look that clashed with the rough appearance she had. Maybe he was just assuming? "I was just having some trouble with the material, sir. I mean, I can understand what the book is all about but it is really hard for me to express it in words. And we have the paper to write on it so I wanted to ask if you could, y'know, tutor me on it a bit?"

Jaune wanted to say "No", if only because he hardly had any strength left with all the stress of the day. But one look into Vernal's honest pleading eyes... How could he, as a teacher, refuse his student the help in improving herself? It was always hard to ask someone for help with the schoolwork. Let alone your own teacher, ironically enough. Which is, why, ignoring a very bad feeling in his stomach, Jaune agreed.

BGW

"Well, here we are. Welcome to my place."

Vernal smiled politely as she entered the dump he called home. It wasn't small, but it wasn't exactly the kind of places people like her were used to. Not that Vernal complained. She wasn't like Weiss or Coco or any other one of those bitches. She knew what she came here for wasn't his apartment or some other shiny stuff. Vernal was here to get means of getting regularly laid.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

"Alright, let's start."

Even if that meant listening to his annoying drivel. He was passionate about the book, at least. Without his notice, she carefully added a couple of drops of the special mixture into his water. Nothing that would hinder his ability to satisfy her. Just a little of help to rip his inhibitions apart. The blondie was so into teaching her that he never realized what was happening.

Good. Just as she liked it.

He was excited enough to talk and help her through all the stuff she presumably didn't understand or struggled with. Passionate enough to miss her turn on the phone and place it on the table. Excited enough to miss her get closer to him until it was too late. She watched his face grow hot and his eyes stay on her cleavage and legs just a tiny little bit longer before he hurriedly turned them away.

Impressively enough, he actually managed to keep himself in control for almost two hours. Two hours too long before she finally decided waiting was no longer an option. If she were to seize control of him, she had to do it now.

"Vernal? Is everything okay? Why are you loo-"

She smashed her lips against his. Her tongue pushed past his lips till it managed to reach his own. He was slow and passive, too shocked to properly react. Vernal smirked to herself, enjoying the moment to seize as much control as possible. Without much carem she pinned him to the floor and began removing her clothing. The sight of her naked tanned skin seemed to shake the teacher out of his shock.

"S-Stop!" he pushed her back, not enough to push her off the top of him though. "W-What... What was that?"

"A kiss," her frowned. "What, don't tell me you never kissed a girl before. Or were you saving it for the marriage?"

"I am serious," Jaune glared. He managed to slip from under her. Clearly pissed off, he started gathering her things. "Seriously, I think that the day couldn't get any crazier and then you decide to do this. Damn it, why couldn't it be just a normal school?"

A normal school, huh? She wished it was like that too. In normal high school, she could just bribe a teacher to let her skip class or whatever. Plus, she could cause much more trouble and piss off that bastard even more. Yeah... Going to a regular high school would be a bliss.

"Seriously," Jaune scoffed as he handed her all the stuff she brought. "I understand that you are young and think it was funny. But trust me, at some point you will have stop with pranks like this. If you keep acting like that, you will only get yourself in unnecessary trouble."

Vernal felt the hand grip her heart. Cold, ugly and deformed hand was wrapped around her heart so tight she could barely breathe as she looked at Jaune. His eyes, so lost and awkward before, were now similar to the eyes that man had. Similar in all the ways that pissed her off.

"What kind of child are you? Do you have any idea how much trouble you have caused me and your mother? If you don't stop fooling around, you will never be anything more than a troublemaker."

Nothing more than a troublemaker, huh? Fine by her.

"Y'know, teach," Vernal said, dropping all that innocent girl facade. "You shouldn't talk about being responsible and shit like that... Not when you have been nothing but a naughty little pervert yourself."

Before he could even ask, Vernal showed him the picture she took with her phone. It was shaky and somewhat blurry around the edges, but it painted a very juicy picture. A student with only her shirt on her back and the teacher with his hands all over her. Their lips locked. Their eyes closed. And both looking to be enjoying their state. A picture could say a thousand words, indeed.

"Combine that with girls' testimonials of you flashing them today and what we have is an open-n-shut case of a perverted teacher trying to sink his claws into poor innocent girls," Vernal sniffed mockingly. The blondie looked deathly pale. Good, that would show him how to talk down to her. "From what I heard, you got fired for hitting your student too, right? That certainly doesn't paint you in the best of lights now, does it?"

"Y-You are the one who kissed me!" he pointed out. "You are the one who attacked me. I didn't even do anything!"

"And you think it will matter? All that could or would be said is on the photo here. And this doesn't look good at all. Not for you, at least."

He moved to take her phone.

Too slow and too sluggish. She didn't stop him though, "Deleting it won't matter. It's all on my Dust Disk now. So unless you know how to hack into my account before I can do anything with it, you should be a good boy and listen to whatever I say."

The teacher gritted his teeth but did little more. Good, he seemed to understand. "Why are you doing this?" he asked with the heavy dose of frustration in voice. "You want me to quit teaching? Or give you a better grade? Cause I can do the former but not the latter."

Oh, an idealist, how cute.

"Nah, I don't care about getting A's," she looked him in the eyes and smirked, "Though I am interested in that D of yours you showed us today."

"W-What?"

"You heard me," she kneeled before him, giving him a wolfish grin. "Take off your clothes. Now."

After a few silent minutes, Vernal watched him follow her order. It was nothing like in porn where the dude would rip off his clothes or even take them off sexually. He did it slowly, awkwardly and unsure. Obviously, he wasn't used to the stuff like that. Too bad for him, of course. She enjoyed how vulnerable he looked quite a lot. Finally, mhe stood before her in all his naked glory.

Now to get to the fun part.

"You know, teach, you are a really lucky guy," she said as she wrapped he rfingers around his hardening member. The heat it radiated sent arousal down to her very core. The fact that actually struggled to get it in her full grip certainly didn't help her growing excitement. "With this bitch breaker between your legs, all the girls in our class are dreaming of getting fucked by you."

And that was their class alone. Wait till the rumors spread and the senior heard all about him. Not that it would matter, of course.

"Too bad for them, cause I am claiming you tonight."

Hard and hot, his meat rod stood proud, easily big enough to cover her face. What would intimidate or even scare off the other girls only intrigued Vernal further. Her mouth watered and her loins burnt in anticipation of receiving all that dick inside, but she forced herself to keep it under control. She would have him begging her to fuck him first. So that by the time she was done with him, their teacher was properly house-broken and obedient little dildo.

"Do you like it?" she whispered into his ear, dragging her hand up and down his shaft, occasionally pausing to play around with the head of his cock. "I bet you jerk off when thinking of all your female students. You probably imagine them fucking and sucking you till you cover them in your hot thick cum every single fucking night, is that right?"

"I don't!"

She squeezed harder and moved her hand faster, making him groan and grunt and pant. "Liar," she smirked as she felt his cock throb. "Aw, you are close to cumming now, aren't you?"

The teacher protested weakly, a signal for her to crank it a bit higher. Removing her shirt and bra, she wasted no time in wrapping her breasts around his cock. Or trying to. She wasn't as flat as that washboard Weiss but she doubted even Xia Long cow could properly get this monster between her tits. And it seemed to be working as he struggled to not cum from the contact with her bare chest.

He failed not even five minutes after she started titfucking him. With a groan, he started releasing one thick rope of semen after another, covering her face and chest in his cum. She scooped some of it up and brought it to her mouth. Salty, bitter and sour, her first instinct was to spit that shit out. But not even a second after that, she found herself hungry for more. Dragging her fingers all across her chest and face, she wasted no time in devouring as much of it as she could while it was still hot.

And by the time she was done, the teach was ready to go again.

"Do you want to cum again, teach?" Mumbles. Barely audible whispering. He refused to look her in the eyes. "I can't hear you, speak the fuck up!"

"Yes," he moaned as she mounted herself on the top of him. Her wet, dripping cunt burshing right above his hardened meat rod. Just an inch separated the two, the heat from their respective organs enticing and intoxicating. "I want to fuck you... So Vernal, please..."

She smiled, "Good answer, teacher! Here is your reward!"

And with that cry, she slammed her hips down. She felt his cock pierce all the way inside, stretching her pussy to the limits. Vernal gritted her teeth as the wave of delightful pain washed over her. Again and again, the insane mixture of pain and pleasure coursed through her body, sending her mind into a frenzy. Her body covered in sweat, she grinned down at the teach.

"So? Still think you can talk down to me?" She was about to say more but then she realized something as she looked below herself. The blondie's cock pierced its way right up to her womb... But she still had good five inches left to go. "Shit..."

"Vernal, don't push yourself," the teach groaned from under her. "Y-You proved your point, okay? Now how about we calm down and talk it out? Seriously, you shouln't be doing this sort of thing with-"

"Shut the fuck up!" she slapped him across his face, cutting him off. Who did he think she was? Some damn pillow princess? A no good virgin? "Just shut it and be a good fucking dildo with legs, will you?"

She could do this. She could totally do this. She could fucking take this cock and break him in. Just fucking watch her.

Vernal took a deep breath as she forced herself further down his cock. She felt her breath get stuck in her throat as she took one inch after another, her body shaking as she struggled to stay sane. Finally, she managed to get all of that meat inside her now much more crammed insides. She did it! She had it all inside!

But she couldn't move.

Vernal could tell that if she moved even a little, she would break. Body and mind, she would end up breaking like some damn virgin. But she couldn't show that weakness in front of him. The moment she showed it, the damn teach would try and take over. She couldn't let that happen. She just needed a few minutes to catch her breath, "So how does it feel, teach? You love my pussy wrapped all around your cock? I bet you are going to cum any second now. Too bad that I have no interest in weak spineless guys like you... If you beg me enough though, maybe I will let you be my fuck slave!"

The teach gritted his teeth as he tried to get her off. Fuck, he must have seen she was losing control. She needed to reestablish her dominance now. And do it fast, "Why are you fighting back, huh? I bet your only experience was just some pity sex! Or maybe you were just a virgin, huh? I bet you never even touched a woman. Feel grateful that you get to have sex with me, you spiiiiEEEEH!"

Suddenly Vernal was on her back, the teach towering over her. It was only now that she realized that his muscles weren't just for show. Unfortunately, she found that only by struggling and failing to break his hold on her. Shit! Oh well, she was nothing if not resourceful. Teach might have enjoyed a momentary advantage over her, but she could crush it without any trouble.

"Is that it, Arc?" she sneered, throwing a vicious glare his way. "What now, you are going to fuck me? Make me pay for treating you like this? Well, go right ahead, cause after that you are the one who is screwed!" There was a change in his eyes. He seemed shaken. Hesitant and fearful. "That's right, now you understand, don't you? So if you know what's good for you, then you better get back down on your knees and do as you are told."

She felt his grip loosen and now she patiently waited for him to assume his position on the floor. One minute, then another... Why the hell was he still not on his damn knees? Before she could rip into him again, she felt her body pulled forth. Her cry of surprise was quickly muffled with the teacher's lips. A part of her resisted and screamed at her to bite his lips off.

But that part was small and quiet compared to the rest of herself that revelled in the sudden surge of pleasure. It grew even smaller and quieter as he invaded her mouth with his tongue. As he examined and tasted every single bit of the inside of her mouth. His tongue felt like the living fire, sorching and boiling her from the inside. She could feel her boyd tremble as she came closer to orgasm from this kiss.

From the damn kiss alone!

But what her body was going through was nothing compared to the things this bastard was doing to her mind. Little by little, but her defense and drive to dominate over the blondie was crumbling to dust. The desire to have him under her was slowly falling apart, burned down by the growing flames of something more. Something so much stronger...

She felt cold. Suddenly, all that fire and lust were gone, ripped away from her core without mercy or warning. She stared at the teach in shock, breathless and paralyzed by the sudden cold that now was in her body, "W-What... Why- What gives, teach?"

Her words came out much weaker and less demanding than she was used to or comfortable with. Somehow, she didn't care all that much. She just needed to cling to that warmth that had been stolen from her.

"C-Come on, you are not mad, are you? I was just fooling around, you know. So how about we just forget about the threats and enjoy our time together? I promise I will make it worth your while," she let out a small needy whine, burning up in shame and arousal as she refused to let go of his shoulders. When the blondie said nothing and just looked down on her, she felt her temper flare up again. "You fucking piece of shit... You think you are some tough shit? I can destroy with a word and a damn photo, so you better go ahead and start fucking me, you bast-!"

She was silenced once more. This time, though, much more roughly. The teach was more confident and bold as his hands started freely roaming all over her body. He kneaded and squeezed her breasts, making her moan against his tongue in weak and clingy moans. He moved his mouth to her neck, covering her tanned skin with sorching kisses and licks. She gritted her teeth in a desperate attempt to retain some semblance of control over what was happening.

It all broke apart once his hands went to her ass. Her eyes widened in shock as she felt his fingers trace around her tight little asshole. The fear set in, making her shake as she cried out, "W-Wait! Not there, please! Time out, please time ou-!"

Her pleas fell on silent ears as the teach mercilessly plunged two fingers of each hand inside and spread her apart. The sudden simulation proved too much for her as her whole body shook in orgasm. Her eyes rolled back to the back of her head as she struggled to keep her mind intact. All a failure as her brains turned to mash, an idiotically wide smile across her lips.

"T... This was fucking amazing...," Vernal thought as she rested her head on Jaune's shoulder. Without much thought, she started breathing his smell in. Her head spun as she found herself growing intoxicated with the smell of his body. Without more said, Jaune placed him down on the sofa. Taking the cue, she laid back and spread her legs, exposing her dripping pussy. "Go on ahead, teach... Finally fuck me for real!"

Her shirt landed on her face.

"I think you should go now."

Wait.

"What?" she rose to her knees, throwing the damn shirt away. She wasn't planning on wearing it. Not unless she got fucked into a damn coma before. "You are not fucking serious now, are you? You think you can just make me cum once and send me back home. Well, think again you dipshit cause I-"

"Quiet." She instantly fell silent, surprised by herself. Moreso, she was shocked by the sheer power in his voice. And how much pleasure listening to him brought her. "Give me your phone."

A small part of her rose in protest. This was her sole leverage and only means of keeping him under her. If she gave it away, she wouldn't hold any ground. Their school would cut any dishonest claim down and prevent her from harassing him into obedience! She had to hold onto that damn fault at all costs.

"Here you go, sir," she said without a hint of sarcasm. That small part of her whined and cried out in despair as she stared at him in anticipation of another command. Obedience was a new experience. Following someone's commands and doing so without snark or bite... She would stab herself in the throat before she admitted it but it felt good. Or rather, it felt to obey Jaune...

She watched him delete any evidence she had on him. Then he tossed a phone back to her, "Now you may leave."

She didn't want to. She couldn't do it!

"T-Teach... Sir, please, let me stay," she got down on the floor. Without taking her eyes off his face, she crawled up to him, making sure to sway her hips as seductively as possible. Jaune appeared unimpressed, which made getting his praise all the more important to her. "I am really sorry about earlier... Please, let me just show you how sorry I am! Okay? Please?"

At this point, she was pressing her face against his hardened cock, intoxicated by the smell alone. She salivated, drool dripping down from her mouth as she fought the urge to just swallow it all in and skullfuck herself on that meat ro of his. But she would wait. She had to wait if only to prove she could be good for him. So she whined and cried and begged and humiliated herself, all but humping his leg at this point.

"I think I finally figured you out," Jaune smirked as he cupped her face in his hand. His grin was wolfish, the kind of grin a predator had before playing with its prey. He pushed her on her back, hand roughly pressed against her swollen cunt. "For all your talk, you are just a masochistic pig, aren't you? Is that the reason why you talked shit to me? To try and push me? Well, mission accomplished!"

Without a warning, he plunged his fingers inside her, spreading and playing with her insides. She winced and wriggled in her place, suppressing the pathetic whining that was about to emerge from her throat. SHe was amazed by how easily he could bring her to the brink of orgasm. How little effort he took when it came to bringing her under his control.

Maybe he was right? What if she was just wishing for someone like him to come along and take control of her, To make her obey...

"Ah, no cumming yet, Vernal," Jaune chided as he squeezed her breast. "You are not going to cum without my permission. Not if you want me to eve fuck that needy little cunt of yours ever again."

She obeyed and fell silent, trying to focus on not cumming. She held on for the good five minutes before she was close to breaking into tears. As if to mock her unberably growing arousal, his cock stood tall, hard and fat, the precum leaking and dropping inches away from her mouth. She tried to lick some of it up but a harsh slap conveyed a silent rule against doing so.

And so she laid, Jaune playing around with her body like his personal toy, as his precum kept teasingly dropping on and dripping down her face. It wasn't long before her mind was rotting away, ripped into shreds as she focused solely not cumming her brains out. Not until she got fucked by Jaune. But the longer she held onto this orgasm, the harder it became to not lose it and go insane.

But she could wait only for so long before she was reduced to a sobbing mess.

"S-Sir," she looked at him up with tears in her eyes, body trembling in the need for release. She had to cum. She wanted to cum now! She needed to cum or she would go crazy! "Please, just let me cum! I am begging you, please, let me cum just this once! I swear to God, I will be your good little girl if you let me, please!"

And she meant it. Every goddamn fucking word. If only he let her cum, she would do whatever the fuck he wanted. She would be a good students and a good little fucktoy. Whatever he wanted, whatever he needed, she would give him all that he asked of her. Just one little orgasm. Just one chance to cum, that's all that she was asking for.

"Very well," Jaune finally chuckled as he kneeled before her. Without much care, he spread and pressed her legs down. She was shaking with excitement, barely keeping herself from cumming there and then. It became much harder the moment she felt his tip brush against her swollen leaking pussy. "Make sure not to cum right away though. Otherwise, I might throw you away,"

And he meant it, she knew that. With a cock like his, Jaune could have any slut at his beck and call. And, as much as she hated to admit, no guy would pick one girl over the whole damn school of hot bitches. But she wouldn't give up on him that easily. She was first and she had the right to his cock. To hell with whatever shit others would throw his way, she had to make sure Jaune saw her as his number one.

"Nghh!" she grunted as Jaune drove his cock inside her. Inch by inch, he took his sweet time in penetrating her already sensitive pussy. All in another show of dominance and control over her. To remind her how easy it was for him to drive her to the edge and keep her there. "Ah... Ah... Sir, please... Hurry up and fuck me, please! I don't think I can hold on any longer!"

"Is that so?" he asked, twisting her nipple between his fingers. He pulled and squeezed it, enjoying her pathetic moaning. He was grinning as he listened to her incoherent cock-drunk pleadings. "Then why should I keep you around, huh? If you can't handle that much, then shouldn't I look for someone who can? What good are you if you can't even satisfy me properly, you little whore?"

Vernal groaned and moaned as he slowly fucked her. Torturously slow, he drove his cock in and out of her slopping cunt. She bit her lips as with each slow thrust, Jaune was reaching and piercing all the way right to her womb. And with each one of those thrusts, he was breaking her already vulnerable psyche even further, feeding her addiction to his cock.

"Do you love it, Vernal? God, you are so tight, did you want my cock that much?" she refused to answer, all too lose in the pleasure. Her brain was melting as she tried to drink in every single bit of the experience. She cried out as Jaune pulled her up by the hair till she was facing him. "Hey, answer when I am speaking to you. Or do you have nothing but cocks on your mind?"

"Cock..." Vernal moaned desperately. "Faster... Please. faster... Fuck me with your cock faster... Faster and harder... Please!"

Vernal care little for how she sounded at this point. She didn't care if Jaune fucked her senseless or treated her like a walking fucktoy. As long as she got fucked by him without mercy and care, she could live with that. And it seemed that her pathetic whining got the desired result for the next moment Jaune slammed all the way inside her. She felt the breath ripped out of her as he pulled her closer to his chest.

"Yes! Just like that, sir!" she cheered as Jaune rose to his feet, his cock lodged deep in her crammed pussy. In any other situation, she would be eager to take the inititiative, but with Jaune, Vernal found herself the happiest when she gave up on any semblance of control. "Please, teach me a lesson in obedience! Fuck the proper discipline into this useless little brat! Hyaaaa!"

Vernal cried out as Jaune's palm swiftly landed on her ass. She yelped in surprise as the teach continued to fondle her toned ass, painfully squeezing it until she was moaning in sweet pain. Then, without as much as a warning, he proceeded to rain down merciless spanking on her now much more sensitive ass. That only drove so much closer to the orgasm she was despertely holding back. And now she felt she could no longer restrain herself.

"S-Sir, please! Wanna cum! Let me cum!" She felt his cock swell and twitch inside of her. She could tell he was close. A warm feeling swelled in her heart at the thought of cumming together. "Please, let's cum together, sir! I wanna cum with you! Please, please, please!"

"Let's do this," Jaune whispered into her ear as he slammed his cock inside all the way through. "Better not spill a drop!"

Her back pressed against the wall, Vernal felt Jaune erupt inside of her, his hot thick semen filling up her womb. Her head was spinning now, she drunkenly reached for Jaune's mouth with her own. She had no strength to beg now, having screamed her lungs out by now. She was only lucky that the teacher was all too accepting of her, locking lips and tongue with her.

His cock still inside her, their mouth still locked in passionate makeout session, the two went to Jaune's bedroom. They exchanged hot hungry kisses as they laid on his bed. Vernal reluctantly let go of her teacher's mouth. She didn't wish to lose that warmth but she was so hungry for some semen in her mouth she couldn't wait anymore. Carefully, she cralwed back till she was in front of his flaccid cock.

Even soft, it was still too big to fit inside her mouth. But as long as Jaune was satisfied, she would happily conquer this challenge. And so with, eyes locked on Jaune's expression. Her heart grew warmer when she saw a smile. It soared even higher when he rested his hand on her head, like an owner would praise his pet for following commands properly.

"You are hard again, sir" she mewled, taking a long lick up his shaft. Sweaty and bitter, tasting of the mixture of her own pussy juices and his semen, the flavor was all too strong to resist. "Just how long can you go on for?"

"Wouldn't you like to find out?"

Oh, how she would. It took her a gargantuan effort to open her mouth wide enough to fit the thing inside. It took even more time and effort to force the cock down her throat. It hurt and scratched the insides but with each pang of pain she was growing wetter and hornier. By the time she managed to swallow his cock, she felt dizzy and was about ready to pass out.

But Vernal was nothing if not stubborn. So she pushed through the pain and exhaustion and willed herself to start deepthroating him. She started slow, Jaune gave her all the time she needed to get used to it. Not that she planned to take too long. Eyes still locked on Jaune's face, she started moving her head faster, tightening her throat around his cock even further.

She didn't care for pain and discomfort as her mind focused solely on the small but honest smile on Jaune's face. Obeying him... Pleasuring him... It felt so much better than when she was trying to bring him under her command. Her heart swelled when his hands rested on her head... and froze as she was pushed all the way down on his cock. Her vision blurred and mind swam as Jaune started dragging her mouth up and down his thick girthy cock, treating her as nothing more than a hole to fuck.

And by Gods, wasn't it the hottest thing ever!

"You and the rest of the girls... Teasing and pushing me the whole day, you came here just to get fucked into a mess, didn't you, Vernal?" he lifted her up, holding her mouth inches away from his swollen head. "Admit it!"

"Yes, sir!" she cried out, eyes frantic and hungry for more. More pain. More pleasure. More humiliation and disciplining. "I really needed to be put in my place, sir! Thank you for fucking me, sir!"

More rough and heated skullfucking followed, her mouth stretched and jaw practically unhinged in a desperate attempt to accomodate his cock. She was running short on air and her nostrils flared in undignified pursuit of oxygen. Jaune chuckled as he lodged himself all the way in her throat, his cock throbbing and pulsating in a warning of upcoming release.

"Gagkhnhhh!" Vernal choked and gagged, the violent burst of semen flooding her throat. The hot sticky thick goo cascaded down her throat, burning down and away any and all memories of other tastes. Food or drinks, no mater how delectable and rare, vanished from her mind as Jaune's semen took the main place as her favorite flavor for everything. "Ahhh..."

As Jaune pulled out of her mouth, Vernal started frantically licking around her lips, desperate not to waste a single drop of his delicious cum. As she did so, her eyes wandered off and landed on the mirror in the room. In its reflection, the girl that defied any and all authority was nowhere to be found. In her place, naked and sweaty and covered in drops of cum, was a woman living for the pleasure of her man. Broken, degraded and des[erate for more humiliation and abuse at the hands of the man holding her head.

And she loved every single thing about that woman.

The makeup smeared all over face. Her hair, disheveled and covered in sweat and cum. The shameless expression on her face, mouth wide open with the tongue out. And the eyes that spoke of nothing but pleasure found in obedience.

"Hey, don't space out, slut."

Jaune gave her a scornful playful look before throwing her down. She whined in desperation, fearful of being denied another good dicking. Not a case, she caught on quickly, as Jaune pressed her into the mattress, head down and ass up in the air. He pressed his thumb against her puckered asshole, roughly massaging the growingly sensitive spot. Was he going to- Oh Gods!

"Oh, so you were a virgin down here, huh," Jaune chuckled as he no doubt watched the blood trickle down her legs. "I thought a slut like you would have fucked in the ass a ton of times by now."

The verbal abuse shook het to the core, the desire to agree and degrade herself with words rising to the top but failing to be voiced. Vernal was unable to answer, her mind abuzz with all the sensations her body was going through. The mere pulsations and heat from Jaune's cock spread through her entire being like the wildfire, scorching her already burning flesh even more. Shaking and twitching, barely holding onto whatever remained of her brain, Vernal turned to Jaune and whimpered pathetically, "P-Please, sir... B-Be gentle, please!"

Jaune smiled at her. A false reassurance since the next second he tore through her without mercy, care or pity. Vernal let out a shriek, mind going blank as her body spasmed and shook with the violent squirting. Orgasms rocked and shook her body as she desperately and unsuccessfully tried to stop herself from cumming like a faucet. The seemingly endless squirting didn't stop or even slow Jaune down as he mercilessly thrusted into her at the pace one could only call mindblowing.

He was going to fuck her brains out. He was fucking her brains out already! Her pussy and womb were by now shaped solely for him, addicted to the pain and the feeling of him inside of her too much to ever be satisfied by anyone else. Her breasts and ass burnt whenever his hands were no longer squuezing or spanking them, so needy for his rough and rude treatment. And as for her heart and soul?

She had given up on them the moment she tasted his cock.

Now she was only embracing it.

"Beg to cum, Vernal!" Jaune ordered her, his hot breath scorching her neck. "Beg for it like a apthetic little whore you are!"

And she was happy to obey.

"Please, sir, please cum inside me! Mark me as your little pet! Please, I want your cum inside me!" she mewled and cried, thrusting against his cock, trying to get him as deep inside as she could. "I am your whore! Your pet! Your cum-addicted student! So please, sir, mark me as your own forever!"

Jaune kept thrusting but gave her no permission.

"Please! I will be good! I will be whatever you want, sir!" she grew desperate, feeling her own orgasm build up to the breaking point. "I will be your little fuck slave until the rest of my days! I will be your obeident little student if you want! I will be the best cock whore you could wish for, just please let me cuUUUUM!"

Jaune came with a final grunt, marking her asshole as his with his hot semen. With this, all three of her holes now belonged to him. Vernal let out one final moan as she collapsed onto his bed, the cum oozing out of her abused asshole. Her eyes wandered off to Jaune and saw that he was fast asleep. Perhaps that little medicine she used made him overexert himself? Not that it mattered, really.

Crawling over to him, Vernal laid by his side. Jaune showed her that he was the dominant one. And, with all the pleasure she received under him, it wouldn't be anytime soon when she decided to challenge him on that one. But, as submissive as she might have been with him, she remained an Alpha among the girls. And she planned to keep it that way.

"Smile for the camera, sir," Vernal purred as she planted a kiss on his cheek as she snapped a quick picture. Admiring her work, Vernal threw her phone off to the pile of clothes on the floor. Too tired to walk back to the dorm and not very willing to do so anyway, Vernal covered Jaune under the sheets before cuddling next to him. His body was still hot and sweaty from their intense fucking. And she pressed harder against him.

Maybe making it a long-term thing wasn't such a bad idea, after all? Jaune wasn't exactly as rough or confident in his daily life as she would like. But if his actions in bed were any indication, maybe she could bring it out? Yes, that sounded great. It would taker some time and effort, but hey, all things worth something did. He already was a beast in the sheets, now she needed to make sure he showed that outside his bedroom.

And make sure none of the other girls sunk their claws into him.

"Sweet dreams, Jaune."

She knew she was going to have them.

BGW

"I bet you jerk off when thinking of all your female students. You probably imagine them fucking and sucking you till you cover them in your hot thick cum every single fucking night, is that right?"

Neo let out a silent moan as she came for what must have been the tenth time by now. Her skirt and panties were long since discarded, now lying in the puddle of her juices on the floor. She didn't care for the clothes, far too focused on drinking in every moment of what she had just watched. A shame that Vernal got to him first. A real damn shame, if you asked Neo.

She was the one who showed his cock. And, technically, she was the one who saw it first in the class. Hell, if not for her, none of them would know about that bitch breaker he had between his legs. It was her right to break him in first. To make him into her obedient little pet. And for that flat whore to just swoop in and try to steal him? Neo had half a mind to publically punish the bitch.

"Please, teach me a lesson in obedience! Fuck the proper discipline into this useless little brat! Hyaaaa!"

It seemed, however, that the teacher did more than good on that frontier. As much as Neo would love to leash and lead that bitch around campus, watching her try and be a Dom only to get fucked into submission was so much more satisfying. The poor little Vernal who thought herself Alpha Bitch bit off more than she could chew, that's for sure.

"I am your whore! Your pet! Your cum-addicted student! So please, sir, mark me as your own forever!"

And now Neo had just the kind of blackmail to bring that bitch under her heel.

With that kind of leverage, she could have both Vernal and Jaune as her personal little toys. Oh, how exciting it would be. She had no doubt that, with her experience, breaking Jaune down would be a piece of cake. And she would hae Vernal watch it all. Hell, that Wennbar whore would be lucky if Neo ever let her be fucked by a dildo again. For all those times they butted heads together, Neo would reduce Vernal into the lowest of the low, her own bottom bitch who'd do whatever she was told.

Yes... That sounded just nice.

"I really don't like the look on your face. Thinking of doing it all by yourself, again?"

Neo huffed and pouted, throwing an annoyed glance towards the other two in the room. Or rather, the only one of those two whose voice mattered.

"Bite me, Fall," Neo snapped, masturbating even more furiously to the sound of Vernal's pathetic whining and begging. "If you don't like it, then you should leave me alone."

The raven-haired teacher smiled, though her eyes promised her harm if she spoke like that again today. No matter, she knew she could take her in a fight if necessary. "You sure are talkative today, aren't you? Do I need to remind you who set up those cameras in his apartment so that you could rub your brains out like a needy little whore?"

"The slut eating you out like it's her last meal?" Neo raised an eyebrow, pointing at the mocha-skinned kleptomaniac. Emerald didn't pay any mind though, too absorbed in eating out her owner and mistress. Like a starved dog, she was lapping up Cinder's juices, her tongue exploring every inch of the woman's folds. "She is so pathetic I can't even watch it."

"Is that so?" Cinder smirked before snapping her delicate fingers. Like she was burnt, Emerald rose to her feet, showing off her naked body. Neo would lie if she said Emerald didn't have a nice body. She wasn't thing like Cinder or muscular and toned like Arslan, but she wasn't unattractive either. She had fat in the right places, just enough to squeeze and pull and play with. "Emerald, bring me some of the toys. I am feeling playful right now."

The girl obeyed, eagerly nodding. Not even a minute or two after, she presented Cinder with thick black strap-on and a whip. Her favorite combination, no doubt. Neo was about to get back watching Jaune fuck Vernal into submission when she got hit with a strap-on of her own, bright pink and as big as Cinder's. Emerald looked at Neo, fearful and worried. Like a puppy lost, she was so afraid of bigger dogs.

As she should have been.

Turning up the volume of the video, Neo pushed Emerald onto the floor, pressing her head down with her foot. She could see the mocha bitch leak down there in shame and humiliation she loved so much. She tried to hide her face from Neo, but the fake silent girl knew how much she was enjoying it. What a masochistic pig!

"Aaaargh!" Emerald cried out as Neo started violently slamming her hips against her ass, pushing the plastic cock all the way down there. Emerald was shaking violently, obviously resisting the orgasm in something stupid show of loyalty to her mistress. Good, she wanted to beat that orgasm out of her anyway. "Cinder! Mistress, please make her stop! It hurts! It hurts! It hurtsssss!"

She came, squiting all over the place. Eyes rolled back and face melted in an absolutely stupid expression, she kept pathetically calling for Cinder to forgive her. Her legs trembled and shook before she orgasmed again. And again and again, obviously messed up from all the weeks of denial Cinder put her through to train her into a fully-obedient little slut.

"So what was this about?" Neo asked as she kicked Emerald in her still drenched twat, making the little piggy masochist squeal and moan before cumming again. "Trying to get me under you?"

"Not quite," Cinder smiled as she walked up to Neo. Emerald, smelling the aroma of her Mitress' dripping cunt, stumbled and crawled up to her. On her knees, hands out like dog's paws and tongue out, Emerald was whining for attention. For the chance to earn forgiveness of her Mitress. Not that said Mistress cared one bit. "That was a demonstration of what you could get with me on your side. Did you enjoy fucking my little pet here like that? Or maybe you enjoyed watching her serve me every whim and command?"

Neo said nothing. Both were quite hot indeed. She often imagined Cinder just as broken and pathetic, with herself in the role of the Mistress.

"I have the means to make sure Vernal and the others will be like that. All I need of you is to work for me. You do as you are told, and trust me, in a couple of weeks, Vernal will be at your beck and call, ready to humiliate and degrade herself for your amusement."

The images of that scenario started popping in her mind. Neo could imagine the school life with herself in charge. Making the girls in the entire class walk around the school with fist-sized dildos up their asses and cunts. Pathetic little whores like Vernal and Ciel and Coco being reduced to sobbing messes as she kept them denied for weeks or even months. How those older bitches would step over each other in a desperate attempt to win her favor.

She would the Alpha Bitch of the school, the top of the fucking food chain. And with that kind of power, it would be also natural to bring some of her influence later in her life once she graduated. As for Cinder... She knew that the Deputy Headmistress was always looking out for her own interests. And she would discard her if the opportunity presented itself.

But if Neo managed to grab control over Jaune... She could imagine Cinder, broken and pathetic, smiling like an idiot as she was being fucked into submission by her blonde hunk. Yes... She could totally pull that one off.

"In that case," she smiled and extended her hand, stepping on Emerald's fat ass in the process of walking to the teacher. "You got yourself a partner, Cinder."

And soon an owner and mistress.

"Let's get to work then."

[katsutomos]

hello, i’m kosmo (she/her) and i’m v excited to be here hehehe! thank u for having me! ;; also i didn’t realise that both kosmo and tomo end the with the same letters & now i wanna d*e but oh well pls ignore that! (: anyw, i’m here introduce TOMO!! there’s probably some stuff i left out here but it ended up having a word count of almost 2.5k so i’m just going to stop myself while i’m ahead! i’ll finish off my stats & bio pages soon and then i’ll try to think up some plots but here’s all this for now!

(tw: suicide mention, brief drug mentions)

BASIC STATS

NAME / tomo katsumura; his full name is tomohiko but nobody calls him that except his mum & grandparents like literally everybody else knows him as tomo NICKNAMES / technically, tomo IS a nickname but he’s so used it that not using a nickname with him is :knife emoji: -- also katsutomo but that one’s more of fan-title-nickname rather than one he actually uses (as much as he came up with it himself tweeting it out like ‘you guys can call me katsutomo from now on if you like ^^’ before changing all his handles to that exact name). other than that, he’s a bit iffy about nicknames. he likes them if HE came up with them but giving him a nickname is usually Yikes City (unless he decides it’s cute and lets u do it, i guess) AGE & DOB / twenty-three & 6th november 1995 BIRTHPLACE / LA, USA ETHNICITY / japanese OCCUPATION / actor! he dabbles in modelling but it’s more of an ‘i got asked to model this thing bc i’m famous and they’re paying me (:’ type deal than it being something he’s actually personally into. whereas acting is his PASSION.

EARLY LIFE

to start with, let’s talk about his parents; his dad, born and raised in america, was an actor who eventually made a move into directing but ultimately committed suicide at age 38 & his mother, born and raised in japan, is a socialite who had started off as a teen idol in the 80s. his parents had also divorced when tomo was still young, a few years before his dad’s death, so he uses his mother’s surname. tomo does not get on with her but, thanks to the sense of guilt she’s raised into him, he can’t bring himself to cut her out of his life completely. 

basically, she’s got hang ups about the way her idol career ended so she kind of pushed tomo into the spotlight (which was fine for him because he wanted to act) but she grew envious of him after he got out of his teens and doesn’t like the decisions he makes. it’s a mutual issue. they mostly don’t get on because they can’t see eye to eye or really speak to each other at length without arguing.

his mum actually wanted him to break into acting when he was about nine because he’d already taken an interest in it by then. because her career had ended early, she took the approach of ‘he won’t be cute forever, what if we wait too long and he loses his chance?’ but his father, who had his own issues with the industry, strongly disagreed. this disagreement was one small contributing factor for their divorce; they had plenty of other issues as well but this didn’t help. their compromise was that tomo could wait until he was in his teens and this deal was mostly held up because tomo thought it was wrong to break a promise with a dead guy.

to be clear though, he’d probably have issues with his dad too if he were still alive (and he’s not exactly super fond of him as it is; he doesn’t hate him but he doesn’t like being asked about being his son). he was kind of a shit husband and, if it weren’t for the fact he didn’t see tomo as often as he’d like, he’d probably be a pretty distant father as well. his work was pretty much his main priority and he had a lot of personal issues that he took out on other people.

tomo grew up in LA for the most part but also spent a lot of time in japan, mostly jumping between osaka, where his mother’s family lived, and tokyo, where his mother’s friends and connections & his father’s extended family lived. the family stopped travelling quite as much after his father’s death and tomo’s reaching high school age. he grew up bilingual.

CAREER

he started acting professional when he was 16, mostly with a few smaller tv roles but he had good connections and was able to get a small but still substantial role in the film directed by a friend of his dad. his big break came at age 18 when he landed a leaded a role in the main cast of high school drama. it was exciting at first, being on tv and being famous, but he hated both the show and his character so the whole thing got tired fast. he wasn’t allowed to quick so he went out of his way to get himself fired. there’s a whole story behind that but i’ll leave that for the bio hehehe! (he wanted his character to get killed off bc he thought it’d be fun to act out but they wouldn’t let him do that ): boooo)

one of his biggest issues with the tv show was that he didn’t like being sold as a product / character that wasn’t anything like him. he hated being shown off as this squeaky clean teen heartthrob type and not being allowed to have his own emotions & tastes. he found it mentally exhausting and, since then, he’s had a lot of issues dealing with the contrast between how he is as a person and how he’s seen by the media. he tries not to admit it but he’s terrified of being swallowed up by what other people think of of him and losing track of himself in the process. it’s made him a little paranoid.

since then, he’s avoided tv as much as possible. he prefers working on films in general but he finds the idea of playing the same character for too long incredibly unappealing. he enjoys taking on new roles and absorbing himself in that character & sometimes to the point of bordering on obsession so playing the same role not only plays into his fears of people seeing him as someone he’s not (i.e; whatever character it is) but he’s also scared of seeing HIMSELF the wrong way. he needs the separation.

tomo likes working on indie films or more artistic/niche studio films most of all. the promotion cycle isn’t as intensive and the characters tend to appeal to him more. he has appeared in a few blockbuster-type films but mostly because his bosses have pushed him into it or he’s had to taken on a multiple film contract with a studio in order to land a role he really wanted. (he once got int trouble for calling his own character in a blockbuster a ‘dumb bitch’ on twitter)

the bratpack article had a pretty heavy impact on him. it kinda just spoke to all of his worst fears of not really being a Real Person or being Sold A Certain Way. he wanted to get away from it without having to actually stop working because it’s the one thing that really keeps him stable. his eventual means of escape was a role in a japanese film. he’s been living in japan since then, having moved there to specifically hunt out a film to work on, to get used to the japanese industry/prepare himself and then get to filming. he’s come to milan straight from tokyo, not having seen any of the other brats in person during that time, but he’s had time to relax. sort of. 

PERSONALITY

for the most part, tomo’s a friendly and energetic guy! (living up to his name a lil bit here bc tomo can mean ‘friend’ in japanese hehehe) when he’s at his best, he’s great company. he likes to stand out in a crowd, has a winning smile and enjoys a little bit of attention but also knows when to step back and look out for other people. he likes to play as hard as he works. the trouble is that, when things aren’t going well and he’s distressed, he tends to collapse in on himself. behaviour that seemed playful before looks straight up stupid and reckless instead. he’ll avoid attention but get frustrated because he craves it and do more reckless shit for attention. yet he’s pretty good at pretending shit’s fine, he’s still weirdly positive for a guy who feels all messed up — maybe he gets away with it because he’s a good actor. tomo has good days and bad days but there’s little warning as to which is which. it wasn’t always this way; it’s like something has broken his spirit. (i copied this from my app but asdghgsdf)

that’s why his archetype is The Contradiction,,,bc he doesn’t make any fuckin sense, woooeee! he’s this very bouncy, upbeat person and he likes having fun but he’s not really a very positive person in terms of outlook. he’s too high energy! his general vibe is everything’s going to shit but i’m going to have a good time anyway :D

actually, on that note...he IS :D

he doesn’t like crying in front of people which is rough bc he’s v emotional all the time. he’s a total crybaby when he’s drunk. if you drink with him, there WILL be a point at which you have to scoop him up off the floor because he’s found something over which to start weeping. OR he’ll end up calling you to panic about how he can’t find his way home, only for him to realise like 5 minutes later he’s phoning you from the steps outside his apartment building.

the kind of guy who can have a full-on breakdown in his room by himself and then just reappear & ask u if u wanna go for ice cream or smth bc he’s bored. like ok that’s done with, that already happened. it’s over.

anyw he’s always willing to give ppl advice if they’re feeling stuck. it’s not always great advice bc he’s basically shit at dealing with stuff himself. he’s not one of these ppl who gives great advice but can’t follow it himself, he’s more...he gives advice bc he’d feel bad if he didn’t TRY so the advice itself definitely varies in quality. he means well though.

don’t watch funny films with him because he will do one of either things; 1) not find it funny and sit through the whole thing like : | or 2) he’ll find it so funny that he’ll end up on the floor at some point. there’s no in between. it’s all or nothing with this fucker.

he really likes cute shit. he’s rich so there’s nothing stopping him from buying those overpriced limited edition hello kitty goods.

let’s not talk about how he enjoys acting bc it’s an escape where he can be Somebody Else but he can’t cope with himself being promoted as something that doesn’t feel like Tomo. that’s its own mess. i’m p sure he’d just unravel if anybody said anything about it.

OTHER STUFF

his hair is currently bright red. it’s a recent change but he was like ‘uhhhh if i’m going on this trip, i’m making a visual statement’ and that was that. he likes to go for more interesting colours when he’s not filming anything because it’s the only time he really gets to. i mean, he still has dyed hair in a lot of his films but it’ll usually be brown or blonde or something else more ‘realistic’.

tomo cares a LOT about the way he dresses and styles himself. he’ll probably complain if he has to do a promo/magazine shoot and he doesn’t like the outfit he’s been given. it doesn’t actually help him half the time and he just gets told to shut up but it’s the PRINCIPLE of it !!!!!!!!

he posts on his finsta probably way too often but that’s because his public social media is pretty filtered, given that he’s caused fusses on social media before. there have been multiple cases of him having to delete tweets and instagram posts because somebody in charge decided he was pushing the limit just a little too much and, granted, most of it wouldn’t be seen as risky (bc it’s mostly utterly pointless stuff that gets flagged up as risky, e.g; ‘i need to pee and i can’t find a bathroom. death is coming for me.’) if he hadn’t publicly complained about the tv show that made him famous several times on twitter but he did do that so, y’know, he’s seen as a liability. the unfortunate outcome of this is that his finsta story is often littered with fairly inane thoughts.

he’s not very good at watching himself in films. it depends on the film and he can do it but uhhhh let’s just say he once watched the one horror film he was in at the cinema (and didn’t like most of it bc he’s a wuss about that sort of thing) but he laughed during his own death scene. there were tears in his eyes. real tears.

he doesn’t like dating because...well, he likes the IDEA of it but he’s the type to really fall for someone and BASICALLY? he’s scared of being dumped! he’s a bright & appealing personality with just enough edge to balance it out but he’s a bit of an emotional screwball and getting people interested is easier than keeping them interested, leading to mixed experiences with dating so he’s settled for sleeping around a little instead. oh well, whatever works! (does it actually work? shhhh it’s a secret...)

he’s very much involved in the party scene, whatever country he’s in. it’s not something he talks about much (privately, i mean, bc DUH he doesn’t say it publicly) but he doesn’t exactly avoid drugs in anyway (code for...yeah, he’s done stuff). it’s all casual, he says, but he still does it. he does smoke cigarettes though and he’s a little dependent on that.

also i guess he got involved in that kinda thing deliberately because he wants to distance himself from the clean-cut, shiny heartthrob pretty boy image as much as possible. eventually, it just became a natural way of de-stressing and dealing with the constant frustration of his career. the unfortunate consequence of that is that he’s now got a bit of a Bad Boy/Wild Child image and he’s not entirely sure he likes that either. (the shift in image also means that some journalists will talk about him as though he’s ‘gone off the rails’ and, yeah, he hates that as well)

[jj-ktae]

Fragrances - Final -

Title : Fragrances

Genre : Fluff, Angst, Romance

Pairing : Jaebum x Reader

Summary : You are a perfume composer, he is a lyricist, and while you’re left with too many possibilities, he is out of inspiration. Your only bond is an unknown fragrance. Second part of the Fragrances series.

Warning : Mentions of suicide. Don’t read if you’re uncomfortable with the subject please <3

- Teaser - Wisteria - Metallic - Sillage - Accord - Finale - 

Finale

“Weren’t you supposed to come back in two days?” Jaebum’s mother look surprised as she sees him enter their house’s huge living-room. “Youngjae had schedules so we came back earlier than expected.” He bents down to kiss his mother’s cheek.

She simply laughs, getting up, “Did you eat? I believe the cook is still around.” She puts her book on the table and walks toward the kitchen, her steps light and face full of joy.

“Nah, I’ll be heading out soon. I have a lot to do.” Jaebum answers, entering the big kitchen.

“You came back already.” They both stop at the sudden deep voice, turning around to meet Jaebum’s father.

His hands are full of folders. “What are you doing?” the woman asks, shocked to see him home.

“I had to get some papers.” He lifts his arms and nods towards Jaebum, “What are you doing here?”

Jaebum stops dead in his tracks. “Father. I... wanted to pay a visit.” He had countless phone calls with his mother while he was away, but his father would never speak to him. His mother would always tell him he wasn’t mad about the whole situation but just busy and Jaebum never believed it.

“Oh.” The man nods, and when he smiles at his son, none of them want to believe this is actually happening.

“I Have to go but I’ll be back for dinner, you could join us.” He proposes, not daring enough to meet his son and wife’s eyes.

Jaebum blinks. Is this reality? “Hm. Yes. Okay.”

“Good, I’ll see you tonight.” He turns around so fast the files almost fall.

“Did you drug him?” Jaebum breathes and his mother simply bursts out laughing.

“I told you he wasn’t mad at you!” She taps his shoulder, her laugh echoing in the kitchen and Jaebum doesn’t understand why he is so happy, suddenly.

---

Sleep is important. Jaebum loves sleeping. Your bed is the warmest place ever. He could stay in it for days.

But the alarm clock doesn’t agree with him.

Bambam is supposed to come in thirty minutes, but you don’t feel like going out of bed. You barely slept and your body is too numb to even budge.

On top of that, the body next to you is way too snuggled against yours to leave room for any type of movements.

You grunt when it goes off again and the arm around your waist tightens.

“Turn it off.” You breathe, head already dipping into your pillow to get more sleep.

A kiss lends on your nape, “You have to get up.”

It’s always surprising. You’ve been sleeping alone all your life but recently, you have to deal with someone snuggling close to you.

Not that you mind, though.

“Let me sleep, Jaebum.” You warn, but he doesn’t care about your threating voice and kisses your neck next, snorting against your skin.

“Bambam doesn’t want to see us naked in bed. We’ll traumatize him.” He jokes, sticking his body even more and sighing. “Get up.”

You wine and turn around, eyes still closed and mouth half opened. “Why are you so cruel...?”

Jaebum doesn’t answer and sighs instead, his legs wrapping deliciously against yours and bringing your closer. His hand goes to your hair, cleaning your face off the messy locks. He doesn’t know if he will ever get used to you being so stunning every morning. “Babe...” he simply says, not even able to stop himself from pecking your lips numerous time. “I promise we’ll get plenty of sleep tomorrow.”

You grunt and open your eyes, your lips softly inching upward to reveal one of the most beautiful sleepy smile Jaebum has ever seen. “No alarm?” You ask and he nods, mesmerized by your hazy state.

“Anything you want.” He confirms, which makes you laugh.

“You’re too in love.” Jaebum is an interesting boyfriend. From the moment you started dating, he was nothing but perfect. You thought it would be hard at first, considering his condition, but he never showed it to you and always did his best to heal. He never complained, always did his best to please you, bought you presents, took you places, cooked, baked, cleaned, massaged, laughed for you.

“You deserve even more.” You literally melt at his words. Jaebum is a poet, a romantic guy with enough calmness to make you see things on a whole new point of view.

He has a soothing capacity you never thought he would have.

“I love you.” You tell him out of nowhere and he suddenly looks like a puppy you gave a treat to. “Stop, we don’t have enough time for me to do all the things I’d like to do to you.” He whispers, kissing you until you end up on top of him.

Everything is warm with Jaebum, and most importantly; he left his odour everywhere in your flat. It’s pure bliss.

“And what are those things you’d like to do?” Your innocent voice makes him contract every muscle with delicious pain. “Maybe you could show me...?”

Jaebum’s hands immediately go to your legs, spreading them so you can finally straddle him. “Don’t you love teasing me...” his face approach yours and a second later, he’s kissing you with full force, his breath itching against your skin and his tongue caressing yours agonizingly slow.

You love when he becomes fierce.

You both make out for so long that you don’t even notice someone knocking on the door.

But Jaebum hears it and releases your lips with a soft noise. “Time’s up.” He mumbles, pecking you one last time, “Your crazy assistant is here.”

You let your head fall on his chest while he softly scratches your back. “Ignore him, he’ll go away.”

Jaebum laughs, turning around to let you lend on the bed. “He won’t.”

---

“I couldn’t sleep. I’m going crazy!” Bambam walks around the kitchen, his cup of coffee shaking with every movement of his hands.

“You’ll do fine! Your perfume is great.” He did great, he really did. Bambam has always been a bit too wild, but his skilled were solid. Now that he had the opportunity to finally become a good perfumer and unleash his talent, he was freaking out.

“Yes but if I become an official perfume maker and get a contract for another company, who’s going to bear with me? I love being your assistant, boss.” He stops and pouts, one of his hand resting on his hip.

Jaebum comes back from behind the counter with food and kisses your temple. “Eat and stop worrying. You guys can still be friends and it’s a good opportunity for you. Stop freaking out.”

Bambam simply nods but starts going crazy as soon as Jaebum sits next to you. “What if they say it smells like shit. Maybe it does!”

You laugh. “It won’t happen!” You scoff before stealing food from Jaebum’s plate, “I’ll go with you anyways. Come and sit down, Bam.” The latter only moans. “Okay. Okay.”

“When will you be done?” Jaebum asks you when Bambam decides he talked enough. “We have to be at my parent’s house at 8 tonight.”

You stop moving. “It was today? Two days ago, you said-”

“Two days ago, on a fine Tuesday morning, I said ‘My parents invited us for dinner this Thursday’ and you agreed.” Jaebum answers, tapping his fingers against the table.

“Shit, Thursday is today.” You breathe, looking at Bambam who can do nothing but shrug.

“We can still celebrate tomorrow. Let me tell Jackson.” Bambam tries, already grabbing his phone.

“You were supposed to eat with them?” You know this tone. You know Jaebum. He isn’t fond of the idea that you are still friends with Jackson, even if he doesn’t want to show it.

You slap Bambam’s arm, “Look at him being jealous.” And you both start laughing.

“Forget it, my parents don’t want to see you anyways.” Jaebum answers, already getting up to leave the kitchen while you both giggle at his cute annoyance.

“But baaaabe, I was just kidding!” Being cute is your only way out.

“Jaebummie! Come celebrate with us!” Bambam screams from the kitchen and Jaebum doesn’t know why he is even putting up with such weird people in his life.

---

“I’m freaking out. I’m totally freaking out.” You’re not ready for that. From what Jaebum told you, his parents are not the usual parents and you highly doubt this is the best idea he ever had.

You’re both in front of the door. Jaebum’s parents insisted on meeting you and there you are, both not ready for what is going to happen.

“They won’t hate you.” Jaebum puts a hand on your shoulder, rubbing it sweetly. “You’re awesome!”

“It’s not about me being awesome. I’m just... not the type of well-brought girl they might want in the family.” You know about how hard it has been for Jaebum to deal with them. They are filthy rich; they expect the best for their son and you only have your stupid nose and perfumes.

“They might want what? Do you really think my parents are going to disapprove of us?” Jaebum laughs because you apparently know nothing about them.

“This is not funny!” He is too chilled; you hate it when Jaebum looks like nothing is happening while you’re losing your damn mind.

“My parents gave up a long time ago. They’re certainly not going to command my love life; they know that’s not going to work on me.” Jaebum rings the doorbell, “They’ll love you babe, I swear!”

You nod but still make a face, which totally disappears when Jaebum’s mother opens the door, her face lighting up as soon as she sees you.

“Right on time! Come on in!” She takes your vests and it surprises the both of you.

Didn’t Jaebum said they had a ton of staff in their huge house?

She seems to feel your astonishment. “We thought it’d be more cosy with just the four of us. I even did the cooking!” she sounds so genuinely proud of herself, and you feel Jaebum relaxing next to you.

“Are you okay?” You ask him when the classy lady leads the way to the living-room.

“I’m just...surprised.” he breathes, clenching your hand tighter.

He never thought they could do this just for his sake.

“How can you be so depressed when we offered you everything!” Jaebum’s father is furious.

“I don’t care about that! Can’t you see I just need a normal family! Is it that much to ask? I want you to act like real supportive parents instead of trying to inject your money everywhere in hope it’d make me feel good with my damn useless life!” Jaebum doesn’t know why they came all the way to him just to yell. He escaped because he needed peace, because he wanted to face them when he’ll be ready but luck seems to be a stranger to him.

“Why are you so ungrateful?” His father’s words are like venom to him.

Jaebum knows he will never win. “It’s not about that! You know what, forget it. You’ll never understand so just disown me now if it makes you happy. If you want to act like you never had a son I’m okay with it too. Do as you please.” Jaebum had enough of the fighting. It’s a lost case.

He doesn’t want to cry in front of his father, but he does nonetheless.

His mother is quick to react, jolting up from her spot on the sofa where she had been crying ever since they arrived.

“No sweetheart. Don’t cry.” She is close to cry again, but calms herself, gathering the strength to try to save the situation. “Can we stop yelling at each other? Can’t we listen to what everyone has to say instead of yelling?”

Her husband rolls his eyes, a hand going to his hair as a sign of his frustration.

“Jaebum, sweetie. What is it that you want from us?” She uses her most caring voice because she doesn’t want her son to be that way. She also had enough of the endless fights and arguments. She wants her son happy as much as she wants a real family life.

“I just want you to tell me I’m doing well. All I want is for you to stop planning my life based on what you want me to do. I want you to care about me, to support me and life choices. I want you to act like every parent should act.” Jaebum doesn’t know why he pours his heart like that. Maybe because he knows he is about to do something terrible and has nothing to lose anymore.

“Yes, okay. We will. We will support you, don’t do...this.” She doesn’t want to say it because it hurts, and when she turns to her husband, her eyes are nothing but dark. “We’ll care about you just like you want us to, right?”

Jaebum’s father doesn’t answer but when his son raises his head and he is greeted by his miserable state, he thinks that maybe, just maybe, he should stop giving a hard time to his shattered son.

Jaebum doesn’t recognize his father in the living-room. He is wearing a plain black polo shirt and it’s been such a long time since he last saw him out of a suit.

He gets up and extends a hand, his face a bit unsettled. “I’m Jaebum’s father.” He introduces himself to you and you swear Jaebum is about to collapse from shock.

He knew there would be no hostility but he didn’t expect them to be this unhostile.

“Sit, sit! I’ll get the appetizers!” Jaebum’s mother is already back on her feet, leaving them three together.

Jaebum doesn’t know what to do anymore.

His father sits right in front of them, “I told her not to overdo it but I think she prepared too much food. If it’s not good, we can still call a caterer.” He whispers, apparently scared to be heard and you giggle gently, nodding.

Jaebum isn’t moving at all.

You feel the nervousness between the two and soon, a silence settles. It’s one of those times you want to disappear into the ground and never come back.

Jaebum’s mother comes back and saves the situation. “Why is it so calm here? Here you go,” she puts two huge plates full of appetizers. “There’s foie gras, salmon, goat cheese, cured ham...” Everything looks sophisticated and pretty, and you look at her happy face with a wide smile.

It’s only when everything is ready that you start to chat for real. Jaebum’s parents seem curious to know about your job and you answer the best you can, explaining perfume making and talking about brands.

Jaebum’s mother looks so pleased.

“You definitely have to make a perfume for me.” At some point, she feels like your own mother, and her perfectly manicured hand lands on your thigh, sweet and gentle.

Jaebum is silent next to you, but also pleased to see you two get along well.

Like you had any reason to panic.

“How is everything going?” He hears while you’re still chatting happily with his mother.

He looks at his father, who sounds eager to finally starts a conversation with him.

“The usual.” He shrugs because he knows his father doesn’t really care about his life, but is merely trying to act nice for them all.

He appreciates the gesture, though.

“No, I mean, your mother told me you wrote a big hit song?”

Jaebum blinks, not getting the sudden interest. “Yes. It’s a love song. I wrote it for a young singer as a debut song. It worked out well.” He explains, earning a whistle form his father.

“I’m glad it worked out. You seem to be quite famous in the music industry.”

To this everyone stops. Jaebum’s mother lifts her brows, you don’t even swallow the food you have in your mouth, and Jaebum almost chokes on his drink.

“What,” Jaebum’s father blinks, looking at the three of you with embarrassment, “My son is a successful songwriter, you should be happy for him!” he defends himself the best he can and coughs to change the subject, “These are too salty, I told you not too cook!” He mumbles, turning his face away because he isn’t used to compliment his son and didn’t except it’d feel this good.

Jaebum starts laughing so loud it startles you and right at this moment, you know he will be alright.

---

The ride home is quiet, the type of quiet you like to see on Jaebum’s face. He looks lost into his thoughts, and a small smile paints his face.

You arrive home with your hands full of food as Jaebum’s mother insisted on giving the leftovers. Jaebum takes off his shoes and aims for the bed as soon as you close the door and you join him.

“Are you okay?” You ask, taking your clothes off. “You seem off.”

Jaebum sits, his tired face showing nothing but bliss. “He said I’m his son. He never told me I was his son.”

“It’s awesome! How do you feel?” You sit next to him when you’re fully changed and raise a hand to slip it into his hair.

He closes his eyes and hums. “Great. I feel like I’m going to wake up any minute.” he leans back, grabbing your arm to push you against him. “I’m glad you were with me. I’m glad you’re with me.”

“I love you.” You simply say, your mind exhausted and body tired.

You fall asleep rapidly, both of you too spent to talk any longer and when Jaebum wakes up, you’re still here and everything seems real. He hugs you tightly, thinking about how luck is finally by his side.

And he can rest again.

---

AN : It’s finally the end of Fragrances! I shall thank everyone who read this and liked and reblogged because I wouldn’t have continued if not for your amazing support and feedback. I’m a bit sad to finish this but it was a very fun to write. Hopefully you’ll like the ending as much as you loved the whole story. It took me a lot of time to do researches on perfume making so I could be as accurate as possible because this subject is not very common, and i’m glad if I was able to make you discover the world of perfumery ❤️ Lots of love to everyone, I love you so much ❤️

[jonathanalumbaugh]

Weekly Digest

Dec 23, 2017, 4th issue.

A roundup of stuff I consumed this week. Published weekly. All reading is excerpted from the main article unless otherwise noted.

Read

When women are discussed on the main economics discussion forum, the conversation moves from the professional to the personal...

Even with generous subsidies, low-income people are still unlikely to buy health insurance...

Managers are biased negatively against minority workers, and this, in turn, makes the minority workers perform worse...

Living standards may be growing faster than GDP growth...

The World Bank’s $1-a-day poverty line inadequately deals with local context, and a better measure can be derived through more complicated math...

Decriminalizing sex work makes it safer and more common...

Poor kids who grow up in rich neighborhoods do a lot better than poor kids who grow up in poor ones...

Better trained doctors mean fewer opioid related deaths...

After a bad outcome, female surgeon’s referrals went down much more than male surgeons...

The average worker does not value an Uber-like ability to set their own schedule...

Foreign finance has led to more inequality...

Preschool programs targeted at the poor don’t work nearly as well as universal pre-school programs...

Shocks to the economy in certain sectors can have larger effects on the entire economy than previously thought...

— 13 economists on the research that shaped our world in 2017

Comments section: Pilote345 - NO WONDER: Recently, the pilots' pay was less than it was in the 1980's. They might be trying to improve, but for example, I just now found Allegiant Air found pays MD-80 1st Officers $34,440.00, not much more than the $15/hour crowd wants for starting burger flippers.

— Airlines battle growing pilot shortage that could reach crisis levels in a few years

— APOLLO 10 0N BOARD V0ICE TRANSCRIPTION

Under Schmidt’s leadership, Google notched its fair share of not-quite-not-evil missteps. After getting everyone hooked on Gmail and Search, the company started to erode some of its original privacy promises.

— Be Kind of Evil

“People want to cast it as a choice between policy or technology as a solution but those should exist hand-in-hand. We would have never gotten renewable energy prices where they are today without really ambitious public policy. It shows the importance of bold goals,” Brown says.

— California Poised To Hit 50% Renewable Target A Full Decade Ahead Of Schedule

“Keep your phone away from your body,” the state health department writes. “Although the science is still evolving, some laboratory experiments and human health studies have suggested the possibility” that typical long-term cell phone use could be linked to “brain cancer and tumors of the acoustic nerve,” “lower sperm counts,” and “effects on learning and memory.”

— California says the only safe way to talk on your cell phone is to text

Developer infatuation with Chrome is not good — because competition between browsers is good.

— Chrome is Not the Standard

The initial physical deployment of 5G networks alone could pack a major economic punch. A 2017 Accenture report forecasts the cellular communications industry will invest $275 billion in new networks, which will create up to 3 million jobs and add some $500 billion to the United States’ gross domestic product. Longer term, researchers expect the new 5G networks to help stimulate productivity growth to rates not seen since the 1950s.

— The Coming 5G Revolution

In early tests, the company claims the feature helped to reduce ghosting behavior on its service by 25 percent.

— Dating app Hinge rolls out a new feature to reduce ‘ghosting’

Liberated from the diamond and pointing calmly eastward, perhaps a designer’s pure intent is revealed—direction for an otherwise aimless walk in the woods.

— Decoding the Mysterious Markers on the Appalachian Trail

Trade the ginkgo biloba for a bag of spinach during your next stop at the store: Leafy greens may be your best resource for boosting memory... The study involved 960 people, all between 58 and 99 and without dementia. Everyone enrolled in the study was part of the Memory and Aging Project, which has been ongoing since 1979 at the Knight Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at Washington University.

— EATING SALAD EVERY DAY KEEPS BRAINS 11 YEARS YOUNGER AND PREVENTS DEMENTIA, STUDY SHOWS

— Edward Snowden on Twitter

Commander Persera swam out into intergalactic space last week, she says in a forum post, piloting a ship called the Jack of Flames. The reason for the trip is simply to go further from Sol than anyone else (a previous record was set by one Commander Deluvian, who travelled 65,652 lightyears from Sol along a similar route). But also, she says, to bring a canister of mugs from the infamous Hutton Orbital space station into the void and leave them there. Just because.

— Elite Dangerous pilots are scrambling to rescue an explorer stranded in the void between galaxies

[Eminem says] that he's not making his music for other artists who aren't fans to begin with.

— Eminem Responds to Vince Staples’ Criticism of Him

Reports so far claim the spec will offer support for low, mid, and high-band spectrum from below 1 GHz (like 600 and 700 MHz) all the way up to around 50 GHz while including the 3.5 GHz band. It’s been said that the first 5G networks for consumers will begin rolling out in 2019 and this will continue throughout 2020.

— First 5G Specification has been Declared Complete by the 3GPP

As Brian and his wife wandered off toward the No. 2 train afterward, it crossed my mind that he was the kind of guy who might have ended up a groomsman at my wedding if we had met in college. That was four years ago. We’ve seen each other four times since. We are “friends,” but not quite friends. We keep trying to get over the hump, but life gets in the way.

— Friends of a Certain Age

Comment section: Blaming Amazon for this is wrong. The people make a choice to work for them. This is an indictment on our society that forces these people to have to work. Amazon isn’t a charity that should have to take care of people. But it’s all of us who are to blame.

— A Glimpse Inside CamperForce, Amazon's Disposable Retiree Laborers

Effective filmmakers, no matter their genre or taste, put their fingers in the air, feel for a current, and then make art that either complements or pushes against it. They distill the world they live in, which is why there’s no such thing as an apolitical film.

— How Big Screen Sci-Fi and Horror Captured 2016’s Political Paranoia

The Legislative Analyst’s Office predicts California will eventually make more than $1 billion annually from taxing recreational marijuana.

— HOW RECREATIONAL MARIJUANA IN CALIFORNIA LEFT CHEMISTS IN THE DARK

What makes for an effective office environment? Random encounters with your coworkers. And food. Lots and lots of food.

— How to Build a Collaborative Office Space Like Pixar and Google

Fidelity suggests having your yearly income saved at 30, three times your income at 40, seven times your income at 55, and 10 times your income at 67.

— How Much Should You Have Saved at Every Age?

HCI (human-computer interaction) is the study of how people interact with computers and to what extent computers are or are not developed for successful interaction with human beings.

— Human-computer interaction, from University of Birmingham

The company says it is now focused on “on developing and investing in globally scalable blockchain technology solutions,” but, as reported by Bloomberg, it has exactly zero partnerships in the works with crypto firms

— Iced Tea Maker's Stock Price Triples After Adding 'Blockchain' to Name”

9 “Should you invite someone who assaulted you to your wedding.” No.

— It Came From The Search Terms: “I Can See The Sun In Late December”

The best way to cook a steak is medium rare. Plenty of people will disagree with this statement, for different reasons.

— Medium Rare: The Best Way to Cook a Steak

It sounds like it was made by an algorithm. It checks off so many boxes it could land in anyone’s “Because you watched” recommendations.

— Netflix’s first big movie “Bright” feels like a blockbuster built by an algorithm

State law that is rarely invoked requires tied elections to be settled by “lot.”

— Oyster shucking? A duel? No, Virginia will pull a name from a film canister to settle tied election

— Parents give teacher wine with son's face on label

— Reggie Watts: Fuck Shit Stack

— Reggie Watts: Humor in music

Self-efficacy is defined as a personal judgement of "how well one can execute courses of action required to deal with prospective situations".

— Self-efficacy (Wikipedia)

The problem Haven aims to address is known as an “evil maid” attack. Basically, many of the precautions you might take to protect your cybersecurity can go out the window if someone gains physical access to your device.

— Snowden's New App Turns Your Spare Android Phone into a Pocket-Sized Security System

After doing a lot of online research and making a terrible mess, I thought I could make a tutorial for humble people like me. If I can do it, you can do it too.

— The Ultimate Guide to DIY Screw Post Book Binding

The robot obediently appeared in the distance, floating next to Miller. Miller then walked into the same space as the robot and promptly disappeared. Well, mostly disappeared, I could still see his legs jutting out from the bottom of the robot. My first reaction was, “Of course that’s what happens.” But then I realized I was seeing a fictional thing created by Magic Leap technology completely obscure a real-world human being. My eyes were seeing two things existing in the same place and had decided that the creation, not the engineer, was the real thing and simply ignored Miller, at least that’s how Abovitz later explained it to me.

— We Need to Talk About Magic Leap's Freaking Goggles

What’s this mistake so many make? It’s using your current job title as your headline.

— What Your LinkedIn Headline Reveals About Your Self-Confidence At Work

With the Dec. 14 repeal, Comcast and others will be able to charge content companies exorbitant fees without, technically, blocking. This fundamentally changes how the internet works, argues Ryan Singel, a fellow at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School.

— What will happen now that net neutrality is gone? We asked the experts

The story [Cat Person] stuck with me because I, too, have felt like the story’s main character, Margot. I have belittled myself to make a man in a vulnerable situation feel more comfortable. I have allowed myself to spend time with boys who I did not like that much but who I felt I owed my time to because they really liked me. And I have also taken part in the practice of ghosting- ignoring somebody who is texting me, instead of outright rejecting them. With time, I have gotten much better at being straightforward when someone is interested in me and the feeling is not reciprocated, but I still do the dance many women do: We exert energy into finding the most polite, passive way to get ourselves out of uncomfortable situations with men.

— Why Women Are Ghosting You

[kitsutoshi]

Addressing the Broken: Ura and Omote

I’ve been thinking about something for a while. About why it is so hard for martial arts groups to police themselves.  This isn’t a problem unique to our schools. It happens all over. But martial arts schools are different in some ways. Many or most of our styles teach people to stand up, to be strong and to have integrity.  In theory, we should be learning to protect ourselves and each other. But in practice, many twisted and abusive things happen right in our schools, and we are complicit.  

I’m talking about everything from garden-variety sexism and glass-ceilings, to creepier types of manipulation and abuse. Teachers who undermine self-confidence, who pick favorites, who make rape jokes or gay jokes, who comment on women’s appearance but on men’s skill, who convey embarrassment over a student’s abilities, who exploit students, who treat the student population as a personal dating pool, who use the culture of martial arts tradition to avoid paying workers properly or just outright cheat their workers.  The list goes on.

if you train in enough schools it’s all there to see.  (If you haven’t seen it, awesome, thank your teachers).

This summer I had the opportunity to watch a peculiar set of events unfold with a local organization. Friends of mine have been involved with this group for many of the seventeen years it was open, but I only have an outsider’s view of it.  Though not a martial arts school, people could take classes there that would help them find strength, get out of their everyday self, and be something bigger.  They formed a close, trusting, and supportive community.  But this summer, there were news stories.  

According to the stories, and some friends’ posts online, the owner had engaged in over-the-line behaviors that bordered on abusive (or perhaps walked squarely into abusive).  Sexually inappropriate, failing to pay employees properly, weirdly sexist hiring and promotion practices, and passing it all off with personality and appeals to "community."  Which worked for many years to keep people from talking about the problems.  But then someone started talking, and others chimed in, and eventually people pushed to do something about it.

On friends’ Facebook posts, I watched guys who said they knew all along that “things weren’t right” stand up and own their knowledge and previous inaction.  They acknowledged their responsibility to stand, however belatedly, with the people whose experiences had been different than theirs.  

The story was interesting to me for a few reasons, but primarily because the situation was queasily familiar from my years in martial arts schools.  I wanted to see what would happen to that business.  The organization had brought richness to many lives, but it was owned by someone who poisoned the place, who made people deeply uncomfortable, who drove off valuable members with his behavior.  A charismatic person with damaging issues owned this place that was both life-improving, and misery-inducing.  

These people put their thoughts out into Facebook posts and news stories where we could see them.  Their thoughts were exactly what goes through the heads of every person who walks out of a martial arts school not because they are done with the art, but because they are done with the bullshit.  Once you’ve spent time in a martial arts school, the people there become more than your friends.  Sometimes far more.  The school becomes a home.  The teachers vary from never-to-be-questioned gurus to deeply-trusted mentors, to examples on a pedestal, to (at least) respected coaches.  

No matter what happens in an environment like that, the pressure (self-created and from others) to protect the school at all costs is intense.  The personal investment in a school’s reputation, in keeping alive the illusion that “everything is bright and wonderful” so that others can continue to train and benefit is so powerful.

The need for integrity in the profession of martial arts instructor really couldn’t be higher.  But the presence of integrity, as we all know, is a real crapshoot.  Some larger arts have formal training programs for teachers.  Some even do basic background checks.  For the most part, the immense responsibility and power of the “martial arts teacher” role is handed over to folks who have no training in counseling, crisis-management, or even the barest hint of what ethics might apply to their position.  Anyone can open or run a martial arts school. They can hire or appoint anyone they like. There’s no license for that.  If you consult the Internet, you’ll easily find “instructors” who look as if they've never taken a credible martial arts class.  

Teachers in our schools are usually just people who are good at martial arts (at best).  In spite of the many sales pitches made to parents about the endless virtues that martial arts will teach their children (“Discipline!”  “Respect!” “Confidence!” “Honor!” “Strength!”  “Character!”…) even in schools with some whisper of those things in the curriculum, what is taught most of the time is how to be good at punching, kicking, grappling, throws, weapons use, and escapes.  

Some schools are better than others at working in those "soft" lessons.  Maybe with words on the wall, or mantras the students yell, or lessons they need to study.  But mostly martial arts schools just teach martial arts.  Which has very little to do with personal character.  

I see three types of people attracted to martial arts.  Those who ARE decent human beings choose martial arts out of affinity for those goals; people who may not be stellar yet but who WANT to be better people choose martial arts for the same reason; and people who aren't decent at all, but who want to APPEAR to be decent also choose martial arts.  Because an environment like that makes it so easy to put on a facade and exploit people. I think that there are far far more of the first two types, but it doesn’t take many of the third type to do a lot of damage.

A quick Google News search will turn up plenty of “martial arts teacher messed up” stories.  Abusing kids, sexual misconduct, business misconduct.  Being good at a martial art doesn’t make you good at being a person. But those news stories are the exception, where someone got caught.  Mostly bad teachers just stay in their jobs, and if they have charisma they may stay for a very long time.  They do things that are abusive and “not right,” and they harm a lot of people, but martial arts schools are littered with them.  They have power, and they abuse it.  But only a small percentage cross into criminal territory and eventually get caught.

So seeing these news stories this summer, I could relate. The struggle between loyalty to their “family” and wanting to see something done about things that “weren’t right.”  I would be astonished, actually, to find people, particularly women, in martial arts with any significant years of training who could not relate to that, at least a little.

I’ve watched too many friends change schools, change arts, or give up martial arts entirely because of teachers who shouldn’t be trusted to run a lemonade stand, but who owned whole schools. It’s routine in the women’s changing rooms and “women’s nights out” to vent about the bullshit. The glass ceilings and very different standards for promotion or hiring or teaching, the poor assumptions about women who train, the condescension from lower-ranked men that’s so rarely dealt with effectively by teachers. The promotion of women who look good, regardless of skill or hard work, and the failure to promote women (even ones who look good) regardless of skill or hard work. (All unfair to everyone involved). Women in martial arts just suck that shit up and keep training.  Or they leave, because it's an overt violation of the integrity martial arts is supposed to embody, and why would they stay?  Of course it’s not only women: favoritism toward younger people, racism, massive doses of anti-LGBTQ attitudes…all of the social ills we see everywhere are magnified in a martial arts school.

People who train are, just like most people, usually really decent. Plenty of men train because they want to be able to protect others or be better people.  So often they quietly tell us “I saw that, it wasn’t right,” or do things to “make up for” a bad teacher. Which keeps some folks training longer. But the environment of a school with a toxic teacher can suck the wind out of anyone’s sails.  

We’re often asked “why is it so hard to keep women students,” but the real answers go in one ear and out the other and we get pink gis rather than solutions. When a structure is betrayed by the people running it, that puts off a lot of students.  When the people up in front are all white dudes, and the occasional woman is clearly window-dressing or a token, or teaches mostly children’s classes, that’s massively off-putting.  

So this summer I watched this local kind-of-like-an-MA-school organization and its owner go through a public flaying with bated breath to see whether my own personal fear would be realized. The fear of everyone in a position of knowing things aren’t right with their beloved organization.  And it was realized.  The owner of this business agreed to step out, but couldn’t find a buyer (it was a reputation-based business, and this publicity had done it in).  The company folded.  Exactly the fear that keeps our people from speaking up when things aren’t right.  “What if I hurt my school?”

Watching this organization’s public laundry-airing, I mainly considered two things:

1. What INTERNAL fortitude and integrity does it take to speak up about things that “aren’t right” or to take those things seriously and act when someone else speaks up?  This group of not-martial-artists had a lot of guts, strength, and integrity.  Some spoke up, probably in fear that their friends would hate them.  Others acknowledged their own role in it, cleaned up their mess, and “did the right thing,” cutting through their own cognitive dissonance and risking their beloved company to do it.  I’ve not seen much of that in the martial arts community.  Usually the opposite.  People whose stated profession/avocation is about being strong and having integrity…mostly aren’t and don’t when it comes to handling toxic instructors, or even toxic students. 2. What EXTERNAL forces could be applied to pre-empt a hot mess?  What constraints, controls, or measures could be put in place in an organization (specifically a martial arts school) to keep things from getting that far?  To help people recognize “not right” and head it off at the pass? To remove control from abusive people or keep them from getting it to begin with.

The internal fortitude issue is complicated.

When most people leave a martial arts school in frustration after wading through the bullshit for too long, or after a traumatic encounter or shock, paradoxically, their greatest fear is that if they speak up it will hurt the school. If they were there long, they probably highly value their experience, even if it was painful or harmful. They may believe that other people don’t have the same harm from the bad teacher (though often it’s just that others are harmed and no one speaks up).  They don't want the people they care for to be hurt.  Better to step out quietly.  

I’ve been on the side of saying “I know that wasn’t right.” I’ve encouraged people to leave quietly to protect the school rather than speaking up myself or encouraging them to speak. I’ve bitten my tongue at the many “seriously not right” things that go on in a school like that because of loyalty, or hierarchy, or “did I really just see that?!” or because I knew that speaking up would do no good.  Probably many people of rank who have trained in a few different schools can say the same.

There isn’t much to be done when the harm is coming from the school owner.  I many times protected the larger “family” at the expense of those members who were hurt. I let those people down by not dealing with the ugliness. I did not act with strength or integrity, though I rationalized it all every time as protecting the family.  I think of myself as someone with integrity, so I had to handle that cognitive dissonance somehow when my integrity failed.  

Cognitive dissonance plays another part too.  We imbue teachers with our ideals, so we make a lot of excuses for them to keep that “big bright” image. It is hard to cut through our constructs to see a problem, and there are so few ways to deal with a problem like a toxic teacher that we will do almost anything to avoid thinking about it.  Between wanting to believe that we have integrity, and that our idols do, we walk around in a bubble and allow harm to happen in ways that are the opposite of having integrity.

Speaking up about problems with teachers (who attain impressive loyalty from their students) is incredibly hard, and that protects the teachers who shouldn’t be there. Personal fear plays into it.  "What if I'm wrong/crazy." or "Will my friends turn away from me?"  Those are difficult questions.  They’re especially difficult if the toxic person is skilled at gaslighting (as so many are).  Far more difficult if the toxic person has a little cadre of gaslighters downplaying the harm on his behalf.  Like being with an abusive spouse and their thirty cousins who believe the abuser can do no wrong.

And most of those factors were true in the organization I watched this summer as well.  I was a little awed by what I witnessed when this local company was exposed.  The guys in that organization stepped up.  When presented with the reality, they cut through the same mental trap we face.  They posted publicly too, acknowledged the trouble out loud, and they ultimately sacrificed their beloved business in favor of supporting the people who had been hurt there.

They probably felt the loss keenly, after-all they hadn’t been harmed.  At least not directly.  (From what I saw them post, they were harmed. They knew things were “not right” and they were harmed by their inaction.  I harmed myself in that way, and regret it keenly. Because it hurts to let your friends be hurt and do nothing to stop it.) That’s a regret that doesn’t heal easily.

But I find a lot of irony in the courage of these people who do NOT train in martial arts.  We ostensibly train in “integrity, courage, discipline, honesty…” but we pressure each other to ignore the harm caused by these toxic teachers. We teach personal protection, we teach courage, strength, trusting our guts, doing the right thing.  But the secretive “keep it in the family” culture of too many martial arts schools doesn't mean "and we'll fix it in the family," it means we pretend bad things aren't happening.  We don’t step in when we know things aren’t right and many students leave quietly when the “not right” hits home too much for too long.  We should have better solutions.

I don’t have any silver bullets, but I do have some thoughts. Both about the “internal” problem of standing up with integrity when we encounter toxic teachers or when someone tells us about their bad experiences.  And also “external” options that may help nip these situations/people in the bud.

Student’s Bill of Rights

An obvious one is Better teacher training, and training on ethics.  Literally codes of ethics for teachers and school owners.  That’s an internal AND an external fix.  Some systems have those, and I would be fascinated to know whether it helps.  I doubt it keeps really bad teachers from doing bad things.  “Those teachers” are going to do what they do.  But inexperienced people who have never thought about what it means to be in a position of such responsibility should be taught. People who are ignorant rather than malicious can learn ethics.  Martial arts instructors are in a terrifying position of power over their students in many schools.  People handed that role should be told up-front what it means to be in that role and to do it responsibly.

As an external control, a code of ethics, like a “Student’s Bill of Rights” would illustrate “this is the standard of behavior for teachers.”  Knowing what a teacher should be like makes it much clearer when things are wrong.  Don’t throw a code in an owner’s manual somewhere, put it in the changing rooms on a poster. If a school doesn’t allow teachers to date students (or constrains such relationships with clear rules to prevent the harm it can cause), but a teacher asks a student out or asks them to hide a relationship, that’s a clear sign. But if students don’t know it’s wrong (or worse, teachers don’t)…well it happens all the time.

With a code, students can know “this shouldn’t be.”  And maybe having that sort of standard, and discussing it openly and frankly, would make it easier to bring things out of changing-room conversation and into open, frank discussion in schools.  

Trusted and Empowered Seniors

Maybe rather than keeping lids on until the cooker explodes, schools should create ways to have conversations that could release pressure and make things better. There’s nothing wrong with “keeping it in the family” as long as the “family” has ways to fix the problems. I just bet that some of the folks from that company I watched are thinking “is there anything I could have done years ago to deal with this?”  “Did it have to come to this public shaming and implosion?”  That’s a great question.  

I look back on my many friends who have lost martial arts from their lives, or lost their preferred art and had to take up another one where the school environment was survivable. I wish that I had had words or leverage or ability to make things better for them.  Or at least I wish that I had spoken up louder, and continued speaking up until I’d either been walked out the door or things changed.

Having senior (but perhaps not too senior) students designated individually or as a group to handle issues would help.  Of course most schools work that way informally.  Senior students take care of junior students.  Senior students listen to the woes of junior students and try to help.  But I think that an official role would make a difference.  It was my responsibility as a senior student (Instructor) to listen when people told me things were not right, but there was nowhere to go from there. The “yeah, I hear you, that sucks” problem.  

People should be told: “You are designated to make sure that this ethics code is adhered-to, and if it’s not, you need to tell X, Y, Z, and keep telling people up the ladder until the problem is fixed.  Whether it’s the newest coach on the floor or the owner of the school, you need to 1. Listen.  2. Use your judgment. and 3. Act on what you’ve been told.”

Maybe rather than individual responsibility, it could be a group that has the power to call anyone (even the owner) on the carpet.  Often just shining some light on dark behavior will make it go away.  When it’s issues like bias in promotion or hiring, that’s a tough nut to crack, but a group whose job is to consider the issues might have a shot at it.

Listening and Watching

We all have a  deep bias against people who stop training, an assumption of weakness or insufficiency.  That makes it easy to downplay any reasons they give.  People who quit things want to blame anyone other than themselves.  The best teachers out there will have a long list of quitters who say it’s the teacher’s fault.  So we take those excuses with a big lump of salt. Which is a great cover.

Let’s be real.  Attrition in martial arts is high, and that masks the effects of bad teachers.  Lame excuses for leaving can cover “I’m too lazy for this, it's too hard for me” but they also cover up “the teacher made me feel like dirt,” or “the teacher had his hands on me differently than he touched other people in class,” or “I watched some lower-ranked guy who trains a lot less get promoted over my head one too many times.”  or “I’m gay, and sick to death of people covering their discomfort with jokes like ‘it’s not gay if you don’t make eye contact.’”

When someone complains about others being promoted over them, it’s a near 100% likelihood that they’re whiners who didn’t get promoted because they didn’t earn it.  The people who we SHOULD notice didn’t get promoted fairly are good students who DON’T speak up.  A “good student” just assumes they weren’t good enough and keeps trying. There’s no system there for countering bias in promotions.  We rightly dismiss complaints from whiners, and the people unfairly held back go quietly unnoticed.  

But I think we should measure.  Keeping demographics on promotions/attendance/attrition.  We should see whether men are promoted faster on average than women, or white people faster than POC.  Or young people faster than old people.  Controlling for attendance, in a big enough school or over enough time we could spot bias pretty easily.

Also, taking comments and keeping them, either anonymously or with some bare demographic information.  Are there trends?  Maybe we could task senior students with writing down what people tell them, and keeping a file.  Sending friends to do “exit interviews” when people leave a school. Then annually review the file.  Spot trends.  See if it’s not just one whiner complaining about promotion, but a trend of older people all feeling they were held back.  Or women feeling that their teachers didn’t take them seriously.  Or even just “I can’t put my finger on it, but I don’t feel comfortable in X’s classes.”  

And when we spot the trends, we need to act on them.  Back to “internal.”  If we want integrity, we need to realize that integrity is an awful feeling, not a bright one.  It’s self-doubt, it’s sacrificing one value for another, it’s wondering if we’re doing the right thing.  It’s standing up to our friends.  Assuming “I’m a person with integrity” or “Teacher is a person with integrity,” and rationalizing our actions or dismissing the evidence of our senses is the opposite of integrity.

How it Ends

I hurt for the folks I watched over the summer, who did the right thing and lost their beloved organization.  In the movies that wouldn’t happen.  In real life, sometimes we have to choose, and we regret every choice.  That is the position a poisonous teacher or school owner puts us in.  Life is messy.  You can’t punch a problem like this in the face.  We like face-punchable problems.  These are not that.

I can’t answer whether risking a school failure to address issues is worth it. That’s a personal decision. One I’ve never answered “yes” to.  Presumably it’s all on a scale.  A teacher with a bad temper who just makes people feel bad occasionally is one thing, a teacher sleeping his way around the school or manipulating students against their own interests or not paying or promoting appropriately is quite another, and a teacher crossing over into criminal behavior ought to be a bright line.

But there are simple things.  If your school doesn’t have a code of conduct for its instructors, it might be worth asking for one.  And if there’s resistance…maybe it’s worth asking a lot harder questions.  When devoted students leave, senior students should pursue their reasons. There’s a difference between a loudmouthed white-belt leaving and a loyal black-belt leaving. Good teachers will ask questions and keep asking them until the answers come out.  Giving students trusted people to talk with to really understand if something has gone very wrong can draw that out.  People with higher ranks have responsibility to address those issues rather than stewing or silencing.  

We apparently have obstacles and blind-spots to living with integrity. But we could do better.  Others do. Even people in the entertainment industry are cleaning house these days. If we don’t practice our values, we’re just crazy people in pajamas.

[nchoi]

hii (〜￣▽￣)〜(〜￣▽￣)〜(〜￣▽￣)〜  again, acacia. so you saw my wallflower and my babydoll. but this time you get to meet the head bitch in charge, super fab, actual blair waldorf, naomi choi. by now, y’all know if you click on this you are obligated to plot with me. xoxo.

****update: i created all of this on the spot & also … it got kinda long... again... sue me. but as always, if you want the nutshell scroll down to the very last bullet point. [in sadie saxton’s voice] you’re welcome.

░ * . ╰ ✯ › ⊰ IM JINAH, CIS-FEMALE, TWENTY-FIVE ⊱ is that NAOMI CHOI ? the FASHION DESIGNER & SOCIALITE. they’re known to be AUTHORITATIVE & BEAUTIFUL. but also VINDICTIVE & IRRATIONAL. unknown to them, they are the reincarnation of HERA.

BACKGROUND

unlike my other two characters, naomi actually grew in a very stable home. her parents are very much in love. therefore she was very much loved. being their only child, she was constantly spoiled. always given whatever she wants, whenever she wants. and of course, she’s used to getting her way all the time. if you couldn’t tell by the gif, she’s bad and boujee. her family is loaded. her father, being the chairman and co-owner of rosewood resort (hotels.) and her mother, being a now retired model turned to a fashion designer. she’s always been surrounded by luxury and will continue to be.

naomi basically grew up in private schools. of course her parents wanted her to be the best of the best. so she was constantly put under (positive) pressure by the them. this of course results her to being the top student of her year every year. she never settled for less, for both them and herself. she doesn’t like to disappoint her parents ever. they are her support system and role models. she strives for their success (and even more than that.)

during high school, she was sort of a bully. she was very ruthless and cold. she had that, “i’ll do anything to get where i need to be,” personality. and if it meant paying someone to transfer the other student threatening her valedictorian spot, then yes, of course she’d do that. people either hated her or loved her. there was no in between. she kept her clique small. yes, a clique, which indeed was very exclusive. invite only. think of regina george. she ran her school and she liked to keep it that way. once she graduated she became more of an adult about things. of course her ruthlessness was still around, but a little more filtered. just a tad bit. she got accepted into almost every ivy league college. but ended up going to harvard. 

naomi grew a very big following. she was very popular on social media due to her sense of style. a lot of fashion magazines, blogs, youtubers, etc all tried to recreate her looks. at first looking the best was just a simple task to her. but eventually, she discovered that fashion was no longer a competitive thing. but just a really fun hobby she had. her love for fashion grew immensely. while she was studying to become a business major, she started up her own clothing line company. first it started with a couple shoes. then it slowly started to build into more. she eventually graduated with a bachelors degree in business management and is now a full time fashion designer.

how she got to seattle: so, although she has a deep love for new york. she found herself most comfortable in her family penthouse in seattle. a lot of her younger memories were spent their. mostly for family vacations. the view is beautiful, more calming than the hustle and bustle of nyc, and she always just felt like she belonged. she is currently living alone. her parents still residing in new york and visiting every now and then. she does travel constantly. but always finds herself back home in seattle.

PERSONALITY+RELATIONSHIPS

naomi’s PERSONALITY is quite something. she has that tell it like it is personality. she just calls it likes she sees it. even if she’s not exactly right. she’s literally drowning in her riches. making her materialistic af. some people might think she’s that dumb bimbo rich bitch. but she’s actually very VERY smart. witty and intelligent to be exact. she’s very particular when it comes to most things. she wants things done correctly. so she often runs by the quote, “if you want things right you gotta do it yourself.” she doesn’t like relying on others to get things done when she knows she could do it faster and better. a little bit of a ocd queen. also, she’s able to throw old things together and make them look better, which is another reason why she became a fashion designer. she’s very dedicated to her work, thus making her very goal oriented. she’s very creative when it comes to her designs. and she’s actually a very good artist, like drawing her sketches. i’m sure she picked up doodling and bullet journaling while growing up. *plays boss ass bitch vine.*

when it comes to FRIENDS she has plenty, at least in her head. she just knows a lot of people through her many connections. so she has many affiliations. but never real friends. she’s very particular with the people she associates herself with. she believes that those around you reflect who you are as a person as well. therefore, she only surrounds herself with the best of the best. she may not be the best person to tell your secrets too either because she’s quite the gossip queen. but she can probably persuade you to trust her. rip. however, if you are a close friend of her’s, she’s very loyal to those who are loyal to her. which means she’d never do you dirty. but that’s only if she really cares about you. she’s a really great listener and she’s willing to give advice to those are willing to take it. plus, she’s the type to spoil the people she loves. so expect the best christmas gifts ever if u rollin’ with her. honestly, she really does need to surround herself with good people with genuinely good intentions. so please, someone teach her what loyalty is. bonus points if they’ve been friends for awhile. displays loyalty.

please flood her with ENEMIES. i know for a fact that she has these. she was bully in high school. so you know this girl has more than enough haters. she uses people, she pushes people around, etc etc. like she has some very evil intentions. and i would love it even more if some of these enemies were girls that she caught her fiance with. that would juicy af. especially since she’s vengeful and irrational. while naomi does have some good intentions, she leans more to the chaotic evil side. she puts fuel to drama and loves to see people crash and burn. why? she wants that reassurance that she is flourishing above all. she never wants to be belittled and will do anything to remain on the very top. also, a rivalry would be perfect. especially if someone is damaging her business. because that’s her baby and she would do anything to protect that as well. naomi absolutely needs enemies. give her many. plenty. an abundance please.

as for LOVERS. naomi has most definitely dated a lot. she’s had a handful of serious relationships as well. she is a beautiful and alluring woman after all. she does believe in love. she’s witnessed it between her parents and wishes for a love like their’s. so of course this girl is a hopeless romantic. and honestly, she needs love in her life. it would totally tear down her tough bitch exterior and show how soft naomi can really be. but that’s probably going to be with her fiance. ok, a little bit about naomi and her relationships. she’d be very loyal to anyone she’s dating. she’d spoil them with gifts, surprise visits, and honestly just give them the whole world. they’d be the only person who’d be able to tell this bitch to stop acting so unreasonable. and *gasp* she’d actually listen. i feel like she’s the type to do whatever she needs to do to please her significant other. sad, but it’s true. she’s not as independent as she makes herself out to be. but everybody needs somebody. am i right?

WANTED CONNECTIONS

FRIENDS

best friend — her closest confidant. she’d never let go of this person. they’re her ride or die // f or nb

winghoe — another close friend of her’s probably the person who got her and her fiance together. // m, f, or nb

exes — she’d be the type to still be friends with her ex. yes, they’ve loved each other. but they’ve come to terms they’re much better off platonic. // m or nb

ENEMIES

victim — someone she’s bullied in the past. just someone to constantly remind her that she’s a raging bitch. // m, f, or nb

used — someone she dated and she just basically used. most likely treated them as a toy in her little games // m or nb

frienemies — just always trying to one up each other. whether it be in fashion, friends, family, just life in general. they’re always in a secret competition. // m, f, or nb

LOVERS

fiance — this would be the love of her life. even if they bicker and argue. she’d be 100% dedicated to them. // zeus deity only

first love — once naomi is dedicated to someone it’s a little hard for her to let them go. especially if it was her first love. this could be drama central yooohooo... // m or nb

on and off — just the person she always runs back to. she’d probably even try contacting them if she ever got into a fight with her fiance. // m or nb

** also, since we don’t have zeus deity yet, her love life is up to be fucked up. pls. f her up.

MISCELLANEOUS

✿ an angel with a halo unbalanced with horns, not a devil but not a saint either?? kind yet has a backbone. softer than what she seems like. humorous and witty though understanding. mistrusting but willing to let loyalty speak. wealthy but tries not to depend on her family. and heavily involved in the king glitterati lifestyle. she is the queen of fashion. and honestly trying to be the queen of life itself. she’s chaotic neutral. she comes off as a bitch, but if you are her friend, she’s very very loyal to you. honestly, her life seems fine. she has parents that love her but push her to be the best of the best. she tears people down for shits and giggles. and can be quite manipulative. but overall, naomi choi is a beautiful, driven, judgmental, opinionated, artistic, and the most problematic head bitch in charge e v e r.

alright. if you made it to the end of this ilysm. this might be kinda confusing cause tbh i’m too lazy to proofread. but please like this shit if you wanna plot it uppppp.

[wanderer706]

Behind the Screens Ch 4- Landlord

(Cam. Airl- Written Draft 2)

Reginald felt sick again. He though his liver had properly processed the alcohol he had consumed last night. Evidently that was not the case.

He had only woken up about two hours ago. It was already the afternoon, and the drink had caused him to sleep through the entire morning without waking once. He wouldn’t have minded so much except he missed a call from a client he was trying to get. Client however was just a word he used to make himself feel good. He knew damn well the police wouldn’t call it that. They would call it robbery.

He slumped off of his couch and landed hard on the floor. He then proceeded to run as fast as his drunk legs would allow him to the bathroom. He only arrived just in time.

He tried to stand up right but only succeeded in awkwardly knell over the toilet. The vile puke then flew out of his system. It seemed to take forever this time, but after what seemed like an eternity he was finally able down it down toilet. He tried to get up, but couldn’t. Instead he fell face down on the toilet floor, head against the toilet itself. Everything then went black.

When he came to it was because somebody was knocking on his door. This served as a perfect as a replacement for an alarm clock in his current state. His headache was gone, but the sound of somebody knocking on the door had the same effect as a drum being played right next to his ear.

Reginald forced himself to get up. His mouth still tasted like shit, but at least the vomit was gone. Regardless he put all of his effort into groggily walked towards the front door.

“What?” he asked opening the door. Layla, one of the buildings residents, was standing outside. He didn’t really know her, but from what passed his ears he knew she was some kind of screenplay writer. He could see she was looking at him through her clear eyes that stood out because of how they were offset by her dark skin.

“You look like shit Reggie.” She said. Everyone in the apartment called him Reggie.

“I’ll live. What do you want?” he asked.

“Rent.” She said handing him the cash. He took it from her and immediately began counting it up.

“How are things?” he asked out of curiosity.

“Not good. In the middle of a screaming match with a bunch of dumb executives. Honestly they don’t seem to care about anything, but money.”

Reginald wasn’t actually listening. He was too busy counting the money she had given.

“This’ll do. You have yourself a nice evening.” He said closing the door.

He locked the door behind him, and then he slumped down on the couch where he stared intently at the cash. He wondered about what he would do with the money in his hand. He guessed he should do the right thing. Give it to his brother who technically owned the building, but then that one thought entered his head. Alcohol. This cash could pay for another two days’ supply of alcohol. No. He’s drunk enough at the moment and he doesn’t need any more of that sweet delicate nectar.

Luckily at that moment he was snapped out of his poison thoughts by the sound of a phone ringing. He looked to see which one. It was his own personal phone which wasn’t what he was hoping for.

“Hello.” Reginald said.

“Hello. Landlord.” Said Sebastian, his brother.

“What do you want?”

“I called to remind you that it’s rent day, and I will be coming by tomorrow to collect.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Well judging by that tone in your voice you’ve either given yourself a headache because of it or if I know you… How many last night?”

“Piss off.”

“Come on how many?”

“I said piss off.”

“Six or seven?”

“I can’t remember.”

“Yes you can. You still have that pamphlet for that rehab clinic. I recommend you at least give it a whirl.”

Reginald looked at his desk. The pamphlet with all of those smiling faces on it was still sitting there. “There is wrong with an addiction.” It said on the front page. Reginald meant to throw its taunting vibes out.

“Are you done? I’m busy.” He asked

“Not quite. Have the new burglar protection devices been installed?”

Reginald looked at the control remote they left after they had finished installing it.

“Yes. They finished the other day. Now if there is a threat we’ll be locked inside with it.”

“Cheer up. It’s for the best.”

“Who’s best? Mine or yours? Now are we done?”

“Yes, good brother. We are done.”

“Fine. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.”

Reginald hung up the phone and placed it back on the table he got it from. He was a joke to his entire family. Whilst his brother had become one of the most prominent city councillors, he had slumped to the bottom of a bottle.

Back in the day he had been the popular kid in school. Had all the right friends, went to the best parties, and had an all-round good time. His brother on the other hand had been the bottom of the pile when it came to friends. Yes, he had friends, but he didn’t have the fun that Reginald had.

After school whilst he went to university, Reginald continued to look for parties. He wanted to live the life of luxury. Fame and fortune like a few of the people at the parties. But, as the years went on the crowd he had gotten so used to disbanded, got on with their lives, got married, had kids, and he just continued to look for a good time.

It was in doing so that lead to that one night. The night when he drank so much that he passed out on the floor of the bar he was in. Everything spun around in that darkness for a while. When he came to he was in the hospital, with an apparent severe case of alcohol poisoning. His brother who had just gotten himself onto the city council at that point had forked the bill. Reginald hadn’t seen him in such a long time that that had been an awkward thirty minutes. His brother suggested help but he didn’t want to hear it from his fucking face.

It was the night after he had gotten back from the hospital that he felt a strange thirst that he had never felt before. A thirst that could not be clenched by water, but only by alcohol. His life then really spiralled downhill. It began with all of his spending money being used to purchase as much alcohol as one could buy. Then came the multiple hangovers. That happened so often that he was laid off from his job at an online store warehouse. Desperate for money he turned to a new trade that wasn’t strictly legal, but it paid well, and gave him the money to satisfy his thirst.

His brother was constantly urging him to get help, but he never listened. He never told his brother where he was getting the money, and he never wanted to.

Reginald was however very surprised when his brother told him that he had taken a gamble and pulled some strings. The next thing he knew he was the newly named landlord for a new apartment block that the city nicknamed “the squeeze” because of how small a space it was squeezed into, even though the name in the building’s lobby said Moonlight Apartments. Now here he was forced to take collect rent from occupants and give over some of that precious money back to the council every week or face jail time. Money that could be satisfying his thirst.

Reginald wiped some sweat off his brow. He could tell that his mouth was drooling just thinking about all the alcohol that this money could buy, but it wasn’t worth it. He fought off those thoughts, and put the money into the box he had set aside for the rent money giving it one last look before locking the box.

Now his mind was desperate. How would he get the money? He didn’t care that he probably nearly drunk himself to hospital again last night. He needed that thirst quenched. Now.

Suddenly, another phone rang. His eyes lit up when he saw that it wasn’t his personal phone, but his business phone. He rushed over like a madman, and answered it putting on his business voice.

“Fredrick’s and Sons. How may I help you?” he said doing his best upper crust accent.

“Yes. I’m calling about your company’s ability to help me work from home.” Said a voice on the other end of the line. Reggie almost immediately could pin that this was probably some lazy arse youth who didn’t want to go to university.

“Yes, we can help you do that. We have helped many people in the past gain stable income from working at home. Our packages all cost money, but will guarantee cash in your pocket by the end of the week.”

“Money isn’t a problem. My parents pay me plenty.” The voice said. Reggie took account that this was a rich kid with too much money on his hands. That usually meant that they were incredibly stupid. So, he began with the options route.

“Okay we have several packages. The cheapest costs $85 whilst the most expensive costs $950.”

“What does the $950 package entitle?”

“It entitles everything that you need with a guarantee return value of $1500 per week.”

“I’ll take that one.”

“Very good but first we will need something from you. In order to set-up a proper connection with the IRD we will need your bank details.”

“Of course, my details are…” Reggie smiled as all the bank details were laid out in front of him. He wrote them all down on a piece of paper

“Great. That’s all we need we’ll get in contact with you at a later date, once the connection has been set up.” He said.

“Thanks. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.”

Reginald hung up the phone, and bolted over to his computer. He opened his computer, and immediately set to work making an encrypted withdrawal from the kids account. He had no intention of helping that lazy arse work from home. He was only interested in getting his money, and with that he set up the withdrawal to empty half of his bank account.

Whilst this was happening he checked his emails to see if any of his phishing emails had drawn any unsuspecting people. He had two bites. He posed as their banks saying that there was a problem with their accounts and that he needed their details to fix the problem. In reality he was just using it to once again obtain bank details. The e-mails were of course encrypted and if traced it would always pin-point an internet café that he never set foot in. Once the current transfer was done he would move on. The phone was similar, but for that he had set it up so it would always be traced back to a traffic control box nine blocks away.

He didn’t always want to scam people out of money, and he had only started out of desperation. It was one night, when he was low on cash and his precious alcohol that he saw a story on the news. Apparently, the fraud desk of the police had intercepted a rather large player in that field. He had ripped off a grand total of sixty-seven bank accounts, and that had amounted to five hundred and seven thousand dollars being stolen. His mouth drooled when that amount was spoken. How much alcohol could he buy with that amount of money? He didn’t know, but he immediately began his research into that world.

A few weeks later came his first attempt, He created the fake company Fredrick’s and Sons on his own two feet. He began by randomly calling any number in the phone book offering the work from home scam. He got a gullible hit on his second day. He was so excited that he nearly gave away his true intentions on the phone. He then successfully executed the encrypted removal from the account. He didn’t however take into account his phone being traced luckily the amount he had withdrawn was more than enough to buy a new one. He went for a walk with his old one and dropped it behind a garbage truck that was collecting trash. The crunch as the tire ran it over was a relief.

He began phishing shortly before he was named landlord of the Moonlight apartments. He had heard about it and after a few trial runs he was able to create an authentic looking email that looked like it was from some organisation that required some sort of credit card details or even just the bank. He then learned how to scan peoples’ computers for the services they were using and to adjust the scheme accordingly. He was actually quite surprised how easy all of this tech stuff was to him. At the end of the day though he found the phishing emails created much more hits the work from home scam.

After about thirty minutes he had the money from all the gullible people that he needed. It was only half from each account, and he only removed money from each account once using a heavy smoke, mirrors, and encryption technique to fool any would be followers. The only way to catch him was to run the trace and beat his tricks whilst he was performing them.

He then powered down his computer and turned on the television. He slumped down in his favourite arm chair and began to watch one of the many quiz shows that were on before the news. This one featured a bunch of celebrities who were playing to win money for charity. The current theme was literature and it was clear that the celebrity trying wasn’t too familiar with his book knowledge.

He had a few laughs whilst watching as his mind slowly drifted away thinking about how much more money his scams would give him than his greedy brother would allow him to have. But most importantly how much alcohol he could buy with it.

[cnisms]

bye ... i’m truly done taking up muses ... these are short n poorly written but i did them ! i’ll eventually add more information on everyone when i finally get around to finishing muse pages but honestly ? this is all u need to know for now. again, if u wanna plot, just hmu :P a few mentions of drugs n alcoholism but nothing descriptive. here’s percy, zach, ajay, luke, bunny, paris & luma ! (i’ve added gwen, helena n gia too just so they’re all in one place bc i’m lazy)

FINN COLE, CIS MALE, HE/HIM — have you met perseus sage nichols yet ? the twenty-two year old is known for being both astute and jocular, but also very obstreperous and arrogant. born in melbourne, percy now lives in kensington, working as a junior management consultant.  comes from a nice family that he will always be pissed off at for very little reason. has beef w his dad for not providing even tho he really did, it was just never enough for percy. is exactly the type of dude that got mad when leo didn’t win the oscar for wolf. just wanted to be dumb rich n coked out. v smart and got an international scholarship at a good university, by the time he got kicked out for being a rowdy asshole, he’d helped his friends develop some legit apps (the most successful one being a dating app which two yrs later is really just a meme) and they suddenly had a lot of money, he just bought his way back in. bc he was in charge of the business side of things, it was easy enough for him to screw over his friends n walk away w most of what was left when their success went down the drain. got a job as a management consultant at a big, scary firm in london mostly thanks 2 his reputation. is a known ugly n ruthless n desperate to be at the top n live in disgusting luxury. can’t talk to his family or old pals without Wanting To Die bc he’s so committed to this new life he’s created for himself. is literally awful if he doesn’t like u, still awful just in a less hurtful n more annoying way if he does. doesn’t know when to stop. always forgetting n probably trying to hide the fact that he’s not a trust fund baby like all the people he hangs with now. literally just clyde oberholt ?

JAMIE BLACKLEY, CIS MALE, HE/HIM — have you met zachary vaughn baltazar yet ? the twenty-five year old is known for being both unostentatious and sincere, but also very self-deprecating and uncouth. born in berlin, zach now lives in southwark, working as a telemarketer. the nice guy who is always getting rekt (he wrecking himself lbr) is Um .. a v talented writer but is happy just shitting on his work n never exploring his potential bc why bother when he has the ideal amount of friends n weed atm right ? given up and is convinced he is satisfied, will accept any invitation. still won’t let you live tho. has opinions on ur choices and will probably share them behind ur back. somehow feels underappreciated by everyone even tho he truly believes there is nothing to appreciate. omg have a cry and grow up. king of impressive first dates n writes rlly romantic poetry but is either ghosting or getting ghosted the following week bc he is dry and confused. doesn’t know if this is really what he wants/doesn’t feel like he deserves what he wants. close with his family but tries to force more n more distance bc he can’t stand their #drama... or any drama that doesn’t give him an edge Actual Of Ly. the ders of the squad probably.

RAHUL KOHLI, CIS MALE, HE/HIM — have you met ajay charles johal yet ? the thirty year old is known for being both urbane and jovial, but also very restless and quixotic. born in chennai, ajay now lives in newham, as an airline pilot. moved to london w his parents when he was v young, spent all of his teenage yrs feeling guilty for no reason just like watching all his parents did for him to be happy n healthy ? never got over the guilt. is just a v feeling person ig ! anyways he was so committed to helping his parents out, which was rlly truly the only thing he’s ever committed to in his life. needed enough money to support all three of them but rlly had no idea how to go about it. pilot was just one of the ideas handed to him back in high school n he went with it bc he knew he’s never actually settle on anything. turned out ok bc he likes being able 2 actually get the entire hell away from his problems. a v flighty person (aha... classic) and doesn’t have many close relationships bc of it. v respected ... v respectful ... quality lad but can be a lil immature under it all. wish he’d stop feeling bad just bc he has GOOD parents.

TOBY REGBO, CIS MALE, HE/HIM — have you met luciano andrius falley yet ? the twenty-five year old is known for being both genial and cultivated, but also very irksome and delphic. born in naples, luke now lives in camden, as a struggling actor and annoying historian. tragic backstory ? never heard of that. comes from a supportive ($$$ n <333) family who probably only pay for the many flights for all his long ass self discovery backpacking trips bc deep down they can’t put up with him anymore. is a super friendly n outgoing person, the type that is literally always reading a book he only half understands but will bring up what he has learned from it at one of his MANY dinner parties where ur only option is CHICKEN and lots of wine while he refuses to SHUT THE FRICK UP. cute ! kinda very judgemental but will just sigh n let u fuck up. “not to get political but...” is always like Hm Yes ! I Love Hearing Other People’s Stories ! but when ? when does he hear anything other than his own voice ? he probably gives himself lectures on intersectional feminism when he’s home alone he just doesn’t stop. honestly he only ever means well n ig he’s interesting enough but Really... fake struggling yet still pretentious aesthetics.

MARGOT ROBBIE, CIS FEMALE, SHE/HER — have you met elizabeth celine leblanc ? the twenty-seven year old is known for being both coruscating and ardent, but also very egocentric and bourgeois. born in seattle, bunny now lives in southwark, as an influential homemaker. boozy housewife. spent her childhood living below the poverty line before her father began helping ppl smuggle drugs into america. he built his own big operation off of that (with a hygiene product company as a cover) and was successful enough to squash the few people it pissed off. business spread to europe n then when he was ready to retire and the south gang was interested, he had elizabeth marry into it before he sold the operation just to make sure he would always be taken care of. it got handed down to her husband bc she wasn’t interested in any legit roles (her asshole fathers fault honestly ? he wouldn’t have given her control even if she wanted it) and she just went along with whatever would keep her from returning to her Humble Beginnings. is very “i do whatever i have to in order to survive” n by survive she means never actually work n just waltz around a mansion in designer gowns all day. materialistic n v selfish. fake charitable for her socialite image. doesn’t cook, but is always sharing recipes. has no real interest in the soap she pretends to make. is consistently fake. literally gets zero joy from anything that isn’t spending money. could probably be happy if she could escape her family’s ugly beliefs n misogynistic practices n she’s getting there but just . slowly. hates the nickname bunny, but i’m forcing the meme.

MIMI ELASHIRY, CIS FEMALE, SHE/HER — have you met paris nefret bayoumi yet ? the twenty year old is known for being both beneficent and equable, but also very disengaging and inelegant. born in alexandria, paris now lives in greenwich, practicing herbalism. also works at the rosado but whom cares ? not her ! all she cares abt are the HERBS. was raised by her grandmother who was a Kitchen Witch (as in .. u know ... this isnt a supernatural rp But that woman was a witch !) so she’s always practiced similar hobbies but now she’s all about making her friends custom teas ! n yea paris likes to claim that she’s also a witch. is extra but in a calm n collected way. serene at all times but unintentionally sardonic. not super bright but has plenty of advice for every problem. seems to enjoy oversharing and yet no one knows exactly whats the deal w her parents (criminals that have always been n remain in hiding, some people think they’re straight up pirates now) or anything serious in her life rlly . but u wanna know what russells burp smelt like last week ? she’s about to tell u.

SOFIA BLACK-D'ELIA, CIS FEMALE, SHE/HER — have you met luma camille pontecorvo yet ? the twenty-three year old is known for being both optimistic and dexterous, but also very prevaricating and overindulged. born in quebec city, luma now lives in waltham forest, working in retail.  ah , another brat . she was left w her much older half brother n his wife when he mom dipped when she was fourteen n honestly they felt so bad n also had no idea how to handle her so they just . gave her everything she wanted without question. she had her mothers bad attitude n reckless habits tho n when she started getting her nieces n nephews in trouble once they were all in college together, her brother Politely kicked her out of their lives by offering to set her up anywhere she wanted “for the Experience”. she picked london n quickly got a job at a kingsley store n has been working there for a few yrs now. now also deals party drugs at clubs for the north family n she rlly lets that be the focus of her life, so she’s always showing up to her day job late n overtired. doesn’t ever really lie but rarely tells the whole truth. ig she would be fun to hang out with but she’s probably a fair bit cunty. doesn’t care about ur feelings, has very few of her own, just here for a meme. truthfully she’s angry abt everyone ditching her but it gets ugly whenever the topic comes up n dark!luma is an actual thing that makes an appearance.

MADCHEN AMICK, CIS FEMALE, SHE/HER — have you met gwendolyn griet hathaway yet ? the forty-three year old is known for being both reverent and winsome, but also very acquisitive and ambivalent. born in las vegas, gwen now lives in richmond upon thames, managing a record label. also known as gwen nash. mother to gertrude bc we meme too hard. born in nevada, her own momther bailed early n then her father disappeared when she was fourteen (she’s always been sure he was murdered by a biker gang but no one believed her n kept saying he just ran off on her but ! the story comes up whenever she drinks still) n she ended up just getting a cleaning job in a motel n taking care of herself. eventually she met a nice older couple who sort of took her in. they were responsible for a lot of jazz artists n she stanned them hard ? sang for them for a short while n eventually married their son mostly bc she wanted to actually be part of the family yikes… anyway they had a Beautiful Daughter together obviously n eventually got control of the label n thats all they rlly share now post separation. tragic n twenty years later than everyone expected . anyway she’s lurkin about london, lookin for talent n trying to fix her relationship with gertrude (i’d hate my mom if she named me that too … no a fence) n just drinkin wine ig ! she’s very … impulsive and only ever thinks about herself in the moment but otherwise ? she can be kind n caring but Ya . her habit of just jumping into things for her own pleasure generally hurts other people so she’s a lot of strained relationships. still seems v standoffish mostly bc she’s Um . Scared Of Everything. literally does not matter how much shit she sees ? permanently spooked. lowkey cruel sense of humor but she just seems so gentle 95% of the time that when she makes a sick joke ur like Oh she doesn’t realize how bad that sounds ! hates memes.

LILY JAMES, CIS FEMALE, SHE/HER — have you met helena therese o’shea yet ? the twenty-six year old is known for being both cultivated and strong-willed, but also very callous and tenacious. born in chicago, helena now lives in wandsworth, working at erstead’s and planning birthday parties. a tragedy. always had it in her head that she was better than everyone else (especially her brother ) but never fully committed to the brat act, like she never threw tantrums or asked for too much, v well mannered n proper but it’s always been obvious that she’s permanently disgusted by everyone except for herself. sometimes also disgusted by herself tho. will say something cringeworthy n just about put a hit on herself for it. was a v successful wedding planner for a while, her business took off rlly quick thanks to a few helpful connections. got engaged herself 3 years ago and cut off most of her family n all her old friends to start this new amazing life she always thought she deserved ? sike. after three years of putting off the wedding, she got dumped n came home to work @ erstead’s bc she’s like well if i’m gonna crash this hard i might as well hit rock bottom ! plans birthday parties for children occasionally. hates children. hates everything. fun ? never experienced that emotion. barely tries to make up with the people she wronged bc despite setting herself back 6 yrs, she still thinks she’s above everyone else. loves to complain. doesn’t really have much going for her honestly other than ? total commitment to whatever it is that’s happening in her life. obviously that’s not workin out for her rn ?

CHARLI XCX, CIS FEMALE, SHE/HER — have you met georgiana lalaine visariya yet ? the twenty-three year old is known for being both jocund and unfeigned, but also very vexatious and lowbrow. born in kiev, gia now lives in soho, being extra on youtube.  gia is honestly .. a headache. she was always a v creative person, ‘expressing herself’ n doin’ the most when literally no one asked ever. she started vlogging two years ago n got bored quickly so instead she decided to start her own (fake) reality series on youtube ? she handled everything by herself at first n reached out to hot local people who were popular on instagram n youtube to star in it WITH HER and only got a few people in on it but ? it took off. now she has a whole crew n writers n what not working on it with her (even tho most of the time she will take over every part of the production n handle it herself again) n it gets her good money (especially bc she’s shameless n stays making sure she’s a main in every single episode so she gets those instagram sponsors too) calls herself “““punk lauren conrad””” n is clearly too extra. a very very confident n loud person, super friendly, loves everyone n honestly u can try to drag her but that’s not gonna stop her running up to u in the street next time she sees u n telling you to drop whatever it is ur doing to go get cocktails with her. she’s so … genuine irl that you literally would not belieb how much of the show is scripted n thought up by her w that … interesting … imagination. will annoy u for content.

[alberteamllc]

ANIMALS (722)

In a private receiving room, Prince Anselm sits brooding, idly polishing the scuff-marks on one boot with the hard heel of the other. He raises a peremptory hand as an attendant enters.

“I know they’re here. I don’t have any interest in seeing them. Pay them and see them out.”

“But, um, your highness, they said--”

“They’re not men to make a habit of believing. Tell them our arrangement is at an end.”

The attendant quails. He’s paid relatively little, in exchange for a spacious room with a few other servants, access to the palace kitchens, the chance to shoot glances at the beautiful people-- his life is a good one, but for this, he feels, he isn’t paid enough.

“Your highness, they’re… what if they don’t take that well?”

Anselm turns in anger but the fear in the attendant’s face softens him. He’s still not thinking as a ruler. Some distaste-- some unfamiliar flavor of recrimination and shame-- lingers in his stomach.

“They very well might not.” A curt sigh like he used to hear from his father. “Tell them I’ll receive them. Thank you.”

He has a few moments to kill and he spends them pacing the room, testing the arms of sofas for dust, checking the time on the clocks, as if part of him cares how his visitors will be struck by the upkeep of the place, but he doesn’t care, it sickens him to think of their stain creeping over the marble floors and thick carpets of the place he’s always called home, this place of history, of majesty, and their dirty boots, their vile, barbarous smiles on their lechers’ lips--

The attendant clears his throat and the prince turns. They look out of place, like elements in a dream that sit a degree or two askance from their proper setting, like something in the field of vision that makes the back of the eyeball ache. Elias Ewer, the Lamb, doing his best to look like a dandy-- greying hair slicked back from a leathery forehead, thin moustache, those eyes like the eyes of a wolf in a trap knowing that it could still kill you in a fair fight and still longs to. It seems as if he’s tried to tie his cravat by himself and given up after a few attempts. His spats are speckled with something black. He’s wearing that signature cloak of his, the beast’s claws clasped across his chest. It stinks like cheap smoke. It stinks like a house burnt down. Next to him the halfling, Francis Flisk, who almost looks like he belongs in a place like this. He shrinks back under the prince’s look, trying to smile like he knows what he’s doing. And the elf. He’s seen elves like this before, and he’s seen the cast of this face. Men and women who had something they would die for, and often did. There’s an expression a face can’t make until it’s lost enough to know what it won’t abide losing again, and this elf is making it-- a tautness around the mouth, the eyelids slightly limp as if a thread has been quietly snipped by a million indignities. Gods, he thinks, he’s still going around in animal skins-- he’s either the slowest learner I’ve ever met or he’s refusing to let this city take the forest out of him. Out of the three he hates dealing with the elf the most; so much of him longs to respect him, but the company he kept made that impossible. It was a fresh disappointment every time. There is something in him he keeps trying to understand, and the bafflement frustrates him. The prince is not used to tolerating mysteries.

He plays this scene out in his mind. I grab Ewer by the throat, throw him up against a wall. Paintings rattle. How dare you come to my home like this. If I see your face again I’ll kill you and if I see it here, in these halls where my father ate and slept, I’ll kill you twice. He swallows hard against the void in his throat.

“Ewer, what is this?  Who the devil even let you set foot in this palace?”

“Fine thanks, how are you? But since you asked so nicely, I dropped the name of a mutual friend at the gate. I guess he didn’t want me swapping stories with the hired help any longer than I had to. Hell of a walk up that slope though. No wonder you rich bastards spend so much on shoes, right lads?”

“Well you didn’t need to bring friends. A dozen guards saw you come in. If you wanted to kill me-- well, if you wanted to kill me and get out of here alive, you’d need more than this menagerie.”

The trio stand about as if waiting to be offered a seat. After a moment the prince awkwardly dabs a mantel for dust one more time and coughs softly.

“Come on then, I won’t ask again-- what is this about? You’ve fulfilled the terms of our agreement, yes? And I assume you received your compensation?”

Another silence. Flisk is tense, like the only thing keeping him from bolting are invisible nails driven into his feet. The elf’s eyes are dead. Ewer smiles. Yellow teeth.

“Well, your Majesty--”

“Your Highness…”

“‘Hey, hey--Elias is fine. This isn’t about the gold. But I guess it is about compensation. You see, what you’ve asked of us… of me… it’s not just illegal. Why, I’d say it’s wrong. Just… ethically wrong.”

“Morally repugnant,” offers Flisk.

“And don’t think I haven’t heard the rumors. From the prisons. You think I don’t know prisons? People disappearing. First the murderers, the arsonists, the highwaymen, but then thieves, and drunkards, poor bastards who skimped on their taxes. People down there where I make my living-- down at the bottom of the hill, you see, or across the bridge-- they’re terrified to take on honest work these days. Not a burglar or fence in this town isn’t scared, and it’s not the scaffold they’re scared of, your Highness”

His eyes flick a foot or two behind Ewer’s hobbling pacing. There’s something in his voice like rotten fruit and the prince turns his head to hide the twitch he feels coming to the corner of his mouth.

“Do you  see what I’m getting at, your HIghness? You’re bad for my business. I’m losing money because of you. And then you offer me piss for payment?”

“You’ve received two hundred gold pieces per pers-- per head. Is that unfair? Your halfling seemed amenable to the terms when I offered them. If I recall he had to have his tongue rolled back into his mouth.”

“Things have changed! I didn’t know what this was about. I thought you were your run of the mill pervert, or some kind of deranged slasher type. Plenty of rich folk with time on their hands dabble in the old blood magic. A million reasons for a sick mind like yours to want that many warm bodies. Not my type, you understand, these old men and these drunks and these cripples, but you get what you pay for, don’t you. Oh, right.”

“What are you getting at? Make an accusation. Or take your money and leave.”

The elf and the halfling exchange tense glances. Ewer leers.

“You’re experimenting, aren’t you? You and your doctors and your… your wizards. You’re doing something to those poor bastards you wouldn’t do to yourself or one of your precious bridge partners with their soft, soft hands. I want in.”

“You must be joking.”

“Who else knows? That uptight prick Sarmasik? That foxy little whore of yours whose parents you’re paying off? How about your mommy, or does she forget about it every night while she’s drooling in her wine? I’m not loyal to you, prince. I don’t give a shit. Cut me in or I talk. Money or magic or power. I’m not picky.”

“You’re insane. And bluffing.”

“Am I? Or do I have all this written down in an envelope back at the ol’ chez Ewer, ready to be read by people who know people if I’m not back home kicking my feet up by the fire within the hour?”

The prince stares. He could call the guard. He should call the guard. Ewer sees an opening in his hesitation and leans forward, jabs a knotty finger. The prince notes his fingernails, the brown and the black encrusting them.

“I heard you got a visit from Sir Polywebb, your majesty. Always a thrill when great minds put their heads together.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“Sir Polywebb.”

He brushes away Ewer’s hand as lightly as he can manage.

“Ewer, you and I were never supposed to meet. If your halfling had done his job I would never have even heard of you and your sad, meaningless little empire. Learning your name and seeing your face was a mistake. The men you arranged to arrive here were given fine meals and soft beds. What they did when they left is known to them, not to me. You were paid-- and I force myself to utter these words-- as a broker of a charitable initiative. That destitute souls were ferried to the palace for some verifiable and richly witnessed generosity and then vanished back into the city is unlikely to set the journalistic world on fire. You brought me over two hundred men in the past six months. I can personally attest that over two dozen of them were provided with long-term jobs and are currently thriving. Certainly happier than you found them. I can have them here tomorrow morning to pass muster, if one were to insist upon it. You’re spinning tales. You’re working from the presumption that all men are men like you. Don’t presume to know me.”

That leer again. The prince thinks once more of a wolf-- the kind of wolf that only exists in folk tales, a caricature of a wolf, a slavering thing full of idiot hunger.

“But I do. I know what you did to our froggy friend. And I know that some of those poor and desperate souls that Fancy Francis here schleps up here for a hot meal never come down. And I know that they don’t die either, do they, Your Highness? No matter how hard they try, they don’t--”

He blinks heavily and when he opens his eyes again-- why does it take so long to open his eyes again?-- he finds a candlestick in his hand, and he finds it cutting through the air and connecting with Ewer’s face. It feels papery, unnaturally thin. Ewer buckles and puts a hand to his cheek and holds up a hand to his companions. The prince notes the elf’s hand already at his hip. The halfling trying to vanish behind a potted plant. And then, there It is on a table, looking. He sees It from the corner of his eye-- did he bring It here with him? Was It always here? It seems to tell him to raise the candlestick high, bring it down again, bash him in the eye, bash him again, raise it lower it again and again until the human below him is reduced to a mere thing, a fading leather sack of fluids and bones. The sack shuffles back and onto its shoulders, glaring, spits a thin gob of pink and red. It quivers viscously on the vine-ornamented carpet.

“Nobody does that to me, Insatsi. Nobody lays their hands on me.”

He gives into It, just a bit. On the side-table light from the fire catches It, shines off its sharp edges. A beautiful cleanness to it. Is that a look it’s giving him? An eye? Did it have an eye before, and did it burn so bright and clear? He kicks the sack in the ribs and this part of him revels at the sound of it.

“Call me Your Highness, wretch, or I’ll finish you here with my bare hands.”

The elf is taut. The prince knows how badly this could go but some part of him-- some part he finds himself coaxing-- wants it to. This elf could--

Ewer stands up shakily.

“I know what--”

The candlestick hits the floor.

“You came here to blackmail me. You can’t. No one will believe you, Ewer. Look at yourself. You’ve made yourself an animal. The people you call your own-- the poor of this city? They despise you. They work every day of their lives-- they grind themselves to the bone-- to be able to look in the mirror and say that they’re nothing like you. And you’d try to turn them on me? I’m a hero to them. No one has served this city like I have. And on top of everything else I’ve done, if I could ride down into the city tonight with your head on my sword, they’d cheer me. Get up and get out. I won’t be needing your services again.”

He smears the blood from his cracked lip. Even his blood smells wrong, thinks the prince with a reflexive start backwards. Ewer nods silently and turns, his phlegmy eyes dim but hateful like wet embers.

Flisk meekly mumbles something about being in touch as he crowds in between the taller men. Something tugs at the prince’s mind.

“Wait. You-- Misteltaine was it? Zozobra Misteltaine?”

The elf half-turns to face the prince.

“I don’t understand it. I don’t understand you. The halfling-- he’s made a name for himself as an opportunist. I can’t expect him to act against it, for good or for ill. But you… I know your like. You’ve suffered for something. Why are you here?”

“I owe Mr. Ewer much.” His voice a stone sinking smooth into still water.

“What could he grant you that would be worth…. all of this?”

The elf’s stare is impassive. He’s not at a loss for words, the prince realizes. He’s simply economic with them-- saving them up to accrue interest, and deciding that this moment isn’t worth it. He remembers a two-week siege on an elvish fort-town. Ancient. It was called… Atterdag. Atterdale? Something like that. When his forces had ridden into town, having routed the enemy army at the gates, he had been surprised to see on those elven faces not gratefulness or relief but hatred. It had confused him at first. They would live, some of them, because of his army’s efforts, a pitched battle which many good soldiers hadn’t survived. But their sunken bellies, their hollowed out gazes-- they hated him for knowing that his war would someday end. He would ride back to his palace and his footmen and hang his sword over an old, elegant fireplace polished daily by well-fed men and women. He had tried for years to find mercy in his heart for those souls who would live in that war for the rest of their lives, and would die in that war no matter where in the world they went. He sees that war again in this moment.

“I see it now. You want to see this city suffer. You want to see my people wither and weep under the thumb of men like your master. I understand.”

A corner of Misteltaine’s mouth seems to flicker momentarily towards a smile before resetting itself into a stoic slash perpendicular with his chin.

“You could be more than this, you know. I’ve seen men like you. I’ve seen them get well. I can help you.”

He hadn’t. He couldn’t. Ewer snaps his fingers.

“We’re out of here, pricks-for-ears, before the wildman here sics his security guards on us. We’ve got rounds to make, anyway.”

He pauses by the door, at that side-table. It’s still resting there. The prince’s body freezes up, every nerve commanding him to strike, to cut this cur down. Don’t you touch what’s mine. Don’t you even look at it. Ewer’s makes a little clicking noise with his mouth.

“So this is it, huh? Ugly little thing. Is it supposed to.. fit over your head or something? You wear it? Looks a little snug…”

“Leave.” Something in his voice now convinces Ewer. He leaves, Flisk a half-step behind him. Misteltaine, passing through the doorway, casts a last look at It, his eyes pausing on it as if he too sees, sees whatever it is that the prince sees and cannot put into words. One hand reaches out to brush it gently and the prince can’t find the will to stop him.

The elf whispers something in old elvish, the prince is rusty but it sounds like “Parent,” and the prince knows, yes, this is the crown’s name, what it was called by its makers and what it truly is. The elf exits, shuts the door behind him, but Anselm Insatsi is not alone.

[d00dt00nz]

Obligatory promo stuff at the top because it sucks and I hate it and let’s get it out of the way! follow me on twitter where I’m active, check me out on spotify for music, or like my facebook for sparse updates on music stuff. Thank you. The Cover art is by Ellie Tison 

This is the first of the songs here that I'll be posting which I wrote at the medium sized evil financial company that I worked in. The company handled RESP's, which, I don't think exist outside of Canada. Or well, they do exist it's just named something different and I can't remember what. Basically it's where a parent invests money into a fund when their child is born. The company then invests that money for the next 18 years. Also you have to make monthly payments or else the company takes all the money you've invested. Also it has to be used for school or else the company can take a huge chunk of the money. This may all sound really shitty and predatory, and everyone I worked with kinda felt that way. The main advantage is that it's either tax free or very minimally taxed.

Basically at best it mostly functions as an institutionalized series of hoops that rich people can jump through to dodge taxes. At worst it's a scam that preys on poor people, or people who don't speak english well enough to understand the (extremely complicated) contract they're pressured into signing, or it's a method for criminals to launder money. That last one was against company policy, but realistically the fact that it goes on at all means that there's plenty of laundering that wasn't caught. The later scenario (immigrants getting scammed) went on extensively and was actually something that this company actively pushed towards.

RESP's in Canada are typically done through a bank or the government, but can also be done through private institutions. The “benefits” of this place was (on paper) lower rates and more aggressive and risky investments. It all looked very well advertised. We had a much higher average growth percentage for investments. I can't say for sure, but I'm going to guess it's because they were able to take hundreds of thousands of dollars from people who could no longer pay or people who just plain forgot. The company would pay hospitals to send them lists of expecting immigrant parents and then send out agents to meet these mothers in hospital sometimes immediately after giving birth (this part is true). They would target immigrants because they were less likely to speak english, which meant they were less likely to fully understand the contract they were forced to sign. They would also intentionally target people who weren't financially stable, so that in the next 18 years they might potentially be unable to make payments and lose their money.

The company actually had an expose written about it in the newspaper while I was working there. A lot of my friends in customer service (they were all incredibly nice people) had to get a lot of shit from (rightfully angry) people for things they had no control over. The higher ups were completely insulated from this and were hardly ever around. The agents were also hardly ever around. They were all unpleasant and entitled people that I would occasionally be forced into dealing with. There was a big stink in the company at the time about tons of temp workers being pressured into “off the clock” overtime. I don't mean to brag, but I started the big stink! People were eventually paid.

Eventually the company was bought out by a much larger, evil-er financial company. As these things go, the shady practices remained, but became a little more obscured and a gajillion low ranking people who had nothing to do with the problems lost their jobs. It was the cartoon version of a north american workplace. Through a combination of coincidences, I was mostly protected from any workplace politics (except this one jerk) and was able to both whine a lot about things but also be completely secure in my job. I drank a lot of free coffee, I ate some free donuts, I avoided the lunchroom like the plague. Mostly mundane stuff.

Around this time I began to feel not only personally stagnant, but also just generally unhappy. I knew a lot of people there who felt the same way – the feeling of being a small part of this big machine that existed almost entirely to the detriment of people who didn't really deserve it, and you can't really change things – and also the fact that people were losing their jobs left and right while other people were in uniquely protected situations. It weighs on you. It sucks to be a part of something evil. I started listening to The Eagles a lot around then. Maybe because I wanted to listen to an evil band because I felt evil.

This song is my ripoff attempt of Tequila Sunrise by The Eagles. Lyrically, however, it leans much closer to my Silver Jews obsession. David Berman had not yet committed suicide. A few songs on this album are very inspired by Berman's poetry and songwriting. It's a little bit difficult to listen to them sometimes, for me anyway. I don't think that my lyricism matches Berman, especially not on this song.

I originally wanted a cowboy-ish feel to the tune, much like Tequila Sunrise. I'm not sure how I failed at that, but it feels a little mickey-mouse to me. I added strings in the second half to try and prop things up. I don't hate the song by any means, but I think it fell short of the majestic ballad that I was trying to write. The instrumental section almost approaches it, but I think I'm missing some kind of human warmth.

The instrumental section, however, I do think shines. This part was actually a cheater-afterthought type thing. I felt like the song was too short so I added another verse. I was too lazy to write lyrics for it so I made it an instrumental. I like making little instrumental bits like this when the chords and background stuff is already written. I can just noodle around. In this case I just noodled around on guitar and layered it, and actually it ended up turnout out okay.

In general, I think the song's okay. I don't mind it at all. My brother says it's his favourite track, so I guess maybe there's some merit to it. I feel like I could have done a better job at making it what I wanted it to be, but it turned into something different and maybe that's alright. At any rate, it works to help the album flow.  

[flauntpage]

Deadspin Writer Shreds NJ.Com Sports Director, Again

Background information:

A few weeks ago Kevin Manahan, the sports director over at NJ.com, put up a somewhat snarky and condescending job post on his Twitter account. He was looking for a super-motivated reporter to cover the 76ers for a monthly stipend, and the description of the gig was widely-panned because he just sort of sounded like a dick.

This job posting resulted in an internet-wide referendum on the sports writing business, with people conflicted over the concept of wanting to work a real job with real wages and real benefits vs. the potential of taking a fringe opportunity and turning it into something bigger. Most of us went down the latter path, working shit jobs for shit money until we could make a full-time living off of our work.

Laura Wagner at Deadspin wrote a story about the posting, titled “NJ.com Sports Director Advertises Shitty Job, Is A Real Asshole About It.” It was a short post ripping him for coming across like, well, an asshole. Manahan later pushed back while reiterating that he didn’t specify the dollar amount of the monthly stipend or the amount of hours this employee was expected to work.

Just when it seemed like all of this stuff had subsided, Wagner came back today with a 3,000 word follow-up, revealing that Manahan deleted his Twitter account while quoting local guys like Joe Giglio in an effort to get a read on whether or not Manahan was, in fact, a douche bag.

It’s an interesting read. Wagner says she spoke to “more than a dozen current and former NJ.com employees, people who worked with (Manahan) at other companies, and various other people in the industry who have come into contact with him.”

I wanna pull some of the most relevant parts of the story and respond to those, after the jump:

The website features tabs for the Giants, the Jets, the Knicks, the Nets, the Devils, the Mets, the Yankees, Rutgers football, Rutgers basketball, the Eagles, the Flyers, the Red Bulls, the Rangers, the Phillies, Seton Hall, and the 76ers. It’s unclear how many of these teams are covered by part-time staff and how many are full-time. (It’s worth noting that full-time staffers are paid competitive salaries and receive benefits.) In an email to the president of NJ Advance Media, Steve Alessi, I asked about the size of the sports department; Alessi did not respond.

Several people pointed to Manahan as the reason there is so much turnover at NJ.com. Some leave because they get other jobs; Manahan sours on some; others won’t put up with him and quit. In the past year alone, at least seven employees have left the NJ.com sports department for various reasons.

Among them: Eliot Shorr-Parks, who went to 94 WIP, and Chris Sheridan, who did the Sixers beat for something like two weeks before parting ways with the company.

Former 97.5 the Fanatic host Matt Lombardo is still with NJ.Com, but swapped the Eagles beat for the Giants beat, which resulted in Zack Rosenblatt sliding over to NovaCare this season alongside Mike Kaye, who formerly covered the Jaguars and spent some time with Bleeding Green Nation. Anthony Gilbert, who does a variety of freelance gigs, was brought in to be a 76ers guy in place of Sheridan and Rosenblatt.

Of all the people I spoke to, and all the people I reached out to to ask about their experience working with Manahan, good or bad, only one person spoke about him glowingly. Joe Giglio, whose NJ.com bio describes him as a “Sports Engagement Specialist,” emailed me saying:

“Kevin’s been nothing but a good boss to me. I’m not available (two little kids and two jobs!) for a longer conversation, but nothing but positive things from my perspective, on or off the record. Thanks for reaching out.”

Joe was writing articles for NJ.Com while covering shifts at WIP a few years back. He also did radio in New York, similar to how Jody Mac splits time between NY and Philly. Giglio is now anchoring the evening shift on a nightly basis at 94.1, so his role at NJ.Com is limited to NFL picks and predictions along with some baseball free agency and trade rumor posts as well. Most of Joe’s writing is national in scope these days.

The defining pattern that emerged through all these conversations? People were wary of allowing specific anecdotes to be included in this story because they feared Manahan would have the ability and the vindictiveness to identify them and seek revenge.

This is what happened when we wrote the NBC Sports Philadelphia story. People were worried that Michelle Murray and the bosses over there would spend more time trying to identify who spoke to us, rather than considering what people had to say about morale.

Why Manahan has been able to attract talent even when offering poor pay to work under bad conditions is clear enough: Young writers are understandably eager to jump at the chance to cover a pro sports beat. Thirty, 20, or even 10 years ago, when newspapers still reigned supreme, there were plenty of entry-level sports reporting jobs to go around, and the career track was clear: A writer would make his or her star at a small local paper, move on to a bigger regional paper, and then maybe make it to the big leagues, writing for a national publication. As newspaper jobs have dried up, that traditional paths has changed. Places like the Athletic, whose stated goal is to make local newspapers’ sports coverage obsolete, primarily hire people with sizable social-media followings, meaning that to make it there, reporters have to have built a following somewhere. One way to do so might involve writing for little or no money and no benefits at somewhere like an SB Nation team site; another might involve working for a monthly stipend and no benefits at a place like NJ.com. One sportswriter recounted a conversation in which Manahan was frank about the realities of the industry, and about the ways he understands the dynamics involved.

Yeah. Welcome to the club.

That’s why most of us were freelancers. We worked 2-4 jobs and combined our salaries into something feasible. A vast majority of younger writers go this route because we know we’re not ripping off a full-time job with full-time benefits in the post-newspaper landscape that Wagner writes about.

For me, about 85% of monthly income came from working at CBS 3, while 15% came from writing about the Philadelphia Union and reffing youth soccer games. As the years went on, that number came closer to 20%,  25%, and 30%, so you start to tip the scales as you build a following and gain more experience.

It was the stability afforded by channel 3 that allowed me to grow my side career as a writer, which I think is how most people operate these days. It’s true that some people are propped up by their parents or spouse or live in their mom’s basement or whatever, but that’s certainly not the story for every middle-class college-educated kid. It’s not even close. Most of the sports writers I know had supplemental income that they themselves created. I used to wait tables and do consulting gigs on the side. That was the hustle. You weren’t propped up by your parents, you were propped up by the three other gigs you worked while trying to “make it big.” This is the same exact path that aspiring actors and musicians follow. Stunningly, there are fewer legitimate opportunities for non-essential careers.

“He essentially said why would he pay a Yankees writer $100,000 when he could pay two kids $50,000 apiece and run them into the ground for a few years,” the sportswriter said. “Then when they move on to something better or burn out, he can replace them with more young, cheap labor.”

This is common practice in every industry in the United States. I also don’t know many writers approaching anything close to six-figure salaries, but if you find them, let me know.

The reason Manahan posted the 76ers job description in the first place, according to people familiar with the situation, was that the incumbent writer, Anthony Gilbert, had been let go after only a few months for not drawing enough traffic. (His bylines are still appearing on the site every day, as he is apparently finishing out his month’s contract. Gilbert declined to comment.) Such a short amount of time doesn’t seem like enough to judge a new writer’s ability to work sources, develop their beat, or even see if they’ll be responsive to the training Manahan’s supporters claim he offers. Manahan’s primary interest, though, seems to have to do with none of that; he seems strictly focused on raw page views and on getting them on the cheap.

It’s not enough time. Not nearly enough time, especially in a city like Philadelphia where people have been working the Eagles beat for 20+ years.

It takes time to earn trust and build a following and earn respect. It usually takes years to develop sources and break your first story. If Anthony was let go “after only a few months,” then that’s really shitty on Manahan’s part. Instead of just cutting ties and moving on, maybe sit down and talk about a strategy to improve traffic. Identify stories that are doing well and stories that aren’t doing well. If you run through reporters with this frequency, then maybe you’e the problem, not the writer.

Plus, Philly can spot a fake. Anybody can walk into a new beat and start throwing hot takes around and force page views that way, but nobody is truly taking you seriously. The best beats in this town, guys like Sheil Kapadia and Zach Berman and Rich Hofmann and Derek Bodner over the Athletic, they understand the value of building your reputation via solid content without the need to throw shit at the wall, just to see if it sticks.

The $50,000 the sportswriter said Manahan bragged about paying to writers he’d then run into the ground is, for instance, far more than Manahan paid a “kid” recently to cover a beat for NJ.com. For writing 15 or 16 articles a week and doing video hits after home games, this young writer was paid $2,300 a month.

I need to know what beat this is. A lot of people are doing similar work for less than $2,300 a month, which amounts to $27,600 a year. If you work this gig in addition to something else on the side, you can easily hit $40,000, which is what most kids in their early 20s are earning as their introduction to the business.

It’s true that the industry is fucked: Sports media is chock full of companies like the previously mentioned SB Nation (which is facing a collective action lawsuit for not paying its worker as employees) and Sports Illustrated’s FanSided (which no one takes seriously), which exert downward pressure on wages by selling young writers on “exposure” and telling them it’s normal to work for little or no money. The scam digital sweatshops are running, though, is simply the logical extension of the similar one newspapers have been running since time immemorial, one that has in addition to exploiting workers for corporate profit worked to keep sportswriting far richer, far whiter, and far more male than either society generally or the part of society it covers. This is part of why it was so strange last week to see not just veteran sportswriters who’d worked with Manahan defending him, but others defending the system of which his shop and his shitty listing for a non-job are merely expressions.

It sucks, but it’s free market capitalism, so I don’t know what Wagner and other people expect. If you don’t like it, don’t work for Kevin Manahan, don’t apply for a gig at SB Nation and don’t read FanSided.

Look no further than the creators of The Athletic, who decided to build a different model and try to operate that way instead of just complaining about the industry on Twitter. This blog was created in a similar fashion, because Kyle wanted to do his own thing and had his own ideas. That’s really what America is, isn’t it? If you don’t like the way things are done, do it your own way. Build a better product with a different revenue model.

In June, NJ.com held a meeting intended for women to speak about the challenges of being a women in media, and to help the men in the newsroom understand these obstacles. That, at least, was the goal, until Manahan derailed it.

“After ONA [the Online News Association conference] this year, some female reporters from the newsroom came back and hosted a reporting/sourcing as a female workshop here. It was a space where men were also welcome and encouraged to listen and learn how to help out their female colleagues,” one newsroom source said. “About halfway through, we were talking about how it feels to be a female reporter in male-dominated spaces, and how that often happens in sports. Manahan took over and started talking over the women who were present and didn’t listen when they tried to explain how it can feel to be a female reporter in a men’s locker room, or how to navigate being condescended to.

“He was essentially [saying] that being condescended to was part of the job, while being condescending,” the source said. “The fact that he talked for so much of the meeting and was so tone-deaf in what he was saying was kind of talk of the newsroom that day and among the female staff.”

This source’s description of the event was confirmed by a second newsroom source.

“He spoke for 20 minutes,” this person said. “And ended it with, ‘ESPN keeps taking my female reporters to fill their quota.’”

Yeah, well, that’s not a great look.

Time’s yours.

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