#so I wrote this open letter to the community which I think is completely necessary

[captainbeverlycrusher]

An Open Letter to the Star Trek Community

To the Star Trek Community,

I write this from a place of deep respect, gratitude and compassion, and with hope that what I have to say will be received in good faith and be heard.

I am an immigrant woman of colour who found Star Trek at a time when I was at my lowest and stuck in what seemed like perpetual darkness, and it was this wonderful franchise and its powerful message which uplifted me and brought me back into the light so that today I can truly say that I am at my strongest. As such, Star Trek’s positive influence in my life has been no small thing. Star Trek has taught me to be the captain of my life, to reach for the stars, to stand up for what is right no matter the cost, and, above all, to be brave and bold.

And so, in the spirit of boldly going, I humbly call on ALL white members of the Star Trek Community — creators, platform curators, prominent fans and figures, including and especially Star Trek cast members, past and present — who believe in the underlying mission and vision of Star Trek to formally denounce all forms of racism and bigotry and those who uphold such abhorrent beliefs; I call on you to condemn the actions of those who have harmed Black and Indigenous people, and all People of Colour (BIPOC); and I call on you to strive to do more and do better for the sake of BIPOC in both the Star Trek community and in your own lives who have been subjected to racism. Finally, I encourage you to urge your supporters in this community to do the same, particularly those who are now finally waking up to the injustices perpetrated against BIPOC.

I am, of course, aware that the official Star Trek entity released a statement in this vein recently. I know many of you have expressed one way or another your support for the Black Lives Matter movement. I see you. It’s a good start. But it is not enough. I need each of you who hold so much influence within this community to do this, to say once and for all that you will not condone racism and anti-Blackness from your supporters, fans and followers any longer. It is important for this to happen.

I know you support the vision of the great Gene Roddenberry and the powerful philosophy of Star Trek and what it stands for. I know you believe in these words as much as I do:

“Star Trek was an attempt to say that humanity will reach maturity and wisdom on the day that it begins not just to tolerate, but take a special delight in differences in ideas and differences in life forms.”

But many white supporters within the Trek community truly do not share these sentiments, and they have proven this time and again, especially as they have belittled and driven fans of colour like me away instead of putting the mission of Star Trek into practice and welcoming us with open arms. Both on-and-offline, there are those who have insulted and degraded BIPOC involved in the Trek community— and not just fans but creatives, actors, and notable figures of colour alike. We have been treated as inferior and dismissed.

I have seen and witnessed it with my own eyes. I have endured this myself and I cannot explain to you how hurtful it has been for many of us. I am a fan who has experienced so much harm from many white people I have come across in Trek spaces, at conventions and events, even among those I had considered friends, and for it to come from within a franchise that promotes love, hope and acceptance, it has been devastating. What I once looked to as a safe haven no longer is.

I can only speak for myself and from my own experiences. And based on my experience, my call to action here is completely necessary. Because something I never say aloud, something I constantly have to process and reprocess in therapy is that 6 years ago when I was 24, the night before I first met my Trek heroes, I cried bitter tears because I felt that they would not accept me because I wasn’t white, that I was unlovable by even the most amazing people because I was not white like them. 24 years old. A grown adult. And I felt that way. So many white Trek supporters contributed to making me feel that way every time they overtly and subtly implied that their whiteness made them superior. I have remained silent about this and numerous other incidents for many years, but living in silence has only served to intensify the painful experiences I’ve had, and so I share this to stress the urgency with which this community-wide issue needs to be addressed. We cannot allow damage like this to continue towards BIPOC in this community.

Racism destroys the soul. Racism is why I hurt myself for so long and why so many white supporters have harmed fans of colour like me, despite their claims that they believe in all that Star Trek stands for. Racism hurts us all. This is just a small part of my story. Imagine how many more there are like it or even worse. As white people, you will never experience racism and you may not see the abominable treatment BIPOC in the Trek community encounter, but it is happening.

With the Black Lives Matter protests gaining momentum worldwide, it couldn’t be more clear that now is not the time to find the middle ground on issues like this, because there is none when it comes to racism. Either you are against it or not. And I promise you, the Trek community does not need the support of people who go out of their way to justify any and all racist acts, because as we can clearly see, even the smallest racial microaggressions and biases can ultimately lead to murder. The desire to keep the peace in the fandom and franchise is not more important than Black lives. Especially because the truth is, as far as I have observed, there has never been actual peace.

We are presently witnessing a global reckoning in which many are finally starting to acknowledge the existing ways racism and white supremacy are upheld. As a community that claims to value all beings and embrace all differences, it only makes sense for Star Trek and all its community members to lead the way to a better future in the entertainment and creative industries and beyond, and to start doing so by looking within ourselves and our own backyard. We MUST clean up this community so that all People of Colour can truly feel safe and welcomed and be embraced and celebrated in every Trek space.

As I issue my call to action, I urge you to consider doing the following:

First, in particular for prominent white cast and creatives, please let the Trek community know where you stand. If you have not already done so, please let people know that you will not tolerate any further bigotry and racist behaviour from anyone. Please let your Black fans and all fans of colour know that you are with us. And please don’t mince words.

Amplify the voices of BIPOC within this community. So many of us are constantly silenced and drowned out and it is time for us to be heard. Our presence only enhances the Trek community. Uplift and embrace us. We matter.

If you manage any online Trek-related spaces and platforms, it is your responsibility to moderate and remove speech that is racist against BIPOC. It is imperative for you to enforce stricter commenting policies and do all that you can to protect BIPOC from further harm. And for those participating in these spaces, it is equally your duty to call out and report any such speech you encounter.

Educate your fellow white Trekkies who don’t yet understand why this is important. BIPOC have expended a lot of labor attempting to do so already but we have been dismissed, ignored, and cast aside. The onus is now on you to ease us of this burden and do the work given your positions of influence.

Hold yourselves and other white people in your Trek networks accountable to BIPOC community members. Make this part of your norm so that it becomes second nature to you, especially so these issues don’t ever fade into the background as they have often done in the past. This is an opportunity to improve and get it right.

Continue supporting the Black Lives Matter movement even after it stops trending. Visit https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/ to find helpful resources, make donations, sign petitions, and to get more involved in this work beyond the Trek community. This work is ongoing. It is lifelong.

Committing to doing every one of these would be small yet meaningful steps in the ongoing struggle for racial justice and it would make a significant difference. So with great respect and love, I implore you to use your power and privilege to do this for BIPOC, for yourselves, for all of us.

Stand up with and speak up for all BIPOC fans, friends and colleagues, far and wide. Be loud about it.

Be as loud and unrelenting as LeVar Burton. He has always been at the helm of this struggle, has always been upfront about it, and I love and admire him for it. Follow his lead.

Naturally, fear courses through me as I write all this, but I think of Gates McFadden, a great hero of mine, who once rocked the boat and spoke up against the sexism and racism she witnessed while working on TNG and was actually fired for it. If she can do that, then I think I can do this regardless of the risk. Because I know what I’m asking for and ultimately fighting for is right. Because what we can no longer deny is that lives are at stake. Black lives. And they matter.

Now it is up to you to do your part. Boldly go, in hope and with love.

And may you Live Long and Prosper.

— Originally published on Women at Warp

[mira--mira]

Hi! I was wondering

How do you think Hashirama and Madara would be in a Road to Ninja version?

I remember once reading a Hashimada fic (which I never finished RIP) that was about Madara appearing in the RTN universe and the 3 things that stucked with me were:

1.- Madara was the first Hokage (something that Madara thought was horrible when he saw his sculpted face on the Hokage mountain 🤣)

And personally I think that it would not have been like that even in the RTN universe because we didn't see his face along with the other faces of Hokages in the movie (Yeah, apparently I'm basing myself on a movie which I'm not even sure if it's canon or not, even though Kishimoto wrote it) and the RTN characters didn't seem to even know who Madara is.

2.- Hashirama having his bowlcut as an adult

And I agree with the Madara from that fanfic, it looks awful on him. Hashirama, babe, I'm sorry but the only ones who can rock that style are Guy Sensei and Rock Lee, I know you just were trying to be cool but it doesn't suite you.

3.- Tobirama was a porn writer

Instead of being a fan of forbidden jutsu and creating justus, he wrote porn novels a la Jiraiya. And I'll hold that headcanon with my dead hands.

The only other fanfic that places the founders in the RTN universe is one where the protagonist is Mito (it's an interesting one-shot that pairs her with Itama 🤔)

She was kind of a shy person 🤔? And so it was Tobirama 🤣 which I found fun.

Hashirama, as the first fanfic I mentioned, was the Tobirama of the place (saddenly Madara wasn't in this fic).

So I would like to know what are your versions of the founders (or only Hashirama and Madara if it is too much) in the RTN universe! And how do you think things would be

Hmm, RTN is an interesting concept to me but, to be honest, I don't think Konoha would exist if a lot of personalities got flipped 😂 I haven't read any RTN fics with the founders, but if you, or anyone else, have links at hand I'd love to check them out 👀

1. Madara

Here's the big one and the crux of why I don't think the village would exist. Typically I characterize Madara as an extremely responsible man who internalizes things when he shouldn't, takes himself way too seriously, is aggressive and abrasive even to people he loves sometimes, but genuinely loves the people closest too him. Reversing this would make a character that slacks off, takes no responsibility, and is completely passive in life and has fleeting attachments to others around him. Assuming he wouldn't die on the battlefield, I could see the RTN "alternate" personality coming about of Madara's being so overpowered and competent that he loses interest and distances himself from things before he can get attached and lose them.

It makes building a village very hard though. (At first I was tempted to go RTN Sasuke route and maybe RTN!Madara is a little more openly flirty than canon!Madara, but the passivity and refusal to take responsibility would be the "core" qualities for me.)

2. Hashirama

Hashirama is a bit weird because he has a lot of surface-level "conflicting" traits in canon. He is optimistic but he pushes beyond his natural attitude and uses it as a mask to hide instead of addressing his feelings. He's mischievous, likes jokes and games, and can be a bit hedonistic with his pleasure but can equally be serious when necessary and will willingly sacrifice for others around him. And simultaneously, Hashirama and Madara are connected by a shared sense of idealism but also anger. Hashirama is a very kind, but extremely angry, man. I think a RTN!Hashirama would share a kind of apathy of RTN!Madara but instead of passivity his lack of anger would manifest as cruelty. Because canon!Hashirama is angry but his anger is usually a righteous kind. I don't think RTN!Hashirama would go out of his way to be cruel, but he doesn't have the empathy of canon!Hashirama, especially to others' suffering. He enjoys fighting just a bit too much and has no qualms about killing. In his mind, he should always come first in any situation and prioritizing (or even considering) others' is effort and him going out of his way to be "nice" and the other should be thankful. Similarly if he feels any negative emotion, he won't bottle it up and swallow it down, he'll immediately address it, usually confrontationally. RTN!Hashirama is as intelligent as his canon counterpart but he doesn't suffer fools and he hates it when people underestimate him. He's pretty proud and vain, tbh.

I really don't think the above would make him the "Tobirama" of RTN verse. To me Hashirama and Tobirama have different core values and perspectives and inverting Hashirama's doesn't make it become Tobirama's, if that makes sense. This one is also wordy bc I immediately knew how RTN!Madara would be RTN!Hashirama is a bit harder to pin down. But I hope it's clear why I have doubts about the village existing...maybe if RTN!Hashirama got it in his mind as a pet project for the hell of it, that he'd be a better leader for the country and not just the Senju alone, and RTN!Madara liked the idea of no responsibility and being able to detach even further than he already was? But that's still kind of grasping for a reason.

3. Hashimada

Equally I think any Hashirama/Madara relationship would be ehhh. They definitely wouldn't have the overwhelming bond of their canon counterparts, and it could be a relationship ripe for unhappiness. The closest I can think of to making the ship work is RTN!Madara would be drawn to Hashirama's absurd level of self-confidence and able to let the casual cruelty slide off instead of getting worked up about it. In a way RTN!Hashirama is stable and predictable. If he's pretty overpowered, there's less of a chance RTN!Madara would lose him, so their relationship isn't deep but it's more or less dependable and Madara knows exactly what he's going to get. In contrast RTN!Hashirama has an audience in the form of RTN!Madara and a partner that's not going to push back against his ideas. RTN!Madara doesn't ask for much and he doesn't complain when RTN!Hashirama puts himself first. He doesn't want, or might not be capable of, the deep emotional bond their canon counterparts have. RTN!Madara wouldn't leave Konoha (if it existed) in the AU, because he doesn't really care. If someone upset RTN!Hashirama and he decided to leave to 'do it right' RTN!Madara would probably follow, maybe out of some loyalty for RTN!Hashirama but mostly because it's what's easiest.

4. Tobirama

The core of Tobirama's character to me is prioritizing logic over emotion and both a conscious and unconscious failure to realize he can't completely eliminate emotion. Tobirama loves his brother, he's curious and has a desire to find out what makes things work and is willing to bend morality to get results if it'll serve a greater good. He's very aware of the unfairness of the world but believes it's an unspoken truth of humanity and can only be mitigated through logical means, but never completely erased. He'll be the sacrificial lamb, the one that works in shadows so his brother can have his utopian dream. Despite everything, he loves his genin, the strongest bonds he has aside from Hashirama, and does try to instill in them lessons he think will help them and lead to peace and stability in the village. He's still influenced by the prejudices of his time and can never find it in him to truly forgive the Uchiha.

A RTN!Tobirama would be a man ruled by emotion. Him writing erotica all day definitely could be one way this manifests lol. But overall he's sensitive and spiritual and can't stand the idea of killing. He and RTN!Hashirama don't get along and he actively tries to avoid his brother. RTN!Tobirama has equally strong principles as canon!Tobirama, but they're pacifist in nature and while he likes his studies, he prefers to be out talking to people and learning from them first hand. He's very naive and can be easily taken advantage of and he has trouble focusing on any one thing for too long. No matter how many times this happens, he never can harden his heart or be overly suspicious of others. RTN!Tobirama would most likely be the one support peace in this AU. He embraces the Uchiha and all the Senjus past enemies with open arms, almost to a foolish degree. It'd be a bad idea if he became hokage in this AU because he's a terrible negotiator and has a bad people-pleasing streak and struggles with long-term tactics. With the exception of RTN!Hashirama, who he considers an aberration who doesn't have a soul, humans at their core all have good intentions at heart.

5. Mito

I characterize Mito as a very level-headed woman. Her marriage to Hashirama is political in nature but they grow to be good friends and she never expected to fall in love and she's glad Hashirama didn't want a traditional wife. Mito is devoted to her community work (she works hands-on with people in the village), she seeks out connections with others and, despite the distance, remains close with her family in Uzushio, constantly writing them letters. She's spiritual and follows the Uzumakis' beliefs (not gonna list this OoT spoiler lol) and studies fuinjutsu in her spare time, something she's done since she was a child. She is willing to sacrifice if it meant protecting something she considered greater than herself, much to her own personal detriment. She loves and is proud of her children and grandchildren, but if she had a choice, she would have chosen to remain childless, she finds her true calling elsewhere.

RTN!Mito, similarly to RTN!Tobirama, is ruled by emotions. She dreams of one day making a good marriage for herself and centers romance and being a mother as her ideal life, but she's extremely picky when it comes picking the perfect husband. RTN!Mito knows how much she's worth and she refuses to settle and will not even entertain the idea of an arranged marriage. She has a hard time forming long-lasting, deep bonds with other people and views starting her own family as the solution to this problem. At times she can be a bit absent-minded and unintentionally selfish, but she's not actively malicious. She blusters a lot and depending on the situation can come off as cold and uncaring, but it's only to hide the depth of her true feelings and loneliness. In this AU she would absolutely refuse to marriage RTN!Hashirama. Nothing on hell or earth, could make her change her mind.

Mito is such a blank-slate character it feels like writing an oc more than a canon character, tbh. And this is something I don't see brought up a lot but a "heart full of love" to combat the kyuubi's hatred to me has never been exclusive to romantic or familial (to children) love. *cough* I want a complex female character who's not vilified for not wanting to have children and/or regretting having them *cough* Mito's "love" was for the people of Konoha and Uzushio. My personal headcanon regarding her and Hashirama's child (I don't think she had more than one) was that she was dedicated to her son, but quickly realized being a mother wasn't her dream or something she even actively liked. The kid was well-cared for and she was dutiful towards him, but Hashirama was the parent that loved and embraced him with his whole heart and it led to some tension between Mito and her son as the kid could tell the difference and neither of them were "wrong" to feel the way they did. This is why Tsunade was shown with Hashirama instead of Mito, he was a lot more present in her life when she was young (instead of Kishi just not having made Mito as a character yet). But after Hashirama and Tsunade's dad died (and then Nawaki), she and Mito grew close but it was definitely more of a friendship or student/mentor relationship rather than a traditional grandmother/granddaughter relationship but both were satisfied with it and loved eachother. Likewise I didn't want RTN!Mito's characterization to be shallow and hit misogynistic undertones with her being an "opposite" to Mito's calm, level-headed, focused on her work/passions characterization.

6. Closing thoughts

#1: Wow this got long #2: I feel conflicted about RTN because it seemed to flip surface-level characteristics instead of deep characterizations, and ignored flaws altogether. The ones above, esp. Hashirama and Madara's, are kind of dark in a way? But that's the only way it makes sense to me...Gai and Lee caring about style and being stylish is a funny joke but if you were to actually poke and prod and say their personalities were inverted, neither of them would be top-notch ninja as we know...unless I'm just completely misremembering RTN because I realize it's been years since I saw it lol. Anyway, hope this was entertaining!

[quarantineddreamer]

i’ve been absent, and i can’t be sorry (it’s been necessary), but i do miss this community and having the energy/time to participate.

in truth, it’s been a challenging past few months for me...

don’t want to bore anyone, so details below (tw: depression, anxiety, parental troubles, covid)

i was really fortunate to be really close to my family growing up. i had a great relationship with my parents. which is why it has been that much more painful for me this past year to have them slowly driven from me by the absurdity of current politics. i didn’t see it coming, i didn’t think my parents could become science deniers. and yet here i am...

i tried with everything i had to teach/reach them, but ultimately the stress of it all was causing my anxiety to reach extremely unhealthy levels. for my own health and sanity, i wrote them a long, heartfelt letter explaining why i would not be talking to them for the time being (as they refused to get vaccinated and began to behave dangerously, no masks, frequent outings, seeing lots of people). that was july. 

august my parents visited my hometown. i did not see them or speak to them. my birthday passed, i did not see them or speak to them... 

i spoke with my mother once, in september...and it’s all still just as bad. there was shouting, cursing, crying (mostly me tbh). she’s stubbornly clinging to her beliefs drilled into her by right-wing media. i wont get into them, but it’s conspiracy level bad... she got covid, she kept it from me and my brother until afterwards. miraculously she was okay despite taking “medicine” that has been proven to be ineffective against covid and potentially dangerous while sick to boot... it’s made her even more determined to cling to her insane theories about the vaccine, covid treatments, the government all of it... 

i told her my life would continue without her and dad: i might get engaged (probably would have on my anniversary except my partner felt bad i wasnt talking to them at the time), married, who knows... covid isn’t going away anytime soon, and i cant agree to disagree with her on this. it matters too much to me that they be safe. if i let it go and something were to happen to her and my dad...i’d never forgive myself for it. 

i’m not saying mine is the correct approach. i have been plagued with doubt and guilt off and on. my mom has used language that makes me feel like this is all my fault, for being anxious, for being depressed, for not just letting her have her dangerous opinions... but at the end of the day despite the pain and grief i feel for not having my parents right now, i am still better off than i was before. fewer panic attacks, able to focus at work, able to at least sleep some now. 

i started anti-depressants when my mental health hit an all-time low during all of this, and they’ve been helping too. i really didn’t want to get back on them, but i believe they’ve saved my life. 

sadly, between all this (and busy times at work) i’ve had very little time, focus, or motivation to write. i’ve barely been on here. to be completely honest, naps after work are common. the extra rest has become important. i’ve developed a sudden interest in true crime documentaries and sad movies?? i was very confused by this at first, since i’ve never ever had an interest before, but my therapist says its how im processing my trauma and grief lol 

but why write all this out on tumblr, B? well... i like to scream into the abyss here, and i also want to be completely open about my struggles and mental health, because i was at my worst when i felt utterly alone, and if this post helps even one person who might be experiencing similar feel less alone than it’s worth it.

and i also wanted to let this community know why i’ve suddenly dropped off because it is a place that has brought my joy even during the chaos of the past year or so. i am going to be participating in the upcoming zkmbb and still have my other projects ready and waiting for me to return, but for now, the queue is going to be up and running and i’ll be a bit quieter as i fight my way through this and have to dedicate extra time to self-care.

i hope no one relates to this post, i really do, because it all hurts a lot and i dont want anyone to feel this pain, but if you do? you are a warrior, i admire your strength and courage --and i am sending you so much love.

best wishes all,

B

[hellomynameisbisexual]

As a nonbinary bisexual, I’m no stranger to people erasing me and telling me that I’m something I’m not. With the rise of terms like “pansexuality” and “omnisexuality,” many people unfamiliar with the true nature of bisexuality now think that it’s transphobic or otherwise binary — some go so far as to claim bisexuals only believe in two genders.

People assert that, while bisexuality allegedly means “attraction to two genders,” pansexuality and omnisexuality, unlike bisexuality, denote “attraction to all genders.” It’s easy to think this way if only examining the terms at face value, but this comparison is an outright lie. Some others say that new labels were a response to transphobic exclusion from the bisexual community — this is similarly not the case. (I’ll be compiling a piece on the history of the “pansexual” label at a later date.) Using this “reasoning” to separate bisexuality from these other terms is woefully inaccurate and disrespectful to bisexual and transgender people.

While there are cissexist definitions of bisexuality, that holds true for “gay” and “straight,” too. Bisexuals have also described our orientation as attraction regardless of gender¹ for decades — at least fifty years or so — and we still do. Before words like “transgender” and “nonbinary” came about, bisexuals still often saw themselves as attracted to people beyond gender.

Androgyny and gender-nonconformity are also a staple in bisexual culture. Major bisexual icons throughout history explored and embraced it. Look at bisexual chic, especially the glam rock era. Some bisexual activists and organizations have historically included and allied with transgender and nonbinary people, and many of us are transgender or nonbinary ourselves.

Below are just a few examples of the hidden secret of our gender-expansiveness. (Including a quote here does not equal my approval of what was said. Keep in mind the times during which they were recorded as well as the footnotes.)

Sources without links can be downloaded for free from ZLibrary, borrowed from the Open Library, or found wherever you purchase or borrow physical books. Sources without a year next to them are those for which I could not find the publish date.

“…the very wealth and humanity of bisexuality itself: for to exclude from one’s love any entire group of human beings because of class, age, or race or religion, or sex, is surely to be poorer — deeply and systematically poorer.”

— Kate Miller (1974)

“It’s easier, I believe, for exclusive heterosexuals to tolerate (and that’s the word) exclusive homosexuals than [bisexuals] who, rejecting exclusivity, sleep with people not genders…”

— Martin Duberman (1974)

“Margaret Mead in her Redbook magazine column wrote an article titled ‘Bisexuality: What’s It All About?’ in which she cited examples of bisexuality from the distant past as well as recent times, commenting that writers, artists, and musicians especially ‘cultivated bisexuality out of a delight with personality, regardless of race or class or sex.’”

— Janet Bode, “From Myth to Maturation,” View From Another Closet: Exploring Bisexuality in Women (1976)

“Being bisexual does not mean they have sexual relations with both sexes but that they are capable of meaningful and intimate involvement with a person regardless of gender.”

— Janet Bode, “The Pressure Cooker,” View From Another Closet (1976)

“A sex-change night club queen has claimed she had a bizarre love affair with rock superstar David Bowie. Drag artiste Ronny Haag said she lived with the bisexual singer while he was making his new film, “Just a Gigolo,” in Berlin. […] Ronny says: ‘I am a real woman.’”

— Kenelm Jenour, “I Was Bowie’s She-Man!”, Daily Mirror (1978)²

“[John] reacted emotionally to both sexes with equal intensity. ‘I love people, regardless of their gender,’ he told me.”

— Charlotte Wolff, “Early Influences,” Bisexuality, a Study (1979)

“On Saturday, February 9, San Francisco’s Bisexual Center will conduct a Gender/Sexuality Workshop. ‘We will explore the interrelationships of gender feelings and sexual preference… We will discuss sexuality and whether we choose to play out the gender role assigned to us by society or whether we can shift to attitudes supposedly held by the opposite gender, if those feel good to us. We will deal with the issue of the TV/TS [transvestite/transsexual] in transition and how sexuality evolves as gender role changes. We will attempt to present a summary of the fragmented and confusing information on gender and sexuality.’”

— The Gateway (1980)

“J: Are we ever going to be able to define what bisexuality is?

S: Never completely. That’s just it — the variety of lifestyles that we see between us defies definition.”

— “Conversations,” Bi Women: The Newsletter of the Boston Bisexual Women’s Network (1984)

“Bisexuality, however, is a valid sexual experience. While many gays have experienced bisexuality as a stage in reaching their present identity, this should not invalidate the experience of people for whom sexual & affectional desire is not limited by gender. For in fact many bisexuals experience lesbianism or homosexuality as a stage in reaching their sexual identification.

— Megan Morrison, “What We Are Doing,” Bi Women (1984)

“In the midst of whatever hardships we [bisexuals] had encountered, this day we worked with each other to preserve our gift of loving people for who they are regardless of gender.”

— Elissa M., “Bi Conference,” Bi Women (1985)

“I believe that people fall in love with individuals, not with a sex… I believe most of us will end up acknowledging that we love certain people or, perhaps, certain kinds of people, and that gender need not be a significant category, though for some of us it may be.”

— Ruth Hubbard, “There Is No ‘Natural’ Human Sexuality, Bi Women (1986)

“I am bisexual because I am drawn to particular people regardless of gender. It doesn’t make me wishy-washy, confused, untrustworthy, or more sexually liberated. It makes me a bisexual.”

— Lani Ka’ahumanu, “The Bisexual Community: Are We Visible Yet?” (1987)

“To be bisexual is to have the potential to be open emotionally and sexually to people as people, regardless of their gender.”

— Office Pink Publishing, “Introduction,” Bisexual Lives (1988)

“We made signs and slashes. My favorite read, ‘When it’s love in all its splendor, it doesn’t matter what the gender.’”

— Beth Reba Weise, “Being There and Being Bi: The National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights,” Bi Women (1988)

“…bisexual usually also implies that relations with gender minorities are possible.”

— Thomas Geller, Bisexuality: a Reader and Sourcebook (1990)

“Many objections have been raised to the use of [“bisexual”], the most common being that it emphasizes two things that, paradoxically, bisexuals are the least likely to be involved with: the dualistic separation of male and female in society, and the physical implications of the suffix ‘-sexual’.”

— Thomas Geller, Bisexuality: a Reader and Sourcebook (1990)

“Bisexuality is a whole, fluid identity. Do not assume that bisexuality is binary or duogamous in nature: that we have ‘two’ sides or that we must be involved simultaneously with both genders to be fulfilled human beings. In fact, don’t assume that there are only two genders.”

— The Bay Area Bisexual Network, “The 1990 Bisexual Manifesto,” Anything That Moves (1990)

“Bisexuality works to subvert the gender system and everything it upholds because it is not based on gender… Bisexuality subverts gender; bisexual liberation also depends on the subversion of gender categories.”

— Karin Baker and Helen Harrison, “Letters,” Bi Women (1990)

“I tell them, whether or not I use the word ‘bisexual,’ that I am proud of being able to express my feelings toward a person, regardless of gender, in whatever way I desire.”

— Naomi Tucker, “What’s in a Name?”, Bi Any Other Name (1991)³

“Some women who call themselves ‘bisexual’ insist that the gender of their lover is irrelevant to them, that they do not choose lovers on the basis of gender.”

— Marilyn Murphy, “Thinking About Bisexuality,” Bi Women (1991)

“Results supported the hypothesis that gender is not a critical variable in sexual attraction in bisexual individuals. Personality or physical dimensions not related to gender and interaction style were the salient characteristics on which preferred sexual partners were chosen, and there was minimal grid distance between preferred male and preferred female partners. These data support the argument that, for some bisexual individuals, sexual attraction is not gender-linked. […] …the dimensions which maximally separate most preferred sexual partners are not gender-based in seven of the nine grids.”

— M W Ross, J P Paul, “Beyond Gender: The Basis of Sexual Attraction in Bisexual Men and Women” (1992)

“[S]ome bisexuals say they are blind to the gender of their potential lovers and that they love people as people… For the first group, a dichotomy of genders between which to choose doesn’t seem to exist[.]”

— Kathleen Bennett, “Feminist Bisexuality, a Both/And Option for an Either/Or World,” Closer to Home: Bisexuality and Feminism (1992)

“The expressed desires of [female bisexual] respondents differed in many cases from their experience. 37 respondents preferred women as sexual partners; 9 preferred men. 21 women had no preference, and 35 said they preferred sex with particular individuals, regardless of gender.”

— Sue George, “Living as bisexual,” Women and Bisexuality (1993)

“Who is this group for exactly? Anyone who identifies as bisexual or thinks they are attracted to or interested in all genders… This newly formed [support] group is to create a supportive, safe environment for people who are questioning their sexual orientation and think they may be bisexual.”

— “Coming Out as Bisexual,” Bi Women (1994)

“It is logical and necessary for bisexuals to recognize the importance of gender politics — not just because transsexuals, cross-dressers, and other transgender people are often assumed to be bisexual… […] I have talked to the bisexual practicers of pre-op transsexuals who feel they have the best of both worlds because their lover embodies woman and man together.² Is that not a connection between bisexuality and transgenderism? […] Some of us are bisexual because we do not pay much attention to the gender of our attractions; some of us are bisexual because we do see tremendous gender differences and want to experience them all. […] With respect to our integrity as bisexuals, it is our responsibility to include transgendered people in our language, in our communities, in our politics, and in our lives.”

— Naomi Tucker, “The Natural Next Step,” Bisexual Politics: Theories, Queries, and Visions (1995)

“The first wave of people who started the Bi Center were political radicals and highly motivated people. The group was based on inclusivity… for example, in the women’s groups, anybody who identified as a woman had the right to be there, so a lot of transgender people started coming to the Bi Center.”

— Naomi Tucker, “Bay Area Bisexual History: An Interview with David Lourea,” Bisexual Politics (1995)

“[B]isexual consciousness, because of its amorphous quality and inclusionary nature, posed a fundamental threat to the dualistic and exclusionary thought patterns which were — and still are — tenaciously held by both the gay liberation leadership and its enemies.”

— Stephen Donaldson, “The Bisexual Movement’s Beginnings in the 70s,” Bisexual Politics (1995)

“If anything, being bi has made me hyper-aware of the sexual differences between [men and women]. And I still get hot for both. But I do experience something that is similar to gender blindness. It’s this: being bisexual means I could potentially find myself sexually attracted to anybody. Therefore, as a bisexual, I don’t make the distinction that monosexuals do between the gender you fuck and the gender you don’t.”

— Greta Christina, “Bi Sexuality,” Bisexual Politics (1995)

“[A]nd too / I am bisexual / in my history / in my capacity / in my fantasies / in my abilities / in my love for beautiful people / regardless of gender.”

— Dajenya, “Bisexual Lesbian,” Bisexual Politics (1995)

“The bisexual community should be a place where lines are erased. Bisexuality dismisses, disproves, and defies dichotomies. It connotes a loss of rigidity and absolutes. It is an inclusive term. […] Despite how we choose to identify ourselves, the bisexual community still seems a logical place for transsexuals to find a home and a voice. Bisexuals need to educate themselves on transgender issues. At the same time, bisexuals should be doing education and outreach to the transsexual community, offering transsexuals an arena to further explore their sexualities and choices. Such outreach would also help break down gender barriers and misconceptions within the bisexual community itself. […] If the bisexual community turns its back on transsexuals, it is essentially turning its back on itself.”

— K. Martin-Damon, “Essay for the Inclusion of Transsexuals,” Bisexual Politics (1995)

“As bisexuals, we are necessarily prompted to come up with non-binary ways of thinking about sexual orientation. For many of us, this has also prompted a move toward non-binary ways of thinking about sex and gender.”

— Rebecca Kaplan, “Your Fence Is Sitting on Me: The Hazards of Binary Thinking,” Bisexual Politics (1995)

“And so we love each other and wish love for each other, regardless (to the extent possible) of gender and sex.”

— Oma Izakson, “If Half of You Dodges a Bullet, All of You Ends Up Dead,” Bisexual Politics (1995)

“Similarly, the modern bisexual movement has dissolved the strict dichotomy between ‘gay’ and ‘straight’ (without invalidating our homosexual or heterosexual friends and lovers.) We have insisted on our desire and freedom to love people of all genders.”

— Sunfrog, “Pansies Against Patriarchy,” Bisexual Politics (1995)

“In the bisexual movement as a whole, transgendered individuals are celebrated not only as an aspect of the diversity of the bisexual community, but because, like bisexuals, they do not fit neatly into dichotomous categories. Jim Frazin wrote that ‘the construction and destruction of gender’ is a subject of mutual interest to bisexuals and transsexuals who are, therefore, natural allies.”

— Paula C. Rust, Bisexuality and the Challenge to Lesbian Politics: Sex, Loyalty, and Revolution (1995)

“Is bisexuality even about gender at all? ‘I don’t desire a gender,’ 25[-]year-old Matthew Ehrlich says.”

— Deborah Block-Schwenk, “Newsweek Comes Out as Supportive,” Bi Women (1995)

“One woman expressed the desire to elide categorical differences by reporting that she finds ‘relationships with men and women to be quite similar — the differences are in the individuals, not in their sex.’ Others expressed their ideal as choosing partners ‘regardless of gender…’”

— Amber Ault, Ambiguous Identity in an Unambiguous Sex/Gender Structure: The Case of Bisexual Women (1996)

“Most conceptual models of bisexuality explain it in terms of conflictual or confused identity development, [r-slur] sexual development, or a defence against ‘true’ heterosexuality or homosexuality. It has been suggested, however, that some individuals can eroticize more than one love object regardless of gender, that sexual patterns could be more variable and fluid than theoretical notions tend to allow, and that sexual desire may not be as fixed and static in individuals as is assumed by ‘essential’ sexual categories and identities.”

— E.Antonio de Moya and Rafael García, “AIDS and the Enigma of Bisexuality in the Dominican Republic,” Bisexualities and AIDS: International Perspectives (1996)

“I’m bi. That simply means I can be attracted to a person without consideration of their gender.”

— E. Grace Noonan, “Out on the Job: DEC Open to Bi Concerns,” Bi Women (1996)

“BiCon should accept transgender people as being on their chosen gender, this includes any single gender events.”

— BiCon Guidelines (1998)⁴

“The probability is that your relationship is based on, or has nestled itself into something based more on the relationship between two identities than on the relationship between two people. That’s what we’re taught: man/man, woman/woman, woman/man, top/bottom, butch/femme, man/woman/man, etc. We’re never taught person/person. That’s what the bisexual movement has been trying to teach us. We’re never taught that, so we fall into the trap of ‘you don’t love me, you love my identity.’”

— Kate Bornstein, My Gender Workbook (1998)

“Transsexuality and bisexuality both occupy heretical thresholds of human experience. We confound, illuminate and explore border regions. We challenge because we appear to break inviolable laws. Laws that feel ‘natural.’ And quite possibly, since we are not the norm or even average, it is likely that one function we have is to subvert those norms or laws; to break down the sleepy and unimaginative law of averages.”

— Max Wolf Valerio, “The Joker Is Wild: Changing Sex + Other Crimes of Passion,” Anything That Moves (1998)

“From the earliest years of the bi community, significant numbers of TV/TS and transgender people have always been involved with it. The bi community served as a kind of refuge for people who felt excluded from the established gay and lesbian communities.”

— Kevin Lano, “Bisexuality and Transgenderism,” Anything That Moves (1998)

“A large group of bisexual women reported in a Ms. magazine article that when they fell in love it was with a person rather than a gender…”

— Betty Fairchild and Nancy Hayward, “What is Gay?”, Now that You Know: A Parents’ Guide to Understanding Their Gay and Lesbian Children (1998)

“Over the past fifteen years, however, [one Caucasian man] has realized that he is ‘attracted to people — not their sexual identity’ and no longer cares whether his partners are male or female. He has kept his Bi identity and now uses it to refer to his attraction to people regardless of their gender.”

— Paula C. Rust, “Sexual Identity and Bisexual Identities,” Queer Studies: A Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Anthology (1998)

“Bisexual — being emotionally and physically attracted to all genders.”

— The Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, “Out of the Past: Teacher’s Guide” (1999)

“There were a lot of transvestites and transsexuals who came to [the San Francisco Bisexual Center in the 1970s], because they were not going to be turned away because of the way they dressed.”

— David Lourea, “Bisexual Histories in San Francisco in the 1970s and Early 1980s,” 2000 Journal of Bisexuality

“Respondent #658 said that both are irrelevant; ‘who I am sexually attracted to has nothing to do with their sex/gender,’ whereas Respondent #418 focuses specifically on the irrelevance of sex: I find myself attracted to either men or women. The outside appendages are rather immaterial, as it is the inner being I am attracted to. […] Respondent #495 recalled that “the best definition I’ve ever heard is someone who is attracted to people & gender/sex is not an issue or factor in that attraction.” […] As Respondent #269 put it, “I do not exclude a person from consideration as a possible love interest on the basis of sex/gender.” […] For most individuals who call themselves bisexual, bisexual identity reflects feelings of attraction, sexual and otherwise, toward women and men or toward other people regardless of their gender.”

— Paula C. Rust, “Two Many and Not Enough: The Meanings of Bisexual Identities,” 2000 Journal of Bisexuality

“Giovanni’s distinction between what he wants and who he wants resonates with the language of many of today’s bisexuals, who insist that they fall in love with a person, not a gender.”

— Marjorie Garber, Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life (2000)

“The message of bisexuality — that people are more than their gender; that we accept all people, regardless of Kinsey scale rating; that we embrace people regardless of age, weight, clothing, hair style, gender expression, race, religion and actually celebrate our diversity — that message is my gospel. I travel, write, do web sites — all to let people know that the bisexual community will accept you, will let you be who you are, and will not expect you to fit in a neat little gender/sexuality box.”

— Wendy Curry, “Celebrating Bisexuality,” Bi Women (2000)

“But really, just like I can’t believe in the heterosexist binary gender system, I have difficulty accepting wholeheartedly any one spiritual tradition.”

— Anonymous, “A Methodical Awakening,” Bi Women (2002)

“But there are also many bis, such as myself, for whom gender has no place in the list of things that attract them to a person. For instance, I like people who are good listeners, who understand me and have interests similar to mine, and I am attracted to people with a little padding here and there, who have fair skin and dark hair (although I’m pretty flexible when it comes to looks). ‘Male’ or ‘female’ are not anywhere to be found in the list of qualities I find attractive.”

— Karin Baker, “Bisexual Basics,” Solidarity-us.org (2002)

“Bisexual: A person who is attracted to people regardless of gender (a person does not have to have a relationship to be bisexual!)”

— Bowling Green State University, “Queer Glossary” (2003)

“The bisexual community seems to be disappearing. Not that there won’t always be people around who like to have sex with people of all genders, the community, as I’ve discussed in this book, is a different matter altogether.”

— William Burleson, Bi America: Myths, Truths, and Struggles of an Invisible Community (2005)

“Although bisexuals in general may or may not be more enlightened about gender issues, there has been, and continues to be, in most places around the country a strong connection between the transgender and the bisexual communities. Indeed, the two communities have been strong allies. Why is this? One reason certainly is, as I mentioned earlier, the significant number of people who are both bisexual and transgender.”

— William Burleson, Bi America: Myths, Truths, and Struggles of an Invisible Community (2005)

“Amy: […] But my friend’s question got me thinking: given the fact that so many bisexual friends and community members reject the idea that gender has to have a relation to attraction and behavior, why should I reject the bi label? Why did her question even come up? How relevant is gender to the concept of bisexuality? If bisexuals like me don’t care about gender the way monosexuals do, why would my identity label exclude my lovers’ gender variations?

Kim: …Like you, I’m a bi person who sees gender as fluid rather than fixed or dichotomous… I’ve also felt outside pressure to reject my bi identity based on the idea that it perpetuates the gender binary: woman/man. However, this idea reduces bisexual to ‘bi’ and ‘sexual’ and disregards the fact that it represents a history, a community, a substantial body of writing, and the right of the bisexual community to define ‘bisexuality’ on its own terms. Most importantly, this idea disregards how vital these things are for countless bi people. Identifying as bi doesn’t inherently mean anything, and it definitely doesn’t mean a person only recognizes two genders. However, to assume that bi-identified people exclude transgender, gender nonconforming (GNC), and genderqueer people also assumes they are not trans, GNC, or genderqueer themselves, when in fact, many are.”

— Kim Westrick and Amy Andre, “Semantic Wars,” Bi Women (2009)

“The [intracommunity biphobia] problem is very serious, because bisexuals, along with trans folks, are the rejects among rejects, that is to say, those who suffer from discrimination (gays and lesbians) discriminate against bis and trans folks. It is for this reason, at least here in Mexico City, that Opción Bi allies itself with transsexuals, transgender people and transvestites, and works together with them whenever possible. It seems to me we are closer to the trans communities than to the lesbian and gay ones.”

— Robyn Ochs, “Bis Around the World: Myriam Brito, Mexican City,” Bi Women (2009)

“I introduce myself as bisexual, because I am attracted to people, across gender lines, and ‘bisexual’ comes closest to explaining that.”

— B.J. Epstein, “Bye Bi Labels,” Bi Women (2009)

“Bisexuality is not some kind of middle-ground between heterosexuality and homosexuality; rather I imagine it as a way to erode the fixed systems of gender and sexual identity which always result in guilt, fear, lies[,] and discrimination.”

— Carlos Iván Suárez García, “What Is Bisexuality?”, Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World, Second Edition (2009)⁵

“To me, bisexuality is a matter of loving and accepting everyone equally — seeing the beauty in the human soul, rather than in the shell that houses it. Being transgender, I know firsthand that love between two people can transcend — even embrace — what society regards as taboo. Bisexuality is a mindset of revolution, a mindset of change. We’re creating a brave new world of acceptance and love for all people, of all the myriad genders and methods of sexual expression that this world contains.

— Jessica, “What Is Bisexuality?”, Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World, Second Edition (2009)

“Bisexuality (whatever that means) for me is about the ability to relate to all people at a deep emotional level. It is an openness of the heart. It is the absence of limits, especially those that are defined by the other person’s sex.”

— Andrea Toselli, “Coming Out Bisexual,” Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World, Second Edition (2009)

“Considering my personal preferences, calling myself ‘bisexual’ covers a wider territory regarding my capacity to fall in love and to share the life of a couple with another person without taking into consideration questions of gender.”

— Aida, “Why Bi?”, Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World, Second Edition (2009)

“I’m sure I’m bisexual because I can’t ignore the allure and loveliness of a wide spectrum of people — differentiating by gender never seemed attractive or even logical to me. […] For me bisexuality means I don’t stop attraction, caring or relationship potential based on gender; I can have sex, flirtation or warm ongoing love with anyone (not everyone, okay? That part’s a myth). […] And we have enough trouble splitting the human race into two halves, assigning mandatory characteristics, and then torturing people to fill arbitrary roles — I consider that a wrong and inaccurate way to understand human potential, and that’s also why I’m bi. Men and women are different? Honey, everyone I’ve ever met has been different. I think being bisexual lets me see each person as an individual.”

— Carol Queen, “Why Bi?”, Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World, Second Edition (2009)

“But to hell with respectability: the real point about being bisexual, a friend pointed out, is that you’re asking someone other than ‘What sex is this person?’”

— Tom Robinson, “Bisexual Community,” Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World, Second Edition (2009)

“Being bisexual… allows us to love each other regardless of our gender…”

— Jorge Pérez Castiñeira, “Bisexual Community,” Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World, Second Edition (2009)

“‘Hello, my name is Jaqueline Applebee… if you want to see me later, or just want a kiss, let me know as I’m bisexual, and you’re all gorgeous!’ […] I have loved men, women, and those who don’t identify with any gender.”

— Jaqueline Applebee, “Bisexual Community,” Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World, Second Edition (2009)

“[T]here’s nothing binary about bisexuals. Bi is just a provisional term reminding us, however awkwardly, that when it comes to loving, family and tribe, margins and middle intertwine.”

— Loraine Hutchins, “Bisexual Politics,” Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World, Second Edition (2009)

“My bi identity is not about who I am having sex with; it is not about the genitals of my past, current, or future lovers; it is not about choosing potential partners or excluding partners based on what is between their legs. It is about potential — the potential to love, to be attracted to, to be intimate with, share a life with a person because of who they are. I see a person, not a gender… I demand to be free to legally marry anyone without regard to their gender.”

— Rifka Reichler, “Bisexual Politics,” Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World, Second Edition (2009)

“To me, being bisexual means having a sexuality that isn’t limited by the sex or gender of the people you are attracted to. You just recognize that you can be attracted to a person for very individual reasons.”

— Deb Morley, “Bi of the Month: An Interview with Ellyn Ruthstorm,” Bi Women (2010)

“Q: Which gender person does a bisexual love? A: Any gender she wants.”

— Marcia Deihl, “Do Clothes Make the Woman?”, Bi Women (2010)

“While the bisexual manifesto being written following a workshop at London BiCon is still being worked on, the tweeters set to work on a shorter, snappier alternative… ‘Love is about what’s in your hearts, not your underwear.’ […] ‘We aren’t more confused, greedy, indecisive or lustful than anyone else. We like people based on personality not gender.’ ‘[W]e believe that lust is more important than anatomy.’ ‘What you have between your legs doesn’t matter. What you have between your ears does[.]’”

— Jen Yockney, “#bisexualmanifesto,” Bi Community News (2010)

“As briefly mentioned above and interlinked with the notion of ‘importance of individuality’, the binary concepts of gender and the stereotypes surrounding these is a notion which each of the [bisexual] women interviewed fundamentally reject. The participants here were keen to distance themselves and their experiences of romantic relationships from any notion of hetero-normative gender boundaries, although they did agree that unfortunately these gender boundaries still exist in contemporary society. Most participants do not link gender boundaries with concepts of romantic love; it was stated that although sometimes gender boundaries can be seen in romantic relationships this is primarily down to socialisation and the unnecessary importance that hetero-normative society places on gender roles. Therefore, gender boundaries seen in romantic relationships are not constrained by gender but instead are a product of gendered socialisation. For these women, claiming their bisexual identity and their romantic relationships illustrates the futility of binary concepts of gender as it is about individual preference or style rather than gendered norms values and expectations.”

— Emma Smith, “Bisexuality, Gender & Romantic Relationships,” Bi Community News (2012)

“And anyway, I’m generally not sexually attracted to men or women. I’m into all sorts of things, but a person being a man or a woman isn’t a turn-on. Certainly not in the same way it’s a turn off to a gay or straight person. I’m never going to think “Wow, Zie is really sexy, shame they’re a ____” because what turns me off isn’t gender.”

— Marcus, “What makes a bisexual?”, Bi Community News (2012)

“I am bisexual. That does not depend on my dating experience or my attraction specifications. It is not affected by my dislike for genitals (of any shape). All it describes is how gender affects attraction for me: it doesn’t. I am attracted to people regardless of gender, and I am bisexual.”

— Emma Jones, “Not Like the Others,” Bi Women (2013)

“I’m generally okay with ‘attraction to more than one gender’ [as a definition of ‘bisexuality’]. I think that the ‘more than’ part is important because there are definitely more than two genders. Some people like the definition ‘attraction regardless of gender’ and I like that too because it suggests that things other than gender can be equally, or more, important in who we are attracted to. I like to question why our idea of sexuality is so bound up with gender of partners. Why not encompass other aspects such as the roles we like to take sexually, or how active or passive we like to be, or what practices we enjoy? Why is our gender, and the gender of our partners, seen as such a vital part of who we are?”

— Robyn Ochs, “Around the World: Meg Barker,” Bi Women (2013)

“It may sound crazy but I’d never thought that carefully about the ‘bi’ part of the word meaning ‘two’. I’d always understood bisexuality to mean what Bobbie Petford reports as the preferred definition from within the UK bi communities: changeable ‘sexual and emotional attraction to people of any sex, where gender may not be a defining factor’. […] Participants in the BiCon discussion rejected the ‘you are a boy or you are a girl…binary’ (Lanei), all arguing that they were not straightforwardly ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’.

[…] Because they discarded the dichotomous understanding of gender, participants rejected the ideas that they were attracted to ‘both’ men and women, arguing that they did not perceive gender as the defining feature in their attraction. Kim said: I don’t think actually gender is that relevant…gender is like eye colour, and I notice it sometimes, and sometimes it can be a bit of a feature it’s like “oo, that’s nice” and I have some sorts of gender types, but it’s about as important as something like eye colour.

[…] As I came to realise that you can actually be bisexual…your desires and your attractions can wax and wane as time goes on, I realised that there was a parallel to gender: you don’t have to clearly define, you don’t have to cast off the male to be female and vice versa. Despite the fact that the conventional definition of the word ‘bisexual’ could be seen as perpetuating a dichotomous concept of gender, being attracted to both sexes, Georgina concluded that it could challenge conventional understandings of gender…”

— “Bisexuality & Gender,” Bi Community News (2014)

“My fellow bisexuals… I stand before you as an unapologetic, outspoken, bisexual activist who has intimately loved women, men and transgender persons throughout my life span of 72 years…”

— ABilly S. Jones-Hennin, “If Loving You is Wrong, Then I Don’t Want to be Right,” Bisexual Organizing Project (2014)

“Coming out as bisexual in the late 80s, when I first came across the label pansexual it didn’t involve any kind of gender nuance: it was how someone explained their bisexuality feeling interwoven with their Pagan beliefs. Back then the ‘bi’ in bisexual didn’t get talked about as having some great limiting weight of ‘two’, it was an “and” in a world that saw things as strictly either/or. As I was pushing at boundaries of discussion around gender and sexuality with people in the 90s I’d sometimes quip that I was ‘bisexual, I just haven’t decided which two genders yet’. When I started to come across people saying that bi was limiting because it meant two, a bit of me did think: oh lord, were they taking me seriously?”

— Jen, “Bi or Pan?”, Bi Community News (2015)

“Pansexuality is sometimes defined as attraction to people of all genders, which is also the experience of many bisexual people. More often than not, however, people define their pansexuality in relation to bisexuality. In response to the question: ‘What does pansexual mean?’ I’ve seen countless people reply: ‘I’m attracted to people of more than two genders. Not bisexual.’ The implication is that bisexual means binary attraction: men and women only.

Since I came out in the late 90s, I haven’t seen one bi activist organisation define bisexuality as attraction solely to men and women. Bi and trans* issues began to grow in recognition at the same time. When I use ‘bi’ to refer to two types of attraction, I mean attraction to people of my gender and attraction to people of other genders. […] …it’s so upsetting to see internalised biphobia leading many pansexuals, many of whom until recently identified as bisexual, telling us we’re still not queer enough. Gay and straight people aren’t being pressurised into giving up the language they use to describe their attractions and neither should they be. As usual it’s only bisexuals being shamed into erasing our identities and our history.

The most frustrating thing to me about the current bi vs pan discourse is that it’s framed as a cisgender vs genderqueer debate. This has never been the case. In reality, many genderqueer people identify as bisexual… To say bisexuality is binary erases the identities of these revolutionary bisexual genderqueer activists, and it erases the identity of every marginalised genderqueer bisexual they’re fighting for.”

— Sali, “Bi or Pan?”, Bi Community News (2015)

“Currently some pansexual people argue that bi is ‘too binary’ and that bisexuals are focused on conventional male/female gender expressions only. This is then taken to mean that bisexuals are more transphobic, whereas pansexuals aren’t locked into a binary so they are open to all gender expressions. However we believe this is not the case since bisexuals: ‘… do not comply with our society’s imposed framework of attraction, we must consciously construct our own framework and examine how and why we are attracted (or not) to others. This process automatically acknowledges the artificiality of the gender binary and gendered norms and expectations for behavior. Indeed, the mere act of explaining our definition of bisexual to a nonbisexual person requires us to address the falsity of the gender binary head on.’

We do not deny that in actuality some bisexuals are too bound by traditional binary gender assumptions, just as many gay, lesbian, and heterosexual, and some trans people are too. Bisexuals, however, have been in the forefront of exploring desire and connection beyond sex and gender. When anyone accuses bisexuals, uniquely, as more binary and more transphobic than other identity groups, such targeting is not only inappropriate but is also rooted in biphobia — a fear and hatred of bi people for who we are and how we love.

Confusing the issue are the definitions in resource glossaries defining bisexual, most surprisingly in newly released books including textbooks. [...] These definitions arbitrarily define bisexual in a binary way and then present pansexual as a non-binary alternative. This opens the doorway to a judgment that pansexual identity is superior to bisexual identity because it ‘opens possibilities’ and is a ‘more fluid and much broader form of sexual orientation’. This judgmental conclusion is unacceptable and dangerous as it lends itself to perpetuating bisexual erasure. The actual lived non-binary history of the bisexual community and movement and the inclusive nature and community spirit of bisexuals are eradicated when a binary interpretation of our name for ourselves is arbitrarily assumed.”

— Lani Ka’ahumanu and Loraine Hutchins, “Bi Organizing Since 1991,” Bi Any Other Name (New 25th Anniversary Edition) (2015)

“Herself a bisexual woman, [Nan Goldin] found that drag queens, to her a third gender, were perfect companions. By transgressing the bounds of the binary, they had created identities that were infinitely more meaningful.”

— Alicia Diane Ridout, “Gender Euphoria: Photography, Fashion, and Gender Nonconformity in The East Village” (2015)

“It is the job of those of us with links to children to continue to promote the language of bisexuality and validity of attraction to all genders — especially when that attraction changes over time.”

— Bethan, “Practical Bi Awareness: Teaching and LGBT,” Bi Community News (2016)

“The persistent use of the Kinsey Scale is another issue. Originally asking about the genders of people you have had sex with, more recently it gets deployed in more sophisticated ways which distinguish between sexual attraction, romantic attraction, and sexual activity. Nonetheless it is woefully inadequate in accounting for attraction to genders other than male and female — a key part of many bisexual people’s experience.”

— Milena Popova, “Scrap the Kinsey Scale!”, Bi Community News (2016)

“Robyn Ochs states where the EuroBiCon also stands for: bisexuality goes beyond the binary gender thinking. There are more genders than the obsolete idea of two: male and female.”

— Erwin, “Robyn Ochs: ‘Bisexuality goes beyond the binary gender thinking’,” European Bisexual Conference (2016)

“I call myself bisexual because it includes attraction to all genders (same as mine; different from mine).”

— Rev. Francesca Bongiorno Fortunato, “Label Me With a B,” Bi Women Quarterly (2016)

“Loving a person rather than a man or a woman: this is Runa Wehrli’s philosophy. At 18, she defines herself as bisexual and speaks about it openly. […] She believes that love should not be confined by the barriers put up by society. ‘I fall in love with a person and not a gender,’ she says. […] Now single and just out of high school, she is leaving the door open to love, while still refusing to give it a gender.”

— Katy Romy, “‘I fall in love with a person and not a gender’,” Swissinfo (2017)

“I’m bisexual so I can’t really come out as gay. When I’m gay I’m very gay. And when I’m with men then, you know, I’m with men. I don’t fall in love with people because of their gender.”

— Nan Goldin for Sleek Magazine (2017)

“I use the word bisexual — a lot / I’ve marched in the Pride parade with the Toronto Bisexual Network / I post Bi pride & Bi awareness articles all over social media / I’m seeking out dates of any and all genders / (not to prove anything to anyone, but simply because I want to)

— D’Arcy L. J. White, “Coming Out as Bisexual,” Bi Women Quarterly (2017)

“BISEXUAL — Someone who is attracted to more than one gender, someone who is attracted to two or more genders, someone who is attracted to the same and other genders, or someone who is attracted to people regardless of their gender. […] Other words with the same definition of bisexual, though they have different connotations, are ‘pansexual,’ ‘polysexual,’ and ‘omnisexual.’”

— Morgan Lev Edward Holleb, The A-Z of Gender and Sexuality: From Ace to Ze (2018)

“In the heat of July [2009], and finally equipped with a word for “attracted to people regardless of gender”, I bounded out of Brighton station with that same best friend. At the time, I didn’t know that we bisexuals have our own flag…”

— Lois Shearing, “Why London Pride’s first bi pride float was so important,” The Queerness (2018)

“Being bisexual does not assume people are only attracted to just two genders. Bisexuality can be limitless for many and pay no regard to the sex or gender of a person.”

— “The Bi+ Manifesto” (2018)

“I realized I was bisexual at age fifteen, but although I am attracted to folks of any gender, I’ve always had a preference for men.”

— Mark Mulligan, “Fight and Flight: ‘Butch Flight,’ Trans Men, and the Elusive Question of Authenticity,” Nursing Clio (2018)

“Bisexuality just became, to me, about that openness — that openness to anything, and any potential to any type of relationship, regardless of gender. Gender is no longer a disqualifier for me. It’s about the person.”

— Rob Cohen, “Where Are All the Bi Guys?,” Two Bi Guys (2019)

“Oh no, Mom. I’m not a lesbian. Actually, I’m bisexual. That means that gender doesn’t determine whom I’m attracted to.”

— Annie Bliss, “Older and Younger,” Bi Women Quarterly (2019)

“A bisexual woman, for example, may have sex with, date or marry another woman, a man or someone who is non-binary. […] If you think you might be bisexual, try asking yourself these questions: …Can I picture myself dating, having sex with, or being married to any gender/sex?”

— “I Think I Might Be Bisexual,” Advocates for Youth

“Although it’s true that people have all kinds of different attractions to different kinds of people, assuming that all bisexuals are never attracted to trans or genderqueer folk is harmful, not only to bi individuals, but to trans and genderqueer individuals who choose to label themselves as bi.”

— “Labels,” Bisexual Resource Center

“My own understanding of bisexuality has changed dramatically over the years. I used to define bisexuality as ‘the potential to be attracted to people regardless of their gender.’ […] Alberto is attracted to the poles, to super-masculine guys and super-feminine girls. Others are attracted to masculinity and/or femininity, regardless of a person’s sex. Some of us who identify as bisexual are in fact ‘gender-blind.’ For others — in fact for me — it’s androgyny or the blending of genders that compels.”

— Robin Ochs, “What Does It Mean to Be Bi+?”, Bisexual Resource Center

“… bisexual people are those for whom gender is not the first criteria in determining attraction.”

— Illinois Department of Public Health, “Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Youth Suicide”

“Bisexuality is sexual/romantic attraction to people regardless of sex or gender.”

— “Bisexual FAQ,” Kvartir

“Please also note that attraction to both same and different means attraction to all. Bisexuality is inherently inclusive of everyone, regardless of sex or gender.

In everyday language, depending on the speaker’s culture, background, and politics, that translates into a variety of everyday definitions such as:

Attraction to men and women

Attraction to all sexes or genders

Attraction to same and other genders

Love beyond gender

Attraction regardless of sex or gender”

— American Institute of Bisexuality, “What Is Bisexuality?,” Bi.org

“This idea [that bisexuality reinforces a false gender binary] has its roots in the anti-science, anti-Enlightenment philosophy that has ironically found a home within many Queer Studies departments at universities across the Anglophone world. […] Bisexuality is an orientation for which sex and gender are not a boundary to attraction… Over time, our society’s concept of human sex and gender may well change. For bis, people for whom sex/gender is already not a boundary, any such change would have little effect.”

— American Institute of Bisexuality, “Questions,” Bi.org

Gender-expansive (or -fluid, or -blind) descriptions of bisexuality are nothing new — and with the exception of the Getting Bi quotes, the above compilation is just what I was able to find online. Arguably, the concept of excluding genders never even crossed the mind of many twentieth-century bisexuals — not just because “nonbinary genders hadn’t entered the mainstream” — but simply because many bisexuals understand bisexuality itself as “beyond” gender. Go to any bisexual organization and they’ll tell you bisexuality is broad and can include anyone.

Of course, the above quotes do not reflect the beliefs of every bisexual — no single quote can do that. These quotes were certainly not the only variation of bisexual-given definitions of bisexuality. I’m only pointing out that the “both” descriptions are similarly not the only ones that exist.

Even then, before wider knowledge of and language for nonbinary identities, attraction to “both” men and women was attraction regardless of gender. “Both” does not purposefully keep anyone out; it only (mistakenly) assumes how many groups there are. Gender not being a make-or-break, or not caring about gender in general, doesn’t depend on how many genders there are.⁶

Not to mention, all sexualities automatically include some nonbinary people — “nonbinary” isn’t merely a third gender. The mere notion that someone could just “not be attracted” to nonbinary people as a group completely misunderstands nonbinary identity.

Some bisexuals “see a person, not a gender,” while others, like me, see a person with a gender (that doesn’t stop us from finding them attractive), if they have one. Being bisexual has made me see people in more gender-neutral ways. Our experiences are far too vast to pin down, and there’s immense beauty in that vagueness.

Also, while bisexual activism and transgender activism have frequently overlapped, plenty of cisgender bisexuals are transphobic. But this is because all sexualities have transphobes. Even if we coined a sexual identity that only transgender people could use, some identifying with it would still likely be transphobes. Why allow transphobic bisexuals to erase the attitudes of all the bisexuals before and after them?

I find it incredibly odd that people now task bisexuals with proving our inclusivity considering that, for decades, we never had to. We had always (i.e., consistently throughout history, not as in every bisexual) been warping gender norms, but it was never to debunk a myth or make ourselves look good; it was just how we were. That hasn’t changed.

One of the predominant stereotypes is still that we’re indiscriminate sluts willing to sleep with anyone, but somehow there’s a new wave of folks insisting that we require our partners to obey the gender binary. I have a severely hard time believing this conclusion is based on reality. Almost all attempts to redefine bisexuality as binary come from people who don’t identify as such.

Imagine if we performed this revisionism with the word “gay.” For this example, I’ll use “gay” to describe gay men in particular.

“Gay” only means exclusive attraction to men, so the people who use that word only like cisgender men. I’m androsexual, which means I like cisgender, transgender, and nonbinary men.

Doesn’t that sound ridiculous? So why do we only apply this rhetoric to bisexuals? (It couldn’t possibly be because of biphobia, could it?)

While it’s obviously unrealistic to say that no bisexual person has ever been transphobic, bisexual orientation is not, and never has been, about exclusion. Considering that bisexual activists were seldom (if ever) focused on the prefix in the word “bisexual,” this recent fixation people have on trying to find a way to use “two” in its definition is misguided.

Begging to differ is ignorant and arrogant, contradicting not only history but many current bisexuals who understand bisexuality as all-encompassing. Acting like it’s uniquely binary or inherently limited in any way is indisputably false and biphobic. Please stop speaking over us and erasing our history. It, like the bisexual community itself, is bountiful, beautiful, and never going away.

Here’s one final quote that, while a bit unrelated to the rest, I particularly enjoy:

“I understand bisexuality not as a mixture of homosexuality and heterosexuality as Kinsey did, nor as a particular sexuality on an equal footing with homosexuality and heterosexuality, but as a holistic view of human sexuality, in which all aspects related to human sexuality are taken into account.”

— Miguel Obradors-Campos, “Deconstructing Biphobia” (2011)

[mishapeesha]

hello friends! i have decided to start writing a fanfiction (although I am......not that experienced with writing, but I will trY)

anyways! the pairing is obviously deancas, and since I’ve just written the first chapter, the tags will be limited until I further develop the story. The rating will change if needed, trigger warnings will be added if necessary, and so on!

the summary: 

A package is mailed to Castiel Novak, a 27 year old with unknowingly very limited knowledge on a certain aspect of his life. It’s filled with what seems like hundreds of letters all to him, a single person. Memories and confessions of love are penned within those letters. As time goes on, he feels drawn to the person on the other end and sets out to find them – and the letter’s inevitable true destination that ties the final loose end in Castiel's life.

ao3 link!: 

https://archiveofourown.org/works/28625316/chapters/70161738

i would really appreciate any feedback, or just boosting this would be pretty cool too! 

for anyone that doesn’t wanna read on ao3, chapter 1 starts below!

September 18th, 1992

           Castiel’s chest bounced as he jogged down the stairs aligned in a wide spiral, his eyebrow quirked up in confusion as his doorbell buzzed repeatedly with barely a second in between every ring. He winced at the harsh sound of it, noticing how military-like it was in the way that the alarm went off. It was always a task of his to get it changed, but he never got the chance to. Either because he didn’t feel like it, or because his memory disallowed him to remember something as unimportant as a doorbell.  

           “Coming!” He called out to whoever bothered to show up at his house so early in the morning. Castiel paused beside the bookcase placed beside his door, glancing at the mirror in order to adjust the loose strands of hair that spiked in different directions with the frantic brush of his fingers. He let out a sigh as his gaze shifted towards the reflection of the wall clock behind him, seeing that it was barely 7:05 am. Just as he turned to face the door, that annoying noise rang in his ears once more. Maybe one day he’d go through with that mental task of changing the buzz to something more audibly pleasant.

           His fingers wrapped around the metal doorknob, and a click emerged as he swung the door open, being immediately met with a man who he had never seen in his life. His eyes quickly scanned over the man, noticing that he was in uniform, so he classified him as harmless. What damage could a mailman do? Hand him a letter and give him a papercut? Though there was a look on the mailman’s face that Castiel couldn’t quite place. He was torn between thinking it was some sort of discomfort towards Cas personally, or just general exhaustion because it could just be that he was tired. There wasn’t really anything enjoyable about driving to several homes, handing gifts to so many people while barely surviving off of minimum wage and receiving nothing in return.

           “Castiel Novak?” The man asked, shifting in his spot momentarily as he held a medium sized box underneath one arm, and a clipboard in the other hand. Castiel took note that his name was Thomas after noticing the nametag attached to the pocket on the fabric of his blouse.

           “Yes, that’s me.” Castiel replied, opening the door slightly more after feeling more comfortable to do so. He furrowed his eyebrows as he looked past Thomas, wondering if anyone was following him, or if they were being watched. They seemed to be alone, so Cas stopped tapping his fingers against the wooden door, although he hadn’t realized that he began to do that in the first place. “Is there anything that you need of me?”

           “Well,” Thomas began with a nod. He cleared his throat and placed the clipboard in between his legs to use both of his hands, and then offered Cas the box he held. “We’ve had this in the office for a while now, but it was specified to be delivered on this day to this address, and to you.” He explained, biting his lower lip in what Cas took as some sort of minimal panic, or uneasiness. “The sender wishes to remain anonymous, however.” He added, as if it were nothing unusual.

           “Anonymous?” Castiel questioned and drew a frown onto his face. He shook his head and reverted back to closing the door, but he kept a smaller gap so that the two of them could still communicate. “I will not be accepting a box from someone who doesn’t wish that their identity is revealed. It could be anything, and I am not willing to risk my safety.” He deadpanned before he glanced down at the box, not trusting whatever was in it. Why would anyone refuse to mention their name unless they were someone dangerous and not to be messed with?

           Thomas stared at Cas for a few moments as he was now met with the confusion of what to do with the box now that the apparent receiver was blatantly rejecting it. He swallowed hard as an uncomfortable smile curled the corners of his mouth.

“Mr. Novak, I can assure you nothing that will hurt you is in this box. Not only is it very light, but it would also be a shame if this was thrown out. As I mentioned, this has been collecting dust in our office. It has been for the last four years.”

           Castiel froze at Thomas’ words, struck with surprise. He had absolutely no idea who sent the box, what was in the box, or why it was sent in the first place. Cas was Cas. The person he spoke to the most was his brother, and even then, he barely saw Gabriel to begin with. They spoke less and less as the years passed, and so Castiel was alone for the majority of the time. So, he couldn’t quite process how he had a package delivered to him, when he knew his brother barely had the energy to stop by his house for a quick hello. He was a generally distant individual. An outsider to himself, his family, and others.

This did not add up.

           “Four years you say?” He asked, tilting his head to the side as he looked between Thomas and the box, earning a nod in reply. He sighed in defeat and once again, opened the door. “You really can’t tell me who sent it? Surely you must know.” Cas said, raising his eyebrow as he finally decided to take the box from Thomas’ hold. “It isn’t heavy.” He pointed out in confirmation to what Thomas previously stated, now more so curious to know what he was sent rather than worried.

           “I’m not at liberty to say. I’m sorry.” Thomas responded and rubbed the back of his neck before he remembered to pull the clipboard from between his legs. “Could you sign this, please?”

           Castiel took the pen and scribbled a random signature on the piece of paper, nodding at Thomas who offered a small smile at Cas. “Thank you.” He murmured quietly, clutching the box to his chest.

“Of course. Have a good day.”

           “And you as well.”

           A creak erupted from the door as Castiel let it close on itself, and eventually the atmosphere fell back into silence. But suddenly, he became almost hyper-aware of his surroundings. He couldn’t tell whether it was his actual heartbeat that he could hear, or if he was overhearing some rhythmic beat from his neighbor’s home nearby. And he definitely grew irritated at the loud ticking sound of the clock on the wall that seemed to follow him as he dragged himself through the hallway to the living room.

           The walls seemed to follow his every movement, making Cas feel judged and uneasy. And just for a moment, a sense of guilt rose in him. There was no source for it, yet there was some inexplainable physical tug to what Cas held in his hands, allowing negative emotions to faintly flood into him. He was convinced that his thoughts echoed off those same walls, as any word spoken in his mind just sounded too intense and loud in his ears.

           Cas sat down on the couch, sinking into the mattress as he leaned forward to place the box on the coffee table in front of him. His bottom lip became a victim of his anxious habits where his teeth would peel at the loose, dry skin, drawing blood that lightly pooled into his mouth and presented a metallic taste.

           “What could you be?” He spoke out loud to himself, picking at the loose thread poking out of the couch. He exhaled and used his nails to tear off the tape sealing the box shut. It looked like an average box, which made any assumptions as to what could be inside completely impossible to Cas. It’s not like he expected a bomb to be inside, but he also didn’t expect a proper gift. So, then what? What made a box so big, yet so light at the same time? What was so important that it absolutely had to be sent to Cas four years later?

           Once he managed to tear the seals off, he took in a deep breath. He didn’t know what he would be getting himself into, and yet he knew there was absolutely no way he’d be able to keep himself from looking inside. So, before he knew it or could hesitate, the box was opened, revealing the last thing Cas would have expected.

Letters.

Lots of them.

           “What the hell..?” He breathed out, flipping the box over so that the letters scattered out across the table. His eyes widened in both confusion and shock, and he immediately reached to pick one up. He examined the envelope: Clean, neat, and numbered with a bold 30 on it that was also in the colour of purple. There was no stamp. There was no name. Just a singular number, and nothing more than that.

Or it would be nothing more if he decided to keep the envelopes tightly secured.

Curiosity killed the cat, didn’t it? Though at the same time, he really did have nothing to lose. A dance with death was the least of his current concerns.

By the look of things, it appeared as though there was a certain number of letters in the box, labeled from one to an unknown limit. For all that could be known, there could be fifty letters, a hundred, or a thousand. He doubted he’d read all of them, because what could possibly be so interesting that the writer thought it was imperative that Cas knew?

The bigger question was, who wrote them?

Castiel shuffled through the envelopes until he found the first numbered 1 in red. His mouth went dry, and his brain raced with questions that he had no answer to at all. He hated being blind to the truth, to be instead engulfed in a mystery, like his life was some sort of game. He wanted to know what was going on, and he wanted to know now. But given all that Cas was presented with, he knew it would be a long time before he knew what was actually going on. It could be days, weeks, months. All depending on how much Cas read, and how fast.

He fiddled with the letter in his hand, debating whether or not to open it. He had to. He could just read this one and throw the others out. And maybe he’d get the answers he needed in the first envelope, making it possible to ignore the others.

The paper ripped beneath his fingers, and soon enough, he held a paper in his hands. The first out of many.

Quickly, his eyes scanned over the words written, immediately blocking them out because he refused to jump too far in what was visibly so carefully put together. He wanted to take his time and appreciate the effort put into all of this. But he did take notice of the handwriting. It was a combination of neat and messy. Definitely readable, and a little too familiar. It was nice, simply put. But Cas could sense the desperation in the way the words were written. They were rushed, and well thought out of as well. Like whoever wrote knew what to say, just not how to say it.

Dear Castiel,

Knowing you, you’re probably freaked the hell out right now. And... Well, you should be.

Cas frowned and scoffed, rolling his eyes at the paper. Already, the letter was referring to him, and he had no idea about who was writing. Clearly, off to a great start.

Or not. Actually, don’t freak out. You don’t need that. Anyways…grab yourself that weird coffee that I know you like and get comfy.

What I’ve done here for you is write a hundred letters. Or I’m planning to, at least. Hopefully I commit to this. I guess if you’re reading this, I’ll have succeeded, so yay me, I guess. But I want you to really read them. To understand it all because there is so much that you don’t know. About me, about you, and more importantly, about us. I know you might be scared-

Castiel looked away and shook his head, setting the letter down on the table causing it to fold in on itself with how long it had been creased for. He rubbed his forehead and sighed, mumbling something incoherent underneath his breath. Not even halfway through the first letter, and Cas was already overwhelmed. Everything in him begged him to stop reading, but he couldn’t stop himself from reaching back towards the piece of paper and picking it up once more. He was certain that would be a decision he would regret in the future.

-and that’s okay. Fear’s good. Sometimes, at least.

Please, hear me out, alright? I need you to keep an open mind. You gotta, man. Or else this won’t work. I don’t mean to put on a show and get all dramatic, but I need you to level with me. To feel with me, and to get angry and hurt whenever you feel like it. I need you to bust open your damn walnut, and pull me out of that chest that you’ve got stuffed in there somewhere.  

Cas, you may not know me now, but I know you.

I’m writing this on September 18th, 1988. We met five years go..I don't really know when you'll get this. Could be ten years from now. Guess we'll see.

I need you to remember.

Work that big ol’ brain of yours and try to not be the dumbass that you tend to be. It's my fault you're in your current situation, but you need to try. If not for me, then for you.

We haven't spoken in so long, Cas. And saying I miss you won't change a damn thing because you don't even know who I am, but I do miss you. And you can take that however you want for now, but you'll understand it all eventually. If you decide to actually go through with this and read all that I've written for you.

“Situation?” Castiel asked out loud, as if he’d get a response. Of course, he was met with silence. But he still had no idea what was happening. He didn’t know what any of this meant, but he did know this had the potential to ruin his entire life. In fact, it felt like everything started slowly tumbling down already.

And yes, he had nothing. But was it worth the loss?

I’ll tell you everything. No plot-holes, not shit-holes, or whatever. All I ask is that you read. It’s that simple.

That’s all for now. Sorry for the short first letter. I’ll see you soon.

-Dean W.

“Dean?” He whispered, and at that, his chest knotted tightly as he took in a shaky breath. He widened his eyes and wheezed, an uneasy feeling creeping its way up his chest. So, the writer had a name. One that Cas mentally did not recognize, but he physically did apparently.

What the hell did the "W" stand for? He didn't know. Or rather he couldn't remember, according to what the letters were saying.

He set the letter down and stared at the others, scratching at his arm as he eyed the unorganized mess that had now grounded him in his place. Out of all of the things he could have received that day, he just had to get what was probably the most confusing thing he had ever been confronted with.

The possibility of fault grew, and all Cas could do for now was allow himself to become engulfed in the non-existent voice of a series of letters that he was yet to understand, and so rightfully dreaded.

[tinyshe]

Pope: Private property is ‘not Christian’, WEF agrees

At the turn of the month November-December, the pope made a move that was described as shocking by many. He argued that Christianity did not support the right to own a home. This led to surprised and outraged reactions, whereby several pointed out that those who are forced to rent or beg for shelter can never be free. Free West Media can here reveal that the Pope's statement is in line with the plans that the globalist elite has long discussed and also more or less clearly communicated to the public, something that most people have overlooked. Among other things, we present the World Economic Forum's 8-point vision for 2030. These world-changing plans are beginning to materialize in various ways now, including in China.

Published: January 19, 2021, 3:46 pm

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Pope Francis attracted a lot of attention in Catholic circles on November 30 when he said several controversial things in a video message to judges from the Committee on Social Rights in Africa and America. However, the general public is not aware of his sensational statement, as the system media did not report on it.

The pope said, among other things, that a new “social justice” is needed and that private ownership is not something obvious in Christianity and therefore not for the Catholic Church either.

“Let us build the new social justice and admit that the Christian tradition has never recognized the right to private property as absolute and immovable,” said Francis.

Outraged reactions

Many were shocked by the statement and pointed out that the right to own private property is one of the most important human rights.

PROFESSOR KLAUS SCHWAB, 82, is a German engineer, economist and professor of business policy who is best known as the founder and chairman of the powerful globalist foundation World Economic Forum (WEF). In his book Covid-19: The Great Reset, Schwab claims that the world “will never” return to normal, despite acknowledging that the alleged coronavirus pandemic “does not pose a new existential threat.” – The pandemic represents a rare but narrow time window with opportunities to reflect (re: flect), rethink (re: imagine) and restore (re: set) our world, Schwab said at the launch of The Great Reset this summer. Photo: KTU

They pointed out that without that right you are like slaves of old, who must rely on their owners giving them a roof over their heads and food. Being always forced to earn in order to pay for the most basic need – protection against the forces of the weather – makes you both unfree and in practice completely powerless, some said on social media.

The pope’s statement was also widely discussed in Christian circles and no comments were positive. The exception was possibly the Twitter account Lichten & Bright who wrote:“Thank you for letting us know the Pope’s position on private ownership of property and means of production. We had no idea that he was an advocate of nationalizations [the state seizes] all land and business companies and against democratic elections. Thoughtful things”.

The Twitter account Catholic Victory wrote briefly that “Francis is a heretic and not a pope”.

Several people pointed out that it was reminiscent of the startling tones heard for several years from the World Economic Forum (WEF) foundation, which is best known for the annual conference in Davos, Switzerland. It brings together some of the world’s most powerful policy makers and globalists in politics and business. It was precisely the WEF that this summer, via its “ambassador” Prince Charles, launched The Great Reset, which more and more world leaders are now talking openly about being implemented.

The author of The Great Reset is Klaus Schwab, chairman of the powerful WEF, who wrote a 280-page book entitled COVID-19: The Great Reset. The book puts forward the argument that the pandemic has proven absolutely necessary to immediately introduce a completely new world order.

No private ownership 2030

To get an idea of ​​the background to the pope’s strange statement and what The Great Reset might mean, we can watch a video from the WEF entitled “8 predictions for the world 2030”.

COVID-19: THE GREAT RESET is 280 pages long and was already published on July 9, almost four months into the pandemic. Many have pointed out the improbability of writing such a comprehensive and complex book in such a short time. It tells us that the pandemic has shown the need to immediately introduce a new world order, which does not quite unexpectedly advocate a comprehensive “world government” and a merger of governments and multinational corporations to meet people’s needs. The incentive for for-profit large companies to pay out, for example, social benefits is, to say the least, vague. Instead of prioritizing profits, companies must now put “people at the center”. The book also proclaims that capitalism is obsolete and should instead be replaced by a new merger of capitalism and socialism, which is called “Stakeholder capitalism”. Critics call it communism in the form of a totalitarian global technocracy ruled by a small globalist elite using Big Tech (technology giants) and artificial intelligence (AI).

The first point there is as simple as it is remarkable. It states that “You will own nothing and you will be happy”. The point also explains that “Whatever you need, you will rent”. So no more ownership, but everything should be rented, including the clothes you wear on the body.

Can they really mean it? We visit WEF’s website for more information. There you can in a text, which paints the future they want to see in 2030, read the following:

Welcome to the year 2030. Welcome to my city – or should I say “our city”. I own nothing. I do not own a car. I do not own a house. I do not own any appliances or clothes.

The text on the WEF’s website also states that it is not only private ownership that will be abolished in the new utopia, or dystopia depending on who you ask, but there will also be no privacy. We can read there that:

Sometimes I can get annoyed by the fact that I have no real integrity. Nowhere can I go without being registered. I know that somewhere everything I do, think and dream about is recorded. I can only hope that no one will use it against me.

Many who hear it for the first time believe that it must be a conspiracy theorist’s crazy fantasies, but it is instead the richest and most powerful globalists on the planet who meet annually in Davos who present it in text and video form. System media has not reported on this and then the general public does not know these visions and agendas of these globalists.

Canadian Whistleblower has been right so far

Someone who claimed to be a Canadian MP and member of the Liberal Party of Canada (Canada’s Liberal Party led by Justin Trudeau, the country’s current Prime Minister) wrote an open letter on October 10 to warn the Canadian people that the pandemic is a smokescreen with the aim of introducing a far-reaching agenda where, among other things, people will be forced to renounce their right to private ownership. The Whistleblower did not reveal his name, but wrote that “I sit on several committee groups, but the information I provide comes from the Strategic Planning Committee, which is governed by the PMO [abbreviation for Prime Minister’s Office]”.

The anonymous MP then set out a secret roadmap established by Trudeau, which would be implemented regardless of their views or objections. He initially states that a second shutdown will be introduced in November, which will then be even tougher over Christmas and New Year. This is exactly what has happened in both North America and Europe. The whistleblower then indicates a frightening development in 2021, where, among other things, a third wave from a mutation called “COVID-21” – this time with real death rates – will be followed by an even harsher third shutdown in the first and second quarters of 2021.

Regarding the current economy and ownership, he indicates an impending “collapse of the supply chain, stock shortages, major economic instability” in the second quarter of 2021. Desperate people will then be offered the general basic income program, Universal Basic Income [UBI] in English. It can be mentioned here that Australia has already made it clear that only vaccinated citizens will be given welfare funds under a new law with the slogan “No jab, no pay”, “no syringe, nothing paid”.

In China, thousands of people in rural areas who voluntarily abandon their privately owned property and move to newly built apartments have been rewarded in various ways, while those who struggle are arrested and punished. Their houses are being demolished regardless of compliance.

POPULATION FROM THE RURAL AREA has begun in China. Here you can see Xiguozhuang, the first village in China’s eastern Shandong province, where residents saw their houses demolished at short notice. Fewer than a dozen homes remain along the village’s main road when the photo was taken in August. The Communist Party (CCP) forcibly expels farmers from their homes and farms. Liu, an affected farmer, recounts how he came home one day and discovered that local officials were preparing to demolish his house. When he called the police, they arrested him instead. Liu told the news channel NPR how about a hundred government officials surrounded his home before breaking down and arresting him, because he “resisted”. Liu’s privately owned property has now been demolished and apartment buildings await him and his neighbors. Photo: Amy Cheng / NPR

NEWLY BUILT MICRO APARTMENTS IN CHINA. Here you can see high-rise buildings with micro-apartments in Heze, in China’s eastern Shandong province, where Liu and his neighbors will be forcibly relocated when they are ready. The farmers are upset about the high rent they are being forced to have and will find it very difficult to afford. They are given the right to continue using the land, but they say that it will be impossible due to the long distance between the rental apartments they have been forced to and their land and that they do not have buildings left there that are necessary for the work. For several years, China has built many new cities, some of the largest in the world, which in most cases are still completely empty. This has been a mystery to many. Now that the CCP is starting to forcibly relocate people to the countryside and demolish their homes and farms, some are beginning to suspect that these “ghost towns” were built for Agenda 2030 and the massive expulsions from the countryside the globalists advocate (see NyT v50 / 2020).

Then the whistleblower describes in detail how the Canadians will be forced to renounce their ownership starting already this year. The anonymous Member writes:

Based on the roadmap provided, the Strategic Planning Committee was asked to design an effective way to change Canadians to meet unprecedented economic hardship. One that will change Canada and change the lives of Canadians forever. What we were told was that the federal government would offer Canadians a total debt write-off to compensate for what is essentially an economic collapse at the international level, where the federal government will offer Canadians to write off all their debts. Here’s how it works:

The federal government will offer to write off all personal debts (mortgages, loans, credit cards, etc.) where financing will be provided by the Canada [International Monetary Fund] IMF during what will be known as the World Debt Reset.

In exchange for accepting this total debt forgiveness, the individual will give up ownership of all property and assets forever. The individual will also need to agree to participate in the vaccination program for COVID-19 and COVID-21, which would allow the individual to travel and live indefinitely even during a complete shutdown (using a photo ID called Canada’s HealthPass).

With the pope’s statement, the Vatican and the Catholic Church have now officially taken the position that such possible plans do not run counter to the “Christian tradition”. Pope Francis was the one who, at the UN headquarters on September 25, 2015, the first visit ever by a pope, saw to it that all world leaders signed Agenda 2030.

All rights reserved. You have permission to quote freely from the articles provided that the source (www.freewestmedia.com) is given

[antoxsmith]

Over (Part 2)

Part 1

Warnings - Angst, Hurt, Tragedy, F/M, Fluff

Pairings - Negan x Reader

Summary -  You and Negan have been in a secret relationship for years. Then, you happen to see him get his throat slit.

NEGAN MASTERLIST

When Negan woke up and Michonne and Rick explained to him what was going to happen, he didn't really care. Sure, he was taking a big hit to his pride but he was more worried about one thing: her. Was she alright? Where was she?

Only because of all those doubts did he shut the fuck up and listened in silence as Rick told him he was going to rot in a cell. But the thing was, his mind was somewhere else, not able to get his thoughts off of her.

Maybe this was for the better... maybe she'd be better off without him. Maybe now she could fall in love with someone who deserved her, someone who wouldn't have six other wives to make her jealous. Maybe now she could have someone else who would put her above anything else and wouldn't have to keep her love life a secret from everyone else like she was doing something wrong.

Who was he trying to fool?

Just the thought of her being with someone else made him feel sick. She was his, completely and utterly his.

He spent a few hours there, just thinking. Rick and Michonne left, but after some time, Rick was back to check on him, maybe paranoid that he’d get a way out. And now he felt a bit stronger so he could talk, and ask about his girl.

But it wasn't even necessary.

"She came here, asked to see you." Rick explained after some minutes in silence, like he knew exactly what Negan was thinking. He looked up to him from his location right next to the door, leaning on the wall. He was confused, his brows furrowed. "She was sweet. How could you trap someone like her?" He asked, scoffing. Negan clenched his jaw at his commentary, knowing he was right. "Poor girl."

He couldn't speak too loud but he still sounded dominant through his raspy tone. "Where is she?"

Rick raised his eyebrows, looking out the window. "I sent her away. She must be back at The Sanctuary already." Rick explained and stayed in silence a few seconds. "Did you... Did you really love her? Because," he looked at the ceiling. "Because she really does love you."

Negan didn't answer. Of course he loved her. But he didn't owe any answers to Rick.

"She okay?" Negan asked.

Rick looked at him for a few seconds. Negan's expression changed from angry and dominant to a begging one. He needed to know. "…Please." He whispered, to which Rick arched an eyebrow. Negan saying please as he begged for answers. Not something you'd see every day.

Rick didn't really want to give him answers, didn’t want to feed his whole expectation of any future. But he had mercy. Again.

"She asked for me to give you this." Rick said as he held a letter in front of Negan, folded in four, the paper wrinkly. He desperately wanted to grab it, but was reminded that he was handcuffed to the bed when he was yanked back while trying to get a hold of it. "Want me to read it to you?" Rick asked.

"No." Negan quickly answered. He didn't want Rick touching anything that belonged to her. "Give it to me."

Rick looked at him with disgust for a few seconds, but finally did place it on Negan's left hand, the other one being wrapped in bandage. Negan waited, looking back at Rick with a deadpan. He wouldn't read it in front of the prick.

Rick took the hint and as he was about to walk out, he said; "…She seemed heartbroken. But I am still not letting her see you. She'll be better off without you." And with that, he walked out and left Negan, who was clenching his jaw with hatred, completely alone again.

Negan tried not to pay any attention to Rick's words, even when deep inside he knew he was right. He shrugged it off and managed to open the letter with only one hand with maybe too much trouble, then proceeded to try to read it in his position, eyes squinting.

Love I really hope Rick gives this to you. Or at least read it to you if you are too weak. "Weak", that's something I know you are not. So please, please make it out of this. I still don't know what they are planning on doing with you but they wouldn't let me see you, and I understand. Negan, I am okay. You don't have to worry about me, I'll be fine. We, the saviors... we'll be fine. I have Lucille. I picked her up and won't let anyone else touch her, you can be certain of that. I know how much she means to you. You will always be my greatest love, the man I admire and appreciate the most, don't let anyone make you think otherwise. I will wait for you, and I will help you shave your beard again, and I will make you lemonade, and I will let you tickle me (I know I said I hated it... but I didn't), and I will sleep on the left side of the bed. Nothing will be the same without you but it will be once you are back. I love you, Negan. So much. Be patient

It had her name and a little heart at the end. Negan's eyes were watering. He quickly stopped himself from it. She was so perfect, and he was fucking her up. He couldn't continue on doing this to her. The damn woman was always an angel to him and he never, not only once, did he give back to her a little bit of everything she gave him.

Still, his selfishness was bigger, and he would not let her go. He would accept on her waiting for him. Even when Rick said that he would never get out of the cell.

She calmed him so much with just some words. He was realizing now... that he was really caught up on her. Her head didn’t even stop to think about anyone else but her, even the news about Lucille caught him off-guard since he hadn’t even thought about the bat.

But he couldn't do anything but wait till Rick had a very good day and somehow let him see her.

For her, the situation was... harder. Since everyone saw her kiss Negan and take Lucille with her, she had been almost shot at with questions, her friends divided between scared, confused and interested. She came back to The Sanctuary with the other saviors and everyone wanted to know how that happened and for how long it had been happening. But she was too sad to say anything yet.

She felt okay as she wrote to Negan, or at least, she was able to pretend that she wasn’t in the verge of tears every five minutes. Looking around, Negan's wives had gone back to their real husbands, none of them missing Negan. She wished she could be like them. She knew Negan’s actions weren’t the best, that he was practically stealing from all those communities, and maybe, just maybe did he deserve it. She wished she could hate him, just like everyone else seemed to do now.

She ended up driving to The Hilltop with Tara and Rosita a few days after. She said she had to talk to Rick, and didn’t stop asking and shooting them with the request until they let her come.

She was introduced to Rick in a very, very awkward conversation. She tried hard to hate him or despise him, but she couldn’t. Empathy was all that she could feel. It still didn’t change what she felt for Negan.

She really tried to convince Rick on seeing Negan, but he just wouldn't let her.

At The Hilltop, everything was different. They didn't look at her with curiosity like at The Sanctuary, but with pity and sadness. Like as she had been kidnapped by the big bad wolf. She hadn't. She had fallen in love willingly, knowing what came with Negan, like the wives, battles, wars... and this attention from strangers who knew her as 'the woman who loved Negan'.

Rick let her write a letter, and promised to give it to Negan. Her only choice was a piece of wrinkled paper that some worker let her have after too many requests. She could only hope Rick was a man of hi word and that he would do as he said, and had no remedy but to go back to The Sanctuary and try to put her life back together.

But the memories were hunting her. And they were hunting Negan too.

They had a strong connection, a connection they weren’t aware of. He would think about her, and she would think about him. Hugging his pillow and trying to keep his scent there, as he looked at the ceiling and remembered her laugh, every night right before they fell asleep.

Love is patient, he reminded himself. He would wait, he would get out of that place, and he would go back to her. He had to.

[mocha-sim]

For a while now I’ve wanted to write out a post concerning where I stand on the whole issue with YanSim and its developer (in short: neutral, leaning heavily towards the negative side, but I like the potential of the story and characters). There are a lot of problems and I really want to throw in my two cents

This might not be necessary, but I need to get it off my chest, and hopefully make some people think about other points of view

Warning: long post ahead

1. Six years and still in development

I can really see both sides here

On one hand, six full years without even one rival - the single most important part of the game - and a game still full of placeholder assets, and terrible code on top of that, is pathetic

On the other hand, Yandev is working with only a small team of volunteers and himself, who (no matter what he claims) knows very little about game development (from what i’ve seen, he’s made one before, but it looks like a very small-scale and basic fighting game, unlike YanSim which is much more large-scale and has a lot of features)

Professional game teams do have full, high-quality games made in less than six years, but that time is also a product of game company employees being extremely overworked. Lately I’ve seen a lot more people talking about this issue, which is good, but isn’t it hypocritical to not also apply that logic to Yandev?

Again, though, I’m not sure how much time he spends actually working on the game - to me, it seems like he spends a lot of time on discord, reddit, etc. even if he does only stream for a few hours every night. Maybe the “harassment” that’s “slowing down game development” wouldn’t be such an issue if he didn’t spend so much time online interacting with these people?

2. The writing and characters

I’m not a huge fan of how the game’s story is handled, either

I don’t think it’s 100% fair to cast a final judgement with the game the way it is now - Osana not being out is in no way a good thing, but it also means that there hasn’t really been any opportunity for story or character development yet, especially for the rivals. That being said:

I feel like there’s a lot of wasted potential with characters’ individual stories and with the game’s story as a whole, like the “Aishi curse” - I just can’t think of many good stories with a main character who’s basically an empty husk. If Ayano had emotions from the beginning, and actually had to struggle with them, she could be a much more interesting character. There doesn’t even need to be a magical curse for it to run in the family - the way children are raised has a serious impact on the person they grow into. If Ayano is raised by a crazy, abusive stalker of a mother, she may well turn into the same thing.

Taro, too - he has so many contradicting character traits. He yells at Ayano for “scaring him” when she’s carrying a box cutter or laughing, but has the courage to run right up to a murderer and take off their mask?? He doesn’t care about reputations for Osoro or Oka, but won’t love Ayano if her reputation drops too low?? We’re told that he’s “friendly and respectful”, but we’re never shown that part of his personality. On top of that, we’re not really given a reason to like or pursue him as the goal of the game - when he’s not interacting with Girl of the Week, he doesn’t really do anything except sit by the fountain and read. I feel as though Taro should have a routine that involves interacting with other characters and gives us more of a feel for the personality we’re told he’s supposed to have

Raibaru as a whole makes no sense and feels like a satellite character to Osana. In Osana’s shoes, I would want to have a word with her about personal space. There’s not a lot to say about her aside from that, because... she doesn’t really do anything except follow Osana around all day and shut down the player’s attempts to kill her. She feels more like a soulless obstacle than a character

I think there should be more true pacifist options than just matchmaking - even the befriending elimination route will, in Yandev’s own words, involve someone getting hurt. If we’re supposed to have a choice on whether or not to hurt and kill people, there should be more variety in our options

3. The game’s code sucks/it’s poorly-optimized

Yeah.

I don’t know much about coding but the amount of awkward stretching/bending limbs on corpses, clipping through walls, low fps, etc. makes this obvious. It was definitely a bad move on Yandev’s part to start a project like this without at least taking a coding/game development class or something

I think the best course of action for Yandev would be to get a professional programmer on board after Osana is released and spend a few months fixing the game’s code before he starts work on the next rival

4. The character models are just stolen Unity models

They are just unity models, but not “stolen” at all - YanDev paid for them.

That being said, they’re sort of ugly and inexpressive, and personally i’m hoping they get replaced soon

5. The characters are all minors

They’re not. It’s in flashing red letters on the screen when you open the game. I can’t help but feel like the reason people keep insisting that the characters are minors is so that they can feel like heroes for defending them or something

It doesn’t make a lot of logical sense, but there’s still plenty of time for this to be fixed. I think it was recently confirmed that Akademi is called an “academy” now and won’t be referred to as a high school again

Imo YanDev should just change it to a post-secondary school, since that’s probably the most seamless way for all the characters to be adults

One last thing I want to say on this is that, when it gets brought up, I often see people use the excuse “the age of consent in Japan is 13″. 1: it isn’t - the Japanese government lets each prefecture decide its own age of consent, but 13 is the minimum. As far as I know, no prefecture has set it below 16. 2: even if 13 was the age of consent, that doesn’t mean we should accept and defend it as “part of a different culture”. It’s still pedophilia. 3: Japanese people actively protest against things like this

6. The uniforms are middle-school uniforms/don’t look like they belong in a prestigious school

Yeah

However there are multiple uniform options, and it looks like the default uniforms will be completely changed in the final game

7. Panty shots

YanSim is an 18+ game, but there is such a thing as too far

I’ve seen people who tolerate it, but I haven’t seen a single person who actively likes the panty shots and would complain if they were removed. Imo the part that makes this bad is the fact that we, the player, actively have to point our camera up a girl’s skirt and take a photo of her underwear with it being in full view; the whole way this works makes it obvious that the feature was put in there for titillation more than anything else, and it just feels uncomfortable. If it were more like Uekiya’s key-stealing minigame where all we have to do is push a few buttons, the whole gross/uncomfortable aspect could be taken away and a lot of people would probably be fine with it

It would also be better to replace it with an expanded version of the phone-stealing feature: this would let the player get “points” for students of both genders, plus it would still make sense to gain more points for certain students, like the student council or the bullies. Maybe you could even steal teachers’ phones under certain circumstances?

8. YanDev is homophobic

Again not too sure on this one

Iirc, most of the comments people bring up on this are from years ago when he still went by EvaXephon

But speaking as a wlw, I think some of the ways I’ve seen him talk about f/f relationships are pretty creepy. And on top of that, he seems to be considering adding a “female senpai” option to the game, but no male player character? (though i guess i can see the point of view that a male mc would need a lot more new voice lines, animations, etc. while the senpai follows a mostly fixed routine and would only need so many. still, it seems wrong to have one without the other). I hope I’m wrong about this but his support of the LGBT community seems mostly focused on the L and more for his own entertainment than any actual support

9. YanDev is making more money than he should (and handles it poorly)

His Patreon may be dropping, but his YouTube channel is raking in even more money with 2M+ subscribers, and he’s making even more money from things like merch and donations... all while apparently still living with his parents (which i don’t find hard to believe). He’s also apparently bought 2 switches and a sex doll instead of using the money to hire the help he desperately needs with his game

Assuming he really does still live with his parents, I fully support the petition to get his Patreon suspended until he at least finishes Osana. Most game devs don’t make any money off of their games until they’ve finished it completely

10. YanDev wrote rape fanfics

So I did briefly check his old ffn profile some time ago, and as far as I could see everything had the proper ratings and warnings

Tagging/warning/rating is a fanfic author’s only responsibility to you. You make the choice on whether or not to read it. If everything is appropriately tagged and you read it anyway, that’s on you, not the author. If you are mature enough to be on the internet unsupervised, then you are mature enough to curate your own experience.

Fiction is the place to explore controversial themes and topics. It doesn’t mean in any way that a content creator would condone the things they write about in real life

11. YanDev steals art/assets

He does, and still hasn’t apologized for the DLC rivals thing. In fact he made a post defending himself for it, and even compared himself to Andy Warhol in the process (lol)

I’m not sure but I think I heard something recently about him continuing to do this type of thing (the grass, etc.). In which case we should continue to put pressure on him until he credits the creators of whatever art/assets he stole. Art theft is inexcusable

12. The fanbase is mostly kids

This is unfortunately true, and it’s a big problem (i’ve had to deal with it myself on my youtube channel)

However I would personally say that this problem is outside of YanDev’s control. Kids seem to be drawn to edgy/violent things, or things they shouldn’t be allowed to see (just look at Call of Duty). I put the blame for this on the parents who aren’t monitoring their kids’ computer activities. As for YanDev, he’s not a babysitter and it’s not his responsibility to censor his content for kids who shouldn’t be viewing it in the first place

Underage or not though, he should really avoid calling his fans things like “fuck kittens”. Even from the perspective of an adult that’s super creepy to hear

13. The character designs suck

Some are alright, others are absolutely awful

I think that, in a game built on anime tropes, characters should be allowed to have unnaturally-coloured hair. I mean, a lot of characters in anime do have weird hair that you wouldn’t see in real life (seemingly without any dye), and it can add a lot of personality to their designs

But some YanSim characters push that too far. The science club is the worst of the worst imo, despite being otherwise one of my favourite clubs. The neon streaks are ugly, and what’s up with the visors? Why are they allowed to wear those outside of club time? Why do they wear them during club time, as opposed to actual goggles or something? (i have this issue with a lot of club accessories, imo the accessories are unnecessary in the first place)

The bullies and the light music club also take things too far. Their designs are crowded, hard to look at, and out-of-place. Nothing against characters with multi-coloured hair, but there’s a time and a place and a “prestigious” school setting isn’t it

(also, slightly off-topic, but why does almost every “intended couple” look like they could be siblings?)

I could probably make a whole separate post on the character designs in YS, but I’ll save that for another day. (i’m just very passionate about character design)

14. YanDev has collaborated with porn games 3 times now

Once I could overlook (after all, the characters are 18+ and YS is already not for kids) but a third time? Seriously? And so soon after the last one?

Not only do I have mixed feelings about Yandev doing crossovers when his game isn’t even in the demo stage yet, isn’t this game supposed to be taken seriously as a horror game? I can’t think of a single other horror game that has willingly put its characters in porn.

Also I can’t help noticing that he advertises the porn game crossovers a lot more than he did with that one Dark Deception crossover. Did he ever even mention that one? I only ever saw it on the Dark Deception Twitter

15. YanDev is rude to his fans

I don’t have a lot to say against this one. As far as I’ve seen, he is, and he doesn’t take criticism well at all (just look at the subreddit - yes, a lot of the things that were removed deserved it (unfunny cum chalice jokes, etc.) but there have also been completely innocent questions, fanarts, jokes, and fanfics that have been removed. Not to mention mods going through peoples’ post history and banning them for being active in r/Osana. Both he and his mod team seem insanely paranoid)

I think he’s going to have to grow a thicker skin and stop censoring critiques if he wants to get anywhere with this game. Not just fans who bring up tiny details that might need changing, but also big, glaring issues like the code and character designs and such. He also doesn’t seem that professional for a game developer who wants to be taken seriously

That being said, if you’re the type to spam the discord server/subreddit/fan communities who have nothing to do with Yandev like the amino, you deserved that ban

16. YanDev defends pedophiles/the “sex license” thing

“No adult ever has any excuse to do anything sexual with a child. As soon as you touch a kid, you have crossed the line from being someone with a mental disorder to being the worst scum imaginable. Having a mental illness is involuntary, but touching a kid is a choice. If you have a mental illness, I feel bad for you. If you violate a child, I feel disgust and contempt for you, and I think you deserve the death penalty.” -From YanDev himself on this page

The sex license thing is also debunked on the same page: the whole conversation was taken out of context and the hypothetical “license” was supposed to be something that only an adult could meet the requirements for

17. “Corona-chan”

This was a really insensitive move to make in the middle of a pandemic, and I agree that the design was racist

However, YanDev listened to the fans’ complaints and removed the easter egg a day later, plus gave an apology. I think that this was the best thing he could do in that scenario and idk what else people are expecting him to do about it

18. YanDev’s general portrayal of high schoolers

Honestly, it’s not 100% realistic (especially in some of the dialogue. you know what i’m talking about)

I’m surprised that more students don’t seem to have friends outside of their clubs. It seems like all the students mostly stick within their club/group - walking to school together, spending their breaks together, etc. A lot of the ways the characters behave are very robotic, like walking in a perfectly straight line everywhere they go

That being said, a lot of the things i’ve seen criticized in regards to this are not part of the problem. By the time you’re in high school, you’ve probably hit puberty. It doesn’t make a character automatically sexualized if they have bigger breasts (though some designs in the game are over-sexualized, like a few certain staff members)

19. Muja, Mida, and Hanako

Let’s start with Hanako: Yandev has already said that she’s not romantically interested in her brother, she’s just insanely clingy and doesn’t want him to get a girlfriend out of fear that he’ll forget about her. If you still insist that she’s in love with Taro, then that’s on you

Muja and Mida I have mixed feelings on.

If every student is 18 or older, meaning that the first-years are 18, that makes Taro, a third-year, 20-21 years old. If Mida and Muja are in their early 20s as Yandev has said, that means that the age gap isn’t an issue. However, it’s still wrong for a teacher or a nurse to pursue their student/patient

I don’t think Yandev should need to spell out “hey, Mida and Muja are not good people” in flashing neon signs. The game is rated M and anyone who’s old enough to play it should be able to understand that without it being said. If you need morality in fiction spoon-fed to you, you probably shouldn’t be watching/reading/playing anything rated above PG

On the other hand, YanDev has a nasty habit of making these things into a joke, which is really insensitive and creepy. Like saying that Mida’s favourite food is “the spit of a younger man” (yikes), that she’s tried to seduce her own students 69 times (haha 69 so funney right guys XD), or that whole confession scene mess. It’s less of a problem with Muja, but it’s still there. As much as the audience shouldn’t need everything served to them on a silver platter, issues like these should still be treated with respect, not made into gags

20. Yandev wastes time on “Easter eggs”

I have to agree that he does spend time implementing unnecessary things sometimes (like the abc challenge), but as far as I know the Easter eggs are what he does in his spare time while waiting for assets from volunteers. However: snap mode, which was hyped up for years, turned out to be a flop with zero purpose, disappointing a good portion of the fanbase.

21. Love Letter

So far I’m really liking the look of this game: I like the models and the school environment they’ve shown, and it seems like they’re doing a lot of things in better or more interesting ways than YanDev, like not outright telling us who the rivals are. I don’t think it’s fair to accuse them of “stealing” anything, when it seems like most of the assets the games have in common are the things they bought from the Unity store (Love Letter even changed the base Unity model to have a more appealing look)

I'm glad to see that they actually listened to criticism from fans on things like Setsuna’s design (I love her newest look and I hope it’s the final one). From design alone she’s already a more interesting protagonist, and she looks like the sort of character you’d actually enjoy playing as

Not sure I totally buy the claim that it was all done in two weeks, but even if it was over the span of months, that’s still miles better than YanSim’s six years

Knowing that Dr. Apeis has already ditched one project I’m staying open to new information on this, but as of right now I’m looking forward to playing the demo!

Overall: A lot of the hate against the game and the dev are unnecessary, but some is justified and we shouldn’t blindly defend everything he does (seriously, you can admit that the character designs are shit. no one is going to stone you for it).  There are a lot of improvements Dev could make, both on the game and on his behaviour towards fans.

I think that the biggest improvement would be for the game to just stop taking itself so seriously. At this point, it’s so full of memes, cringy google translate names, excessive edginess, and gags that it may as well just be a fun ridiculous anime game instead of a serious horror game. I feel like taking this approach could make it more successful (plus, it doesn’t really have a lot of horror elements aside from the gore)

There are a lot of cases of people taking things too far. Like spamming YanDev with explicit gore/animal abuse, trying to swat him, spamming volunteers with weird porn, trying to hack into volunteers’ accounts (including bank accounts), etc. That is going way too far, no matter how awful or pathetic you think a person is. If you are doing these kinds of things, you are doing more harm than Dev or his volunteers

Attacking YanDev’s appearance is unnecessary and not related to his behaviour or skills. Same with the chalice memes

However, I’ve seen a lot of YanDev’s defenders lashing out against “gremlins”, lumping all of them in with the kinds of people who do these things. If you check r/Osana, you’ll see that most if not all of the people there condemn this behaviour: the gore and porn spammers are a loud minority (and i’m willing to bet most of them are the basement-dwelling losers from KiwiFarms and 4Chan)

Attacking and/or spamming fans who are just trying to enjoy the game is also unnecessary. Someone liking a video game you don’t like is not doing you any harm. Be mature and move on

I’m not sure if some of what I’ve said above is 100% accurate so if anyone actually read this and has evidence against it then feel free to add

I think that’s about all I have to say on that. Again, i don’t know if it will change anything in the fandom but i really just wanted to get this off my chest

[nancythedrew]

Can I just vent for a hot second about how much I LOVE how the plots in the older games, specifically the ones involving “treasure,” make at least some logical sense in terms of intent of the original creator and how all the components fit together?

TRT - Marie Antoinette had the tiara separated and sent off in separate directions and while it’s kind of attenuated that Hotchkiss and Jacques had theirs in the castle at the same time it fits together that Marie would then have in her journal the decoder for how to place the medallions in the correct spots and to dig at the purple rose to get the key for it, and then all the other puzzles leading into the tower were designed by Ezra Wickford who was just trying to block off a historical section of his hotel.

SSH - Henrik tracking down the pieces of the key to open to the monolith which the Mayans intended to keep locked forever because the Whisperer was talking shit, and Henrik has located most of the pieces but some Nancy can’t track down and has to use replacements(using that mold, and the replica that Prudence had) which makes sense that they work because the Mayans weren’t like designing some hella high-tech contraption anyway.

DDI - Hilda Swenson becoming a recluse after her husband died but still wanting to talk to someone who she thinks is capable and worthy enough who proves themself through unscrambling the text on the souvenirs she left for people she loved and contacting her via morse code. 

SHA - LEGENDARY. Dirk Valentine leaves this series of puzzles for the woman he loves because he knows she loves puzzles and loves how beautiful she looks solving the puzzles. And even aspects like the “green bottle / under cellar stairs” note that Frances wrote to herself to find where she hid the letters from Dirk. I cry

CUR - Just a kooky ass family that assumes this meteorite has magical powers and carries on this tradition of every other generation creating a puzzle to help keep it protected but leaving all that’s necessary to complete it in the family home.

DAN - Homegirl Noisette was a CITY PLANNER so she was able to use the entire city of Paris + her own moulin as a means to find what she had hidden away to keep safe.

And then after this.... they get kind of bad.

Like they aren’t -horrible-

But they really do feel like a stretch. It kind of starts feeling like HeR had a formula in their heads for what a game needs(puzzles, secret passages, treasure) but forgot how to actually tie it into the plot in a believable way.

CRE - Dr. Quigley found this ancient nose ring that we get handed that unlocks a ton of ancient secret passages that also include a puff of air that can murder us? 

ICE - Trapper Dan creates these insane secret passages that eventually 4 different coins obtained in various ways to get to his “needle” which is just like...a little hideout?

CRY - enough said

RAN - Literally no subtly or lead in. 10 minutes into the game we’re told we have to find some guy’s treasure for the kidnapper. O.K., I guess.

SAW - Instead of just communicating to her daughters that they can choose whatever career path they want Kasumi gives them each half of a nonogram that they can only solve if they work together using both halves to find a letter containing her wishes...but the necessity for the letter would only exist if they were having issues working together ??

ASH - We’re supposed to believe Nancy Drew has never discovered HIDDEN TUNNELS in her hometown before this point

MED - I’m not trying to be facetious with this game but there’s just so much that doesn’t make sense even with a replay and trying to be generous. Who made these caves? How did Jin know how to get through these caves? How did Jin draw cartoons that predict what would happen in the gameshow? Where did Sonny get the component parts used in the gameshow?

MID - hahaha..haha..ha...

[brushes-of-sage]

Alchemy. It was the only thing that was uniting the princes of Arendelle. While a door had separated the two brothers for the past five years, Hugo found a way to still stay connected to his brother. It all started three years ago, when Hugo realized he was running out of things to do. Oh sure, there were plenty of things in the castle, but that number reduces *significantly* when you realize there’s no one to do these things with you. So, Hugo decided to take up alchemy again. (1/?)

Alright lemme try to see if the keep reading works:

He had stopped working with alchemy when Varian had disappeared behind that cursed door, since alchemy was just another painful reminder of the brother he felt he lost. It was one of the brothers' favorite things to do, along with… along with... well, Hugo couldn’t really remember. The more he tried thinking about things he did with his brother that wasn’t alchemy, he got nothing, just laughter and a small headache. But, the number of things to occupy his time were getting thin.

So, he decided to give alchemy a try. This turned out to be a great decision. Not only did it serve as a distraction, but it served as something to keep his mind going. This distraction worked well for a few weeks until he hit a roadblock. He was trying to perfect an alchemical ice bomb that he had started when he was younger, but could never finish. But nothing seemed to be working. After staring at his disaster of a note pile for the better part of an hour, a little voice in his head said,

“You could go to Varian for help”

“No,” he snapped back, “If Varian wanted to help me or be there for me, he would leave his room. Clearly he doesn’t want to talk to me, or anyone for that matter.” Hugo didn’t want to admit it, but he was starting to get a bit mad at Varian. They were the best of brothers for years, and then just one day, Varian just shuts himself in his room, without a single word as to why. He laid his head on his desk and sighed. “Ah, who am I kidding? I’m going crazy just sitting here, I need to talk to someone, even if its nothing more than alchemy notes.”He gets up, grabs his notes, and starts to make his way to a door he passed by and stared at a million times before. On the way though, his mind is going through a back and forth battle: He wont wanna talk to you! Yes, he does, we havent spoken in forever! I wonder why? Besides its just some alchemy help, I’m not asking anything too extreme! All he has to do is fix a couple equations! What if he tears it up and ignores it, just like he has you these past few years? After this comment, Hugo ended up backtracking back to his room. He’d go tomorrow. Right?

Wrong. It took him three weeks before he found himself staring at the door that plagued his existence for two years now. He raised his hand to knock, and before he could back out, knocked twice and slid the notes through the crack under the door. He started anxiously pacing, his mind going back to the constant battle in his mind that had been raging for the past 3 weeks. After a couple minutes of pacing, Hugo was just about to leave when he heard 2 knocks, and paper slide back under the crack. Instantly, the flurry of anxious thoughts started up again, worrying it would come back blank or with a note saying Varian wouldn't help him. His hands shook as he opened the notes to reveal.. the completed solution. He read the solution 2 3 4 times before a huge smile spread across his face and he laughed a huge genuine laugh he hadn’t used in two years. These notes meant 2 big things: One, he finally had a solution to an alchemy problem he’d had since he was nine. And two, the more important one in Hugo’s opinion, is that his brother doesn’t hate him. That scary thought had crossed his mind multiple times and he had always quickly shot it down, but there was always that one tiny voice who would always say, “But, does he though?” Now, that voice was as good as dead. Varian didn’t hate him. He wasn’t giving him the *total* silent treatment. Maybe he could work up from here, have conversations through the door, send notes, maybe even ask why he was doing any of this in the first place.Just as he’s about to leave for his lab to finish the ice bombs with the now completed formula, Hugo heard two knocks on the door and stopped. He wasn’t expecting anything else. He looked at the bottom of the door and saw a small stack of papers slide under and he picked them up. It was a stack of alchemy notes titled “Melting Bomb” The notes were full of blank spaces and question marks and there was a note attached that said:

Hugo-Please assist me in completing this formula for a melting alchemy bomb. I have been on and off of this project for the past few years, and some assistance would be much appreciated. Thank you.-Varian

As excited as Hugo was that his brother was reaching out to him, and actively looking for his help, he couldn’t help but feel a bit…disappointed at the formality of the note. As if Hugo were some stranger that Varian had just met and had to put up formalities and not his own brother. Nevertheless, he shouts a quick “Be right back!” and dashes off to his room to grab a quill and inkwell. While he runs, he reads over the notes and finds the answer fairly quickly. It wasn’t all that hard, it just was in desperate need of a fresh set of eyes. He scribbled down the answers as quick as possible, not wanting to keep Varian waiting. He runs back to Varians room, knocks 2 times and slips the notes under the door. After a couple of minutes, he hears a soft gasp, the quick scratching of a quill, and a new note being shoved under the door. Hugo picked up the note and stared at the messy handwriting and smiled. This was the big brother he remembered. Thanks for the help! Now go work on your project! This went on for the next few months with notes. Sometimes it wasn't just alchemy they talked about. It started simple, like “How’s your day going” and things like that.

Then it slowly evolved to things like “Get some rest Haristripe” and “You haven’t eaten yet today have you, Hugo?” (Both weren’t exactly the best at self care, especially when they were caught up in their work). The day Hugo finally heard Varian talk was one of the best days of his life. Obviously, he had heard his brother talk before, but it had been years since they had spoken, and as the time passed, Hugo’s memories of Varian’s voice faded. Plus, with the time passing, he knew his voice would have changed. So, when Varian finally said a soft “Thank you”, Hugo’s face lit up with a huge smile. He didn’t talk much, but when he did, Hugo treasured every word he said, committing them to memory. For a while, things were going great. Until one fateful day, when Hugo pushed his luck just a *bit* more than he probably should have. The day started out normal enough, Hugo worked on some experiments he didn’t finish last night, ate some lunch, and then after lunch he grabbed his notes that needed Varian’s help, and started making his way to his room. However, on the way, he realized that as happy as he was to be able to talk to Varian, it didn’t feel *right*. A relationship based solely on notes slipped under a door and minimal verbal talking felt like a false one. What Hugo wanted to know more than anything, was *why*. Why had Varian shut him and the rest of the world out? If it was so necessary, why hadn’t he at least attempted some form of contact? This one word question had plagued Hugo’s mind ever since the door had closed, and he had never really had the confidence to ask it: until now.

So, he went back to his room and wrote out a letter. It was simple, a little more formal than usual, but to the point. It read: Varian- We’ve been talking with each other for a while now, and I feel we are at a point where I can ask this question: Why? Why have you locked yourself in your room and away from the rest of the world? Was it something I did? You can answer as vaguely or specifically as you like, I just would really like some answers. Thanks, Hugo

His hands shook as he folded the letter and slid it under the door. He knew to give Varian a little extra time, this wasn’t just a simple math problem. So Hugo waited. And waited. And waited, until it was dinner time and his stomach forced him to get some food. The whole time, his mind was at war with itself once again: See? You just had to push your luck, didn’t you? He’s giving you the cold shoulder ‘cause you couldn’t leave well enough well enough. No! He’s not giving me the cold shoulder, he’s just taking his time to formulate a response. It’s probably a really long story. Keep telling yourself that. I will! ‘Cause it’s true! If the positive side of Hugo was right, Varian sure was taking his sweet old time, because it was 3 weeks before anything happened. Three weeks of absolute silence from the older prince. The only reason things changed was because Hugo took the brave first step of sliding alchemy notes through the door. Five minutes later, it came back with notes and edits. There were no additional quips, remarks, or any explanations like he had requested three weeks earlier, but this was better than silence. They soon fell back into the routine they had before: notes, minimal verbal communication, and various quips. It felt good to get back to that routine, but a small part of Hugo still ached for answers that he feared would never come. But he never acted on this, fearing that Varian would once again give him the cold shoulder, and this time would ignore him for good.(20/20)

((And there it is! The final part! I hope u enjoyed reading it, this is the first time ive really written something i didnt hate *and* am sharing this with someone. Thank you for taking the time to read this, this means more than u know. Thank you also for letting me take over ur inbox😅Next up im doing this story but w/ varians pov, which ive already started. Thx again! -💙

Ahhhhhh, first off, sorry for getting to this later than I usually do!! These past few weeks have been hectic and I’ve been needing to take a step back and focus more on school and classes and stuff, but I finally got to reading this and OMIGOSH I LOVE IT SO MUCH!!!

(Hope you don’t mind if I just added in some italics and kinda changed the formatting to make it easier to read - didn’t take anything off or anything, but the way tumblr formats asks is a bit weird lol, hope that doesn’t offend you! - also number 7 somehow went missing? 😅)

But OMIGOSH YO - just my heart akfjajdjaj 🥺 The two of them building their relationship slowly through passing letters underneath the door? Oh my heart, and the way you can just feel them getting closer and happier because of it?

But then Hugo asking Varian the why - why did he shut him out, why was he behind the door, why can’t they see each other - and then Varian just suddenly going back to that stiff and formal demeanor after that akfjakfjja I cry ahhhhhhh-

“But he never acted on this, fearing that Varian would once again give him the cold shoulder, and this time would ignore him for good.” - JUST RIP MY HEART OUT BLUE NONNIE AHDKGKAKJD

I absolutely loved seeing Hugo’s hesitance then excitement and eagerness to get closer to his brother whom he barely even knows besides a few memories (and ha, I see the headache there 👀) and only to see that he went too far and the fragile bond they’d forged again had melted and akfjakfjaj the FEELS-

Thank you for sharing and for letting me read your writing! I’m excited to see what you’ve got next for Varian’s POV!!! 😱

[killingkueen]

Eat Your Words

Hello @mrs-stiltskin! Are you surprised? I bet you’re surprised. Please contain your surprise. I haven’t had this much fun writing something in a long time. Thank you for that ❤️ I hope you enjoy this nonsense! Merry Christmas! 🌟

Beta’d by the absolute HERO @paradigmparadoxical.

Prompt: Care to wager on that?

Summary: Ruby is so done watching Belle and Gold ineffectually flirt every morning. With a little help from Gold’s son, a Christmas miracle happens (in the form of sex but Neal never signed off on that).

Rated E, babe

OOO

Belle cursed as she peeled off the stockings she had just pulled on. It was the pair with the hole in the thigh, the small but infuriatingly too-big-to-be-within-her-skill-range-to-fix hole at the bottom turning into a run that stretched to her knee. Belle dug through her drawer, looking for a new pair.

She thought she had thrown the ruined ones out when she first lost the battle against the bookshelf, why were they—no, her drawer was empty, she hadn’t put her laundry away yet—she hadn’t shaved in weeks, she couldn’t go out with bare legs—and even if she could, it was December in Maine—she was from Australia for gods sake—

Belle forced herself to take a deep breath. Still clutching the tights, she made a decision.

She would wear pants.

There.

Problem solved.

It meant unzipping and exchanging her pretty green dress for a purple striped top, but at least she knew exactly where her slacks were. And she could still wear her red heels.

So what if she stayed up late to finish what proved to be an unsatisfying book? So what if she slept through her alarm? So what if the shipment of new books that was due Monday still hadn’t arrived today, four days later? Belle was wearing her best pair of high-heeled shoes with a shirt that didn’t bunch up when she reached for a high shelf and everything was fine.

Still, Belle quickened her pace to the diner. Her phone, traitor that it was, showed the time as nearly half past eight, which was much too late for Belle’s liking. But when she pushed open the door to meet with the smell of bacon grease and cinnamon, she saw a vacant counter. No one was loitering by the register, either. Which didn’t tell her anything she wanted to know.

“I was about to send out a search party,” Ruby teased as she slid past, arms full of dirty plates.

“I haven’t missed him, have I?” Belle hung her jacket up on one of the hooks by the door, her purse safely behind it.

“Good morning to you as well!” Ruby’s voice was bright with sarcasm. “Why, it is a lovely day.”

Belle claimed a stool, shooting her friend a smile. “The usual, please, when you have a moment.”

“Yeah, yeah. The paper is by the register,” Ruby said as she disappeared into the kitchen.

The Storybrooke Times was everything one could expect from a local paper; national stories interspersed with smaller, locally written reports on events and things going on in the community. The best thing about it was in the final pages, often next to the movie listings for the single theatre in town. 

The crossword.

Belle hadn’t looked twice at a crossword until moving to Storybrooke. She hardly looked twice at a newspaper, for that matter, but one sunny morning had found her at the counter without a book. After nicking a pen, Belle decided she had plenty of time to kill and how hard could a crossword really be.

Twenty minutes in and Belle came to the conclusion that whoever the Storybrooke Times outsourced their puzzles from were a bunch of sadists. But Belle liked winning far more than giving up, and the sense of accomplishment she got as she filled in each square was satisfying enough for her to try again the next day. And the next.

That’s how it was the morning Mr. Gold walked in. Belle was at the counter, eyes wandering as she thought about a clue and suddenly there was the beast of Storybrooke himself. He ordered coffee and stood waiting for it, fingers tapping the counter.

Having had no dealings with him, hardly any contact at all, she wasn’t sure what to make of his reputation. But to get to be in a position to own most of a town, surely he knew a thing or two?

“A melancholy instrument,” she said before she could lose her nerve.

He turned to look at her, eyebrow raised. His eyes were bottomless.

“Four letters,” Belle said. 

And very brown. And almost impatient, but she watched them flick down to her newspaper, saw her question moving about his head. “Oboe,” he said, accent slight around the single word.

She thanked him with a smile, and bid him a good day as he left, coffee cup in hand. Belle assumed that was the end of it, but he was there again the next day. And the next. He’d make small talk while he waited, and help her with a word or three.

Gold never stayed for breakfast, which was why the timing was so important. 

Belle quickly scribbled her first answer in the boxes, trying not to be obvious about how closely she was watching the door. Bone that’s part of a cage, three letters. Easy. Rib.

When a mug was set down, she looked up. “You didn’t answer me.”

“No, Belle,” Ruby said with forced patience. “Gold hasn’t come in yet, god.”

“Sorry, but he hasn’t shown in the last few days. I just want to be sure I didn’t miss him.”

“He used to not come in at all, you know.”

Belle wrote in the next answer. Nag to death, six letters. Badger. “But what if he’s stopped coming? What if he doesn’t have time anymore for… crosswords.”

Her friend raised an eyebrow, unfooled. “Then you go to his shop, sit him down in his back room, and make him do the crossword with you there.” She sniffed. “Several times, even.”

“I get the feeling we’re talking about two entirely different things.” Belle put her head down, ignoring her blush.  Certainly, she was pretending not to picture in exact detail what Ruby was suggesting.

“Are we?” Ruby smiled with all her teeth. “As if that’s not what you’re thinking the moment he opens his mouth.”

Belle was just about to reply—and it was going to be very clever, probably—but the door opened, and a familiar figure in a long black coat with a cane entered through it.

“Mr. Gold!” Belle said, louder than she meant to. “Good morning!” She ignored the look Ruby sent her.

“Miss French,” Gold greeted. “Hey.” His smile was small, but genuine, so unlike the cool politeness he more often than not greeted people with.

She sat up straighter on her stool, feeling warm to her toes.

“Missed you these last few days, Gold,” Ruby said with a look at Belle. “Coffee to go?”

“Ah—no, thank you, Miss Lucas,” he said, turning to gesture to an unfamiliar man. Belle hadn’t noticed him come in.

Ruby’s eyebrows shot up. “Hey, man. Long time no see.”

Belle shot Ruby a questioning look.

“This is Neal,” Gold said to Belle. He stepped slightly to the side, as if showcasing a work of art. “My son.”

His hair was the same dark brown as his father's, but shorter. He had a similar build, but was a little taller. His face was much more open than Gold’s was, and seemed ready to smile without much provocation.

“Hello, Neal,” Belle said politely. “Nice to meet you.”

“Miss French is the librarian now,” Gold said. “Took over for Mrs. Potts when she retired.”

Ruby reached for some menus, holding them out to Neal. “How’s school? Finals kick your butt?”

He shrugged. “I haven’t gotten the score for a few of my papers yet, but I probably did alright.”

“I have no doubt you aced it all, nerd.” She gestured to the bank of booths. “Sit anywhere. I’ll bring some coffee, yeah?”

“Thanks, Ruby.”

Instead of following his son to a table, Gold hesitated, twisting his cane against the tile. “Miss French,” he finally said. “Have a lovely day.”

“You too,” she said weakly, trying to keep the disappointment from showing on her face.

She watched as he slid into the booth across from Neal, his back to her. She didn’t mean to stare (the silver in his hair was striking in the light from the hanging fixtures, and his shoulders were a defined line, even in his suit and, and, and) but then Neal glanced her way. Their eyes met, and Belle stared long enough to see his eyebrows raise in question. Embarrassed, Belle turned away.

Ruby was looking at her, too, something close to amusement on her face.

“You never told me Gold had a son,” Belle hissed.

“What are you mad at me for? He’s the one that didn’t tell you.” She moved to grab the pot of coffee and two mugs. “Does it matter?”

“Of course not,” Belle sighed, resigned. It was more the absolute proof that she didn’t know anything about Gold, and likely didn’t register at all beyond being the girl at the counter with her morning crossword. She looked down at her next clue. As a result, four letters. Ergo.

“He went off to college a few years ago and hasn’t been back since.”

“I see.” Belle took a sip of her tea. 

Ruby raised an eyebrow at her, but said nothing as she took up her tray.

“Wait, wait.” Belle said. She looked down at the newspaper. No point sulking, just because Gold wasn’t available; she had a crossword to finish.  “Heavenly body, six letters. Would you—but only ask if he seems—available? I don’t want to bother him.”

“Oh my god, Belle,” Ruby said, “you have it bad.”

“There’s an R at the end, I think,” she said with as much dignity as possible.

Belle was tempted to keep an eye on Ruby, but she didn’t want to risk more eye contact with Neal. He seemed nice, but giving him the wrong impression would be...unfortunate.

Belle tried to concentrate on her puzzle, tapping her pen softly on the counter, occasionally taking a sip of her tea. It was agonizing to wait for Ruby.

Belle was just about to risk turning around when Ruby sauntered back. Ignoring Belle completely, she went straight for the computer to punch in the order. After looking back and forth from the screen to her pad far more than was necessary, she finally—finally—looked at Belle.

“You have smoke coming out of your ears.”

“Ruby—”

“Meteor.”

She sniffed. Scribbled in the answer. It fit, of course. 

Gold never gave her a wrong answer; sometimes he’d smile when he knew a particularly tough clue, his gold tooth peeking out from under the curve of his lip. Once, when she’d misspelled patient, he had leaned into her space to look over her shoulder. She caught the smell of his cologne, spicy and expensive and him.

A glance couldn’t hurt, surely. She peeked over her shoulder, at his table, and—she made eye contact with Neal, who was staring right at her.

Mortified, she whipped her head back around. Her face was as red as her heels.

“You wanted extra bacon, extra crispy, right Neal?” Ruby yelled across the diner. Her lips pursed.

Belle heard a cough. “Uh, yeah Ruby. Thanks.”

The cooked called out an order and Belle stared unseeing at her paper.

“Here.” The plate Ruby put in front of her was stacked high with pancakes, sliced bananas and blueberries on top. “Not your usual, but—” She shrugged before taking up the coffee pot to make a round of refills.

Belle sighed, feeling drained of all the energy she had burst in with. So what if she had lost the motivation to finish her crossword, or that the man she was hopelessly in love with didn’t have time to say more than a friendly hello? She had a plate of pancakes and a friend that knew when she needed them. Today was going to be fine.

OOO

Ruby, in the middle of stacking clean cups from the back, turned to the door when she heard it open. It wasn’t quite lunchtime yet, and the morning rush had long cleared out.

“Neal,” she greeted. “Didn’t you eat enough at breakfast?”

He sat on the stool in front of her. He leaned forward, bracing his forearms on the counter. “This morning was weird,” he said without preamble.

Ruby thought of Belle on her stool, staring unseeing at the newspaper. In all her years at the diner, she had never seen someone eat pancakes so sadly.

“You don’t know the half of it,” she muttered.

“Tell me then.”

Ruby put her hand on her hip, considering. Neal was a good kid, always had been, and anything she said about Belle wouldn’t be met with mockery. But Belle valued her privacy, and seemed a little unsure of Neal this morning. Or mostly surprised. Definitely embarrassed.

“Did you know,” Neal said when the silenced stretched, “that my father has recently started doing crosswords?”

She shrugged. “He’s Belle’s go-to when she gets stuck.”

“No, Ruby,” he leaned forward further, lowering his voice like he was sharing trade secrets. “He sits at the kitchen table, newspaper spread in front of him, and looks up the answers on his phone. He hardly even tries.”

Ruby blinked. “You mean—”

“And then he studies the answers. Like he’s memorizing them. Which I thought was weird, but just brushed it off as, I don’t know, brushing up on vocabulary before the dementia kicks in, but then we came in this morning—”

“I knew it!” she said, slamming both her open palms on the counter. Neal jumped. “I knew she asked for answers that she already knew!”

It was his turn to stare at her blankly.

“Belle is the smartest person I know. As if she doesn’t know ‘boast of some shampoos.’”

“Boast of—what?” Now Neal was thoroughly confused.

“‘Low PH’ was the answer, by the way, which was a really stupid clue anyway, and Belle already had the L and the P, but of course Gold knew it.” Ruby scoffed. “He cheats, she plays dumb. God, I hate them both.”

“No, you don’t,” Neal said cheerfully. “It is a weird mating ritual, though.”

“Rituals end, Neal,” she said flatly.

“How long have they been—“

“Months, Neal.”

He swallowed a laugh at her dramatics. “Is it really so bad?”

She crossed her arms, leaning back. “Not really. Gold behaves himself when Belle’s around, and it’s cute, how wound up she gets.” 

There was a pause as Ruby welcomed a new table. Neal waited until after she had put their order in the computer.

“Papa won’t make the first move.”

She snorted. “Belle would rather clear out the library basement than confront Gold about her feelings.” If this morning was any indication, Belle would likely rather bury herself alive than have that conversation.

“What if we,” Neal gestured between them. “I don’t know, give them a little push.”

“Why are you suddenly so invested?”

“Come on, it’s Christmas.”

Ruby gave him a look, completely unconvinced.

“Look, my heart got kicked in the dick, alright? My cheating girlfriend broke up with me and kicked me out of the apartment. When I crawl back here with my tail between my legs, instead of undivided attention, Papa’s preoccupied and growling at me for embarrassing the librarian this morning.” Neal swiveled a little on his stool. His shoulders were hunched forward, arms on the counter again. “Besides, this is the first time he’s shown any interest in a relationship since my mom dipped, and... I don’t know. There must be something special about Belle.”

“You’re damn right there is.” Ruby plucked a brownie out of the display case. She placed it on a napkin by his elbow. “That really blows about your ex. You’re better off without her.”

“Papa and I are going apartment hunting before the new semester starts.” 

The cook called out an order, and she left him with his brownie.

When she returned, a glass of water was the next thing she placed in front of him. “So what’s your plan?” she asked.

“I was thinking of playing the sad dumpee and convince dad I need a small party surrounded by friends.” 

“Mainly me and Belle.” She didn’t bother hiding her lack of awe.

“Only you and Belle. Don’t give me that look, it makes sense if you think about it. Since August moved to New York, you’re the closest thing I have to an old high school friend.”

“I was three years above you.”

“And Papa knows that you wouldn't want to come to the house alone,” Neal continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “So, obviously, you’d bring someone you know, and bonus points if you’re not dragging her along behind you.”

Ruby had to admit it wasn’t faulty reasoning, even if it wasn’t exactly sound. “And what will we do at this party?”

“Drink.” He said the word as if Ruby asked what day it was.

“Oh, Neal. Belle will never go for it, and frankly, neither will Gold.” She put her head in her hands. Belle was far more interested in books and quiet evenings in than drinking parties, and Ruby had a feeling Gold was much the same. These two would need a good incentive, something to actually do with their time, and Ruby hoped that she had it in herself to make the sacrifice.

“Because I love you, and I love Belle, and I am quickly learning to tolerate Gold, I will do this one thing for them.”

“What do you mean?”

Ruby stood up straight. She flicked her ponytail over her shoulder. She wore the look someone might if she were pretending to lead an army but knew she was facing a guillotine. “We're going to play Scrabble.”

OOO

Belle needed to expand her wardrobe. Not that it really mattered. Probably. In any case, everything she owned was appropriate for the library. Still, it was hard not to wish she had bought that slinky emerald dress she had been looking at a few months ago. The blue lace number with the red belt would have to do. Perfectly respectable. She didn’t have to impress anyone.

Well. Maybe she didn’t have to, but she certainly wanted to. Gold was mysterious, wicked smart, and she desperately wanted to engage him in a conversation that lasted longer and was much deeper than scant hints and word counts. There was something about him that drew her in, with his perfectly tailored suits and charming smile. And his hair that didn’t quite curl and the ends. If she had something that would catch his eye, she would certainly be wearing it.

Then again, she didn’t have to wait for him to make a move. The outfit wasn’t perfect, but she could pull out the red lipstick. If he demonstrated even the slightest bit of interest she could make a move herself. Nothing was stopping her.

Belle heard Ruby whistle when she walked down the stairs from her apartment.  She nodded in approval at the bottle of red wine Belle had brought. It would pair nicely with the the box of leftover sweets from the diner that was currently tucked under her arm.

“You look hot. Gonna get Gold’s attention tonight, eh?”

“I figured it would be appropriate to dress up for a party,” Belle said, feigning innocence.

“It’s gonna be fun,” Ruby said with her wide, wolf smile. “I’ll make sure if it.”

OOO

It had been snowing since the afternoon, and the fresh snow crunched underneath their boots as they walked through downtown. Belle hadn’t minded when Ruby suggested they walk to Gold’s; it wasn’t a long walk and she enjoyed seeing the flurries of white illuminated in the streetlights.

“Have you been to his house before?” Belle asked, voice barely muffled by the thick scarf she wore.

“Nah,” Ruby said. “Everyone knows where Gold lives, but I don’t know anyone who’s been inside. Doesn’t keep that much company.”

They continued walking in a comfortable silence, until Ruby nudged her and said, “Gold’s is the pink one.”

The salmon pink Victorian, to be exact. The lawn was buried but Belle could imagine how neatly trimmed it was kept when not under several inches of snow. She wondered what flowers he grew when it wasn’t winter.

The house was intimidating. The place was huge, palatial even, if she were the sort of person who was swayed to hyperbole. Ruby nudged her out of her reverie.

“Let's go in. My feet are freezing.”

“We could also go home. We have a very nice bottle of wine we could split.” Belle waved said bottle.

“If you want to walk all the way back we’re at least going to thaw out first.”

Belle didn’t really have anything to say to that; she hadn’t been able to feel her face for the last block or so. She adjusted her coat. It was silly to be nervous anyway. And she didn’t run from anything, certainly not antiques dealers and their nice houses.

Ruby went ahead, bouncing up the stairs and ringing the bell. The door opened almost immediately. Gold stood there, nodding a hello before stepping out of the way so she could enter. He wasn’t wearing a suit jacket, only his shirt sleeve and a waistcoat. She had never seen him so dressed down before, or knew that he apparently wore sleeve garters; the golden bands caught the light when he moved, just so. Like halos, but for his elbows. The thought made her giggle.

“Are you going to come in, dear?” he called to Belle, who was still hovering at the bottom of his porch. “You’re letting the warm air out.”

“Sorry, sorry.” Belle shuffled in. “Your home is beautiful,” she said lamely. Beautiful was accurate, if understated. The furniture was old in style, but well kept. Paired with the numerous art pieces and various decorations, it could be called cluttered if everything weren’t arranged just so. It was an appealing sort of orderly chaos.

“Thank you.” He smiled as if she had given him the highest of compliments. “May I take your coat?”

Belle automatically brought her arms up to unzip, only to be stymied by the wine bottle.

“Oh, uh, I brought you some wine.”

Gold took it, inspecting the label. His eyes narrowed, and her heart rate sped up. Why didn’t she consider the possibility of him being a wine guy? Of course he was a wine guy. Connoisseur was likely on his birth certificate.

“Not a bad choice, given the options we have here,” he said eventually. “You have a good eye.”

Belle blew out a breath. That was the first battle won. She relieved herself of her winter coat, hanging it on the rack he pointed out.

When she turned around, he was staring at her.

“What?”

He started, and Belle noticed his grip on the neck of the bottle tightening. He coughed. “Oh, it’s nothing.” He twisted his hand back and forth. “You, uh, look lovely.”

Belle brushed her hands down her dress, pleased (second victory won, thank you very much), and that’s when she noticed. Gold’s shirt was a deep navy blue, his tie a rich burgundy with a pattern she could just make out as paisley.

“We match,” she said, delighted.

His smile was a small thing. “So we do.”

Ruby poked her head out of what was presumably the kitchen, holding a plate of snacks. “Let’s get this over with, yeah?”

“Eager to lose?” Neal asked, slipping past her with wine glasses. He lead the way into the dining room.

“Like you’re one to talk,” she said, following.

Gold sighed, resigned to what his night was going to be. “Is Miss Lucas not a fan of board games?”

“Board games are fine, it’s just she’s refused to play this particular one with me ever since our first girl’s night.”

“Is Scrabble not her speed?” He held out his arm, elbow bent, like a gentleman caller about to walk his beau on a tour around the garden.

They were only headed to the next room, but Belle was charmed despite herself. Her hand nestled perfectly into the crook; she could feel the warmth of his skin through his shirt.

“No, it’s just out of the three games we played, she never came close to beating me.” She bit her lip, feeling just a trace of smugness. “She actually forfeited the third game after I used all seven of my tiles. Twice.”

“A worthy opponent.” He nodded, as if he expected nothing less. “Neal and I would play on a scaled point system when he was a lad. But now if we play it’s only because he’s humoring me.”

They had reached the dining room, where Ruby was laying out plates of cheese and crackers, and another bottle of wine. Neal had just popped the lid off the game.

“I heard that,” he said, shooting his father a look.

Gold led her to the table. “You make good practice.” He pulled out a chair for Belle, seamlessly depositing her in it. It was unnecessary, and almost out of place, but Belle still felt a flutter in her stomach. She noticed Ruby watching her, eyebrow raised, smirk firmly in place.

“The disrespect,” Neal said to Ruby, shaking his head.

“Smug,” she agreed. “Glass of wine, Belle? Gold?”

“You serve people all day, Ruby,” Belle said. She was about to stand, but Gold waved her off.

“She’s right. Make Neal do it.” He walked around the table, carefully pulling out the chair across from Belle and sitting down. He winked at her, and she smiled, biting her lip.

“Don't have to tell me twice.”

“The disrespect,” Neal repeated, but he was laughing.

Ruby took the set next to Gold. She pulled the snacks—cheese and crackers, and a separate plate of fruit—closer to her. The box of sweets was there, too, and it looked like Neal had made a dent when he and Ruby were alone in the kitchen.

Belle took out the board and tiles. Soon, everyone had their seats, their starting letters, and a glass of wine.

Everyone but Neal.

“Do you not like red?” Belle asked. “I wish I had known, I’d have brought a white, or a nice rosé.”

“I’m not a big fan of wine,” Neal said with a shrug, smile as affable as ever.

“We split a bottle for dinner last night,” Gold said, eyes flickering back and forth from Belle to his son. “You should have said something.”

“Oh,” he said, “It’s just that it’s snowing, you know?”

“Why does that matter? You’re not planning on going anywhere.” Gold narrowed his eyes.

Ruby cleared her throat. “Here’s the thing,” she said loudly as she arranged her tiles. “I can’t keep up with you smarties. No sense denying it.”

“Sounds like you’re giving up,” Neal said, happy to change the subject.

“Don’t be ridiculous. It means I get to use my phone to look up words.”

Belle pursed her lips. “You can use a dictionary to check if a word is real, or check the spelling. No word finding sites.”

“Word finding sites?” Gold asked.

“There are websites that let you type in the letters you have, and then they’ll pop up all the different words you can make with them,” she said, her disapproval evident.

“Which is also called cheating, and I would never,” Ruby said innocently. “But if I’m going to keep pace, I need some sort of handicap.”

“You’re not unintelligent, Miss Lucas,” Gold said quietly.

Ruby frowned, looking for the insult. Unable to find one, she said, “I didn’t say I was. Just, you know, give me some letters and suddenly I forget every word I know, but give me a sudoku puzzle and I can finish it in ten minutes.”

“Is that good?” Neal asked.

“I don’t know. But I can do it.”

“A dictionary is fine, if you think you need it.” Gold said, with all the confidence of a man who had probably memorized every word combo there was.

“Cool. I’ll settle any disputes, too, and side with Belle only most of the time.”

“How generous.” Gold took a sip of his wine. “You can go first,“ he offered. “First word is an automatic double score.”

Ruby hummed, narrowing her eyes at her letters. “Beat this,” she said, cheerfully sarcastic. In the middle of the board, she placed the word TREAT. “Double score, yeah? Ten points.”

Neal, the designated score keeper, gave her a look.

“What? That’s five letters.”

“They’re all one point, though. You can’t waste a double score square on one point letters.”

Ruby scoffed. “I only have one point letters. Give me a break.”

“All right, all right,” Neal said, writing her total under her name. “Papa, you’re next.”

“No need to worry, Miss Lucas, I also only have one point letters.” He moved a tile over on his tray once, twice. With careful precision, he layed all seven tiles vertically, spelling LATEENER.

Ruby groaned. “Neal and I are a team.”

“Oh, this is only...forty-four points,” Neal said around a laugh. “Easy to catch up to.”

“Oh, sure, easy,” Ruby said. “It’s easy to go up against two walking word processors.”

“Says the girl with the smartphone.”

While they were busy, Belle played her word: ARMORIAL. “That's sixty-six points by my count,” she said, reaching for the bag containing the extra tiles.

Ruby gave the board a pointed look. “Do you want to team up or not?” she asked.

Neal looked at his letters. He laid out RAKE, for fifteen points. “Yeah, alright,” Neal said.

“There, see? We have a chance now.”

OOO

They did not have a chance.

“'Adobo' is not a real word, Gold.”

“You’re the one with the dictionary, dearie.”

“Its a type of food,” said Belle helpfully. “Filipino, I believe. A chicken dish. Or Pork.” She scrunched her nose at Gold. “And you took my spot.”

He smiled at her, gold tooth gleaming. “My sincere apologies.”

“Yet you side with him,” Ruby sighed.

“It's called integrity,” Neal muttered, frowning at his letters.

“And whose side are you on?” Ruby laughed. She popped a cracker into her mouth.

“Probably for the best,” Belle said to Gold, playing VIVID for thirty-two points.

“That puts her in the lead,” Neal said.

Gold moved a tile or two on his rack. “By how much?” he asked.

“Eleven points,” he said.

“How far behind are you and Ruby?” Belle asked, trying very hard not to sound like a poor winner.

“By enough,” Ruby said before Neal could answer. “Even putting our scores together, we’re not a match for you.”

Belle had a feeling they weren’t trying that hard. With the exception of Ruby’s first turn, most of the words they played were only three or four letters. It would have been boring, even frustrating, if not for Gold. He had caught up to her quickly, and they’d been neck and neck since.

While she waited for Neal to make his next move, she watched Gold’s long fingers shift the tiles around while he plotted. His gaze went back and forth from the board to his tray, brow furrowed in perfect concentration. The waiting was usually her least favorite part of the game, but she also didn't usually have such a nice view.

His eyes met hers over the board, brown and bottomless. Instead of flittering away, she held his gaze. She could fall right into him, sink all the way down. She wouldn’t resurface for days.

The sound of tiles settling drew her attention away.

“AND,” Neal read. “Four points.”

Belle bit back her sigh. With that disappointing word, it was the start of a new round. Before Ruby could make her move, Belle said, “I bet I can keep the lead.” Gold’s eyes met hers again. Feeling bold, brave, she said, “I can win, too. By a lot more than eleven points.”

“You think so, hm?” He looked intrigued. “Care to wager on that?”

“That depends on what I get when I win.”

Gold opened his mouth, answer on the tip of his tongue, but seemed to think better of it. “Depends on what you want,” he said instead, tongue licking his bottom lip.

Belle’s eyes followed the movement. What was it like to kiss him?

From there, It was easy to imagine Gold between her legs. It’s where her thoughts often ended up. His hands—rough or smooth?—sliding from her thighs to her hips, sliding under her for leverage as his mouth worked over her mound. She was sure it’d be good, sure it’d be—thorough. His tongue reaching all the secret parts of her. She shifted, rubbing her legs together beneath her skirt, her tights sliding against the wood of the chair. How would he react, if she asked him for that?

He leaned forward, as if drawn in by her, his eyes not leaving her face, as if he could read her train of thought on her face. That would have made her blush before, but she wasn’t blushing now.

Ruby’s phone dinged, making them both jump. Red rapidly spread over Belle’s face and down her neck. Embarrassment crowded in like an acquaintance that refused to be avoided. Gold coughed, turning away to spare her. 

“Excuse me,” she mumbled, standing up. “I need the restroom.”

“Third door on the left,” Neal said to her retreating back as she slipped from the room.

Gold said nothing, instead stared at his tiles.

“Dorothy’s stuck,” Ruby said.

Gold blinked, adrift. He glanced at her phone. “Miss Gale.”

“Her car hit a snowbank and she’s—" Ruby shrugged “—stuck.”

“That’s bad,” Neal said, nodding. “She can’t be left out in this weather. You should go get her.” His voice was stilted, which was odd enough, but he was nodding like a bobble head.

“Hold on,” Gold said.

“Yes, I should,” Ruby agreed. “But I walked here, since Granny has the car. It’s her cribbage night, you know.” She was talking fast enough that Gold almost didn’t catch what she was saying.

“I insist on driving you, then. We will take my truck. It has four-wheel drive, so it won’t get caught in a snowbank.”

Ruby swallowed what was left of her wine, following as Neal stood up.

“It’s decided then.”

“What about Miss French?” Gold asked. “Our game—“

“Oh, you two can duke it out for a winner, right?”

“I’ll call you, Papa,” Neal yelled from the foyer.

And just like that, Gold was alone at the table.

OOO

Belle felt marginally steadier when she left the bathroom.

She was a little less so when she returned to the dining room to see Gold alone.

“Are they in the kitchen?” Belle asked, taking her seat. Ruby had polished off the fruit and cheese, and it was as good a time as any for a break.

“Um. No.”

Belle waited for an explanation, but Gold didn’t seem inclined to give her one.

“Is everything okay?”

“Something came up,” he finally said. “Miss Gale? She’s having some difficulty with the weather. Apparently.”

“Dorothy? What do you mean, what happened?”

“She messaged Ruby, and her car is stuck in the snow.”

“In the whole three inches that have fallen today?” Belle asked, frowning. But that wasn’t the only thing fishy. “Besides, Dorothy is in Kansas, visiting her aunt.” She had a deep and sudden urge to pound her head against the table. “Do you feel like we’ve been set up?” she asked.

“Yes,” Gold said after a moment. “It does feel that way.” He looked from the game board, half-finished, to his wine glass, half-drunk. His shoulders sagged, and he looked like a balloon someone had let go of; deflated and limp. “Would you allow me to drive you home, Miss French?” he asked, not meeting her eyes.

She didn’t want to go home, was her immediate thought. This was the most fun she’d had in a long time. It wasn’t just the game, or that Gold could keep up with her. She felt that pull again, that sensation that bubbled in her chest whenever Gold was near.

Hoping this was the right answer, she said, “You’re not getting out of this that easily. We have a game to finish.”

She watched the relieved smile bloom on his face, like a flower when placed in the sunlight.

“You’ll find I’m not that easy to beat.”

“I’m counting on it.” She took a sip from her wine glass. “It’s your turn, Mr. Gold.”

“Rumple,” he said.

“How many points?” She reached over into Neal’s spot for the scorecard. At least he was good at keeping score, if not subtly.

“No, that’s—“ he swallowed. “That’s my name. A nickname. That is—you don’t have to—“

“Rumple,” she said, rolling it around her mouth. She nodded. It suited him, in a strange way.

He smiled, looking at her expectantly, almost hopefully.

Her lip twitched. “It’s your turn, Rumple,” she said, knowing that wasn’t what he wanted.

“Yes, of course, Miss French,” he emphasized, drawing out the consonants. “Whatever you say, Miss French.”

She laughed. “Yes, of course you can call me Belle.”

“Thank you, Belle.”

“Your turn, Rumple,” she said again.

His bashful smile was a beautiful thing, as was his pride as he laid out his word: QUICK.

“Fifty-four points,” Belle counted, writing it down. “Impressive.”

He bowed his head, rolling his hand in a gesture that made Belle think of a bowing knight. She found it suited him much better than the town’s branding of ‘beast.’

Belle looked at her tray.

“You never told me what you wanted,” he said after a few moments of Belle deliberating her next move.

Sexual favors, Belle did not say. Just like that, all her thoughts from before came rushing back. “Uh, I’ll decide when I win.”

‘You seem awfully confident. What do I get if I’m the winner?”

“Anything you want,” Belle said without thinking.

“Anything?” His eyes trailed from her face down her neck, down down down. She was sure it would have gone lower still had the table not been in the way. “I’ll remind you that you said that.”

Belle shivered. As if she’d need it. Anything he wanted was his.

She cleared her throat, trying to focus. The A from Neal’s last move was open, she could use that. She moved an R to the front of her tray, next to an O. Belle felt her breath catch when she saw it.

Did she dare?

It would be mortifying—instant death, even—if the move wasn’t received well. It’d be hard to pass it off as a joke, and it was doubtful that he’d take it as one.

But.

If this succeeded, the reward was unimaginable.

“I think the winner should get this,” she said, very proud that her voice was smooth, confident.

Rumple seemed curious. “Is that so?”

“Yes, definitely.” Being brave had her gotten this far. She placed the tiles, careful to not disturb the ones already on the board.

ORAL. Five points.

Belle watched as Gold read the word, then read it again. The seconds passed.

“Oh,” he croaked.

That wasn’t quite the reaction she had hoped for. She bit her lip.

“Have I made you uncomfortable?” she asked, her voice low. She hadn’t wanted to push him too far, too soon.

“No, no not at all. I just don’t…” He swallowed. “I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want.”

Belle furrowed her brow. “Since I’m the one offering, and since you are now,” she looked down at the scorecard, doing some quick subtraction. “Thirty-eight points ahead of me—“

“I haven’t won yet,“ he was quick to remind her. “Still plenty of time for you to catch up.”

At least he wasn’t upset, she tried to tell herself. At least he wasn’t asking her to leave. “I did say you could ask for anything,” she said, voice quiet.

“I was going to ask for dinner, and maybe a kiss on the cheek when I took you home.”

“A kiss on the cheek?” she repeated. Her insides bubbled. Oh, this charming man. “That’s all you want from me?”

“No,” he admitted, voice strangled. “But it’s all I’d dare ask for.”

“Well lucky for you, you don’t have to ask.”

She watched his throat bob. “Yes,” he said faintly. “Lucky me.”

“Do you agree to the terms?” Belle hoped she sounded coy, but wasn’t sure she nailed it. “Because if you’d rather wait until after a few dates, we can. I don’t want to pressure you.”

Belle saw something relax on his face. She wasn’t sure if it was the way out she offered, or that she had promised more than one date, but it was still good to see.

“Winner receives oral sex,” Rumple said, sounding much more himself then he did a moment ago.

Belle smiled, excitement making her giddy. “Deal.”

“My turn, hm?” Rumple looked at his tray. Moments passed, long and unsteady. He moved his letters around. His eyes flickered to her, then back down. He stared at the tiles so intently, Belle was impressed they didn’t start smoking.

“You’re overthinking this.” Belle could see the gears turning in his head, wondering what the right move was. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to lose or win. “Okay, this bet? It’s off the table.”

He couldn’t quite hide his disappointment. “I see. I understand—“ Rumple cut himself off when she pushed her chair back and ducked under the table. “—Belle?”

“Grab Ruby’s tray.”

“Uh—“

Even in the shadows, as was the only thing below Rumple’s grand dining room table, Belle could see her face reflected in his shoes. She smiled at herself, then loosely grabbed hold of Gold’s good ankle. She pressed her thumb against the joint.

“Scoot forward a little,” she ordered. “Do you have the extra letters?”

“Ye-Yes.” Above her head, Belle heard the faintest sound of something sliding across the wood.

Belle ran her hands up his calves, then down his shins. Up his shins, down his calves. His legs were warm, the fabric of his trousers sleek. He opened his legs wider, and oh, didn’t she fit nicely between them. Speaking of between them, there was an obvious tent, already. She bit her lip, pleased.

“You have quite the way with words, Rumple,” she said, hands on his knees. “Let’s see how good you are when you’re distracted.”

He groaned like he was in pain, the sound going straight to the spot between her own legs. With a solid pressure, she ran her hands up his thighs, to his belt. She carefully worked him out of it.

“You have fourteen letters to play with,” Belle said conversationally. “More than enough.” Instead of unzipping him, she cupped his cock in her hand, the heat scorching. Her other hand went to the base, then lower, looking for—yes, there they were. She gave his balls a squeeze as best she could through his clothes, delighting in the jolt of his hips as he pressed himself closer.

“Belle, please.”

“Tell me what new letters you have.”

Another groan. Then, “She had the Z, plus two Os. An A, an R.”

She unzipped him in reward. “What words could you make with that?”

“I have, ah, ZOO. ZIT. ZOA. I don’t see a space on the board though,” he panted.

She reached inside, drawing his cock out of his pants. Rumple moaned in relief at being freed. “Don’t worry about the board. What other words?” She circled her finger around the head, smearing his precome.

“TEA, TEE, TIE, TOE,” he fired off in quick succession.

She clucked her tongue. “Those are all three letters,” she said. “I expected more from you, Mr. Gold.”

“I’m a little distracted, Miss French.”

“Oh, you want me to stop.”

“No!” His voice was three octaves higher than usual. “Fuck, Belle, please, don’t stop.”

She kissed his tip. He whined, but didn’t buck. She pressed more kisses around his head, down his length. She could feel the strain in his hips, the restraint he had. She wondered briefly what it would feel like if that restraint snapped; maybe his hands would bury in her hair, and he’d pull her close, hold himself in her mouth, in her throat. Maybe he’d even thrust, pressing himself deeper, deep enough that all she could taste would be him.

She licked her lips. Later. For now, she said, “Your words, Rumple.”

“TZAR,” he said, “Please, fuck, OORIE, HAZEL.”

“Very good.” Another kiss to his tip. She gave another, but open mouthed, and then his spongy head was on her tongue, her lips around him, his taste spreading, pungent and perfect. She sucked.

His fist hit the table, the tiles rattling.

“Rumple,” she admonished.

“Sorry.”

She hummed, running her hand up and down his shaft. She rubbed his hip with the other, trailing up to his pelvis, then down. He had too many clothes on, and for a moment she resented her game, but there would be time to explore him properly later.

After a few passes, his hips bucked. She made a noise of inquiry.

“Belle, please,” he said.

“What’s the longest word you can make?”

She kissed his length again before opening her mouth, swallowing as much of him as she comfortably could. His cock was so hot, so sweet on her tongue.

She almost missed it when he said, “REALIZE, no, TOTALIZER. It’s TOTALIZER.”

She worked him, mouth and hands together, back and forth and sucking and squeezing, and Rumple was moaning, then his hands were looking for her, he couldn’t see her, but he was saying, please, Belle, he was there, she didn’t have to, please—

He came into her mouth. He groaned her name, hand finding her hair. Then he was using his good foot to push his chair back. The legs scraped against the hardwood. He cupped Belle’s elbow, lifting her up up up, hand in her hair tilting her head, and then he was kissing her.

Gold gasped—she hadn’t swallowed. She hadn’t swallowed and his tongue was in her mouth, and he was pulling her closer, hungry for the come he had given her, for the taste of them together—

Belle drew back, white spots appearing in her vision. Gold followed, his lips chasing hers, his need for air paling in his need for her.

She giggled, evading him. She didn't go far though, nuzzling his neck. Belle took a deep breath, feeling warm. Gold’s arms were around her, and she never wanted to leave his lap.

“So that was good then,” she said when her heart rate settled.

“More than—fuck. You’re perfect, you know that? The embodiment of light itself. Just your smile is a gift, let alone—Belle,” he whined, kissing her again.

"You’re pretty perfect, too.” She wrapped her arms around him, keeping him close.

Peeking behind her, she said, “It appears you’ve wrecked our board.”

“Screw the board,” he growled, unrepentant. 

Belle laughed, biting her lip. “I’d rather you screw me.”

With a heated look, he swept his arm across the table, tiles scattering. Belle squealed when he lifted her by the hips so her arse was on the edge of the table. “It’s your turn, my dear,” he said, leaving sucking kisses down her neck.

She moaned, legs falling open. She was happy to call this a draw.

OOO

Neal had kept his word, and called his father. Tried to, at least. It was around eleven when Neal figured the game had ended, or his father had struck out in scoring a date. There was an equal chance of both things happening.

When his call rolled over to voicemail, he took it as a sign that Papa was piqued at having been set up. Always careful about when he was too upset, Neal could count on a partially amputated hand the number of times his father had raised his voice at him.

Better to leave this confrontation for the morning.

He had slept at the inn, Ruby coming to the same conclusion he had when Belle hadn’t picked up either. “We tried,” she said, toasting him with a beer bottle as they sat in the empty diner that night. “Nothing else to do now but try again.”

He wasn’t so sure about that one.

Regardless, Neal entered the house, fresh pastries and a travel case of two coffees in hand, courtesy of Ruby. He was about to shrug out of his coat when he saw it; a bright blue pea coat, already hanging. Right where it was last time he saw it. Last night.

He looked at the coffees, as if the plastic lids held the answer of what one was supposed to do when potentially running across…his father’s girlfriend? Is that what this made her?

Neal quickly decided it was above his pay grade and not his business. Just because Belle might still be here didn’t mean anything happened; it was snowing and they had both been drinking, it made sense that Papa would insist she stay the night.

He shook his head at himself. He wished he had the foresight to get more provisions from Ruby. Neal walked into the dining room, plans of braving his father’s high tech coffee pot that neither of them knew how to use already forming in his head, when—

”What the fuck,” he said before he could stop himself.

The Scrabble board was against the wall, as if someone had thrown it, and letters lay scattered all over the floor, as if swept off to make room on the table for something else.

And he knew exactly what that something else was, if the piled clothing was anything to go by.

But the table was where he ate. He had done homework there. For years.

“Neal?” Called a groggy voice from the den. From the couch. That Neal used. They didn’t even make it to his bedroom, he thought in horror.

“Papa.” He set the pastries and coffee on the table. It was too early in the morning, and it would be better for everyone if he was somewhere else. Immediately. “Coffee’s here. I’m going back to the inn.”

“What’s’at?”

That was definitely not his papa’s voice.

He heard the wet smacking of lips, a pleased hum.

“Why, good morning,”

“What’s say we make it a great one?”

And that was all the insight Neal ever needed into his father’s sex life. Without another word, he turned right around and walked out of the dining room. Just as he was about the close the door, he saw the morning paper, thrown up to the porch. He hadn’t noticed it; the opaque, green plastic bag blending in with the painted wood.

Neal remembered the crossword, why he and Ruby had done all this to begin with. He’d tell her a second try wasn’t needed after all. She’d get a kick out of it, and hopefully share some good disinfecting tips with him.

He hung the newspaper by its bag next to Belle’s blue coat.

The weirdos could do what they wanted with it.

[clarz]

[disclaimer: this is an archive of an old question i answered on curiouscat, copied and pasted so i can take advantage of tumblr's tagging system for organization. i'm mostly doing this for my own record-keeping purposes, so feel free to ignore this post and blacklist "clarz cc" to avoid seeing them in the future.]

answered April 2, 2020

Q (Anonymous): hey, fari here!! while we’re on the topic of queer ba*ngtan, i always want to yell about how hoseok never ever said/did anything ignorant/dismissive (as far as i know) in that way tween boys often do towards same sex skinship etc, and it makes me feel very safe with him! i’m also thinking about what influence his sister might’ve had on him, because she’s been openly supportive of the lgbtq community and also maybe jokwon and other older friends of hobi. and i think about how ji*min sometimes pushed hobi away (again, typical ignorant tween boy behaviour) and say stuff like ‘men don’t kiss’ and ‘he likes men a little too much’ and just idk, the idea of queer hobi makes me very happy but also feel very protective of young hobi you know!!!! or that hopekook holdhanding moment in bv in finland (i think) where tae said he’d feel weird holding a man’s hand in the street or sth but hobi just kept smiling and holding jk’s hand... ALSO KIM SEOKJIN, WHO THEN TRIED TO MAKE TAEHYUNG HOLD HIS HAND!!! none of this is a question,... mostly me projecting probably, but a bi can dream!! any thoughts on hobi ??

A: hi fari! it's definitely a thing i really appreciate about hobi, that he's doesn't express any kind of shame over the ways he touches other men or the way they touch them (unless those men are kim seokjin, in which case what better expression of love is there than OPEN DISDAIN? 😂) this isn't quite the EXACT same thing, but i do remember hobi saying smth in a print interview around debut about how he wasn't gonna pierce his ears because it's a thing girls do (when clearly it's just bc he's a big coward lmao), so he definitely wasn't PERFECT, but truly he was so good for a random 19-year-old fuckboy!

god now i'm thinking about that letter jimin wrote hobi during bv2 when he told him that hobi taught him that sincerity and honesty can be cool and i might CRY 😭 jihope's relationship is like SUPER important to me for that reason, like jimin around debut time and for a couple of years afterward was SO raw, like trying SO hard to fit in and act cool, and he changed and learned how to ask for the things he needs in a more effective way and learned how to let other people take care of him and i think hobi was super instrumental in that. and i wanna be clear here that i LOVE jimin for that, that it's not his fault he internalized so much societal messaging about being Tough and Cool, and that i think debut jimin had SO many good and crucial qualities, like his truly superhuman drive to succeed, that were necessary for bangtan's success! watching him grow and change and accept his past self is extremely important to me, and truly beautiful.

i think hobi has that same sort of like unapologetic queerness that jk has in the way he carries himself in the world and especially in the way he navigates his friendships and expresses his affection for people, and i love that about him! i think his way of caring for others was a big influence in developing the kind of intentional and particular way that bangtan as a unit love and care for and support one another, too, like i think he really set a tone there for how they interact with and check in on one another. even if you completely take away any of hobi's professional contributions to the group's work, i think just on a social level bangtan would absolutely NOT be bangtan if it weren't for hobi mother birding around the place and dropping forehead kisses behind him like breadcrumbs, and i fucking love him for that so much.

[wrotetheaboveoftoday]

1831 Thurs. 20 January

7 10/..

12 20/..

L

F46º at 7 10/.., soft damp morning with a little rain while I was out - out at 8 10/.. to the Muette gate Boulevard de Beauséjour  and back at 10 10/.. - dressed - 1 5/.. hour reading Le Temps - breakfast in 25 minutes - 15 11 35/.. had my hair done - had 1/2 hour's nap - Letter from Mariana (Leamington) about 12 1/2 - at my desk at one - read my letter - dated 1/2 down the 2nd page from Warren's hotel London  3 pages and the ends and under the seal -

Mention of the death of Mr. John Charles of Newton Kyme - neither of the executors can act with her Mr. Charles (John late the banker) residing out of the kingdom and writes Mrs. Charles to Mariana ‘Mr. Raper you know from his conduct is banished [from] the kingdom’  Death of your old and faithful housekeeper Mrs. Tatham - William Milne not well - inquired after the school recommissioned by Miss MacLean (my poor dear Sibella) Miss Clomels, Yorkgate, much pleased with it - expense till the age of 14 or 15 £100 a year and Mariana will make a sacrifice to send her niece there - of course as I ought to know I have not much to expect from her in the money way

Mr. Willoughby Crewe writes her that the people began to threaten in Cheshire - she had thought much of what I told her about returning to England - I shall most likely be at 'home in July which perhaps is the best place for us to be together in' such a chance as Scarbro' 2 years ago is not to be expected -     

“If your aunt's health will admit of a return to England possibly she might sit down comfortably at Shibden - certainly such an arrangement would set you more at liberty than any other, and now that you are in such good luck as to society, and stumbling on eligible companions for seeing all you may desire of other countries, I would certainly have you follow it up - you will not be less inclined to go again, should opportunity offer, and if it should not, it will always be an advantage to both that even one has seen the world"

She thinks 'somehow' the continent will not be long open to us - will 'count the time like a school girl' to July - voila tout on this subject  well it is all very well I must make my plans and then tell her them never expecting her advice to help them much - Lady, I mean Mme. de Polignac was a Parkinson daughter says Mariana of the last sister of the present Lord Rancliffe - niece to the Lady of Mrs. Salmon's  brother Captain Barrow - from 1 3/4 to 4 25/.. wrote 3 pages and the ends, long, and under the seal, all very small and close to Mariana from 4 1/2 to 6 wrote page 4, and the ends and crossed page 1 and finished my letter to Mrs. William Priestly begun Monday the 10th instant (vide lines 1 and 8 of page 16)

Dinner at 6 10/.. - read the paper - came to my room at 7 1/2 - _twenty five minutes preparing napkin for my cousin came gently between one and two this afternoon - have wrote to Mariana, surprised to find her in London -

"It is impossible ever to count upon anything like fixity in their case, quite as  much so as in my own - as to myself, nothing is more settled than when I wrote last - no communication has as yet passed on the subject of returning, between my father and me - but you shall know all as soon as you can - I have no reason, at present, to think my aunt will not be able to bear the journey; tho' it is probably enough, if she does not go next summer, she may never go at all - However, perhaps the chances are, we shall     make the attempt - as for my traveling schemes, I see your uncertainty, but I do talk, and must talk of them, because I cannot calculate upon being able to remain comfortably in England - even you yourself, weighing all things justly on the balance, will not, I think, be for my staying longer than necessary beyond the time where we have been as much together as circumstances will permit - my aunt may do very well at Shibden - rien à dire contre - quant à moi, c'est une autre paire de manches - I do not expect the chance of Scarbro' encore, and only ask for 3 weeks, because I think you would have a right to claim the time certain - But we shall see by and by comment tout cela doit d'arranger - as for my 3 possible, just possible traveling companions, I do not count upon any one of them; and all would be very temporary - Lady S- [Stuart] (Gordon) may perhaps be persuaded to go to Spain - Miss Mackenzie is still, I believe, at, or not far from Naples and Miss Pickford is I know not where - and perhaps, after all, [your wid[?]] is as likely as anybody - je n'en sais rien - sufficient till the day etc. etc. and I shall not pother myself by attempting to fin[al] anything till the time comes - I shall be delighted and satisfied to see you, and this will be enough for me -    

Poor dear Sibbella! I have lost the ostensible and now, I find, the real object I cared to wait for here; and, I confess, I have felt more than usually unsettled since my last return - I can understand the regret for [totality] - It is a serious thing, more serious than we sometimes fancy, to lose anyone to whom we have been long accustomed - I refuse going anywhere in an evening, for I am not in a humor for it and morning visits I make as seldom as I can - Mrs. Hamilton promised to introduce me to Lady Granville; but she has not yet been called upon for the fulfillment of her promise; and I am in no hurry - now that my mind is almost made up to be off from here in the summer, I am indifferent about things that would otherwise have interested me much - nous verrons - I am not much above concert-pitch; and now that I have done enough of at my accounts for the present (expense of last year not much above thirteen-hundred) I am seriously meditating a return to my little apartment, and turning back to something more mental than the commonplace of rue Godot - By the way, 13 hundreds are more than I wish to spend just now; but, in the status quo, I am quite sure I cannot make less do - economy goes for something in my not visiting this winter, tho' I am not sorry to have this excuse to make to myself"

Mention Kinnersy having changed 5/. for transmitting the money - 'the accounts I have from Briggs are much better than I expected - all my rents were paid' - remember hearing 'my poor dear friend speak of Miss Clomel's (Yorkgate, London) school'. She at one time wished to have her nieces there - 'It is a nice situation, from all I remember about it, a very likely one to suit their people' ask the age of 'Mariana Lajeune' - 'I am glad you think her such a nice girl, and shall be anxious to hear what you determine about her - at her age, she certainly has no time to lose' - ask after Steph - fear she can expect no great advice from that quarter - will inquire about Mme Thomas rue des filles St. Thomas no. 23 Mde des modes - mention have several 2 or 3 times met a lady I should have fancied Mrs. John Raper had I not beheld her to be at St. Bues in Cumberland. Beg Mariana not to forget her French and if she sends little Mariana to Miss Clomel to 'beg that this language may be particularly attended to' - all the rest of my letter chit-chat of no consequence

my letter to Mrs. W. Priestly - chit chat - had received her letter on my return home 'for which I should have made a point of thanking you immediately, had my mind been more at ease' - she would see by the papers the death of my poor friend Miss MacLean 'for the nearness of which I was strangely unprepared - Deceived to the last, she herself was not aware of the real state she was in, till the last 3 or 4 days; and the 1st account that met me on my return was that of her death' - Congratulation on the Sutherlands being returned to Crownest -

'I can easily understand and join in their sentiments on this subject - I am accustomed to give you credit in matters of both of feeling and of judgement; and it is not in this instance that I should be inclined to dissent, in spite of the opinions, the wishes, or the interests of others’

say 'I had a very interesting tour last summer - a week on the Spanish side of the mountains and at the 1st Spanish town found the contrast between the French and Spaniards as striking as that between the French and English on first landing at Calais - from Narbonne to near Marseilles disappointed with the shores of the Mediterrtanian but M- Toulon and Hières made us regret that our arrangements did not allow of our going farther' -

I find my aunt surprisingly well - she had behaved admirably during the revolution, having been much calm and composed than many younger and stronger people - she says she never felt alarmed but once, and that only for a little while when Marmont threatened to blow up the whole street if they did not instantly cease making the barricade, which, however, was completed in the night - we had no fear during the trial of the ex ministers - 100,000 men under arms - sense enough' -  

All as quiet here now as the P-s [Priestleys] themselves can be at Lightcliffe - mention Laffitte’s being ruined by the revolution - conclude with

‘I know your time is a thousand (crossing on the 1st page) times better employed than in writing to me, and therefore and therefore only I do not expect to hear from you very soon - If you wait 6 or 7 months, perhaps you may have an opportunity of answering in person - Do not name this to any one but Mr. Priestley because our plans are at this moment not fixed, and therefore not mentioned even to our friends at Shibden - I am too much accustomed to trust to your discretion to doubt it in any case - you may see us both - it depends this time as I told you it did 2 years ago, on my father - I fancy you can read my crossing without much difficulty - I did not wish to write the last sentence where Mrs. Bagnold could read it too easily - my aunt’s kind regards to yourself (had before joined in mine to Mr. Priestley) - and my own, too, and believe me, my dear Mrs. Priestley, affectionately and very truly yours A L- Anne Lister’

dated ‘Friday 21 January 1831’ - from 7 1/2 to 9 1/4 (coffee at 9 20/.. and came to my room at 10 55/..) and from 11 to 11 1/4 wrote all but the first 22 lines of today - did not talk much to my aunt tonight - read her what M- [Mariana] wrote on the subject of our going to Shibden , and said, I took it, that she did not particularly advise but said nothing at all against it - spoke as if hesitating on the subject - but my aunt herself says she thinks it best on all accounts to go - Soft damp disagreeable day - a little rain in the morning while I was out - and gentle rain from about 2 p.m. for a considerable time - F48º now at 11 20/.. p.m. and damp, wet night - raining a little - rainy night -

[cannabisrefugee-esq]

(via A "Rational Suicide" Note. Ft. Anne Örtegren.)

November 9, 2019

This is a “suicide” note left by a ME/CFS sufferer who sought and found relief from her suffering via legal, medically assisted suicide.  She says this manifesto took her months to write, which I do not doubt a bit: it is long, detailed and polished and was written when she was feeling terrible.  She wrote it with the intent to describe her almost indescribable pain and experience, and to convince others to take action on behalf of ME/CFS sufferers, both of which are lofty communication goals when anyone is seriously ill.

Describing and convincing have been my most impossible endeavors since I’ve been seriously ill myself and I think I have mostly failed, judging by others’ reactions to everything I’ve managed to gather the physical and emotional grit to attempt to communicate: that I am seriously, hopelessly ill with an incurable, progressive disease, that there is no bottom to how bad this can get, and it matters not what anyone thinks about it.  Some things are just true regardless of whether anyone believes it.

In this note, ME/CFS patient Anne Örtegren describes symptoms and dilemmas I have experienced myself and she foresees logical outcomes to her predicament, something sick people and especially sick women are never allowed to do because catastrophization. For example, she knows that her heightened sensitivity to light and sound will make treatment or recovery in a hospital setting impossible where the standard of care in that environment requires constant activity and interruptions, and provides no privacy and no escape from the harsh industrial lighting, interrogations by (allegedly) well meaning staff and the general hustle and bustle of capitalistic money making on the backs and bodies of sick and dying people.

That is but one example of a sick person making informed prognostications regarding likely outcomes of the things other people want to do to us, and as someone who shares these sensitivities to light and sound (and therefore an aversion to hospital settings) as but one example of our shared experience of being seriously ill, I appreciated her spelling it out.  I also feel extremely sad that she had to, and furious that no one who allegedly cared about her wellbeing including medical professionals who should be fucking sensitive to the actual needs of real patients could make the leap themselves.  There are many such examples in this letter.

See for yourselves, and understand that as illuminating and raw as this letter is, it’s also been edited by the publisher and a so-called suicide prevention expert because the bottom line everywhere appears to be that there is no such thing as rational suicide or euthanasia because well people and people who make money off of the long-term sick and dying say so.  And because living in this capitalistic, patriarchal nightmare is so hideous for so many people that “suicide contagion” exists, where just knowing that someone, somewhere had whatever it took to end themselves is likely to cause untold numbers of happy, healthy consumers with bright futures to do the same damn thing.  Yeah that’s it, let’s keep telling ourselves that.

The letter as published is reprinted below.  The unedited letter supposedly exists online somewhere if anyone cares to look and has the energy to figure out how and where the edited version differs from the original.  Comments are open below.

Farewell – A Last Post from Anne Örtegren

Nobody can say that I didn’t put up enough of a fight.

For 16 years I have battled increasingly severe ME/CFS. My condition has steadily deteriorated and new additional medical problems have regularly appeared, making it ever more difficult to endure and make it through the day (and night).

Throughout this time, I have invested almost every bit of my tiny energy in the fight for treatment for us ME/CFS patients. Severely ill, I have advocated from my bedroom for research and establishment of biomedical ME/CFS clinics to get us proper health care. All the while, I have worked hard to find something which would improve my own health. I have researched all possible treatment options, got in contact with international experts and methodically tried out every medication, supplement and regimen suggested.

Sadly, for all the work done, we still don’t have adequately sized specialized biomedical care for ME/CFS patients here in Stockholm, Sweden – or hardly anywhere on the planet. We still don’t have in-patient hospital units adapted to the needs of the severely ill ME/CFS patients. Funding levels for biomedical ME/CFS research remain ridiculously low in all countries and the erroneous psychosocial model which has caused me and others so much harm is still making headway.

And sadly, for me personally things have gone from bad to worse to unbearable. I am now mostly bedbound and constantly tortured by ME/CFS symptoms. I also suffer greatly from a number of additional medical problems, the most severe being a systematic hyper-reactivity in the form of burning skin combined with an immunological/allergic reaction. This is triggered by so many things that it has become impossible to create an adapted environment. Some of you have followed my struggle to find clothes and bed linen I can tolerate. Lately, I am simply running out. I no longer have clothes I can wear without my skin “burning up” and my body going into an allergic state.

This means I no longer see a way out from this solitary ME/CFS prison and its constant torture. I can no longer even do damage control, and my body is at the end of its rope. Therefore, I have gone through a long and thorough process involving several medical assessments to be able to choose a peaceful way out: I have received a preliminary green light for accompanied suicide through a clinic in Switzerland.

When you read this I am at rest, free from suffering at last. I have written this post to explain why I had to take this drastic step. Many ME/CFS patients have found it necessary to make the same decision, and I want to speak up for us, as I think my reasons may be similar to those of many others with the same sad destiny.

These reasons can be summed up in three headers: unbearable suffering; no realistic way out of the suffering; and the lack of a safety net, meaning potential colossal increase in suffering when the next setback or medical incident occurs.

Important note Before I write more about these reasons, I want to stress something important. Depression is not the cause of my choice. Though I have been suffering massively for many years, I am not depressed. I still have all my will and my motivation. I still laugh and see the funny side of things, I still enjoy doing whatever small activities I can manage. I am still hugely interested in the world around me – my loved ones and all that goes on in their lives, the society, the world (what is happening in human rights issues? how can we solve the climate change crisis?) During these 16 years, I have never felt any lack of motivation.

On the contrary, I have consistently fought for solutions with the goal to get myself better and help all ME/CFS patients get better. There are so many things I want to do, I have a lot to live for. If I could only regain some functioning, quieten down the torture a bit and be able to tolerate clothes and a normal environment, I have such a long list of things I would love to do with my life!

Three main reasons So depression is not the reason for my decision to terminate my life. The reasons are the following:

1. Unbearable suffering Many severely ill ME/CFS patients are hovering at the border of unbearable suffering. We are constantly plagued by intense symptoms, we endure high-impact every-minute physical suffering 24 hours a day, year after year. I see it as a prison sentence with torture. I am homebound and mostly bedbound – there is the prison. I constantly suffer from excruciating symptoms: The worst flu you ever had. Sore throat, bronchi hurting with every breath. Complete exhaustion, almost zero energy, a body that weighs a tonne and sometimes won’t even move. Muscle weakness, dizziness, great difficulties standing up. Sensory overload causing severe suffering from the brain and nervous system. Massive pain in muscles, painful inflammations in muscle attachments. Intensely burning skin. A feeling of having been run over by a bus, twice, with every cell screaming. This has got to be called torture.

It would be easier to handle if there were breaks, breathing spaces. But with severe ME/CFS there is no minute during the day when one is comfortable. My body is a war zone with constant firing attacks. There is no rest, no respite. Every move of every day is a mountain-climb. Every night is a challenge, since there is no easy sleep to rescue me from the torture. I always just have to try to get through the night. And then get through the next day.

It would also be easier if there were distractions. Like many patients with severe ME/CFS I am unable to listen to music, radio, podcasts or audio books, or to watch TV. I can only read for short bouts of time, and use the computer for even shorter moments. I am too ill to manage more than rare visits or phone calls from my family and friends, and sadly unable to live with someone. This solitary confinement aspect of ME/CFS is devastating and it is understandable that ME/CFS has been described as the “living death disease”.

For me personally, the situation has turned into an emergency not least due to my horrific symptom of burning skin linked to immunological/allergic reactions. This appeared six years into my ME/CFS, when I was struck by what seemed like a complete collapse of the bodily systems controlling immune system, allergic pathways, temperature control, skin and peripheral nerves. I had long had trouble with urticaria, hyperreactive skin and allergies, but at this point a violent reaction occurred and my skin completely lost tolerance. I started having massively burning skin, severe urticaria and constant cold sweats and shivers (these reactions reminded me of the first stages of the anaphylactic shock I once had, then due to heat allergy).

Since then, for ten long years, my skin has been burning. It is an intense pain. I have been unable to tolerate almost all kinds of clothes and bed linen as well as heat, sun, chemicals and other everyday things. These all trigger the burning skin and the freezing/shivering reaction into a state of extreme pain and suffering. Imagine being badly sunburnt and then being forced to live under a constant scalding sun – no relief in sight.

At first I managed to find a certain textile fabric which I could tolerate, but then this went out of production, and in spite of years of negotiations with the textile industry it has, strangely, proven impossible to recreate that specific weave. This has meant that as my clothes have been wearing out, I have been approaching the point where I will no longer have clothes and bed linen that are tolerable to my skin. It has also become increasingly difficult to adapt the rest of my living environment so as to not trigger the reaction and worsen the symptoms. Now that I am running out of clothes and sheets, ahead of me has lain a situation with constant burning skin and an allergic state of shivering/cold sweats and massive suffering. This would have been absolutely unbearable.

For 16 years I have had to manage an ever-increasing load of suffering and problems. They now add up to a situation which is simply no longer sustainable.

2. No realistic way out of the suffering A very important factor is the lack of realistic hope for relief in the future. It is possible for a person to bear a lot of suffering, as long as it is time-limited. But the combination of massive suffering and a lack of rational hope for remission or recovery is devastating.

Think about the temporary agony of a violent case of gastric flu. Picture how you are feeling those horrible days when you are lying on the bathroom floor between attacks of diarrhoea and vomiting. This is something we all have to live through at times, but we know it will be over in a few days. If someone told you at that point: “you will have to live with this for the rest of your life”, I am sure you would agree that it wouldn’t feel feasible. It is unimaginable to cope with a whole life with the body in that insufferable state every day, year after year. The level of unbearableness in severe ME/CFS is the same.

If I knew there was relief on the horizon, it would be possible to endure severe ME/CFS and all the additional medical problems, even for a long time, I think. The point is that there has to be a limit, the suffering must not feel endless.

One vital aspect here is of course that patients need to feel that the ME/CFS field is being taken forward. Sadly, we haven’t been granted this feeling – see my previous blogs relating to this here and here.

Another imperative issue is the drug intolerance that I and many others with ME/CFS suffer from. I have tried every possible treatment, but most of them have just given me side-effects, many of which have been irreversible. My stomach has become increasingly dysfunctional, so for the past few years any new drugs have caused immediate diarrhoea. One supplement triggered massive inflammation in my entire urinary tract, which has since persisted. The list of such occurrences of major deterioration caused by different drugs/treatments is long, and with time my reactions have become increasingly violent. I now have to conclude that my sensitivity to medication is so severe that realistically it is very hard for me to tolerate drugs or supplements.

This has two crucial meanings for many of us severely ill ME/CFS patients: There is no way of relieving our symptoms. And even if treatments appear in the future, with our sensitivity of medication any drug will carry a great risk of irreversible side-effects producing even more suffering. This means that even in the case of a real effort finally being made to bring biomedical research into ME/CFS up to levels on par with that of other diseases, and possible treatments being made accessible, for some of us it is unlikely that we would be able to benefit. Considering our extreme sensitivity to medication, one could say it’s hard to have realistic hope of recovery or relief for us.

In the past couple of years I, being desperate, have challenged the massive side-effect risk and tried one of the treatments being researched in regards to ME/CFS. But I received it late in the disease process, and it was a gamble. I needed it to have an almost miraculous effect: a quick positive response which eliminated many symptoms – most of all I needed it to stop my skin from burning and reacting, so I could tolerate the clothes and bed linen produced today. I have been quickly running out of clothes and sheets, so I was gambling with high odds for a quick and extensive response. Sadly, I wasn’t a responder. I have also tried medication for Mast Cell Activation Disorder and a low-histamine diet, but my burning skin hasn’t abated. Since I am now running out of clothes and sheets, all that was before me was constant burning hell.

3. The lack of a safety net, meaning potential colossal increase in suffering when the next setback or medical incident occurs The third factor is the insight that the risk for further deterioration and increased suffering is high.

On top of the nearly unbearable symptoms it is very likely that in the future things will get even worse. An example in my case could be my back and neck pain. I would need to strengthen muscles to prevent them from getting worse. But the characteristic symptom of Post-Exertional Malaise (PEM) when I attempt even small activities, is hugely problematic.

Whenever we try to ignore the PEM issue and push through, we immediately crash and become much sicker. We might go from being able to at least get up and eat, to being completely bedbound, until the PEM has subsided. Sometimes, it doesn’t subside, and we find ourselves irreversibly deteriorated, at a new, even lower baseline level, with no way of improving.

PEM is not something that you can work around.

For me, new medical complications also continue to arise, and I have no way of amending them. I already need surgery for one existing problem, and it is likely that it will be needed for other issues in the future, but surgery or hospital care is not feasible for several reasons:

One is that my body seems to lack repairing mechanisms. Previous biopsies have not healed properly, so my doctor is doubtful about my ability to recover after surgery.

Another, more general and hugely critical, is that with severe ME/CFS it is impossible to tolerate normal hospital care. For ME/CFS patients the sensory overload problem and the extremely low energy levels mean that a normal hospital environment causes major deterioration. The sensory input that comes with shared rooms, people coming and going, bright lights, noise, etc, escalates our disease. We are already in such fragile states that a push in the wrong direction is catastrophic. For me, with my burning skin issue, there is also the issue of not tolerating the mattresses, pillows, textile fabrics, etc used in a hospital.

Just imagine the effects of a hospital stay for me: It would trigger my already severe ME/CFS into new depths – likely I would become completely bedbound and unable to tolerate any light or noise. The skin hyperreactivity would, within a few hours, trigger my body into an insufferable state of burning skin and agonizing immune-allergic reactions, which would then be impossible to reverse. My family, my doctor and I agree: I must never be admitted to a hospital, since there is no end to how much worse that would make me.

Many ME/CFS patients have experienced irreversible deterioration due to hospitalization. We also know that the understanding of ME/CFS is extremely low or non-existent in most hospitals, and we hear about ME/CFS patients being forced into environments or activities which make them much worse. I am aware of only two places in the world with specially adjusted hospital units for severe ME/CFS, Oslo, Norway, and Gold Coast, Australia. We would need such units in every city around the globe.

It is extreme to be this severely ill, have so many medical complications arise continually and know this: There is no feasible access to hospital care for me. There are no tolerable medications to use when things get worse or other medical problems set in. As a severely ill ME/CFS patient I have no safety net at all. There is simply no end to how bad things can get with severe ME/CFS.

Coping skills – important but not enough I realize that when people hear about my decision to terminate my life, they will wonder about my coping skills. I have written about this before and I want to mention the issue here too:

While it was extremely hard at the beginning to accept chronic illness, I have over the years developed a large degree of acceptance and pretty good coping skills. I have learnt to accept tight limits and appreciate small qualities of life. I have learnt to cope with massive amounts of pain and suffering and still find bright spots. With the level of acceptance I have come to now, I would have been content even with relatively small improvements and a very limited life. If, hypothetically, the physical suffering could be taken out of the equation, I would have been able to live contentedly even though my life continued to be restricted to my small apartment and include very little activity. Unlike most people I could find such a tiny life bearable and even happy. But I am not able to cope with these high levels of constant physical suffering.

In short, to sum up my level of acceptance as well as my limit: I can take the prison and the extreme limitations – but I can no longer take the torture. And I cannot live with clothes that constantly trigger my burning skin.

Not alone – and not a rash decision In spite of being unable to see friends or family for more than rare and brief visits, and in spite of having limited capacity for phone conversations, I still have a circle of loved ones. My friends and family all understand my current situation and they accept and support my choice. While they do not want me to leave, they also do not want me to suffer anymore.

This is not a rash decision. It has been processed for many years, in my head, in conversations with family and friends, in discussion with one of my doctors, and a few years ago in the long procedure of requesting accompanied suicide. The clinic in Switzerland requires an extensive process to ensure that the patient is chronically ill, lives with unendurable pain or suffering, and has no realistic hope of relief. They require a number of medical records as well as consultations with specialized doctors.

For me this end is obviously not what I wanted, but it was the best solution to an extremely difficult situation and preferable to even more suffering. It was not hasty choice, but one that matured over a long period of time.

A plea to decision makers – Give ME/CFS patients a future! As you understand, this blog post has taken me many months to put together. It is a long text to read too, I know. But I felt it was important to write it and have it published to explain why I personally had to take this step, and hopefully illuminate why so many ME/CFS patients consider or commit suicide.

And most importantly: to elucidate that this circumstance can be changed! But that will take devoted, resolute, real action from all of those responsible for the state of ME/CFS care, ME/CFS research and dissemination of information about the disease. Sadly, this responsibility has been mishandled for decades. To allow ME/CFS patients some hope on the horizon, key people in all countries must step up and act.

If you are a decision maker, here is what you urgently need to do: You need to bring funding for biomedical ME/CFS research up so it’s on par with comparable diseases (as an example, in the US that would mean $188 million per year). You need to make sure there are dedicated hospital care units for ME/CFS inpatients in every city around the world. You need to establish specialist biomedical care available to all ME/CFS patients; it should be as natural as RA patients having access to a rheumatologist or cancer patients to an oncologist. You need to give ME/CFS patients a future.

Please listen to these words of Jen Brea, which sum up the situation in the US, but are applicable to almost every country:

“The NIH says it won’t fund ME research because no one wants to study it. Yet they reject the applications of the world class scientists who are committed to advancing the field. Meanwhile, HHS has an advisory committee whose sole purpose seems to be making recommendations that are rarely adopted. There are no drugs in the pipeline at the FDA yet the FDA won’t approve the one drug, Ampligen, that can have Lazarus-like effects in some patients. Meanwhile, the CDC continues to educate doctors using information that we (patients) all know is inaccurate or incomplete.”

Like Jen Brea, I want a number of people from these agencies, and equivalent agencies in Sweden and all other countries, to stand up and take responsibility. To say: “ME! I am going to change things because that is my job.”

And lastly Lastly, I would like to end this by linking to this public comment from a US agency meeting (CFSAC). It seems to have been taken off the HHS site, but I found it in the Google Read version of the book “Lighting Up a Hidden World: CFS and ME” by Valerie Free. It includes testimony from two very eloquent ME patients and it says it all. I thank these ME patients for expressing so well what we are experiencing.

My previous blog posts:

From International Traveler to 43 Square Meters: An ME/CFS Story From Sweden

Coping With ME/CFS Will Always Be Hard – But There are Ways of Making It A Little Easier

The Underfinanced ME/CFS Research Field Pt I: The Facts – Plus “What Can We Do?

The Underfinanced ME/CFS Research Field Pt II: Why it Takes 20 Years to Get 1 Year’s Research Done

Take care of each other.

Love, Anne

Comments Open.

[backtozeon]

Dear Fans of Watchmen, Hello there. My name is Damon Lindelof and I am a writer. I am also the unscrupulous bastard currently defiling something that you love. But that’s not all that I am. I am a twelve-year old boy being handed the first two issues by my father. “You’re not ready for this,” he growls with a glint of mischief in his eye. My parents have recently divorced and he has gone rogue, so there I am in my bed, flashlight beam illuminating pages, watching the Comedian fall again and again and again. The old man was wrong. I am ready for this. Because this was written just for me. I am thirty-eight. A man offers me the opportunity to adapt Watchmen for television. The filmed adaptation came out less than a year ago, but that doesn’t matter. I tell him I am not interested and that perhaps he should let sleeping dogs lie with hopes they will eventually be run over by a car tire, bursting their stomachs. He does not get the reference. I am watching my father haggle with a man in a wheelchair. I am fifteen years old and we are at a comic book convention in New York City, long before attending a comic book convention was something anyone wanting to ever have sex with another person would admit to. I definitely want to have sex with another person. My father finally harangues the merchant down to thirty dollars for a guaranteed authentic screenplay of Watchmen, soon to be a major motion picture! Now, he reads aloud from the script as “The Watchmen” battle terrorists at The Statue of Liberty. Something is wrong. The old man’s brow furrows, scanning the text in a mixture of disappointment and rage, a child who has just been told that Santa didn’t bring him presents this year, then robbed the house and beat up his parents. “What the fuck is this?” my father mutters. It is the first time he swears in front of me. Another man offers me the opportunity to adapt Watchmen for television. I am forty now. I tell him someone else asked me to do this a year ago and I declined. He inquires as to why I said no. I tell him that Alan Moore has been consistently explicit in stating that Watchmen was written for a very specific medium and that medium is comics, comics that would be ruined should they be translated into moving images. The Another Man pauses for a moment, then responds – “Who’s Alan Moore?” I am twenty-three and living in Los Angeles. My father flies out from New Jersey for my birthday and gives me a present, a new edition of the “graphic novel” that is Watchmen. He explains to me that this is the publisher’s way of retaining the rights to the characters. He tells me that Dan and Adrian and Jon and Walter and Laurie are all serfs, working the land for a Feudal Lord that will never grant them freedom. My father is more than a little drunk.. More so, he is a hypocrite for buying me the new edition. “I know, I know…” he says, that same mischievous glint from years ago obscured by now thicker lenses, “But it’s so goddamned good.” Yet Another Man offers me the opportunity to adapt Watchmen for television. “Just a pilot,” he says, “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” I am forty-three now and I am thinking about something I read about Orthodox Judaism. While most religions are cultivated by evangelizing and conversion, Orthodox Judaism doesn’t solicit. If someone from another faith wishes to become an Orthodox Jew, they are rejected. If they are stubborn enough to ask again, they are denied even more harshly. But should they have the audacity to ask a third time? The door cracks open. And if they’re willing to invest an immense amount of time and effort and sacrifice and faith, they are embraced into the fold. Why am I thinking about this? I have said no to Watchmen twice now. This makes me Orthodox Judaism. I crack the door. And now I’m a hypocrite too. I am standing over my father’s hospital bed. I am twenty-nine, the last age at which I will consider myself “young.” The breathing tube was removed two hours ago and they said he wouldn’t last longer than fifteen minutes. It’s a cliché. I’m living a trope. He is unconscious and unable to impart final wisdom nor tell me he was proud all along, even though he never said it out loud. There is no beeping machine showing his weakening heartrate. My father is beyond machines. I hold his cool hand and try not to pray to God because he detested the very idea of God so instead I pray to his gods. I pray to Cthulhu. I pray to 42, the Eternal Cosmic Number. I pray to Dr. Manhattan, far away in a galaxy less complicated than this one. The television is on and the Lakers win the championship. My father never cared about basketball. He didn’t even know the rules. When he dies, I finally understand that I don’t know the rules either. No one does. I am forty-five and I am writing a letter to the fans. The fans of Watchmen. It’s unnecessarily wordy and an exercise in oversharing, but nothing gets people on your side more than telling them about the moment your father died. Sharing such intimate details with strangers feels needy and pathetic and exploitative and yucky and necessary and freeing. I am also looking for an elegant way to escape from this device of quantum observance, a device appropriated from Mr. Moore so that I can speak to those fans from the bottom of my cold, thieving heart. Perhaps I could switch from referring to them in the third person and shift into the second, thus bringing them closer to the first? Would that be amenable to you? First and foremost, if you are angry that I’m working on Watchmen, I am sorry. You may be thinking I can’t be that sorry or I wouldn’t be doing it. I concede the point, but I hope it doesn’t invalidate the apology, which I offer with sincerity and respect. Respect. That’s second and twicemost. I have an immense amount of respect for Alan Moore. He is an extraordinary talent of mythic proportion. I wrote him a letter, parts of which are not dissimilar to this one, because I owed him an explanation as to why I’m defying his wishes and to humbly ask him not to place a curse on me because he knows magic and apparently, he can do that. His response, or whether he responded at all, is between he and I. Suffice to say, even before I sent it, Mr. Moore had made it abundantly clear that he doesn’t want anyone to “adapt” his work. To do so is hubris. Worse yet, it’s unethical. There are a million ways to rationalize unethical behavior – I could argue that Mr. Moore’s partner, the brilliant artist, Dave Gibbons, is equally entitled to authorize access to his masterwork and that he has been kind enough to offer us his blessing to do so. Or I could offer that Mr. Moore cut his veined teeth on the creations of others; Batman, Superman, Captain Britain, Marvelman (he’ll never be “Miracleman” to me), Swamp Thing and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, not to mention The Charlton characters upon whom his Watchmen characters are based… So am I not allowed to do the same? No. I am not. I am not allowed. And yet… I am compelled. I am compelled despite the inevitable pushback and hatred I will understandably receive for taking on this particular project. This ire will be maximally painful because of its source. That source being you. The true fans. I once said that if one were a true fan of something, they weren’t allowed to hate it. A prominent writer took me to task for such heresy, arguing that just because one was the creator of a show, this did not permit them to pick and choose who was and wasn’t a fan of it. The writer went on to win a Pulitzer for television criticism. I went on to get snubbed by the Razzies for Prometheus. As such, I concede this point, too. After all, even the most fervent lifelong fan of, oh, let’s say the New York Jets, is allowed to shout at the top of his lungs, “YOU SUCK OH MY GOD YOU SUUUUUUUUUCKIII II” and do so while wearing a replica Namath Jersey he purchased for an ungodly sum of money that may or may not have constituted his entire first paycheck on Nash Bridges. But the point. The point is, you love Watchmen. That gives you the right to hate it, too. Because no matter what… You’re still true fans. But to quote the immortal P.W. Herman… “I know you are… But what am IT’ What am I? I’m a true fan, too. And I’m not the only one. What I love most about television is that the finished product is a result not of singular vision, but the collective experience of many brilliant minds. I have the pleasure of sitting in a Writers Room each and every day that is as diverse and combative as any I’ve ever been a part of. In that room, Hetero White Men like myself are in the minority and as Watchmen is (incorrectly) assumed to be solely our domain, understanding its potential through the perspectives of women, people of color and the LGBTQ community has been as eye-opening as it has been exhilarating. We’ve committed to doing the same in front of and behind the camera. And every single person involved with this show absolutely adores Watchmen. But in the spirit of complete honesty, we also sorta want to… uh… Disrupt it? Except I hate that word because now it’s not disruptive anymore. And how can I present as punk rock when I’m now cozy in bed, spooning with Warner Brothers, HBO and DC? Truth be told, everyone there, particularly Geoff Johns (who is as true fan as it gets) has been extraordinarily supportive. Sure, it’s fun to kick around the comic corporate overlords for exploiting writers and artists, but we all know what happened to Jack Kirby and we’re still first in line for every Marvel film. So… how do we answer the challenge of when it is appropriate to appropriate? Which brings us to the most important part. Maybe the only part that really matters. Our creative intentions. We have no desire to “adapt” the twelve issues Mr. Moore and Mr. Gibbons created thirty years ago. Those issues are sacred ground and they will not be retread nor recreated nor reproduced nor rebooted. They will, however be remixed. Because the bass lines in those familiar tracks are just too good and we’d be fools not to sample them. Those original twelve issues are our Old Testament. When the New Testament came along, it did not erase what came before it. Creation. The Garden of Eden. Abraham and Isaac. The Flood. It all happened. And so it will be with Watchmen. The Comedian died. Dan and Laurie fell in love. Ozymandias saved the world and Dr. Manhattan left it just after blowing Rorschach to pieces in the bitter cold of Antarctica. To be clear. Watchmen is canon. Just the way Mr. Moore wrote it, the way Mr. Gibbons drew it and the way the brilliant John Higgins colored it. But we are not making a “sequel” either. This story will be set in the world its creators painstakingly built… but in the tradition of the work that inspired it, this new story must be original. It has to vibrate with the seismic unpredictability of its own tectonic plates. It must ask new questions and explore the world through a fresh lens. Most importantly, it must be contemporary. The Old Testament was specific to the Eighties of Reagan and Thatcher and Gorbachev… ours needs to resonate with the frequency of Trump and May and Putin and the horse that he rides around on, shirtless. And speaking of Horsemen, The End of The World is off the table (THE LEFTOVERS! NOW STREAMING ON HBO GO!) which means the heroes and villains — as if the two are distinguishable — are playing for different stakes entirely. The tone will be fresh and nasty and electric and absurd. Many describe Watchmen as “dark,” but I’ve always loved its humor -worshipping at the altar of the genre whilst simultaneously trolling it. As such… Some of the characters will be unknown. New faces. New masks to cover them. We also intend to revisit the past century of Costumed Adventuring through a surprising, yet familiar set of eyes… and it is here where we’ll be taking our greatest risks. Risk is imperative. I need the feeling in my stomach before I leap from a great height without knowing the depth of the water below. If my body should shatter upon impact, at least it was in pursuit of glory. And let’s be honest… Isn’t there a small part of you that wants to see me explode like a fleshy watermelon? But hopefully, there’s also a part that wants to experience something sort of amazing. As for what I want? I want your validation. I also want not to want it. I’ve given up the opioid highs of Twitter, but continue to score my methadone in the threads of Reddit and the hot takes of morning-after recappers. I’ll be reading and watching and listening to what you have to say because even though I wish I didn’t… I deeply care about what you think. Which brings us, Thank God, to the end of the missive. Endings. I’m GREAT at them. A wise, blue man once said that nothing ever ends. But maybe he wasn’t wise. Maybe he was just scared and alone and sad that he would outlive everything and everyone he ever loved. So I hope this isn’t the last time we correspond, fellow fans… after all, it’s just a pilot and we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. But maybe… if everything works out the way I hope it does… and if you’re willing to give me a chance, it’s not the end at all… It’s the beginning? With Respectful Hubris, -Damon

[junionigiri]

Just Another Secretary Story! Chapter 4 - It’s Always Her

Chapter summary: Director Todoroki hires a new secretary.

Rating: T

It’s rare to see Midoriya as ill-tempered as he is now, yet Shouto is proud to say that when it happens it’s almost always because of him.

The green-haired executive moves to slam a handful of filled-out forms over his desk, but changes his mind at the last minute and places it gently in front of him instead. “Here’s what you asked for, Todoroki-kun. Don’t you ever make me do that again. I said so many lies I almost stress-barfed in your office! Twice!”

“Never again,” Shouto lies. “Brilliant execution as always, Midoriya. No-one suspected a thing. I could not ask for a better accomplice.”

“Flattery won’t get you anywhere,” he says with a hearty harrumph and a pleased little flush on his freckled cheeks that betrays what he just said. “Anyways I know how important this is to you so I’m glad I could help.”

The result of Midoriya’s hard work is the fake survey form that Shouto designed to help him woo Secretary Uraraka. To avoid Uraraka’s suspicions, he told the marketing chief give out other forms to anyone willing to answer them. By the end of the day he gets five neatly filled-out forms with a wealth of valuable information hidden within. Now...

“Which one is Secretary Uraraka’s?”

Midoriya looks at him incredulously. “Come on, Director. You don’t know how your own secretary’s handwriting looks like?”

“How would I know what it looks like? We don’t write each other letters.”

(But if Uraraka is inclined towards romantic handwritten letters, it won’t be difficult for him to deliver. Shouto is proud to say that his calligraphy skills are superb.)

“Oh man. Okay, I’ll help.” The chief starts sifting through the papers with intense concentration. “Okay, so this one is Ashido-san’s, I’m sure I saw her use a sparkly purple gel pen to sign all her documents and also it’s full of hand-drawn emojis. This one’s Iida-kun’s, since the writing’s so pressured and accurate and his ideal date is reading encyclopedias at the library with a scholarly individual who knows how to use the Dewey Decimal System. This one--”

Shouto cuts him off. “I thought this was a survey for women.”

Midoriya shrugs. “The guys felt left out, so I gave them some too.”

“Hm.”

“Anyhow… this one is Monoma-kun ‘cause it’s written entirely in French. And this one I think is by Kirishima-kun ‘cause he drew himself doing pull-ups at the gym...”

Shouto rubs the space between his eyes as he wonders how in the world this group of people manage to become the most productive set of people in the company.

“... oh! And here’s Uraraka-san’s.”

Midoriya hands him the form in question. The handwriting is small and messy, but legible. The few erasures were crossed out with a single line and countersigned. All in all a civilized entry, but only at about 85%.

Shouto wrinkles his nose in suspicion. “How are you sure that this is hers?”

“Process of elimination,” the freckled chief answers with confidence. “That, and… she wrote her name on it.”

True enough the characters for Uraraka Ochako are scrawled on top of the page. All right then.

Shouto reads through the answers within the span of a minute, absorbing every detail, and rereading them again. With each review, he feels the smile on his face grow larger.

Is this really the ordinary relationship with an ordinary person that Secretary Uraraka wants? While it’s nothing that he expected at all from his capable secretary…

“Todoroki-kun, you’re smiling a little too evilly there,” Midoriya mumbles nervously. “What are you planning?”

Isn’t this going to be too easy?  “Nothing special, Midoriya. Just something ordinary.”

With a new plan forming in his head, he’s sure that Uraraka isn’t going anywhere.

*

 The top of that day’s agenda is the interview for Secretary Uraraka’s replacement.

About a dozen men and women with all sorts of impressive accomplishments patiently wait for their turn outside the Office of the Executive Director. The first candidate sits politely on the plush sofa in front of Ochako and the Director himself.

Utsushimi Camie, 30 years old, a proud graduate of Shiketsu’s communications department. Not surprising. All of them tended to be from Shiketsu or UA or Ketsubutsu or some fancy university overseas. Ochako, who only finished a certificate course in secretarial work, has only dreamed of having that kind of education. It’s still baffling nine years later how an underqualified twenty-year old temp like her ever managed to get hired by Chairman Todoroki’s son.

Now that she’s at the other side of the table, maybe she’ll gain some insight on it. Ochako opens Utsushimi’s file and gives her a bright smile. “Utsushimi-san, thank you for coming. How are you feeling today?”

The first thing anyone will notice about Utsushimi is how gorgeous she is--long light-brown hair, full lips, a good figure, an elegant fashion sense. The confident way she carries herself makes her look like she belongs in this office. Ochako automatically thinks she’s perfect for the job.

And then she speaks. “Yeah, I’m totes… I mean, totally feeling super great today, thanks for asking! I’m so stoked to be here. Cool office, cool space… and you two are looking super hot today too, by the way.”

Ochako’s smile freezes on her face, while Director Todoroki’s face remains stoic. Okay then...

Clearing her throat, Ochako moves on to the first question. “So, Utsushimi-san--”

“You can call me Camie, I totally don’t mind.”

“... Utsushimi… Camie-san.” Keeping a careful side-eye on Director Todoroki, Ochako continues. “It says here that you worked at Orca Law Office before. What were your responsibilities there?”

“The low down in Law Town? Okay, I gotcha.” Confidently, she gives a breakdown of all the things she had to do and all the things she’s capable of doing. Ochako asks her a few more questions about what she knows of the company, current events, and hypothetical situations. Camie is able to answer them properly, although her language is too… casual for the setting.

Okay, so she isn’t bad. Ochako’s sure that the Director would reject her immediately, though. He had rejected applicants in the past just by the way they said their names. But the minutes pass by with Camie talking, and he has not said a single scathing word yet.

Ochako looks at him, and suddenly it’s apparent why he’s so silent--his odd eyes are staring at a spot in the ninth dimension. Looks like he hasn’t been listening at the very start. Ochako is rightfully irritated. Damn him if he thinks that he’ll make her do all the work here!

“Director, do you have anything you want to ask Utsushimi-san?”

Todoroki’s eyeballs moves to her in utter disinterest. “Must I?”

The smile on Ochako’s mouth strains. “Of course. She might be your future secretary, after all.”

He turns to Camie, who is looking too relaxed for the menacing gaze being directed at her. The Director taps his fingers on his armrest for a few tense moments, stretching the suffocating silence in between.

Just as Ochako considers breaking the silence with another question, Director Todoroki finally speaks up. “I have an important question for you, Utsushimi-san.”

A feeling of foreboding instantly fills Ochako’s chest. Utsushimi seems oblivious to the chill in the air as she asks, “Ya, fire away.”

He gives a meaningful side-glance to his present secretary as he asks, “If I hire you, how many years will it take before you quit?”

Ochako’s face stiffens.

Camie hums thoughtfully. “If I get this job, I’m defo not gonna think about quitting, y’know? Like, I came here to work, so, yeah. That’s just weird.”

“Yes, isn’t it?” Now he shows interest, and Ochako does not appreciate it at all. “But let’s say that you’re going to quit. That you have to quit because of something as trivial and vague as personal reasons. How many years will be acceptable before you get to that point? Say… three years? Five? Nine?”

Oh that’s just foul. Ochako barely keeps her jaw dropping at that blatant jab.

To the strange question, Camie merely chuckles. “A hundred? I’m kidding, I seriously dunno. I can tell you though that I’m too legit to quit, ya feel me? And if I have to quit, it’ll be legit. Vague is totally not my style.”

Ochako sees Todoroki’s mouth move again, but this time she beats him to it. “But Camie-san, the demands of this job are massive and unforgiving. What’ll you do if you and Director Todoroki’s definition of ‘legit’ don’t overlap?”

Camie shrugs. “Then I guess I won’t quit?”

“Great answer.” Todoroki smirks at Ochako. “Do you think these standards are worth attaining given the benefits you’ll be receiving? Health, security, experience--”

“Ya. They’re pretty lit~”

“So Camie-san, are you saying that you’ll be prepared to sacrifice everything for this job just for the benefits? It’s not just going to work early and going home late and not having days off. It’s literal blood, sweat, tears, heartache--”

“If I have to, sure. N-B-D.”

“But surely all the hours and blood and sweat and tears and heartache are necessary sacrifices for the good of the company. Didn’t you come here expecting to give your all for Endeavor Inc?”

“Sacrifices are okay, but Camie-san, sure you ain’t—I mean, you aren’t expecting to lose your sense of self just for the good of the company, are you?”

“Uh…”

Before either of them realize it, Director and Secretary have abandoned the interview completely in favor of glaring at each other from opposite ends of the couch. By the end of it Director Todoroki’s eyes are flaring, while Ochako’s knuckles are sore from gripping Camie’s file too hard.

“Utsushimi,” Todoroki calls, but he isn’t looking at her at all; he doesn’t even seem to be aware that she’s there anymore. No, all that cold, raw emotion behind is eyes is for Ochako and Ochako alone. “Do you think that nine years of working with me is... will be a waste of your life?”

A chill runs through her as if she’s struck by ice. There isn’t much that Ochako can do to stop her hands from shaking and her lower lip from quivering except to stare at him in shock.

Camie stares at them one after the other with an interested smile on her face. “Um. If you hire me, I’ll do my best,” is what she decides on saying after an awkward silence.

His glaring heterochromatic eyes not leaving Ochako’s, Director Todoroki raises his right hand and slams it on the table. “Great. You’re hired.”

“What?!” Ochako cries before she can stop herself.

“Whoa, for real?”

“Indeed. Welcome to the team.” Director Todoroki stands up from the couch, too self-satisfied for Ochako to feel comfortable. “Well then, Secretary Uraraka, I’ll leave the transfer of duties to you. I’m confident that you won’t leave until Secretary Utsushimi is able to do your job adequately.”

Trying to keep herself from clenching her jaw, Ochako smiles stiffly. “Of course, Director. You can count on me.”

She wonders if Camie’s actively choosing to ignore the drama or if she’s just that dense, but she is entirely unaffected by the showdown that took place. “You guys, you totes had me going there, I thought I was cancelled the moment I walked in! C’mere, c’mere, employment selfie yeahhhhhh!!!”

Before either of them can react, Camie already has her phone out and has expertly squooshed them together on the couch. Todoroki falls back on the cushions, Ochako half-stumbles over him, and Camie sits next to her brandishing a finger heart. “Let’s do this fam! Say Colorado~”

Say what you will about Utsushimi Camie, but her employment selfie with the famous icyhot Director and his stressed secretary earns her eight hundred likes and a hundred more followers within the next hour. 

 *

 Disastrous interview aside, Ochako thinks she can get along well with the new secretary. She may look too laid-back and casual on the surface, but it’s surprisingly easy to get a good conversation going with her. When she starts telling her about all the intimidating things she has to learn, the other girl accepts them with an easygoing smile.

“Like, so I get that Directoroki’s extra when it comes to work so I gotta be extra too… but dang, I gotta take care of the cat too?” 

“Try not to call him that,” Ochako says successfully without laughing her ass off. “Victoria’s got her own file right here--” she pats one of the thickest clearbooks in the pile of things Camie has to memorize by the end of the week, “--but it’ll be a while before you get cat duties, so don’t worry about her for now. For the first week, you’ll focus on the work in the office.”

“Gotcha, senpai. ”

“Oh, you don’t have to,” Ochako stammers, even though she feels her ears clapping happily at the feeling. “I mean--I’m a year younger than you, plus I’m quitting real soon, so I won’t be your senpai for long. Just Ochako is fine!”

“Hm… gotcha, Ocha-babes,” Camie says with a wink.

Ocha-babes?

“‘Cause you have such a baby face. I mean, you’re a real cutie pie. A Sanrio character. I bet your boyfriend pinches your cheeks all day. Oh my god.”

Ochako blushes all the way to the roots of her hair. “Thanks I think? But I don’t have a boyfriend...”

“Nah?” Camie asks with a pucker of her lips. “A girlfriend then? A nonbinary pal?”

“Nope! I’m single… since birth, ” she says, slurring over the last part.

“Oh, worm.” For the first time since she got here, Camie looks terribly puzzled. “Like, tell me if I’m wrong, ‘kay? I thought people can get it on here as long as it doesn’t get in the way of work?”

“Yeah, relationships aren’t a problem. Even married people can work in the same office,” Ochako confirms.

“Oh sis that’s great news. I thought it was gonna be like Orca’s again. People got fired all the time just ‘cause they made eye contact in the office. Big yikes, right?” The taller secretary looks visibly relieved at this. “Tho I’m real surprised when you said you didn’t have anyone? ‘Cause I totally thought you were having a lover’s quarrel with Directoroki back there.”

Ochako chokes on air. “Wh--me and Directoroki--I mean, Director Todoroki?! No, we’re nothing like that!”

Camie raises her eyebrows. “So, like. The nine years wasting your life thing? He wasn’t salty AF at you for dumping him or whatever?”

“No?!” Wait, she did dump him just a couple days ago, but-- “I mean, no, that doesn’t count! We aren’t… we never-- ”

“Chiiiill.” Camie seems too amused watching the different flustered expressions she’s making. “Sorry, okay? I thought I saw some serious chemistry, but I guess I was wrong.” Going back to the next file, she says, “How ‘bout this one? No kettles allowed near the Director. Seriously?”

Ochako nods. “That’s right. I know it’s weird, but you can’t forget it, okay? It’s really important...”

The other girl makes a face. “Uh-huh. Is it, like, a rich person thing? Is he too bourgeois for kettles or somethin’?”

She shakes her head. “... no. It’s because he doesn’t feel comfortable around them…”

She learned this the hard way during their first year of working together. She wanted to show him how earnest she was by making him tea without being asked. The kettle hadn’t even been on, it wasn’t going to hurt anyone, but he started shielding his face like it was going to burn him. He curled into himself and wouldn’t speak for what felt like hours, even after she threw the kettle out and apologized profusely and tried to comfort him.

When he finally found his voice and managed to curb the shaking, he asked her quietly to never let him near another kettle again. It was the first time he had asked her of something that wasn’t a command, but a plea--the first time he seemed so…

Human…

Even though she can’t keep her eyes off the scar, she never knew the story behind it. She never asked and he never said anything. She convinced herself that she can exist beside him without digging up that part of his past--she was afraid that she’d hurt him again if she did.

Forcing herself back to the present, she gives Camie a pleading smile. “I’m the same with fire, you know? If I see even a little flame from a lighter, I’d start shaking and crying like a baby even though I should know better... the Director doesn’t put me anywhere near them because he knows how I’m not comfortable around fire, so I try my best to keep him away from kettles. We should just respect that, okay?”

Camie looks at her carefully. “... aight. Any and all kettles shall be yeeted off the face of this earth. Gotcha.”

Ochako giggles. “The yeeting isn’t necessary, but thanks for understanding!”

Thankfully Camie doesn’t ask further about her or the Director. She wonders if she’s too protective of the Director, but she truly can’t stand to see him like that again. 

*

Later on she decides to introduce Camie to the rest of the office. They react about the same as she expected--Monoma sizes her up, Mina dances with her, Kirishima shakes her arm so hard it almost pops off its socket, and Iida gives her a stern lecture about formal workplace Japanese that lasts all of fifteen minutes.

“--and furthermore, unless you are speaking about lanterns, LEDs, hazardous fires, the sun, or other luminous things, kindly refrain from using the term lit to describe anything--”

What she doesn’t expect though, is Camie nudging Ochako in the middle of Iida’s impassioned, action-packed speech to whisper, “Yo, this one’s mine, ‘kay?” with a wink.

Ochako gives her a “go ahead then” nod.

By the time Iida is done, the work-day is pretty much done too. After shaking himself out of Iida-induced slumber, Kirishima gathers everyone ‘round. “Hey, I got an idea! We should throw Utsushimi the manliest welcome party ever!”

Everyone but Iida cheers. “A party?! Preposterous! It’s a weekday!” he protests. “We should concentrate on preserving our energies for attending to the Director’s needs tomorrow!”

“Iida, don’t be such an Iida ! You already bored her to death with your lecture, now we gotta prove to Camie-chan that we aren’t workbots like you!” Mina whines.

“Agreed.” Monoma directs an ominous smile at Camie. “It’ll be good for Utsushimi-san to have one last peaceful meal as a free person, right?”

“Ya, totes,” Camie answers, unfazed. It’s pretty satisfying how Monoma’s face sours at that, and how it sours more when Camie ignores his antics in favor of Iida. Turning to the glasses man with a flair that makes her hair swirl, she smiles and says, “Fam, we’re all going to be working together like real fam, right? Bonding is part of work too~”

Iida sputters like a malfunctioning engine. “Perhaps that is so, however, I do not see the need for high-cholesterol food and alcohol to--”

“ Mou! Ochako-chan, just tell us we’re allowed to party already!” Mina says, going into a full blown tantrum. “I want barbecue, barbecue!!! Oh, but don’t worry, the place I’m thinking of has electric grills, so no worries about fire or anything...”

She loves this office. She’s really going to miss them when she leaves. “Sure, why not? I’m starving!”

Again, everyone but Iida cheers. The glasses man just sputters more. “B-but the Director…!!”

“It’s fine, he let us go early so we can focus on Camie. Besides, if he needs you, Iida-kun, he’ll just pick you up at the party!”

Iida scowls through the jeers of the others in the office. “That is not funny, Uraraka-kun, nor is it accurate. You’re his priority, not me.”

“Yeah. He’d sooner join us at this plebe’s party than to let Uraraka out of his sight for one night,” Monoma comments idly as they trail out of the office one by one.

*

 On top of being the resident rat bastard (self-proclaimed), Monoma just might be the office prophet as well.

So there they were in the hole-in-the-wall barbecue place. The grill’s electric as Mina promised so they’re able to cook the beef belly slices without Ochako getting a panic attack. Monoma’s goading Camie into a fight, Mina’s goading Monoma, Camie’s flirting with Iida, Iida’s trying to decode her words as if they were the Hammurabi code, and Kirishima’s dumping overcooked meat onto everyone’s plates. There’s food and beer and everyone’s getting redder and redder in the face. It’s fun.

It happens at around the fifth batch of meat that Kirishima burns to a crisp. “I daresay, Kirishima! This beef is not beef anymore, but a piece of coal!” Iida complains.

“Bro, crispy meat’s manly! Come on, eat up!”

“Blegh. I prefer my meat to not be as dark and shrunken as Director Todoroki’s soul, thanks,” Monoma hiccups. “I can’t see anything ‘cause of all the smoke. Someone confiscate the tongs from Kirishima before I shove them right up--”

A cold, bitter wind from the dead of winter floods the air around them and stops all conversation in their tracks. Kirishima drops the meat tongs with a loud noise.

It’s impossible that the entire restaurant would fall so deathly silent, yet Ochako can hear nothing but the familiar footfalls of genuine Italian leather over the grimy concrete floor. Closer, and closer, and closer. Around the table, everyone but the confused Camie exchanges mildly horrified looks and then stare right at Ochako.

Don’t tell me…

“Secretary Uraraka.”

Out of the smoke of burnt spicy beef comes the silhouette of none other than Todoroki Shouto.

“Director?” Ochako is the first to stand to bow, followed by the rest of the table who is only half a millisecond slower to shift from completely drunk to painfully sober. “What are you doing here?”

The stoic executive has an ungodly strong presence that makes everyone in a hundred meter radius stop and stare. But the overall effect is different in this grimy barbecue place versus the lofty offices of Endeavor Towers--he sticks out less as a divine presence and more like a sore thumb. He’s entirely aware of this too, judging by the way his nose wrinkles in distaste.

“This is an activity of the Office of the Executive Director.” He points to himself. “I’m the Executive Director. I should be here.”

Ochako can almost hear the same panicked internal thoughts of every member of the team: shiiiiiiit. Who snitched?!

It’s probably too late to salvage this very awkward situation, but to Iida’s credit he is the first to gallantly try. He jumps off his spot and bows at perfect ninety-degree angles. “O-o-of course, the Director should be at the very forefront of this activity! How shameful we are to forget! Why, I am astonished! Ashamed! Utterly mortified that he is not involved at the very beginning!”

“As you should.” Todoroki breezes past him, uncaring of the way Iida flinches like he just got stabbed by an icicle through the gut and the way everyone else is suddenly paper white and shaking in their shoes. “Uraraka, I’ll forgive this oversight today. Just today. This will not stand in the future.”

“Of course not sir,” Ochako replies, scrambling for her polite and efficient and not-drunk secretary voice deep within her brain, “But you made it! In this, um, event without anyone telling you how to get here! So thank you for coming to Secretary Utsushimi’s welcome party!”

“You’re welcome.” And then with his version of a winning smile (which is just both corners of his mouth moving 2 picometers upward), he tells his hapless office, “Let’s continue then.” 

 *

 Since taking up his position as the Executive Director of Endeavor Inc three years ago and gradually picking out members of his team, he has never joined them for social gatherings like this. It’s not that he’s opposed to eating at ordinary (cheap) restaurants and eating ordinary (cheap) meat and drinking ordinary (cheap, and likely terrible) liquor like they do, just that he’s never considered it. If they had drinks at the upscale restaurants he liked maybe he’d join them, but then again socializing for work is exhausting enough as it is and he’d rather drink the aged whisky he kept at home.

That was then. Now he has something to prove: that he can be the ordinary man that Uraraka wants to marry. He’s going to ingest cheap meat and cheap liquor and he’s going to enjoy it so hard that Uraraka can’t say no to him.

He’s seated on an uncomfortable bench between Uraraka and Monoma, with Utsushimi on the other end; across from him are Iida, Ashido, and Kirishima. He would have seated himself at the head of the table as Iida has offered, but he didn’t like how Monoma could easily touch or grope or breathe in the general direction of his secretary. Not that he knew Monoma to do those unseemly things, but he had heard what cheap alcohol could do to any salaryman and he’s not risking his personal assistant going through any sort of harassment that will get her productivity down.

He doesn’t have any cause to worry right now though, because somehow they’re all enjoying the party in utter silence. They’ve abandoned their beers in favor of tea and ice-cold water. Ashido is the first to move since he sat down, and it is to sip at her drink with a shaking hand.

So this is how ordinary people have fun. Shouto isn’t that impressed, but far be it for him to judge anyone on how they spend their free time after work.

“S-so, Director. Would you like anything to drink?” Iida cautiously asks, face paler than usual. “Or perhaps, some beef?”

He carefully considers the dark matter on his plate. His nutritionist will take a month to correct the imbalance in his system if he ate this. “... a drink first,” he decides. Signalling one of the part-timers passing by, he says, “I’ll have a Boulevardier if it’s available.”

The part-timer stares at him blankly. “A what?”

So it’s not. He should have expected that from a place like this. “Never mind. I’ll have an amaretto sour instead.”

“ Oji-san, all we got here is beer or Pepsi, ‘kay. If ya want something fancy an’ sour I’ll boil the nicest pickles in the kitchen for ya.”

Oji-san? Since when did he become this kid’s uncle? Did any of his siblings sire a secret love child without him knowing?

Before he can ask, Secretary Uraraka covers for him. “He’ll have the tea too, thanks!”

He doesn’t know what he did to earn that flat-out glare he gets from the kitchen staff, but he isn’t going to let that deter him from his plan. “So. This is… enjoyable. You all seem to know how to have a good time.”

The strained silence over the table breaks into simultaneous laughter from all sides. “Y-yeah, we sure know how to party! Wh… Whoo-hoo!” Ashido cheers, her entire body trembling in what must be pure excitement.

“Yeah! This is fun and not awkward at all!” Monoma adds with a manic laugh bordering on insane. “So, so, so, soooo fun. My heart’s racing from 100% fun and 0% crippling fear!”

“Good.” If he can put a percentage to things, it must be accurate. Everyone else seems to agree so it looks like the evening (slash fool-proof plan) is going well. “Out of curiosity, how long does a standard party like this take?”

It is already eleven PM and late for a weeknight. It’s not a problem for him to stay out for longer--he has stayed up past midnight many times with Uraraka for work, after all, but he figured he should ask for posterity’s sake.

Uraraka clears her throat beside him. “Funny you should ask, Director! We’re actually almost done. This is our last round of drinks!”

Across from him, Ashido, Iida, and Monoma suddenly share wide-eyed looks that suspiciously look enlightened. “Th… that’s right! Because we’re responsible working adults and we must head home early on a weeknight! Now that we have thoroughly celebrated the employment of Utsushimi-kun we can happily head home to rest!”

They can go home now? It was that easy? Shouto keeps his smirk to himself. See how easy it is to do ordinary things, Uraraka? He truly isn’t a man to be underestimated.

Kirishima, however, looks puzzled over this. “Eh? But I went through all that trouble reserving the karaoke place, you guys! Did you all forget abou--ow, ow, ow, ow, Ashido!”

Oh, so they’re not yet done? How could they forget what’s on their agenda? Is that why Ashido is so angry at Kirishima? They must have been looking forward to this. Luckily for them, Shouto isn’t going to let such an ordinary mistake get in the way of their good time. “Karaoke after drinks sounds enjoyable. Let’s head out.”

And so Shouto loads them all in his car, with Uraraka on the passenger seat and the rest of them piled up at the back. The drive to the thoroughly unimpressive place Kirishima has picked out takes about ten gruelling crowded minutes. By the time they make it there, the rest of his team seem relieved to be able to finally breathe, but then make it to a just-as-suffocating small box with nauseating disco lights, an old machine, and an awful audio set-up.

And tambourines. God. He’s trying hard for Uraraka, but even she doesn’t seem to be enjoying herself in a sticky place like this. Shouto has to draw the line somewhere.

“Everyone get back in the car,” he commands darkly, and they’re all running out of the room after a beat.

It takes exactly one text message to the right person for his office to go to a better place they deserve. Shouto takes them to a small music theater in Kiyashi where the last run of Les Miserables was performed privately by his acquaintances from London’s West End. It’s unused at this time of night, so it was easy getting them to set-up for a karaoke party for seven people.

“Directoroki, you rock!” Utsushimi cheers as she rapidly takes photos of all angles of the stage.

He should probably mind the way she just stumbled over his name, but he doesn’t, because for once Uraraka seems impressed. “Let the party commence.”

His office crew’s aura is vastly different than in the barbecue place. They start drinking as soon as the cocktails are served and immediately start fighting over the microphone. Ashido wins first and slurs over a Nicki Minaj song. Kirishima tries to get Iida to sing “Be A Man” with him but ends up aggressively singing all the parts by himself. Etcetera, etcetera. With each song they sing, they progressively get drunker, bolder, and out of tune.

Surprisingly, Shouto doesn’t mind. Maybe because he’s finally drinking something that he’s sure doesn’t taste like piss. Or maybe because Uraraka’s sitting right next to him, clapping along happily as Utsushimi and Monoma sing a Carly Rae Jepsen song while threatening to judo-throw each other for the mic.

A warm feeling spreads over his chest when he looks at her. He knows it’s not just the highball he nurses over the span of an hour. He knows it’s not just the satisfaction of his plan going well. He knows it’s not indigestion from the burnt meat he didn’t eat back in the restaurant.

Uraraka’s smiling brown eyes turn to his. Suddenly his chest feels something akin to heartburn.

She says something that’s drowned out by Monoma and Utsushimi competitively screaming “I really really really really really really like you!!!” Shouto has to lean in closer to hear her. “What was that, Secretary Uraraka?”

She brings her mouth closer to his ear. Her warm breath smells like the strawberry syrup from whatever sweet drink is in her hand. It’s unnervingly pleasant. Shouto has to concentrate to understand what she’s saying. “I said, thanks Director! I really--”

--Really really really really really like you!.. And I want you! Do you want me?--

“--how about you?”

Shouto meets her expectant gaze, for once not knowing what to say. “... yes,” he answers, after a beat.

She smiles. Her cheeks are glowing light and pink, like sakura petals in the spring. “That’s awesome!” She says, for once letting go of the usual formal Japanese she uses with him. “You should join the team for drinks even after I quit, okay?”

“... ah.”

Suddenly irritated, he takes a good healthy swig of his drink and swallows with a grimace. Well… this is fine. This is only phase one of his plan. Knowing how decisive Uraraka is, she isn’t going to change her mind about him that easily. It’s actually better this way. That’s the secretary he hired, after all. That’s the person he wants to keep at his side.

Kirishima’s spiky head pushes between their conversation. “Heyyyy!! Uraraka! Are you thanking Directoroki over here?!! No fair, I wanna thank him too!”

“Excuse me?” Shouto says stiffly. The redhead ignores him though and traps him in a bone-crushing hug.

“I appreciate you! You… are the bestest, manliest boss ever, Directoroki!” Kirishima hiccups rather dramatically and rubs his cheek against Shouto’s. “And you deserve the world! And you should… you should--”

Shouto gives Uraraka a horrified look, which she throws right back at him. She visibly gains some sobriety as she attempts to pry off Kirishima’s muscular arm off of him with little success. “Kirishima-kun, you should drink some water and--”

“Heyyyyy Kiri move over! I wanna thank the Director too! Hic~” Suddenly, Shouto’s other side is being hugged by another unwelcome warm body reeking of alcohol. He freezes like a block of cement as Ashido straight-up cuddles him. “Like, you’re an awesome… awesome, handsome man, like oh my god I can’t believe how handsome you are up close, what the hell! Have you ever seen a man so beautiful you want to cry? Wait, what am I saying?…”

As Ashido starts weeping and getting lost in his face, Shouto decides he has had enough. He’s ready to shove the two assistants aside when another one decides he wants attention too.

Monoma has abandoned the stage and decides to join them. “How dare you smother the Director without me!” Fueled by alcohol, he reaches new heights of extraneousness and places himself across the increasingly uncomfortable Shouto’s lap. “Director, pick me! I’m your favorite, aren’t I?”

“Secretary Uraraka--” Shouto barks like an SOS.

Monoma pouts with a noise. “Her again? It’s always her! Are you in-love with her or something?”

It’s Uraraka’s turn to make an exasperated noise. “Honestly, you three! You are gonna get fired by tomorrow if you keep harassing the Director!”

It’s amazing how she’s still able to read Shouto’s mind so perfectly even in an absurd situation like this. But for all her warnings, all he gets for it is more unwanted bodily contact. “Harassment?! Not on my watch!”

Iida’s bellow is steadfast, but his gait is definitely not. It’s almost impressive how he keeps his body straight while also walking in an unsteady zigzag towards whatever it is that’s going on around Shouto and ends up dropping at his feet. Haplessly groping the director’s pants leg, he demands, “Cease this needless groping of the Director at once!”

“I’m getting major FOMO, y’all! Move over!” To top off this mess, Utsushimi sits near Shouto’s other foot next to Iida’s fallen body and takes her hundredth selfie with everyone. “Best party ever faaaam!!! Peace!”

That’s it, everyone is fired. Shouto is about ready to throw all of them to the floor and all their employment forms in the shredder, until a strange sound floats to his ear amidst all the drunken noises.

“Pffffttt--”

Uraraka is covering her mouth and holding onto her stomach in desperation. At first he’s worried that she’s in pain from a ruptured appendix, but further inspection reveals stuttered breathing, reddening cheeks, a smile so big that her trademark round cheeks are struggling to support it. It’s obvious that she worked so hard not to make the strange sound, but one snort and all anyone can do is watch the dam break.

Secretary Uraraka is laughing at him earnestly for the first time in nine years.

Now this shouldn’t be strange as Shouto is not a humorous man and has never given her any reason to laugh before. But now that he thinks about it, isn’t it strange to spend nine years with someone and never see them laugh or smile like this? Why hasn’t he noticed until now?

If--no, when he marries her (because he definitely will, there’s no way his plan is going to fail), is she going to allow herself to laugh like this?

“I’m s-sorry, Director,” she wheezes after another minute of desperate laughter. He’s never seen someone laugh so much that they’re in tears. He didn’t know it was a thing that happened. “I’m--we’re all going to write letters of apology tomorrow, I promise! Please don’t fire anyone!”

He takes a steadying breath. “All right. I’ll be expecting them at seven in the morning. Sharp.”

His team finally lets him go with a stunned air about them, staring at his face in interest.

“Uh… the Director’s smiling. I must be dreaming,” Ashido mumbles in a daze.

“Or wasted. I’m never drinking again.” Monoma says, holding back a gag.

The rest of the office agrees and follows the sober Shouto to his car. 

 *

 With Uraraka’s guidance, they’re able to drop off all the members of his office at their designated homes without much problems. Because her home is the farthest one, Shouto takes his time getting to the correct exits (he still had to make a couple of u-turns here and there) and driving his car slowly through the narrow streets to avoid any wayward pots. He is proud to say that he is able to make it without any further incidents. Uraraka gets down from his car safely.

He escorts her as far as the unimpressive entrance to her apartment. “So… this is me, Director,” she says quietly, feet shuffling against the welcome mat. “Um. Thanks for dropping me off, but you didn’t need to walk me all the way here.”

“It’s nothing.”

She has a difficult time keeping eye contact with him tonight, which is rare. Maybe it’s from her impulsive actions earlier, or maybe because she’s noticed the way he’s plotting the exact color and diameters of her wide brown eyes, her cheeks. The more he stares, the pinker her cheeks get. It’s an interesting scientific phenomenon.

Objectively speaking, Uraraka has an... acceptable face. People with acceptable faces tend to be subjected to prolonged looks. From experience he knows how uncomfortable this can get and hates that he’s subjecting her to the same treatment, but he can’t stop staring. She’s just so… round. And soft-looking. He’s tempted to touch her cheeks even if there’s no real purpose behind them than to see if they’re as soft as they appear.

He doesn’t usually get senseless impulses like this. Maybe he isn’t that sober after all.

Uraraka clears her throat and finally looks up at him. “Out of curiosity, Director. You never joined us for drinks before, but tonight you really… um…”

He hums. “Everyone needs an ordinary night out to unwind, once in a while.”

Upon the word ordinary, her face falters, and then contorts into laughter again--truly an interesting sound. “There’s nothing ordinary about the night you gave us, Director Todoroki! But it’s good. It’s fun. You really surprised us, in a good way.”

What, so his attempts at ordinary failed after all? He’s a little nonplussed about this, but the giggle from her tells him that it isn’t all for nothing.

“But please, no more surprises in the future, okay? I’m not sure if my heart can take it.”

“I make no such promises,” he says flatly, “but if your heart is not okay, please get a comprehensive cardiovascular workup done as soon as possible.”

Uraraka’s eyes crease in a way he’s never seen before. “Goodnight, Director Todoroki.”

He steps away from her with a feeling suspiciously similar to reluctance. She doesn’t go in immediately and instead sees him off at the entrance. Just before he gets back to the driver’s seat, he calls out, “Uraraka,”

“Yes, Director?” she calls out in mild surprise.

“I warned you not to underestimate me.” He gives her a little upturn of the lips and climbs aboard. “Goodnight.”

The last thing he sees of her is her stunned figure through the rearview mirror. Satisfied, he speeds off into the night without a second glance.