#so do not be so quick to judge writers for 'selling out' or whatever the hell. they're trying to make a living too

[lemonhemlock]

I did not get into Game of thrones when it first started airing. In fact, I waited until it was long past it's heyday (around s6 or 7) to check it out because the marketing and the conversation surrounding it misled me into thinking it was nothing more than "grimdark" bullshit. As one famous YouTuber sarcastically called it "hot fantasy that fucks." So, I avoided Martin's work for literal years due to the impression that I got from online reactors and show-only casuals who did as you and a few others have described as his work being fundamentally misinterpreted.

Fortunately, I overcame my hang-ups, purchased the books (even the supplementary material) and fell down an entire rabbit hole of ASOIAF which led me to recognizing that this world he spent decades creating is far more complex than what had been portrayed onscreen. Regardless of the possibility of the books remaining unfinished (which I am fine with, personally), what George has created is a genuine work of art that I imagine took a tremendous amount of time and energy. So, for so many people online to behave like children and throw tantrums because they feel entitled to him (ew) instead of ushering forth more reasonable conversations and legitimate debates about the nature of his situation frankly makes me look at this fandom with a heavy dose of skepticism.

It is truly baffling to hear even professional critics and see articles describing George as being "ungrateful" or "unprofessional" when it has been well-documented just how often authors get locked out of the adaptation process and left to the wayside as consultants. Look at what happened to Rick Riordan and Christopher Paolini! George R.R. Martin is not the only author to have qualms with how a multimillion dollar studio has mishandled his creative work, and to act like he should remain silent just because he's amassed a certain degree of wealth is quite frankly, ridiculous. He shouldn't have to settle down, be grateful, and stay quiet because the greedy corporate executives and their media drones will get offended by actual criticism that could alter the perception of the adaption being revealed as mediocre for having departed from the source material.

TLDR: authors should be allowed to speak up about their art being sacrificed for commercialization.

Thank you so much for this message, anon! This needs to be talked about more, because I don't think a lot of commentators truly understand the vulgar, late-capitalistic sheen that seems to set in and slowly poison any ASOIAF adaptation. It honestly baffles me how quick some members of this fandom are to rush to the defense of, what is essentially (let's not be kidding ourselves here), a cashgrab by a giant corporation to the detriment of the actual artist and the actual creative foundation behind it.

Why else would "MAX" (if that is even their name) make another (or several other) ASOIAF adaptations? Not to stay true to any philosophical aesthetic vision, as it has become more than apparent with Season 2, but to increase shareholder profits by appealing to the lowest common denominator. Even the basic premise has been shifted in order to address popular trends and satisfy the mindless consumer that doesn't want to engage with anything deeper than their favourite tropes, prettily packaged:

from a story about a doomed ouroborous family superimposed on the pitfalls of feudalism, with villainy and heroism to be found on both sides, it has been simplified and reduced to a narrative that exalts white feminism and disqualifies anyone who opposes its girlboss protagonist. This is Sheryl Sandberg's version of Fire and Blood.

Truly, I think Sara Hess did (unintentionally) outline it the best: "civilians don't matter in Game of Thrones". They don't matter in Game of Thrones, but they matter in A Song of Ice and Fire. The entire heart of the series is contained in Septon Maribald's speech. The writers "kind of", must have forgotten, though.

[animeyanderelover]

Hey! I saw your request were open.sorry if their not you can delete this of their not.anyway can i please request prompt #32 with Ran-Mao from black butler please?thank you a lot! Btw I really love your blog.your a great writer!!

I’m always giving my best darling❤️.

Tw: Yandere themes, unhealthy mindset, unhealthy relationship, harassment, stalking, obsessiveness, violence, killing, blood, body parts

Prompt 32: “Babe! I brought you a gift. You don’t know what that is? Let me tell you. These are the eyes of the person who kept looking at you today.”

You wondered where she had gone. It was not like her to miss out a chance to spend time with you, this just wasn’t like Ran Mao. Usually she always waited in front of your house, following you silently in the house and spending the rest of the night and early morning cuddling with you.

You had no idea when exactly she had even confessed to you, you couldn’t remember that she had ever told you about her feelings. Ran Mao wasn’t very talkative.

When you had first met her, together with this guy named Lau, you had even doubted that she could understand your language at all. The few times she had said something, she had spoken in a more broken tone, giving you the feeling that she didn’t know the words.

But she seemed to understand everything just fine, you had taken notice of that the moment you had accidentally mentioned one time that you had wanted desperately some pastries a new bakery had started selling. Sadly you were at that time a bit short on money, having to miss this sweet temptation.

Maybe that was how she had confessed to you now that you were thinking about it. Because she had stood for the first time in front of your house at that time, holding a huge box with the logo of the bakery in her hands. Not a single word had been uttered, she had just given it to you, waiting for your reaction.

You had never interacted with her before, she had only sat on Lau’s lap, watching when you two had been talking. God knows how you had managed to make friends with that guy, but he was a funny guy to be with after all.

But at one point she had just started to pay more attention to you, her golden eyes constantly watching you and seemingly being interested in whatever word you had spoken.

And on that night you had let her for the first time in your house, this gorgeous Chinese beauty.

And from there on this had become a routine, her always waiting for you at the front door after you had finished work and you two just spending the following few hours together before you two fell asleep together.

You had at first been worried for Lau, fearing that he might be somewhat hurt by Ran Mao’s sudden change in behavior. But luckily he didn’t seem all too affected by it. Much more on the contrary. He had told you that he was happy for her since he had noticed that she seemed to be in a much more good mood since she had met you and you had started dedicating more time to her.

The first time she had suddenly started sitting on your lap rather than Lau’s, you had been a bashful mess, not a single word had left your mouth. You hadn’t been able to think clearly, not with her on your lap and hugging you in front of Lau, who had seemed more amused by this.

You still weren’t completely used to it, Ran Mao was incredibly distracting. Not in a bad way, but she was very attractive, no one could deny that. You had once tried to talk with her about this behavior of hers. It wasn’t like you didn’t like it, but it was just the fact that you would like to avoid misunderstandings since she even did it in front of other people.

She had not understood it, she had just tilted her head back then and watched you as if not sure if she had heard it right. You had felt terribly bad afterwards, trying to make it up by being more cuddly and tolerating when you two were in private. It wasn’t like she wouldn’t have been touchy even if you wouldn’t have been.

She had learned to restrain herself more in public even though she still clinged into your arm all the time. But at the very least she had stopped placing herself in your lap except when with Lau or alone. You had never expected her to be the clingy type when you had first seen her, she had looked more cold.

In reality she was anything, but cold. In fact she was one of the most lovely persons you had met. She rarely talked, but she was just so mindful and lovingly with everything else she did that you felt thankful for having crossed paths with her. She had always been there for you.

Maybe that was why you felt a bit hurt right now. Because she wasn’t here. And especially today you really would have needed someone to comfort and listen to you. Ran Mao knew that as well, didn’t she? She had been there when this person had kept looking at you, the reel of alcohol and his rotten breath still causing you to feel nauseous.

Luckily he hadn’t approached you, Ran Mao having stopped him with a quick kick which had led him to landing on his face before she had grabbed your hand and quickly dragged you away from the man who had started shouting and cursing at you two, spitting out some rather nasty words before an police man had stopped him and taken him under custody. Letting a drunken man like this run freely around wouldn’t have been a good idea anyways.

You turned around in your bed, eyes trailing instantly to the spot Ran Mao would have layed by now. You missed her a lot right now. Lau had informed you that she had been busy with something, but you hadn’t expected that it would take her that long. Normally she always finished her tasks in the matter of less than an hours. What was taking her so long?

He could only stare at the person in fear, shaking like crazy. It was too dark to confirm who exactly it was, but from the dim light that the moon was gifting him, he was sure he could indentify the body line of a woman.

But that was not possible, not from the utter display of skilled and brute strength he had just witnessed. No one fought like this! No human could destroy a whole wall and knock out all officers!

Maybe he was still drunk? He had quite the few shots after all. No, he surely hadn’t drunken that much. The fear was way to real and even if he should still have been somewhat foggy before, he was sure he had sobered up by now.

“No human can do this...” There was this small and terrifying thought crossing his mind, one he refused to believe. What was he thinking? Stuff like vampires and witches where some dumb shot from fairy tails. And yet, when he looked into those golden eyes, ice-cold and yet burning with a bright fire, he couldn’t help, but think of one word. “A demon.”

It seemed like the devil had decided to go after him. He should have listened to his parents, his friends, everyone around him. Everyone had warned him that one day he would get a payback for his actions, his disloyalty, his habit of drinking until late at night. And now death would finally punish him in the form of the creatures he had always chased after. How mocking fate was.

“You hurt...the most precious person.” After that he only remembered darkness. Eternal darkness.

“Babe!” You stirred up from your slumber, being softly shaken by someone. Who? What? Where? You slowly sat up, stretching yourself to get rid of the stiffness and rubbing your eyes.

With still half-closed eyes you turned around, blinking several times in an attempt to widen your field of vision. And that’s when you finally noticed the person sitting beside you on the bed.

You were at first happy that she had finally made it, you must have fallen asleep whilst waiting for her. But that’s when something else crossed your mind. How did she get inside...?

Just as you were about to ask her the question, you noticed the open window, halting in your actions. Had she...?

“Ran Mao...” Judging from the way she had cuddled herself comfortably next to your side, she was listening, eyes waiting you to finish your sentence.

“Did-did you enter through the window? The closed window? At least ten meters above the ground?” You were flabbergasted the moment she simply nodded like it wasn’t anything special. It wasn’t like you weren’t aware of the abilities of Ran Mao, you knew she was agile, strong and an excellent fighter. You hadn’t known that she had much more up her sleeves, but that wasn’t what shocked you so much. It was the fact that she didn’t seem to realize that breaking into your house was...well, wrong.

“Why are you here?” You we’re still staring stunned at the opened window, asking yourself how she had managed to open it from the outside without breaking it. That was before your attention was shifted from the window to a small and noble looking wooden box, fine patterns being carved into it. “I brought you a gift.”

Her words still sounded a bit slow-spoken, but it was surprising that she was talking so much in the first place. You didn’t mind, you really liked her voice. But mixed with this rather...odd situation it felt a bit weird.

You slowly took the box, observing it a bit. “Is that the reason why you were so busy?” A small nod of confirmation from Ran Mao was all you needed. And in that moment you started feeling a bit guilty, giving her a somewhat unsure look.

“I appreciate it, really. But I feel bad since I don’t have anything for you...Just like all the other times you gifted me something.”

It happened all so often that Ran Mao gifted you something, no matter how expensive or rare. She seemed to always find ways to get you what you wanted. And different from with the physical affection, she hadn’t slowed it down when you had talked with her about it. You had felt terrible because you knew you would never be able to get her the things she gifted you, there had even been a time where you had tried to reject the presents because you had felt too bad.

You had stopped not long afterwards, after she had just stood there, holding her arms out in expectations of you taking it, a certain feeling of slight desperation and hurt surrounding her. You hadn’t been able to say no to those leading eyes.

What had she gifted you so far? Pastries, expensive ingredients, jewelry, clothes, flowers, decorations...The list was long. Whenever you had expressed your interest in something, you had gotten it only shortly afterwards from her. But you couldn’t recall that you had showed interest in anything lately, making you curious about what she had gotten you so suddenly. You suspected she had bought you something due to the recent accident.

“You don’t know what this is?” You guessed your reaction could have been worse than just kind of freezing the moment you opened the small box and were met with a nasty stench, two round-like things laying inside the piece of wood. You didn’t know why you were so calm, this would have been the perfect moment to scream and have a panic attack.

Maybe...just maybe it was due to the fact that you had used to work in a hospital and had seen some stuff in there.

But you had definitely never seen eyeballs that detailed and clearly before, not to mention not placed in the skull which they should have been instead of in a small expensive box, gifted as a present to you. Were you crazy for suddenly thinking how she had been able to rip them out so clearly and cleaned them up so well? Shouldn’t you worry more about the person who was missing them right now or if they were even alive anymore? Yes, yes you should.

“Let me tell you.” You really wished to find out how she could sound so incredibly casually right now given the fact that she had just given you the eyes of someone. Shouldn’t she act a bit different as well? Panicked? Guilty? Maybe angry because that person did something wrong to you? Really anything, but her usual clingy and calm self?

“These are the eyes of the person who kept looking at you today.” You didn’t do anything when she started rubbing her face against yours, wanting more physical contact with you. You didn’t know if you were either too shocked or if your brain had just stopped working, you only knew that you felt somewhat blank in that moment. You probably just didn’t know how to react to this and what to think, leading you to doing nothing.

Ran Mao seemed to notice it as well, blinking a bit confused. “Don’t you...like it?” What was this even for a question?

[blubberingmess]

[---]

Pairing: 1940s!Bucky x male!reader

Summary: It's just you having a crush on 1940s!Bucky. A prologue of a series I was working on.

Note: This is a draft I made before my chibi!Bucky. I never bothered to post it because of lack of motivation until now because I'm having a writer's block 😗✌ Also, yes, it doesn't have title, I'm sorry about that.

Warnings: cursing and very slight mention of sucking ones dick.

A low growl emits from within you as you watched Davis pushed the blonde on the pavement, the young man fell with a pained groan as he holds his side. You see, you're not the guy who likes to pick random fights on the street; not the kind of guy your ma raised you, but it's a lie if you said you don't want to punch Davis in the balls right now.

"Back at it again, I see." Both males to turn their heads at the sound of your voice. "Daddy didn't gave you attention back home? Ah," you shook your head and ducked your chin down, smirking to yourself when you saw him balling his fists.

"Who could blame him? Even I can't keep my eyes on you for two seconds." Eyes drifting off to the side with a grimace, crossing your arms over your chest.

"Atleast I have a father, (L/n). How about you? Can't keep mommy from whoring around Brooklyn?" The taller guy sneers, attention now turned towards you and completely ignored the the blonde behind him next to the crates - good.

The insult didn't falter you one bit and kept your chin up high, cocking your head to the side. "Believe in whatever you want to believe in, Davis. Atleast I'm not the one who's fucking my own mom."

His face reddens in anger, an ugly scowl on his face as he growls a menacing"Why you little" before he lunges at you. You sigh and took a step back making him punched the air instead, his large fist an inch away from your face before you took your chance and step forward, giving a quick yet strong punch square on his nose.

The blonde can only stare as Davis whimpers while pinching his nose to prevent the blood from coming out.

"You punch like a girl!"

"I'll take that as a compliment." You winked which only made Davis pinched his eyebrows together in confusion.

He scoffed. "I'm not done with you," you hissed before running out from the alley with a broken nose.

Looking up from his scratched up palms, Steve noticed you walking towards him with a worried expression on your face. It surprised the blond for it's the first time someone outside his home-- other than Bucky-- is looking at him with concern.

"Hey, you alright?" You softly asked, crouching down in front of him and gently placing your hand on his right shoulder.

Steve nodded his head and was about to thank you when he saw a large, familiar hand grasp you by the shoulder and yanked you up from your crouching position in front of Steve.

You let out a groan the moment your back hits the brick wall behind you, two hands now tightly gripping your shoulders making you slightly wince in pain. Opening your eyes, you immediately felt your face warmed up at the sight in front of you.

Such a fine young man; sharp jaws, curly dark brown hair, clean shaven, and eyes that just made you want to knee down and worship him in... different kinds of way.

Fuck, hopefully he won't noticed how your face reddens but you doubt he didn't considering the close proximity of both of your faces; an inch or two.

"Hi, can't help but notice you picking on my friend right there. Any problem here pal?" His voice is calm yet there's an absolute threat hidden behind those words. He practically hissed the last word out, eyes slightly narrowing at you.

Ignoring how intense his blue eyes are, you growled, pushing him off of you just enough to make him stumble a few feet away.

"Well y'see, I just so happened to be passing by when I saw your friend's face close to meeting Jenkins' fist and decided to be a good Samaritan and helped him," you growled. "You're welcome, pal."

The pretty guy stares at you for a moment before glancing at his friend who's now standing on his feet, nodding his head at your explanation.

"He's telling the truth, Buck."

This Buck guy averted his eyes back at you, giving you a once over. You can't help but felt your whole body stiffened at his intense look before it settled back at your eyes.

"Thanks. Sorry for pushing you up against the wall like that."

"That's okay." I don't mind.

He grins at you before outstretching his hand at your direction. "James Buchanan Barnes or you can call me Bucky, my friend here is Steve." He gestures towards the quiet blonde beside the two of you, too busy swiping off dirt on his two size too big of a coat.

So this is The James Buchanan Barnes? Not gonna lie, this guy is handsome. No wonder dames kept talking about him at work; sadly he's straight as a pole.

Your eyes flickered down on his hand then back up before grasping it with your surprisingly smaller ones, giving it a single shake before pulling away after telling him your name.

How his hand stayed outstretched mid-air for a few seconds too long than necessary didn't go unnoticed by you. You flashed him the bright smile you know that makes any dame-- and also some men-- around you sigh and swoon.

Wouldn't hurt to give it a try right?

"Nice to meet ya, Bucky. Steve" Turning to Steve, you add with a soft but stern look on your face, "Don't go around picking up fights, especially Jenkins and his goons."

"No promises, buy sure. Thanks again, (Y/n)." The blonde lightly waves at you with a thankful smile on his face.

You look at Bucky and almost laughed at the strange look on his face as he silently stares at you, eyes laced with confusion and inner conflict.

A look you knew all too well.

When Steve can't go with one of your 'pals nightly hang outs'-- as you drunkly named it-- because of his health, it'll just going be you and Bucky, which you both don't mind at all.

It's been a year since your first meeting with the two and the three of you became friends real quick, especially you and Bucky. The two learned that just like Bucky, you are also a ladies-man and it irked Steve at first but then quickly accepts that he's the 'less attractive' of the your small group of three, which you both always deny with all seriousness.

Because let's be honest, Steve is cute, people just don't see it and always judge the book by it's cover.

The two of you are currently on the roof of your house, just laughing and joking around like you usually do. The roof has been one of the best quiet place for the three of you to hang out, just drinking(you and Bucky), eating, and talking there all night.

One time Bucky and you slept on the roof while Steve is inside your room sleeping on your bed when the rain started pouring--

You felt a droplet hits your cheek, then another before you felt it all over your body. Sitting up straight-- still half-asleep-- you suddenly felt your whole body being drenched in water. Widening your eyes at the realization, you snapped your head to your side where you saw Bucky's still sound asleep and snoring.

Before a loud boom of thunder was heard, that's when he scrambles up and tugged you inside the window by your hand.

"Wake up you meatball! It's raining!" It didn't wake him up making you frustrated, but also amused.

A smack on the face woke him up, eyes opening wide and stares up at yours. You thought Bucky would quickly scramble up when he noticed the rain falling down on the both of you but no, he just stares up at you in awe; soaking wet, hair sticking on your forehead and looking down at him like... like an angel.

"Why didn't you tell me, punk?!"

"What?! I smacked you in the face three times!"

--"Wait, Is it true that your mother was..." Bucky trails off, not wanting to offend you.

"Aunt, actually. And yes she is, but not in Brooklyn though; Queens," you explained, leaning back on your arms as you look up at the stars as you continued.

"This house was my grandma's, said that she wanted to give it me for my 18th birthday. My aunt didn't know about this though, I don't let her knowing she would immediately sell this as soon as she sees the letters."

Bucky nodded his head as he listened to your story intently.

"How did ya suddenly ended up here in Brooklyn if you're from Queens? Of you don't mind me asking." Bucky side-glancing at you with curiosity. He took a bite of the sandwich you've made, clearly liking how it taste considering he already ate two of them in fifteen minutes.

You pursed your lips together, contemplating if you should tell him the truth or not - You decided to go 50/50.

"Lets just say I was kicked out for a reason she can't accept. Ever." Bucky knows not to push you, thinking it's a sensitive topic to talk about. So he decided to change it.

"Is it true though?"

You swing your gaze from the stars and to the pair of blues next to you, gulping nervously. "What?"

The brunette leans his body towards you, eyes intently locked into yours. You beg whoever is watching you right now to make your heart slow down even for just a tad bit, it's getting out of control the more he leans in.

What's he doing? Is he going to kiss you? It takes you all the willpower in your body to not smack your lips against his right this instance.

"That Davis' fucking her mother?" Bucky asked in a hushed tone, nose an inch away from yours. The question brings you back from your day dream and grimace in disgust at the mention of Jenkins. The scrunched up look on your face made Bucky grin widely, showing the faint wrinkles in the corner of his eyes.

"Step-mother," you corrected. "But who knows? The way he acts whenever I mention it gave me all the answers I need-- or don't, actually."

Even after answering his question, he still didn't lean away and kept the close distance between the two of you. Blue eyes flickering down to your lips so fast you almost didn't see it, but you did, and even saw how the tip of his tongue lightly licks his lips. It gave you a spark of hope that maybe--

"You smell like spam."

You growled and pushed him away, profusely blushing at his comment. "Get off me, punk!" Bucky started to laugh hysterically while clutching his stomach.

"Alright, no more sandwiches for you."

"Wha-- I'm only joking, shorty!"

"I'm not short! I'm an average height. You're just taller than me for like... three inches."

"Yeah yeah. Whatever you say, shorty-- ouch!"

You are glaring down at your lap while Bucky sat next to you with a frown on his face. The two of you are currently sitting on the roof, both with a forlorn look on your faces.

"Can't back up now. Been wanting to be a soldier for years now, like my pa." Did he though? He did, yes. But why do he feel reluctant about going now? Whatever, it's not like he could just quit. He'll be shipping off tomorrow morning, there's no turning back now.

"I know." You groaned, tilting your head up in exasperation. "If I wasn't so chicken-hearted I would've come with you, but being a soldier is just... not my thing."

"You could pack a hefty punch y'know. Broke not just those punks' nose but also mine three times within our six years of friendship." You knew he's just trying to lighten up the mood, but you knew better.

"Maybe the reason why I punch so hard is because of how many doughs I have to beat up and roll around every single day." You began punching the air like there's someone in front of you, laughing at your childishness before looking up at Bucky with a more genuine smile on your face.

You chuckled for both of your sake, bumping his shoulder with yours. "Yeah I did. But I much prefer baking rather than breaking random guys' noses. These hands aren't made for that sort of thing, it's too soft, too... feminine."

Lifting your hands up to emphasize your words, showing them to Bucky who just stare at your hands with a look you can't decipher.

What did he wanted to say?

You felt your breath hitched when you saw that he's already looking at you with that strange, conflicted look in his eyes again, but a bit softer this time.

He always gaze at you with that same look in his eyes and it never failed to make your heart flutter each time.

You watched as his lips open then closed a few times, not knowing how to form the words he wanted to say.

"You'll still be here when I come back right?" He widen his eyes at his own words before hastily adding, "w-with Steve, of course."

You scoffed good-naturedly at his question. "Of course you meatball. Where would I possibly go?"

You hummed, looking down at your shoes. "Can't really see myself being a father-- a husband even." Bucky furrowed his eyebrows together as you speak, confused as to why you would think such things. You're great with kids and treat ladies right like a real man should.

He shrugs. "I don't know, travel the world? Maybe even marry the woman of your dreams, have a kid or two."

Oh Bucky, you're so cute... and also freakishly dump. You're surprised for until now he still doesn't know you're gay.

You'd always stare at men longer than the pretty dames in the bar or the streets. Heck, you even flirted at Bucky from time to time but he would always tell himself that it's just you being friendly.

Joke's on you pal, I wanted to suck your dick so bad since the first time I laid my eyes on you.

Your eyes landed back up at him. "What about you, Bucky? Want to be a husband someday? A father?"

"If I make it back alive." Somehow, his truthful answer made your heart clench for two different reasons.

One, he is straight.

The small spark of hope in your heart falters to almost nothing, a sign that you should give up on this fruitless feelings of yours.

Two, he thinks he'll never make it back alive.

"If you don't, I'll go there myself and punch your in the face until you wake up."

"Of course you are, bud." You gave him the glare he's all too familiar with.

Never once a day passed with you not giving him that glare, it's quite amusing and almost comical on his opinion, like that look is just made for him and him only.

The not-so-threatening threat pulls a loud guffaw from Bucky, leaning his head back and placing a hand on his stomach. Even at times like this you somehow always manages to make him laugh, it made him realize how much he'll really miss you when has gone.

"Is that a threat, boy?" He uses the nickname hate so much, makes you feel like a child.

"Its a promise." You smirked.

Bucky shakes his head at you, scooting closer and placing his arm on your shoulders. Instinctively, you lean closer to him, but not to close though.

The two of you stayed like that for a while, watching as the street below you began buzzing with people and cars.

"Did I ever told you that you look great in that uniform?"

"A couple of times, yes."

[kurowrites]

The Live-In Boyfriend - Chapter 1

Looking for live-in boyfriend, the title read.

It had only been put up the day before.

Well, well, Wei Ying thought to himself. Isn’t that exactly what I was looking for?

He clicked on the link and quickly read through the text of the advert.

Since you all enabled me yesterday - have a chapter of Wei Ying being supremely stupid. Link to AO3.

(Note that this fic is going to get mature later on. Also don’t try this at home pls.)

---

Wei Ying usually wasn’t the kind of person that eavesdropped on the conversations of people he didn’t know. Most of the time, it wasn’t worth the effort of spying, anyway.

(Too many boring people in this world.)

But something about the day he’d had so far, and the way the two girls seated next to him kept giggling and exclaiming in (pretended?) shock, made him listen in. It wasn’t like he had anything better to do. He was just sitting there, sipping on his depression coffee, trying to decide what he was supposed to do next.

“A website?” the girl with a truly impressive set of pink lacquered nails exclaimed. “Isn’t that super sketchy?”

She emphasised ‘sketchy’ by tapping her long, sharp nails onto the tabletop.

“Noo, not at aaaall,” the other girl, dressed in a figure-hugging dress the colour of a ripe banana, replied. “You have to provide identification and they do a background check on you, to make sure you’re not a criminal or something. The sugar daddies too, of course.”

“Oh really?” Pink Nails asked, and immediately looked a lot more interested in the topic.

Well, Wei Ying had to agree with Pink Nail’s interest – he could use one of those sugar daddies himself. Someone willing to pay for his expenses, that would be nice. A lot better than being homeless, at any rate.

“Yeah, and you can even chat with them before meeting them,” Banana said, twirling her hair around her finger coquettishly. “It’s not like I’m going to go out with just any guy.”

“And that’s where you met him?”

“Yeah,” Banana said, leaning back a little, clearly satisfied to have the undivided attention of her companion. “You have lots of choices, and you can put in your preferences, too.”

She leaned forward again, and lowered her voice to a fake whisper that did nothing to make her voice less audible over the soft café music.

“I was really lucky with my current sugar daddy. He’s really generous because he has an established career and a lot of money. He likes kinky sex, but that’s fine, because he also kinda gets off on me sleeping with other guys, so it’s not like I can’t still go out and do whatever I want. I’m just providing him with company and a pretty thing to hang off his arm whenever he goes to a party or something.”

The two women laughed, and returned to the discussion of the advantages of this website.

Wei Ying’s attention was caught. He looked down at the sad little weekend bag next to his chair that contained nearly all of Wei Ying’s worldly possessions, discounting the boxes of books he had managed to stow away in Jiang Yanli’s attic. He’d had to sell all his furniture because he had no space where he could put it anymore. The landlord had kicked him out despite Wei Ying’s best attempts at negotiation (curse his entire bloodline), and now Wei Ying was, essentially, homeless. He had no idea how to weather the next few weeks. He had no stable address, and he needed to look for a new job. Things weren’t looking good for him.

So, he sipped on his possibly last coffee for a long time and pretended not to listen in to the conversation of the two women next to him. And when Banana finally mentioned the name of website she had been using, he felt compelled to casually unpack his own laptop, make use of the café’s free Wi-Fi, and enter the name of the website into his browser.

He was just curious, that was all.

His search returned with the result that this website was in fact the equivalent of a dating website, only for sugar babies and other forms of… special companionship. The company claimed to be classy and strict with their background checks, made assertions of quality and high customer satisfaction. And the registration as a potential sugar baby, companion, or whatever else they wanted to call it, was free.

Wei Ying paused for a moment, wondering if he really should do such a thing. All assertions from the provider aside, it was still a risky thing.

He took another look at the bag at his feet. It couldn’t get much worse than it already was, could it?

He clicked the ‘new account’ button and filled out the application without a second thought.

---

Looking for the right sugar-person wasn’t exactly a simple thing to do, Wei Ying realised about three pages in. He had decided early on that the gender of this potential sugar person didn’t actually matter, but that had the simultaneous advantage and disadvantage of increasing his possible matches considerably. He wasn’t sure how to make a choice in this wild new world that had suddenly opened himself up to him.

He was a bit nervous about the having sex part, too. He tried to imagine having sex with someone he didn’t really know and maybe didn’t find very attractive, but he drew a complete blank. It might be better to stay on the safe side and choose someone who didn’t have sex as a prerequisite. That might work out better for everyone involved.

God, with all these options and decisions, it was as complicated as looking for a job.

Well, technically, if he did it right, it might be a job. Well, not really, but he might get enough money to keep him afloat for a little bit. And with enough money, he might be able to both afford a decent apartment and find a well-paying new job.

He absent-mindedly scrolled past adverts looking for highly specific… qualifications that Wei Ying definitely didn’t have, and was considering giving up when he saw an advert for the same city he was living in.

Looking for live-in boyfriend, the title read.

It had only been put up the day before.

Well, well, Wei Ying thought to himself. Isn’t that exactly what I was looking for?

He clicked on the link and quickly read through the text of the advert.

Looking for live-in boyfriend

The ideal candidate must be clean, quiet, obedient, and sophisticated. Must be able to play his part convincingly around relatives, business associates, and friends. Good table manners and skilful socialising are required.

Physical relations are not required, but negotiable if so desired. Strictly no romantic entanglements. Affairs during the duration of the contract will lead to immediate termination.

I offer a large apartment with own private room. All ensuing costs (rent, food, clothing, allowance etc.) are covered.

The advert didn’t reveal much about the writer and his personality, so it was difficult to say anything about how well they’d fit together. But the man offered a room! Without the prerequisite of sex!

He clicked on the profile of this potential sugar daddy to find out more about him. The man, who went by L. Z., was the same age as Wei Ying, and had been working in his family’s company ever since he graduated university. Someone who had been born into wealth, probably.

He lived alone and was openly gay, so his family would expect him to bring a man to public events and family dinners. His hobbies included music, reading and tea ceremony. All in all, Wei Ying started to wonder if he was being catfished, because the age and occupation said successful young man, but the rest of it said boring middle-aged uncle with a receding hairline.

But what did Wei Ying care about boring when such a perfect opportunity presented itself to him? He didn’t want some kind of old, kinky dude. He simply wanted a place to stay, and if that stay came with an allowance and some social contact, it would be perfect for him. He had good table manners. And he did well at socialising. Most of the time.

He decided that ‘quiet’ and ‘obedient’ were relative things. He could be quiet! Sometimes! If he was reading interesting things!

He was going to contact this person, worries and fears be damned. What use was it to wait around? If this man was actually for real, he might get snatched up by someone else quickly.

He clicked on the 💌 button on the sidebar of the profile, and typed out a quick message.

Hi L. Z.!

My name is Wei Ying. I live in the same city as you and as coincidence would have it, I’m currently looking to be a live-in boyfriend! We’re the same age, too, so I think we would work very well as a couple!

I also like reading (if you have a library, I’d be all over that) and I think I can safely promise not to have any affairs while we’re dating. As for the rest, I think it would be best to judge for yourself. I’m free the next few days, so I have time for a personal meeting!

I’m a little curious though – why are you looking for a live-in boyfriend? Not to judge you, since I’m obviously responding to your advert, but you seem like a man that’s very put together. You probably could choose anyone you wanted, so why an advert?

Best, Wei Ying

He didn’t really think that he would get an answer soon, and half expected his message to go ignored, but it took barely an hour until a notification pinged on his phone, indicating that he’d received a reply.

He eagerly clicked the ‘view message’ button.

Dear Wei Ying

Thank you for your message.

I agree with you. Someone from the same city and of the same age would be a good potential partner. If you do not mind, I would like to invite you to my apartment for a personal meeting. We can meet in a café if you are more comfortable meeting on neutral ground, but you should know where you would live before you make any decisions.

To answer your question: I am not interested in a romantic relationship, but my family has been concerned about my happiness ever since I came out as gay. They want to see me in a fulfilling relationship. I want to make them stop worrying. A contractual arrangement will take care of these issues. Once we terminate the relationship, it would also provide me with a good reason not to date for some time.

Best regards,

Lan Zhan

Wei Ying gaped a little. That was a… very decisive statement. This Lan Zhan certainly didn’t beat around the bush.

Oh god, was he really catfished? Human trafficking, perhaps? But then…

He had no time to lose, and getting a home and money as a package deal was very tempting. If Jiang Yanli ever got wind of this, she might strangle him with her own bare hands. But well. She never would get wind of it. Wei Ying would make sure of that.

He pulled out his laptop again, and typed out a second answer.

Hi Lan Zhan!

Nice to meet you again. 😊

Meeting you at the apartment is fine, just know that I’m going to inform a friend of my whereabouts and check in with them to make sure everything is fine.

Tell me your address and a time that works for you!

Best,

Wei Ying

He sent the message and within a few minutes, he had an address and a time – the next day, at 5.30 pm. Lan Zhan also assured him that he was perfectly fine with Wei Ying telling a friend where he was. So maybe not a catfish, after all?

Wei Ying immediately looked for the address online, and it was a nice, modern building in the centre of town. Not some kind of seedy warehouse or an abandoned house. If he ended up disappearing in that part of town, there would probably be witnesses.  

He sent a short confirmation to Lan Zhan, telling him that he would be there at the desired time. And then, he spent the rest of the evening panicking about what he had done.

He just barely remembered that he needed to contact Nie Huaisang and use him as security. Nie Huaisang was the only one he could think of right now that wouldn’t try to talk him out of this. Jiang Cheng would just straight up murder him.

He had committed now. There was no way back.

---

His internet search had already informed him that the apartment was in the better part of town, so Wei Ying had expected a rather classy apartment building. What he hadn’t expected was that said apartment building came with an actual concierge. He’d never had to go through a concierge to meet any of his friends so far. The entrance hall almost looked like a hotel.  

Good gracious, this might all be an elaborate prank.

On the other hand, if he disappeared, now he had another witness.

He walked up to the concierge’s desk and smiled at the man behind the desk winningly.

“Hi, my name is Wei Ying. I’m here to meet Lan Zhan.”

The man gave him a critical look, from his ponytail down to the thick black leather boots he always wore, and picked up the phone in front of him.

He entered a number and let it ring a few times.

“Good evening, Mr. Lan,” the concierge said when someone picked up on the other end of the line. “A Mr. Wei is here to see you. Yes, understood. I will send him up immediately.”

The concierge came out from behind his desk and directed Wei Ying to the elevator. He held the door open for Wei Ying and pushed the button for the right floor, then bid him goodbye.

“Thank you!” Wei Ying called through the closing elevator doors, but the concierge was already out of sight.

Oh well.

He was going to meet Lan Zhan. Right now.

He quickly pulled out his mobile phone and tapped out a message to Nie Huaisang.

[Wei Ying, 05:29 pm] I’m going up to the apartment now. IT COMES WITH A CONCIERGE. 😱

The door pinged and opened onto an empty hallway with elegantly tiled floor and a tasteful but abstract mural on the wall. Wei Ying stepped out of the elevator and looked around curiously. Which way was he supposed to go?

“Wei Ying?”

There, at the end of the hallway, a man stood in the frame of an opened door.

This must definitely be a catfish, Wei Ying decided then and there.

There was no way that a man this beautiful needed his help.

[pars-ley]

Until Tomorrow | Part two

Pairing: Taehyung x Reader

Summary: You’re a happily single magazine editor in London, that is, until you’re set up with a handsome musician, who’s not exactly forthcoming about being in the biggest boy group in the world. But with your days together numbered, will this blossom into something more or crash land, leaving your heart broken.

Genre: Idol!au / Fluff / Romance / Comedy / Slight hint of smut 

Rating: 15+ (sfw)

Warnings: Mentions of sex and sexual activity / Kissing

Word Count: 6413

Part one | Part two Notes: Beta reader @ditttiii​ Thank you so much for your help, you are such a queen! 

I knock lightly against the boss’ door and wait. 

Janelle Rogers is the editor-in-chief for our magazine, she’s brilliant but also a bit eccentric. She always has some kind of wacky blazer on and yet, somehow always manages to look professional. She’s also the messiest person I know, resulting in her desk always being untidy, but she claims it to be organised chaos instead.

Who am I to argue with that kind of logic? 

She’s tough and a lot of her employees are terrified of her, but if you work hard and do a good job she usually notices and shows her appreciation in some way, which makes her quite pleasant to work for. 

I get on with her well on a personal level too. We’ve been out to dinner a few times and it’s always fun. It also always turns into a late night drinking session. Going out with her, usually means I am in for a two day hangover, which is why it doesn’t happen all that often.

“Come in!” She calls.

Swinging open the door, I step in. 

Janelle is pacing back and forth, phone tucked under her ear, as she searches through the papers in her hand. Hearing me enter, she looks up and removes the phone from her ear, before she says, “Y/n, I heard you wanted to speak to me, please come in. I won’t be long.” 

She indicates to the empty seats across from her desk. 

I sit down and cross one leg over the other, trying not to listen to the heated discussion she’s having. 

“I appreciate that I do, but I need that piece before the end of the week.” She says, her tone clipped. I see her jaw tense as she grits her teeth to whatever response she gets. “And I understand that, nonetheless, you’ve had plenty of time to figure it out. Your story needs to be in by the end of the week, otherwise I’ll use someone else’s. End of discussion.”

She hangs up the phone, almost slamming it back down onto the base unit and sighs. 

Sitting down, elbows on her desk, she gives me her full attention. “Some people will use any excuse to avoid a deadline.” She shakes her head and then meets my eyes. “Please tell me you’re here to give me some good news.”

I grimace slightly. “Well the magazine is on track...mostly. The music segment however…” I pause. “It’s unfinished.”

Her face drops. “What?” She mutters, her voice low, brimming with anger. “What do you mean, it’s not finished?”

“Only half of it is complete.” 

She slams her hand on her desk. “God Dammit, Toby.” She runs her hands over her hair, smoothing her tight, black curls. 

Toby was one of our writers, mostly for the music assignments. He did interviews with the artists, went to gigs, reviewed albums but recently had gone on a holiday for some kind of meditation retreat. ‘No phones permitted and no contact from the outside world’ kind of place, not my type of holiday but who am I to judge?

“Can’t we just use one of our other music pieces?” I ask, knowing the answer before she gets the chance to respond.

“No, we need that segment. Our sales were up last month because we featured that story about the k-pop group selling out Wembley, now we need to report what the shows were like.” She sits back in her chair. “BTS are very current, it’s what we need. They’re our ticket to the younger generation buying our magazine.”

“Well, that’s why it’s not finished, the concerts are this weekend and Toby’s obviously not going to be here for them. He didn’t seem to have tickets for them either.”

She lets out a long, drawn out breath. “Ok, well we need to get our hands on a ticket.”

I put my hands up to stop her. “I’ve already got people on it but I need another writer to rewrite the segment.”

She nods. “Toby won’t like it but that’s not my problem. I’ll get George on it.” She picks up the phone and within seconds it’s all arranged and passed over. 

I stand and make my way to the door.

“Y/n?” She calls as I open the door to make my exit. I turn back to her. “Good work, keep me posted, we need this story.”

I give her a sharp nod, not sure how possible it will be to achieve this but of course I’ll try my hardest to make it happen.

I head back to my desk, sending more emails and making more calls, when my personal phone vibrates against the wood. I glance down at the screen and my stomach flips when I see who the message is from.

Taehyung [14.09]: So, how’s your day going?

A wide grin spreads across my face. He’s thinking about me. My chest swells at that thought alone and I type a quick reply and press send.

Y/n [14.10]: So far? It’s a day from hell. What about yours?

His reply is  immediate.

Taehyung [14.11]: 😥 I don't like to hear that. My day is fine. Will be better later, hopefully I can cheer you up...If you’re still free?

I smile at my phone. I couldn’t wait to get out of here and meet him. It’s the only thing keeping me going through all of this work, knowing that he would be there at the end of it. And clearly he was looking forward to seeing me too; my ego was quite inflated. 

Y/n [14.11]: Of course, can’t wait. What time?

I put my phone down and carry on clicking through my emails, relieved to discover that I’ve sent and replied to all I needed to, for now at least. I decide to take a much needed break. I put my earphones in and shuffle my Spotify playlist of metal and rock songs that I had put together and turn the volume up to as loud as it can go. 

The ear buds thrum inside my ears as they blare out classic 80’s rock sounds with ‘Pour some sugar on me’ and I lose myself in Def Leppard. Turning in my seat, I look out of my office window. 

The landscape of London is truly something to marvel at, and I would never tire of this view. The way the entire city reflected in the windows of the high-rise buildings, the way the sun bounced off the river and the classic style of our oldest landmarks. London is a remarkable place. 

I sigh and put my feet up on the low window ledge, crossing my ankles. My phone vibrates in my lap and I smile as I see his name on my screen, reading the message.

Taehyung [14.21]: I’ll be working for a while, is 7 too late for you?

I sigh, I had another early start tomorrow but I can’t pass up the chance to go on a date with the only guy I've been interested in for two years. Who knows how long he’ll be over here for? I can deal with being tired for a few days.

Y/n [14.22]: I can make an exception for you. Let me send you the address.

I sent him the link with all the info of Yoshi’s restaurant. If he was anything like me, he’d be looking over the menu and planning his meal.

Taehyung [14.25]: Then I am flattered. See you there :)

I grin at my phone like an idiot. God, how old was I? I’m sitting here embarrassing myself, acting like a seventeen year old love sick teenager over a guy I barely know. 

I kept picturing his face, his smile, the way he raises an eyebrow so seductively, or the way he runs a hand through his dark brown hair. I’m not sure if my memory of him does him justice. 

I pause my playlist and quickly dial Yoshi’s number, waiting for him to pick up.

“Yo! What’s happening, jelly bean?” His usually cheerful voice rings out.

“I’m wondering something?” I ask hesitantly.

“Wondering...if I’m as good in the sack as people say? Why yes, I am.” He quips.

I roll my eyes. “No one says that and I would never be wondering that.” 

His laugh vibrates my ear. “Your loss. So what are you wondering then?”

“Well, do you have a table for two for tonight at seven?” I bite my lip, waiting for the response.

“If the table’s for you, for sure! Who you bringing with you this time? Taylor?” He asks, mentioning one of my oldest and closest friends who has been with me to his restaurant many times.

I hesitate. “...No. I’m bringing a...date, actually?” I hold my breath as I wait for his reaction.

“Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat!” He exclaims, so loud I have to quickly turn the call volume down before he deafens me. “Hold up, you can’t just drop a bomb like that on me! Who is it? How did you meet? It’s the tourist guy you bumped into, isn’t it? I told you y/n, I told you he thought it was a date.” He bombards me, laughing out of excitement.

“Actually,” I cut in, “It’s not him.” I hear the groan of disappointment on the other end. “It’s his friend.” I laugh.

“Well damn girlfriend! I’m impressed. I can’t wait to hear more about this. Your table will be ready at seven, don’t worry, I got you.” 

I smile. “Thank you, I really appreciate it. And Yoyo?”

“Yea?” He waits, the grin in his voice audible.

“Please, nothing embarrassing.” I practically whine.

He gasps. “Would I ever?” He pauses. “On second thoughts, don’t answer that. Heart crossed and hope to die, I shall be on my best behaviour.”

My shoulders relax a little. “Thank you. See you later.”

I hang up and remove my earphones, releasing a long, slow breath. That didn’t go as badly as I had imagined it would, he let me off surprisingly easy. Maybe going there tonight won’t be as mortifying as I’m imagining.

My work phone rings and I push the thoughts of Taehyung and tonight’s date out of my head and get back to work.

The afternoon goes slow, my eyes constantly finding the clock to see how much time has passed; counting down the hours till I could leave and meet him. 

I wade through my workload; like trudging through mud. I haven’t had any luck with finding a ticket to the BTS concert at the weekend. Any hope I did have was fading fast, well aware of the fact that I was running out of time. I had 3 days until the concert took place, I couldn’t give up; my boss wouldn’t allow it. 

I work past my usual time, wanting to get as much as I can done today, so it might allow me some more freedom for the rest of the week.

At six o’clock I am strutting out the door, after touching up my make-up and fluffing my hair in the washroom. I had decided to take the underground to ride the few stops to the restaurant. Once out of the stuffy tube station, I send a message to Taehyung letting him know that I’m walking from the station and will be there shortly. The text I get back however, has me practically running to the doors of the restaurant.

Taehyung [18.47]: I’m inside :)

My heart drops. But surely Yoshi wouldn’t have any idea who my date was or what he looked like, so Taehyung should be safe.

I yank open the heavy, double doors frantically searching for him. When my eyes finally find him, I gulp. Him and Yoshi are both sitting at a table, deep in conversation. I quickly rush over, interrupting them.

“Taehyung, I see you’ve met my friend, Yoshi.” I smile nervously, as they both stand up to greet me.

Yoshi gets there first, pulling me into a tight hug and squeezing me hard. I pat him on the back. “Ok, I tap out.” I wheeze,and he releases me. “Try to not injure me before my date, will you?” 

He laughs. “Introductions have already been made, so you don’t need to worry. I was just filling  Taehyung in here, about some of our adventures.” He winks.

I scowl at him. “Ok, ok, enough embarrassing stories.” I take my bag from my shoulder and put it with my blazer onto the far side of the seat in the booth. 

Yoshi grins. “Ok, I’ll leave you to it. Taehyung, very nice to meet you. Someone will be over soon to take your order. Enjoy guys!” He says with another wink, before he quickly proceeds to leave us alone.

We both stand there smiling at each other before I lean in, kissing him on the cheek. I linger there for a moment but I stiffen when I feel his breath at my ear. 

“Nice to see you again.” He greets softly. His deep voice like silk, doing things to my body I didn’t expect. 

I pull away, blushing slightly. “Shall we?” I indicate to the seats in the booth. He nods and we slide in. 

One of the best things here was the decor, it gave us a lot more privacy than other places I’ve been to. The booths had partition doors which I could close completely or leave open slightly. The partitions behind our seats were completely covered with painted japanese murals and there were beautiful, pink blossoms hanging from the ceiling.

“Were you here very long?” I ask, trying to gauge how much time they would have had to speak to each other.

He shakes his head. “Long enough to hear how you met each other and the story about the time you spilt a drink in your lap at a theme park and he told everyone you walked passed, that you had wet yourself.”

I laugh and roll my eyes at the memory. “That’s Yoshi for you. Never passes up the chance to embarrass me.”

Taehyung smiles. “He also said some very nice things about you.”

“That is good to hear but he has to, he knows I’d bully him otherwise.” 

He laughs at that. “You two seem very close.”

I nod. “We are. He’s been my best friend for a long time.”

“It’s good to have someone like that.”

I nod again, agreeing. “Do you have a best friend?”

He smiles. “Yes, his name’s Jimin.”

“And would he embarrass you like Yoshi does to me?”

He shakes his head, then leans in closer. “Worse, much worse.”

I chuckle. “Well in that case, I hope I get to meet him one day.” I reply, a smirk playing across my lips. 

He fights his smile. “Perhaps you will soon.”

I raise an eyebrow at him quizzically. “Is he over here also?”

He nods slowly. “Yep and yes, he’s another musician.”

He answers my unasked question and I lean back in my seat, surprise evident on my face. “Really? I’m guessing you still don't want to tell me about your job?”

I notice a flicker of sadness flash in his eyes, before they look down and away from my questioning gaze. I feel immediate guilt in my gut. “Hey, it’s ok, you don’t have to tell me anything, you just seem quite secretive about it. I was saying it more as an observation.” I reassure.

He looks up, eyes wide, “I’m not secretive!” He exclaims, shocked. “I want to tell you but—”

“Hey,” I cut him off, “No need to explain. Don’t worry, you can tell me whenever you’re ready.” I give him a reassuring smile and a gentle pat on the hand he had placed above the table.

I see him stiffen for a moment and my response is to do the same, until he turns his hand over, so we're palm to palm and gives it a little squeeze. His shoulders relax and so do mine, even though my heart hammers wildly with excitement. I can feel my palm starting to sweat the longer his touch lingers on me, it feels like a lifetime before he finally lets go and pulls his hand away. 

I can breathe and think straight again.

While I was more than happy to wait for him to tell me about his work, I found myself growing increasingly curious about the subject. He’s so mysterious, I can’t understand why he won't talk about it. I would assume that being a musician would be a  cool profession to divulge about,  most would probably gush till their heart's content, given the opportunity. 

But, in a way I’m glad he’s not like that, I don’t think I would be able to  stand the egotistical bragging.

“Can I take your drink order?” A sweet voice asks, stepping in between the sliding doors. I look up and recognise the server as Emiko. She’s worked here for a while now, and is always pleasant

“Oh, hi y/n! So nice to see you.” She beams her usual toothy grin.

“Nice to see you! How have you been?” I ask.

“I’ve been good!.” She giggles. “I won’t disturb you too much, what can I get you two?”

I order a lemonade and Taehyung orders a coke. I did contemplate an alcoholic beverage, but I don’t want to be the only one drinking on a date, that’s how I'm sure to embarrass myself.

I pick up the menu and skim through it, even though I'm sure I know it by heart by now. 

Glancing up as he too studies the menu, my eyes rake over his broad shoulders, the light beige shirt he wears falls flatteringly over his broad chest, clinging to all the right places. His black cap conceals his hair, but I can tell it’s all swept back off of his forehead. I watch the way he juts his jaw to the side as he mulls over what to order. His tongue dances across the inside of his lips, my eyes trained on it, mind drifting off again to wondering how soft his lips would feel. How that tongue would feel moving against mine...or other places. He looks up at me and instantly a flush of red travels up his neck. 

“What?” He asks quietly, giving me a bashful smile.

“Nothing,” I look back down at my menu, feeling flustered myself. “What are you going to order?” 

“Hm, maybe the Yakitori chicken skewers, any recommendations? Yoshi told me you’ve tried everything on the menu.”

I laugh. “That is true; I'm a big fan of his cooking. And yes, you should get that, it’s—,” I give a kiss to the tips of my fingers, chef style. 

He laughs and leans back in his seat. “So tell me, why was your day so awful?” He frowns, genuine concern on his brow.

I roll my eyes and groan. “Work is a joke at the moment, I’m covering for someone so I have twice the usual work load and that’s not even the worst of it.”

Emiko returns with our drinks, interrupting me. I pause as we order our meals and some sushi to share, then she leaves in a rush.

He raises his eyebrows at me and leans his chin on the palm of his hand, listening intently and waiting for me to continue. 

“Ok, so, my boss is hellbent on this particular story. The writer of said story has gone off on an unreachable holiday and it's only half done. So, now I have to try and get a ticket for a show that is apparently so high in demand, it seems impossible, so we can finish said story.”

He frowns. “I’m confused. What’s the story?”

I sigh as I fiddle with my napkin. “About some boy group and their shows at wembley.” I have a realisation then. “You’ve probably heard of them? BTS? They’re from South Korea too.” I’m not sure but for a brief moment I think I see him stiffen out the corner of my eye. His expression unreadable. 

“Yes, I’ve heard of them.” He says, nonchalantly. 

“You don’t like them?” I ask, wondering why his face suddenly looked so solemn. “Don’t tell me they’re your musical rivals?” I tease attempting to lighten his mood.

He smiles and some of the tension seems to leave his body. “No. They’re cool. So why do you need a ticket?”

“So the writer can review the show and tell the readers all about it. Our boss is trying to appeal to the younger readers and she’s convinced this is the way to do it, through this group.”

“What will happen if you can’t get the ticket?” He asks, eyes wide with worry.

I shrug. “My boss will be very, very pissed. I don’t plan on finding out though. I’ve got a few more days, it always works out in the end, one way or another.”

He watches me carefully. “I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you.”

I grin as our meals arrive, steaming hot and smelling incredible. We eat in silence for a while, enjoying the taste. I watch as the noises and faces Taehyung pulls assure me of the fact that he’s very impressed and my chest swells with pride for my friend. 

I do, however, let my mind wander into thinking about hearing those noises of appreciation in other aspects. Like me...on my knees...underneath this table. Snapping myself out of less than innocent thoughts, I focus on my meal. 

Why couldn’t I control myself? Why did everything about him appeal to me in such a powerful way? Is it because I haven’t had sex for over a year? Or is it simply that he is just the perfect specimen of a man? Maybe both.

“That was amazing. I’m blown away.” He sat back in his seat, wiping his mouth with a napkin. 

“I’m glad you liked it! Yoshi will be thrilled.” I beam and take a long drink of my cold lemonade, hoping it cools the heat inside me. I could feel tiny beads of sweat forming down my back and along the nape of my neck. 

We sit and talk until Emiko returns to clear our plates and Taehyung asks for the check. 

“I’m afraid, I cannot stay out late with you tonight.” He says solemnly.

I try to ignore the disappointment I feel; not ready for this date to be over. “Ah, that’s ok, I know you’re busy.”

He shakes his head and puts his hand on top of mine, leaning forward. I mirror him automatically. The warmth of his palm slowly flows through me and my eyes can’t help but float down to our touching skin. His hand feels soft and yet strong with his long, delicate fingers enveloping mine. I look back up to his intense eyes blazing into mine.

“It’s not that, It’s just—” He pauses looking away, my stomach drops as I’m left wondering as to what on earth he’s going to say. He doesn’t want to see me any more? He’s not attracted to me? He sees me more as a friend? What excuse is it going to be this time?

“...I turn into a pumpkin at midnight.” He says, his face so serious it takes me a few moments to register the words that have just left his mouth. Relief swamps me as I feel myself relax back into my seat and laughter vibrate through my body. He joins me, his boxy grin spread across his face but as he does, he lifts my hand, turning it over and laces his fingers through mine. 

My laughter fades, and I look down at our entwined fingers. Normally, an action like this so soon after meeting would have me running for the hills, but with him, it just felt...right.

“Is this ok?” He asks hesitantly, a crimson shadow forming on his cheeks.

I nod and swallow; my mouth suddenly dry. “Yes.” I reply simply, frozen in shock.

He relaxes a little and leans forward on his elbows, his thumb gently tracing small circles on the back of my hand.

“I should go back to my hotel…”

“But?” I query.

He side smiles, looking up at me seductively through long lashes and the sight is enough to make my belly clench. “I really don’t want to.”

My heart knocks violently against my ribcage at his admission. “I don’t want you to either.” I blurt out, surprising myself.

His eyes widen slightly before he side-smiles again and squeezes my hand. “I’m glad it’s not just me. I cannot tell what you think about me.”

I let out a small, slightly nervous laugh. “Is it not obvious?” I raise an eyebrow, surely he must be joking. I have never been so red, flustered and embarrassed with a guy in my whole laugh.

He shakes his head. “Not really, sometimes I think I know where your head is and yet at other times it’s hard to read you. I wish I knew what you were thinking.”

It's almost a question; giving me the option not to feel obliged to answer, but I don’t want to leave him hanging and wondering. Maybe laying my cards out on the table wouldn’t be such a bad thing, before I get in too deep.

I lean on my elbows that rest on the table and angle myself towards him slightly. “Ok, just so you know where my head is at…” I shift slightly under his now intense stare, as he hangs on my words. “I like spending time with you, and even though we’ve only just met...I feel I’ve known you for a long time, which is rare for me, to have such a sudden connection. I find you insanely attractive that it’s hard to think straight when I’m around you.” He beams at that and a deep crimson glow burns his face. 

“We seem to have a lot in common and I’m definitely enjoying our time together and getting to know you. You have an air of mystery about you and to be honest, it just makes me more intrigued to find out more about you. Since I met you at the museum, you have been on my mind more than I was expecting and this…” I lift up our joined hands. “would have frightened me to the point of running and hiding, if it was with anyone but you.” I say, quite fast, the words leaving me in a rush, as the urgency of having to say them takes hold of me. 

I exhale and hesitantly meet his stare.

His boxy grin is wider than ever as his eyes sparkle with excitement. I find myself mirroring his smile.

“I’ve got to admit, I was not expecting that but a part of me was hoping you felt that way.” He beams. “When I’m with you, I feel like I can completely be myself, no personas, no hiding, just me. I’m not too experienced in matters of the heart and this is a first for me; feeling this way. You’re so beautiful that it’s distracting especially because I find you fascinating and I want to know every little thing about you. Every story, every thought, everything but when you talk or smile, I can’t help but want to kiss you.” He stops, leaving that last part hanging heavy in the air.

His tongue darts out to wet his lips while he watches me. My stomach tightens with anticipation, hoping he will, waiting for him to lean in and do it. I stare at his mouth, heart beating so hard that it’s all I can hear pounding in my ears. 

He leans forward until he’s just inches from my face, his scent swirling around me, his soft, plump lips inviting me, calling to me, when the screen doors to our booth open abruptly. 

Taehyung is back against his seat in a flash, his hand no longer touching me and I suddenly feel cold without his skin against mine. 

My head snaps up, only to be met with Yoshi’s grinning face.

“Hey guys, I hope you were happy with your meals?” He asked, eyes eager for approval, completely oblivious to the moment he just disturbed.

I slump back in my seat. “Perfect as always, Yoyo.” I smile, trying to hide the disappointment that swells inside me.

“Yes, it was amazing. I will definitely be returning before the end of my trip.” Taehyung says softly, offering a bow of his head.

Yoshi slaps him on the back, the action making Taehyung’s eyes pop with surprise and I muffle a laugh behind my hand.

“Thanks man, I really appreciate that. You’re welcome here anytime, just drop by and I'll make sure you’re taken care of.” 

Taehyung smiles and nods. “That’s very kind of you, thank you.” 

“Here’s your bill.” He places the little, leather book with the paper inside on the table. “Well, I’ll let you two love birds get back to your date, we have a ‘no fondling, foreplay or sexual activity’ rule here though, so be sure to take that outside if the mood strikes.” 

My icy glare burns into him as he grins and closes the doors before I can throw something at him. I hear his laughter and his footsteps as he leaves.

I look over at Taehyung who is fighting a laugh himself. 

“Don’t you start.” I warn, resisting the smile that twitches the corner of my mouth. 

He laughs out loud. “I love it when you scold me.”

I shake my head at him, feigning shock and unable to hide my amusement anymore. “You’re not supposed to enjoy it.”

He shrugs and gives me a bashful grin, then checks his phone and groans. “I really do have to go. I’m really sorry.” 

“Hey, don’t worry, it’s fine.” I grab my bag as he glances at the bill. 

“I’m getting this, no arguments.” He says sternly. I smirk at the authority in his tone, wondering if he’s that commanding in bed too. Mind out of the gutter.

He places his cash down with a very generous tip, that has my eyes practically bulging out of their sockets.

I grab my blazer and slide out of the booth. “Lets go.”

I lead the way over to Yoshi, who is busy entertaining the customers sitting around the counter where he cooks and chats away. I wave to get his attention.

“We’re off Yoshi!” I call out. 

He nods, drops everything and rushes around to us. He pulls me into a quick, tight hug and before he’s even let me go he’s reaching around to shake Taehyung’s hand. I squeeze out of his grip and return to Taehyung’s side.

“Nice to meet you, man.” Yoshi waves.

“You too, thank you again.” Taehyung replies.

“My pleasure. Call me later, doll.” He points gun fingers at me and waves as he returns to his station. 

We head to the doors, opening them to the heavy, night air; warmth swirling around me in a complete contrast to inside. I hear Yoshi’s voice behind me call out. “Use protection!”

I put my middle finger up behind me without even looking in his direction. His laugh bellows out before the doors shut behind us. God, I really hated him sometimes. 

We walk to the car that had arrived to pick up Taehyung, the driver waiting patiently behind the wheel. 

“Jump in and we’ll drop you off.” He said, opening the door for me. 

I slid in across the comfy, fabric seats. Taehyung spoke to the driver then climbed in next to me. I was surprised to see the black partition between us and the driver and the small, dark curtains covering all the windows. I’ve never seen a car with these before, how odd.

My thoughts are interrupted by his hand on mine, the heat from his soft skin, searing through me. I look over to find he’s watching me from the corner of his eye, he gives me a side smile and I thread my fingers through his.

“You know, Yoshi did say something before you came in…” He says into the quiet. 

My stomach drops, nervous with apprehension. “What?”

“He...mentioned your ex.”

I felt a small flare of anger course through me. How dare he speak to Taehyung about him. Why bring up my past with someone I might have a future with? I let out a long breath. “What did he say?”

Taehyung looks hesitant. “Not much, honestly. Just said you dated a real arsehole, who broke your heart in the worst way. Then you came in, he didn’t get to finish.”

Thank god. This was my business to talk about, not Yoshi’s. I nod slowly.

“I think...” Taehyung cuts in quickly, worrying he’s upset me. “I think he was warning me not to hurt you, that’s why he brought it up.”

That was probably the case but I’m still pissed off at him. “That does sound like Yoshi.” I reply, quietly.

“And while I would like to hear about your past, including past relationships, I will wait until you’re ready to talk.”

I nod again, mulling that over. “Tomorrow. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow, if you want to hear it.”

He squeezes my hand. “Only if you’re sure.”

I smile at him, my anger slowly extinguishing, not wanting to ruin the moment with Taehyung because of something Yoshi said.

“Do you get a lunch break at work?” He asks, randomly into the silence, breaking any tension left.

I nod and my brow furrows. “Yes, of course. Why do you ask?”

“I have a packed schedule tomorrow evening, so I cannot see you but I need to.” He hits me with that intense stare again. If I weren't already sitting, my knees would be trembling trying to hold me upright. “Are you free to meet me on your lunch break?” His pleading eyes melt my insides.

I feel heat race from my chest to my cheeks as my blush spreads. “For you? Of course.”

He smiles, genuine excitement in his eyes and he looks down at our joined hands. Sitting this close to him, arms and thighs almost touching, so close and yet, so far. The urge to shift closer to him is almost overwhelming but for some reason I resist. There’s an invisible current I can feel from his body to mine, almost electric, sending tingles through my body.

“Taehyung, we’re here.” A voice sounds out from a speaker somewhere making me jump and interrupting my thoughts. I realise then, the car has stopped, too focused on the sheer magnetism I could feel towards him.

“Come on, I’ll walk you to your door.” He climbs out, hand only leaving mine for a second before he’s grasping it again to gently pull me out the car. He leads me up the steps to my door and when I turn to him to say goodnight, we’re suddenly face to face, inches apart. 

My heart knocks rapidly against my ribcage, even as my lungs seem to stop working and my breath stills. His hand comes up to push the hair off my shoulder and I feel him linger on my neck. Warm, long fingers slide up to hold each side of my face, as he tilts his head and suddenly, before I can think, his lips are on mine. Gentle, soft and magical. 

My senses go crazy for a moment, overloaded with stimulation before I reciprocate eagerly. The taste of him like nothing I’ve ever experienced before, I want more. 

He pulls away suddenly, still close enough for me to feel his harsh breathing against my face. 

“Sorry, I should have asked first.” He says breathlessly.

My core is on fire, I feel ready to explode as I grab his light shirt by the collar and pull him against my lips again. My hands find their way to his neck, as I grip to keep him close to me and yet it’s not close enough. His hands wind around my waist holding me tight against his body. Heat and fire replace my thoughts, as I can only focus on my erratic heartbeat and the painful throbbing between my legs as his perfect, angular lips dance with mine. 

He breaks away to breath, sending a trial of kisses across my cheek to my ear.

“Until tomorrow.” He whispers breathlessly, before gently releasing me and taking a step back. He captures my hand, brings my fingers up to his lips, like he did that first night and places a gentle lingering kiss against them.Then he’s turning abruptly, dashing down the stairs and into the car. 

I stand there, dazed. Wow. Did that just happen? 

I fumble with my handbag, my head feeling fuzzy and unable to control the rest of my body.

I eventually find my keys and clumsily let myself in, walking through my apartment in a trance. I mechanically get ready for bed, my body on autopilot while I replay the kiss over and over in my mind, unable to think of anything else. As I lay in bed, my phone vibrates against the top of my nightstand, pulling me out of my Taehyung daydream.

Taehyung [22.30]: Made it back in time, no pumpkins here—

I laugh. Attached to the message is a close up photo of him laying down in bed, resting on an arm, his almost ebony eyes wearing a smile and staring straight through the phone into me. He looks gorgeous. Did I just kiss him? How on earth did that happen? 

My grin starts to hurt my cheeks but I can’t seem to stop it. I try to force it into just a regular smile, nothing too over the top or creepy, I fluff my hair out on the pillow and take a mirroring selfie, hitting send after.

Y/n [22.32]: Good to know, none here either 😊

Taehyung [22.33]: Haha! Good. I’ll let you get some rest, see you tomorrow lunch time. Goodnight! 😉

I reply, wishing him a goodnight in return, just before my eyelids finally start to droop. As I drift off to sleep I replay the images of his lips moulded on mine, my fingers in his hair and his warm hands on my face, hoping he will appear in my dreams tonight.

Thank you so much for reading, if you could leave me some feedback it would be much appreciate, even if it’s just a little comment to tell me what you thought 🖤

[chibimyumi]

Hi Chibi! I’m kind of obsessed with your blog. I’ve loved Kuro for a long time so it’s nice to see someone make very thoughtful posts about it. I was reading some of your posts about the kuro anime and was wondering. What is your opinion of the season 2 OVA The story of Will the reaper? I love the reapers so getting to know about their world is great, but will kicking grell’s ass was not great 😖.

【Response to: “are there any S1 or S2 OVAs you enjoyed?”】

Dear Dagonl,

Thank you very much for your interest! I’m happy you like my content, and it’s always nice to hear that somebody is interested in long-winded posts deep-analyses! ^^

Short answer:

As for my opinion on ‘The story of Will the Reaper’: as I said in the original post, in my opinion “[a]ll OVAs for the second season were (almost) as awful as the season itself, save for ‘The Making of [Kuroshitsuji]’.” Though, ‘the story of Will the reaper’ is actually the one that made me add the ‘almost’ in the previous sentence, meaning that it’s marginally better than the rest.

Click for Full Answer: The good things and the... awful things.

1. The good things

The reason I found this OVA marginally better is because I do respect the ambition and (attempt at) creativity the makers have shown. At the time of release the manga had not revealed anything yet about reaper origins. So I guess they could be forgiven for their artistic liberties (unlike the spoiler-revelation of Undertaker’s nature that ruined his big revelation in the manga.)

1.1. Fair world-building

The world-building works well with the idea of Yana’s satire on the Japanese Salaryman through William. As William is something of a self-proclaimed ‘model’ and so unforgivingly rigid, it gives us reason to believe the Reaper Dispatch Society is built on this type of ideal; aka the Japanese office environment. We have also seen that the technology of the Death Scythes is a century more advanced than Kuroshitsuji’s contemporaries, so the 1980s setting was well done in my opinion.

1.2. Fair reflection on reaper/Salaryman doctrine

The biggest critique on Salaryman culture is the robotic attitude employers demand. The Japanese Salaryman™ is expected to be no more than silent executors of the will from above. As explained by William, reapers don’t actually do all that much; all they do is meaningless double-checking JUST IN CASE something might be off.

As a satire this OVA is not ‘complete’ because you do need the information from the manga that came out many years later to understand why the reaper world is a satire in the first place for the actual punch. But in the very least the OVA pays adequate lip-service and does not disrespect the satirical origins of Yana’s design.

One thing this OVA does arguably better than even Yana is showing that most reapers are robotic work zombies like Will, rather than that the Dispatch Office is filled with eccentric youngsters as the named reapers of the series might suggest. (Though there is a downside that I will discuss in section 2.2.)

2. The awful things

So, to me this OVA has two good things, but they are insignificant in the face of the awful things that’s the rest of this OVA.

2.1. Raging homo and transphobia, etc.

This OVA handles Grell extremely poorly. First of all, this OVA makes it explicit that Grell is a homosexual man, blatantly defying both canon and Yana’s explicit statement of her female gender. Why? Because the most obnoxious shippers want their Yaoi, and this sells. This one literally needed to sell because it’s an OVA.

As explained in more detail in this post, Grell was called a man and she eagerly responded “oh, yes”, and later she herself confirms this statement by making it explicit that she dreams of herself in a m/m relationship. (Yes, these subs are accurately translated. Click the link for a Japanese to English breakdown).

Some fans have explained this as Grell’s words before she realised her own identity, and I understand why. We all want something to not be this gross and try to make sense of the nonsensical, and some actual identity discovering journey would have been nice. For Grell as a character however, it only serves to give Man!Grellers more ammo (even though they have the destructive power of cotton wads).

As I said in the post linked above, “[if this statement] used to be [Grell’s] thoughts that are no longer relevant in present time, the script should have addressed that in present-timeline of the story. As it is now, it is clear as day that the writer Nemoto Toshizou did not take that into inconsideration.”

Secondly, this OVA is desperately trying to cater to Grelliam shippers. Fans have always come up with different reasons to ship this, but this OVA had to choose the most toxic one to capitalise on. Why make Grell so shitty to Will for no reason? Being degrading to him is one thing, but Grell was outright deadly violent to William for trying to do his job. And then Grell only stopped being so hostile because she got beaten back and therefore fell in love?

Yes, people justify this by saying that it’s charming to Grell because she’s a masochist, “whatever”. This however, paints a very askew image of real people who enjoy masochism as a kink. Any responsible adult in the SM community would tell you how painfully shallow Grell’s masochism is portrayed as, and how this portrayal takes away all accountability from someone who harms a kink-masochist if something went wrong.

This OVA would ironically have been more effective as an anti-Grelliam story, except that it sells itself as the opposite. With just the manga, people could just say: “oh, Grell doesn’t respect William’s personal boundaries, and William is very aggressive to Grell, but they can sort that out...eventually.” Add this OVA however, suddenly William is an indisputable abuse victim, and Grell is just an “in your face gay” (as the gay stereotype dictates...)

2.2. Contradicting Canon

I am actually not all that harsh about this OVA contradicting canon history because at the time of release nothing about the reapers had been revealed yet. Like I said above, I even respect the creativity to some extent. The only real problem is because this fandom tends to conflate canon with anime information by using cross-media information to understand Kuroshitsuji.

As discussed in section 1.2., the glimpses of the Reaper office are interesting, but the downside to this is that it suggests reapers are a race one is born into because all newbies are approximately the same age. Without the manga, this information in a vacuum is fine. Later however, Yana reveals that all reapers are suicides and are being punished for this sin. If a fan accepts both pieces of information and tries to piece them together, then suddenly this bit of creativity becomes a totalitarian nightmare.

People of all ages commit suicide. If a fan were to try shoehorn the OVA info into canon material (for lack of more stories), then we get: 1. reapers are suicides who get punished, and 2. all reaper newbies are approximately the same age and able bodied. The only conclusion we can draw then is that only able-bodied suicides who fit the ‘newbie age’ are punished. What happens to people who fall outside this norm? Is becoming a reaper and ‘paying off’ your sin the only way to “serve your term”? If so, then do suicides who fall outside this norm never get a chance to redeem themselves?😱 Or...... do only able-bodied youngsters get punished for committing suicide because they still had “societal value” but wasted it? Either way would be f*cked up!

But again, none of this is a real problem as long as a fan can distinguish canon from non-canon information ^^ So, moving on

2.3. Are reapers God Almighty?

Unlike the second, the third issue I have with the OVA is actually something I am quite harsh on. In this OVA we see that even trainees like William and Grell have apparent power to judge over somebody’s life and death based on their intellectual value. However, this begs for an urgent question!

Under section 3 of this post I discussed whether the law of “a human dies because a reaper says so” according to Grell would be feasible. It’s a relatively long discussion, so please click the link if you’re interested in the details. If you just want it to be quick then just ask the following question: “why give trainees/reapers with human subjectivity an almighty God’s** power to decide over life and death of others?” If we then add the manga’s canon information that reapers are being punished for having committed suicide, then why give people whose sin was ‘deciding over life and death wrongly FOR THEMSELVES’ the power to do so for OTHERS????

Still, even if we disregard the manga and view this OVA in a vacuum, it is still VERY alarming that trainees are given this power. Perhaps if a trainee misjudges there will be due consequences from above, but why give a trainee this power in the first place? Are human lives just test objects to this “reaper race”?

This third issue is so awful to me because it shows how little the OVA creators thought through matters and just wanted a quick money grab by selling the most toxic version of the Grelliam ship.

**TLN: A ‘shinigami’ is Japanese for ‘Death (shini) God (gami/kami)’, but please note that in Japanese definitions, a ‘kami’ is not ‘god’ in the same way it is in the Abrahamic sense. A ‘kami’ is more similar to a ‘spirit’, and is therefore not a supreme being. Entirely accurately, a ‘shinigami’ would be more similar to ‘death angel’ or ‘death spirit’.

Related posts:

Why would Sascha have committed suicide? Rutger, Will and the JP Salaryman

How does a scythe kill a reaper? A discussion of MBD musical’s horrible writing of universe laws, and canon reaper laws

Can reapers teleport?

A reaper’s dormitory

[royalskarsgard]

Once in a Lifetime

Billy Hargrove X Reader

Summary: Is it harder to love the man who broke your heart or to forgive him?

A/N: This is sooooooo overdue, and I’m so sorry. Family issues got in the way. And a whole lot of writer's block. But I hope you can forgive me, it’s super long to account for how long I went missing! Thanks to the loml for helping me through this @hotstuffhargrove

Sequel to ‘Love You, Goodbye.’

Warnings: one swear word

Word count: 2.4k

“Fucking Harrington! Get your dirty clothes out of the bathroom,” you groaned. He always did this after work, he always left his dirty uniforms on the bathroom floor. He claimed he was too exhausted after work to bring them to the correct place. Yet, a sudden burst of energy always appeared when his “study buddy” called to meet him at the library. 

“I’ll get them later! I’m actually. Headed out to meet Lisa at the library. I’ll catch you tomorrow!” He rushed out. You rolled your eyes, wondering why Steve thought his lies were believable. He’s clearly in love. 

Love was cruel and not worth anything in the end. It’s just a consumeristic ploy that gets you to buy movie tickets and to sell chocolate on Valentine’s Day. It wasn’t real. It was all lust, love at first sight? Fake, what they're really thinking is, ‘my god, that person really is fuckable.’

Sighing, you went into your powder pink bathroom. Feet slipping on the water Steve had left after his shower. When all his clothes were in the correct hampers, you quickly passed the kitchen, deciding to skip dinner. You weren’t that hungry, working at a diner was hard, but the free food was a good perk. Especially for a broke college student. 

Your room was dark, the door screamed against its hinges as you shut it. As much as you loved Steve, you were glad he was always gone. In part because it’s what you preferred and you didn’t want to infect in with your sadness. Was it really that pathetic that you were currently reaching for a half-empty bottle of cologne to spay onto your sheets? That in two minutes, you would light three cigarettes and hold them near your pillow? Maybe, but it was the only thing keeping you afloat. Especially now. 

With the cigarettes burning in your hand, you picked up your favorite picture of him. It was a rare one, he was actually smiling. It wasn’t one of those signature smirks he always gave. It was real. The real billy. No one really gave the real Billy a chance. They wrote him off as a punk as soon as they saw him. People are quick to judge when they don’t know the whole story. Just like love, the truth was more painful than what they told us growing up.

“Why can’t I move on?” You whispered to yourself. You took a drag of the cigarette that sat lit between your fingertips. A coughing attack took over, and you groaned reaching for some water. You couldn’t understand his appeal for them, never had, and never will. After all three were burnt, you laid down in your bed that was now plastered in his scent. It wasn’t perfect. Your sheets weren’t mixed with his shampoo, his hairspray or the way his skin smelled after a basketball game. But it was close enough to lull you to sleep for a few hours. 

“Hey! Wake up, we gotta go. It’s an emergency. Pack a bag we’re going to the airport,” Steve shook your shoulders ripping you away from a peaceful sleep. Your heart climbed into your throat and made you sick to your stomach. When you finally gained full consciousness, you watched as Steve ran around the room putting things he thinks you like in a bag. 

He motioned for you to hurry and rushed to his own room to do the same. Grabbing more essentials and getting dressed, you found Steve waiting in the living room for you. He had a toothbrush in his mouth, the paste dribbling down his chin. His shoulder held the phone close to his ear, confirming two flights to LAX. It was two am, and it was officially proven that Steve Harrington was crazy. 

~~

Three days earlier

Billy’s eyes widened as he saw a brown-eyed boy with a bowl cut standing in front of him.  A chill ran up his spine, he knew this kid. The boy smiled before he took a small step back. 

“Will Byers, Jonathan's brother, I was a friend of Max’s?” Billy nodded, finally putting the pieces together. They weren’t friends by any means, but he’d seen him around. He never tried to date Max, so there was no point in getting to know him. 

“How are you alive? We all saw you die, you sacrificed yourself to the mind flayer. How did you survive? Did El bring you back to life?” Rather than frightened, the boy looked confused. He looked as if Billy being brought back to life was an acceptable answer. There was no fear, only confusion, and genuine concern. And for some reason deep down, Billy didn’t feel afraid to tell him the truth, so that’s what he did. 

“Everything was dark, it was Hawkins but with the life taken out of it. It was so cold. No matter what I did, I could never get warm. Sometimes I was in a dark room with water, and I saw that girl you know there too. I tried to get to her, but she left before I could reach her,” with every word he said Billy got more and more withdrawn. A cold breeze running through his body. Will shivered the more he talked 

“We call it The Upside Down, I’ve been there too. When they thought I was missing, that’s where I was. The thing that you saw down there, and what died in the mall was a mind flayer,” the young boy sighed knowing this was information overload. But he also knew that Billy deserved answers. 

“It possessed me too, except I wasn’t stuck in the upside-down. I’m not sure how that happened. A couple of years ago, the U.S. government used Hawkins as one giant experiment, trying to find out that the supernatural existed, to use it as a weapon. Things turned sour, and it left a big mess for my friends, it’s how we found El. She’s the girl you saw down there.” 

On any regular basis, billy would’ve told the young child to go fuck off and give some insult about how he was crazy. But Billy heard the stories about Will Byers, the boy who came back to life. He’d once found an old missing poster with him on it. So for now, he didn’t find it that crazy, especially paired with Billy’s own experiences 

“I saw her touching me.. not me per se but, whatever looked like me. I was sitting on my bed in my room, and she was real and apparently so was I. I tried to yell, to run to get there but nothing was enough. Now it just feels like it’s watching me, following me.”

“We’re connected to it now, to the mind flayer. Even in death, I can still feel it. Maybe it will never leave, maybe it will go away. It’s terrifying, but I don’t want it to control my life. Do you?” A simple question, yet it caught him off guard. He had moved on, things were going fine he had a job, a home, and a small group of friends. But if he asked himself if he was truly happy, he probably would’ve said no. He was scared shitless. 

“Can I ask you for a favor?” Billy whispered. The boy nodded, knowing that despite everything, the two young men would do anything for each other. 

“Can you call someone for me?” 

~~~

Present:

The car moved shook with the bumps along the pavement. The smell of sea salt was becoming stronger, the closer you got to the beach. It was beautiful, that’s what Steve said at least. Your mind was racing, your heart stopped, and your chest slowly moving. You didn’t know how to feel. When you touched down in Los Angeles, you figured something was off, but when Steve started driving towards Palos Verdes, you knew something major must be wrong. You had begged and pleaded to know if El and the rest of the Byers family were okay. It terrified you to no end when Steve remained silent. It took you screaming your lungs out for Steve to finally pull over to a local diner. 

Now you sat in the passenger seat tears streaming down your cheeks. You didn’t know what to say, you couldn’t breathe, you couldn’t even blink. Billy was alive. Steve told you everything on the side of the highway, at first you thought you heard him wrong because of all the cars driving past. But Steve stood there barely looking you in the eyes like he felt guilty for giving you the information. He hasn’t said much either since you stepped in the car. Explaining it all either drained him or he was afraid to say anything more.

“Billy Hargrove died in the Starcourt Mall from a freak gas leak. If that’s not true, that means the truth is more painful than what actually happened” Steve sighed, he had no idea how to comfort you. He couldn’t tell you everything was okay or it would be fine because it wasn’t. 

Billy was alive, you knew that in your heart. You prayed for so many nights it was all a joke and Billy was pissing his pants from how funny it was. That he would pick you up from work and drive you home. That the man you all thought had died just looked a lot like Billy, and you didn’t know who he really was. 

Yet somehow the truth was much worse than that. Billy knew your heart was shattered, he knew that you were in pain, and he was the only one who could save you. Instead of coming back and risking questions, he walked away. He walked away from you, Max, and everyone else. He watched you and decided you weren’t enough of a reason to come back. He lived it up in California while you got to hold max when she cried herself to sleep every night. Maybe everyone was right, he wasn’t redeemable he was just an asshole. 

“Do you want to see him?” Steve asked you, the beach was only a few minutes away, and your anxiety grew with each mile closer. 

“How am I supposed to look at him after everything. I thought he died in my arms and it turns out he was alive the whole time? Why didn’t he come to me?” A small part of you knew why he did what he did, he was scared and alone. 

“You’re the only person who’s looked at him with pure kindness, he was confused and had nowhere to go. Can you blame him for running away?” He reached over and grabbed your hand. A small gesture that brought you great comfort. 

“How many people know?” 

“Only you, me and Will. Billy wanted to make sure you knew before the others. I’m not sure if he ever plans on telling the others.” He pulled into the beaches parking lot. The glow of the setting sun burned your eyes. He was down there, in the flesh for the first time in over a year. 

You figured out later that the last time you saw the unflayed Billy was the night of the accident. He had just dropped you off, and he said he would see you tomorrow, that he loved you and to be safe. He kissed you and smiled before getting into his car and driving away. After that, Billy started pushing you away, using you only for sex. Until that stopped too and he barely spoke to you. Then he died. You’d felt guilty for so long for not seeing the signs. 

“What if I can’t forgive him?” the whispered confession left your lips in shame. Was it fair to have spent a year grieving for this man only to push him away when you finally got him back? 

“Then you move on, but you won’t know until you see him. So go, he’s waiting.” that was his gentle way of kicking you out of his car. 

You stepped onto the hot pavement. The heat immediately suffocating you, this wasn’t Hawkins anymore. You saw Will standing close the steps, silently greeting you. He gave you a warm smile like he was telling you everything was going to be okay. Will nodded towards the water before going to sit in Steve’s car. 

Taking a deep breath of the salty air, you made your way down to the water. The hot sand sinking underneath your feet. Billy was here, this was the moment. Was he still the same? Would you still love him? Had he moved on? Was he just as broken as you? Your mind flooded with all these questions as you kept walking. Billy wasn’t there yet, giving you a small second of relief to catch your breath. 

A small tap on your shoulder broke you from your thoughts, it was hesitant, and he was obviously just as nervous as you were. There he was. When you turned around, the man you loved more than anything was again standing in front of you. He had been kissed by the sun, and his hair was wilder than ever before. His green eyes were bright against his now tanned skin. 

A surge of anger ran through you as you shoved him away, again and again, and again. He took all of it. He grabbed your wrists when you started beating his chest. Bruises would appear later, but Billy knew full well he deserved all of it and more. 

“I’m so sorry,” he begged. His heart was beating so fast against his chest; he was afraid it would kill him before he could get the words out. You looked so perfect, he never doubted you would, but after a year you weren’t just in his dreams anymore. Your face was perfectly clear, the nightmares about forgetting your face vanished. 

He caught you before you fell to your knees into the sand and lowered his own body to you. He ran his fingers through your hair and held you close to his chest. Repeating that he was sorry and that he loved you so much. He begged you to forgive him. 

As he held you, your lungs filled with the smell of cigarettes, his cologne, and the smell of dried sea salt against his skin. He was back, he was warm, life was coursing through his veins. Every image of his cold body being whisked into a black back was replaced. You loved him, he was your one and only. The only man you could ever think of loving. Forgiveness was already given,   and explanations could wait until later. You had all the time in the world, nothing would separate the two of you again. He would always be there for you, he was your forever and always, and you were his.

Tagged: @hotstuffhargrove @asheseiler

[disenchantedfaerie]

What a strange few days. The fandom of a certain pay cable show, yes OL, are still for all it seems, being punished by the lord and savior, his majesty the King of Men. His likes are sporadic. His retweets even more so, mostly just the blue checks but some of them, the biggest mommies and the biggest worshipers are still getting their love keeping them on the hook. Well that’s just perfect. People are noticing though. His loyal worshipers followers are seeing the same people over and over get his attention and love and it’s starting to break them down. Gone are the days when he spread it around a little. For shame, you bad stalkers worshipers loyal followers.

What I found most interesting was that one of the first posts/tweets yesterday was to say gee thanks for all the birthday wishes but hey look what I can do!! I can write a dissertation to the Lyceum Edinburgh. Was it a genuine, heartfelt, gracious thank you? In my opinion, not really, not when you have to add and sell that you did something that everyone needs to see. It felt empty to me. He has a strong following and naturally they all praise him for such a well written and heartfelt piece. I will say this, the piece was well written.

But let’s chat about that for a minute shall we? The piece had such flow and purpose, it took the reader to the moment and one could feel the theatre and the emotion and it made one feel like the writer truly misses a live audience. So what’s wrong with the piece? It just, in my opinion, doesn’t have the voice of SH. I don’t know who actually wrote the foreword in the mountain book nor do I know who wrote this piece for the Lyceum, but it was a different person from the one who wrote the rant and breakdown. We have to remember, this is the same normal guy who struggled with writing an acceptance speech for his honorary doctorate.

Shall we touch on his friends and their birthday wishes real quick? Most of them posted pictures of the birthday boy pre mid life crisis and most of them were really good photos too. Almost all of them had a sort of ping to them. He can’t help it. He can’t hide it. He absolutely won’t embrace it. He’s just a normal guy. Normal guys do not ping. (His words, not mine, remember the rant. Being a closet homosexual is not normal but that’s for another day. I’m only here to speech my opinion on my blog about what I see).

Leave it to Steven Cree to have the most provocative birthday wish. Seemed fitting that he went all “Marilyn Monroe” who, in case you were unaware, was also on the cover and centerfold of a certain magazine many, many years ago. Back then it was classy. Now, meh. Now it’s all anorexia and silicone. I caught some of the Wizard World Virtual Experience as well. They spent at least 10 minutes discussing his majesty the King of Men. How does that make them feel? I mean, here they are doing this for the fans (and a paycheck, I’m not stupid, we don’t do this shit for free) and all the moderator wants to chat about is SH. Really? Are these people so boring to you that you cannot ask thoughtful questions to get them talking and show their very own personalities? Really? But of course everyone had nothing but kind words to say about his majesty and I wouldn’t have expected anything less. I read body language though. You can speak. Words can come out. People don’t always mean what they say. Dr. House always said people lie. They do. And don’t tell me you never have. We all have for whatever reason. I’m not judging, I’m making an observation. It’s my observation and my opinion. You don’t have to agree.

I guess the point is for a normal guy celebrating a milestone bday, it sure felt empty and not as exciting as it could have been. I suppose at this point in time, being “stuck” in paradise with the beard escort bunny new flame is better than wallowing in self pity, depression and anxiety alone at home. Where is home again? I’m confused.

I’ll keep watching. I’ll be posting.

[theonyxpath]

Shhhhh.

Mum’s the word! A few weeks ago in this blog, I mentioned that we’re working on a bunch of secret projects that for one reason or the other we can’t announce as yet. But that we’re going to announce during the year as we can, particularly at conventions as we attend them.

(Werewolf: The Apocalypse 5th Edition is not one of them. Saying that now, because I know how rumors start.)

This is why we have what appears to be a lighter than normal First Draft section below in the Blurbs!.

But now it’s time to reveal one of these projects!

This Wednesday, the Phone PDF version of Scion Origin goes on sale on DTRPG! If you had a chance to check out the free Pugmire core Phone PDF, then this version of Scion Origin is based off of that process and set-up. Hyper-linked out the wazoo for ease of use, but still containing all the great info and art of the regular PDF and print versions.

Here’s some info about Phone PDFs from DTRPG:

Using a Phone PDF

Phone PDFs are designed so you can quickly navigate them by touch using links in the PDF, instead of relying upon bookmarks or other navigation. Look for the Quick Links menu at the front of the book to give you links to touch to reach the most often referenced parts of the book. Links in the footer of each page help you easily navigate through the PDF.

Navigating the Pugmire Phone PDF

Some of the link navigation in the Phone PDF file works better in certain readers.

If you’re on iOS, we recommend the Apple’s Books reading app (which comes on every Apple phone) as it supports the Back navigation links in the Phone PDF. If you’re on Android, then we recommend grabbing the free Xodo reader app as that reader has a built in Back function which will jump back one link. This is a handy feature when touch navigating through the Phone PDF (no PDF viewers we’ve tested on Android natively support the Back navigation links in the Phone PDF so Xodo‘s Back function is the next best thing).

When we put up the Pugmire Phone PDF, there were a few demands that we investigate ePub as a format for this rather than PDFs. Long time readers of this blog know that we have, in fact, been working with ePub for years, trying to find a way for it to allow us to present our projects with the same usability and beauty as we have ported from physical books to PDFs. So far, there just hasn’t been a way to produce something that will hold charts and visuals the way we need them.

Maybe someday, as we keep pecking away at it. But that day is not today. Today we had an opportunity to create a phone-based version of a core rulebook, and we did that. One does not preclude the other ever happening, and now we have a very user friendly hand-held electronic version that is still very much recognizable as Scion Origin.

V5 Chicago Folio art by Michele Giorgi

Of course, this week’s headline also refers to our ongoing Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition Kickstarter as it approaches the two week mark and 200% funding with almost 1000 backers. We’re thrilled and gratified at the reaction the book is receiving, and we’re REALLY looking forward to hitting more Stretch Goals that start creating extra projects to expand this new version of Mummy.

If you just aren’t sure it’s your cup of tanis leaves, please check out the last several weeks’ blogs, or last Friday’s Onyx Pathcast, or one of the many interviews developer Matthew Dawkins has given out, or one of the actual plays linked below in the Media section.

In fact, you can ask Matthew all of your Mummy 2e questions on our Onyx Path forums, right here on this site, as he prepares for a Twitch Q&A planned for 15:00 EST / 21:00 GMT on Tuesday 19th: http://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/main-forum/the-new-world-of-darkness/mummy-the-curse/1348728-mummy-the-curse-twitch-q-a-questions-thread

Deviant: The Renegades art by Michael Gaydos

One question you might ask Matthew is how he managed to make sure that the Timeless Chronicle (the subtitle of the game) was included in the book. I hear that it was something that permeated every decision, yet at the book’s earliest stage wasn’t actually directly written about. An oversight Matthew messaged someone not-me about:

“…failed to add the Timeless bit.”

And then he added, after making sure that the book actually did directly address and include that Chronicle:

“I won’t tell Rich if you won’t”.

What a rapscallion! (This info, by the way, was revealed during last Friday’s Onyx Pathcast deep dive into Mummy 2e because Matthew thinks I don’t listen every week).

But Judge Rich, you might say, “Traitorous minions aside, what if I can’t make it to that Q&A, plus I’m more interested in other Chronicles of Darkness games, or Exalted, or V5, or Scion. Whatever can I do?”

Well, I have good news! We’re running an Onyx Path AMA on Reddit on Wednesday November 27th starting at 12 noon Eastern US time and running until ya’ll run out of questions. It’ll be labelled more for Chronicles of Darkness questions, I think, but bring and ask whatever you’re into.

More news on that next week and on our various and many social media venues!

Memento Mori art by Drew Tucker

When we talk of social media, it’s often with a sort of worst expectations mind-set, but just a few years ago a post led to a viral campaign to celebrate a brand new holiday: Wolfenoot. This is an annual festival which commemorates the anniversary of The Great Wolf’s death. The holiday is observed on November 23. According to tradition, during Wolfenoot the Spirit of the Wolf brings small gifts to homes and hides them around the house for everyone. People who display kindness to dogs receive better gifts than everyone else.

The holiday was created by a 7-year-old boy in New Zealand. his mother shared the idea for the holiday via Facebook in 2018, and the post was quickly shared more than 2,000 times. The FB event page for the holiday got more than 13,000 Facebook users marking that they were interested in the event or planned to attend. An official page was created and soon numerous FB groups, pages, and events followed.

The central theme of the Nov 23rd holiday is kindness to dogs and wolves. Various celebrations along these elements have been proposed by participants, such as feasting on roasted meat, giving gifts, donating time and money to charitable organizations which benefit dogs and wolves, and decorating homes with wolf and dog themes. Participants are encouraged to celebrate by eating roast meat and cakes decorated as a full moon. Those who prefer not to consume meat are encouraged to omit the consumption of meat and celebrate in the spirit of “being kind to animals.”

To celebrate the holiday, DriveThruRPG will have a Pugmire sale from Nov 21th-28th. As part of the celebration, we’ve also given the Canis Minor community their own gift: Now Canis Minor creators can write and sell Pugmire and Mau fiction! Check out the Canis Minor program for details: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/cc/17/canis-minor

Pugsteady and Onyx Path be donating 50% of our earning from the Pugmire sale to the Guide Dog Foundation.

And that then, is our blog this week. Hope everybody can find at least one part of it of interest; something that speaks to you about our:

Many Worlds, One Path!

BLURBS!

Kickstarter!

The Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition Kickstarter funded within a day, and is now almost at 200% funding with over two weeks to go. Backers have already unlocked the Mummy 2e Screen as a Stretch Goal, additional Utterances, and are now headed towards starting a whole new project, the Mummy 2e Companion!

Please check out this blog from the last two weeks for a description of all the amazing features of this new edition!

Be there to witness the majesty and terror of this new version of Mummy: The Curse!

Onyx Path Media!

This Friday’s Onyx Pathcast features a discussion by the Terrific Trio of some of the weirder elements and plot points of the Vampire: The Masquerade metaplot!

The Onyx Path Twitch schedule continues apace with a staggering number of games, including Vampire: The Masquerade, Pugmire, Hunter: The Vigil, Aberrant, Scarred Lands, Changeling: The Lost, Mage: The Awakening, and even an exploration into Expedition: Scarred Lands!

Stay tuned to the Twitch channel, as this coming weekend we have a Deviant: The Renegades one-shot at 16:00 EST on Saturday, and on a date to be confirmed, an interview with developer extraordinaire Meghan Fitzgerald.

We also have a Q&A regarding Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition planned for 15:00 EST / 21:00 GMT on Tuesday 19th, so do check it out and ask us your questions live, or post them in the following thread: http://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/main-forum/the-new-world-of-darkness/mummy-the-curse/1348728-mummy-the-curse-twitch-q-a-questions-thread

In other words, do check us out on twitch.tv/theonyxpath and give us a follow and a subscribe! We ambush the channel with news episodes every week, so keep your eyes open!

It really helps us to have subscribers on our Twitch channel, and you can do so for free and catch premieres as they go up if you have an Amazon Prime account. Just type Twitch Amazon Prime into Google and you’ll be shown how to subscribe for free.

The rampage of Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition media continues:

The Story Told Podcast interviewed Matthew Dawkins regarding Mummy: The Curse right here: https://thestorytold.libsyn.com/mummy-2nd-edition-with-matthew-dawkins

Red Moon Roleplaying continue their World War II era Mummy: The Curse chronicle right here, run by Matthew Dawkins for players including Onyx Path writers Bianca Savazzi and John Burke: https://youtu.be/MxNxPx7TPeU

And Red Moon Roleplaying have a Mummy: The Curse character creation session here, in case you missed it, where a mummy, an immortal, and a mortal are created: https://youtu.be/GJIEAEAx2MY

But there’s more to our media than just Mummy:

The fine folks at the Story Told RPG Podcast have recorded and uploaded a review / overview of TheTrinity Continuum:Æon: http://thestorytold.libsyn.com/episode-40-trinity-continuum-on-overview

Satyros Phil Brucato and Jacqueline Bryk were interviewed for the Symposium podcast about Book of the Fallen and Technocracy Reloaded for Mage: The Ascension: https://symposium.podbean.com/e/the-symposium-podcast-episode-6-m20-book-of-the-fallen/

And Red Moon Roleplaying, who put out so much content, continue with their actual play of The Sacrifice from V5 Chicago by Night, including Matthew Dawkins as a player and Klara Horskjær Herbøl as the Storyteller: https://youtu.be/XHl9-2dqHpw

Finally, if you’ve not subscribed to our Onyx Path YouTube channel at youtube.com/user/theonyxpath, you really should, because if you miss any of our content from Twitch it ends up over there! Please subscribe and leave comments!

Drop Matthew a message via the contact button on matthewdawkins.com if you have actual plays, reviews, or game overviews you want us to profile on the blog!

Please check any of these out and let us know if you find or produce any actual plays of our games!

Electronic Gaming!

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is awesome! (Seriously, you need to roll 100 dice for Exalted? This app has you covered.)

On Amazon and Barnes & Noble!

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue from which you bought it. Reviews really, really help us get folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these latest fiction books:

Our Sales Partners!

We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire and Monarchies of Mau out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there! https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire

We’ve added Prince’s Gambit to our Studio2 catalog: https://studio2publishing.com/products/prince-s-gambit-card-game

Now, we’ve added Changeling: The Lost 2nd Edition products to Studio2‘s store! See them here: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/all-products/changeling-the-lost

Scarred Lands (Pathfinder) books are also on sale at Studio2, and they have the 5e version, supplements, and dice as well!: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/scarred-lands

Scion 2e books and other products are available now at Studio2: https://studio2publishing.com/blogs/new-releases/scion-second-edition-book-one-origin-now-available-at-your-local-retailer-or-online

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

And you can order Pugmire, Monarchies of Mau, Cavaliers of Mars, and Changeling: The Lost 2e at the same link! And NOW Scion Origin and Scion Hero are available to order!

As always, you can find most of Onyx Path’s titles at DriveThruRPG.com!

To celebrate the latest Internet holiday, Wolfenoot, DriveThruRPG will have a Pugmire sale from Nov 21th-28th. As part of the celebration, we’ve also given the Canis Minor community their own gift: Now Canis Minor creators can write and sell Pugmire and Mau fiction! Check out the Canis Minor program for details: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/cc/17/canis-minor

On Sale This Week!

This Wednesday, the IPhone PDF version of the Scion Origin core rulebook premieres on DTRPG!

In addition, we are also offering this Wednesday a variety of new Pugmire merchandise on our RedBubble store including character and symbol stickers!

Conventions!

PAX Unplugged: December 6th – 8th, in Philadelphia, PA. We’re going to have lots and lots of gaming for folks to sign up for, a lot of them featuring our game creators! 2020: Midwinter: January 9th – 12th, in Milwaukee, WI.

And now, the new project status updates!

DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM EDDY WEBB (projects in bold have changed status since last week):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)

Exalted Essay Collection (Exalted)

N!ternational Wrestling Entertainment (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Creating in the Realms of Pugmire (Realms of Pugmire)

Contagion Chronicle Ready-Made Characters (Chronicles of Darkness)

Trinity Continuum: Adventure! core (Trinity Continuum: Adventure!)

Duke Rollo fiction (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Redlines

Kith and Kin (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

Crucible of Legends (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #2 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Exigents (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Many-Faced Strangers – Lunars Companion (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Second Draft

Across the Eight Directions (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Contagion Chronicle: Global Outbreaks (Chronicles of Darkness)

Player’s Guide to the Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

Tales of Aquatic Terror (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Contagion Chronicle Jumpstart (Chronicles of Darkness)

Development

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

TC: Aberrant Reference Screen (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Titanomachy (Scion 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum Core)

Monsters of the Deep (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

One Foot in the Grave Jumpstart (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e)

Lunars Novella (Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Scion: Demigod (Scion 2nd Edition)

Manuscript Approval

Scion: Dragon (Scion 2nd Edition)

Masks of the Mythos (Scion 2nd Edition)

Post-Approval Development

Scion LARP Rules (Scion)

Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition core rulebook (Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition)

Editing

Lunars: Fangs at the Gate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Hunter: The Vigil 2e core (Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition)

Let the Streets Run Red (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Geist 2e Fiction Anthology (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #1 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Scion Companion: Mysteries of the World (Scion 2nd Edition)

Cults of the Blood Gods (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Legendlore core book (Legendlore)

WoD Ghost Hunters (World of Darkness)

Mythical Denizens (Creatures of the World Bestiary) (Scion 2nd Edition)

Pirates of Pugmire KS-Added Adventure (Realms of Pugmire)

M20 The Technocracy Reloaded (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad (Scarred Lands)

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant core (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Terra Firma (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Wraith20 Fiction Anthology (Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition)

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

Post-Editing Development

Chicago Folio/Dossier (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

TC: Aeon Ready-Made Characters (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed (Mage: the Awakening Second Edition)

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

Oak, Ash, and Thorn: Changeling: The Lost 2nd Companion (Changeling: The Lost 2nd)

W20 Shattered Dreams Gift Cards (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)

TC: Aeon Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Tales of Good Dogs – Pugmire Fiction Anthology (Pugmire)

Vigil Watch (Scarred Lands)

Indexing

ART DIRECTION FROM MIKE CHANEY!

In Art Direction

Contagion Chronicle – Sent out contracts.

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant

Hunter: The Vigil 2e

Ex3 Lunars – Just need two artists’ pieces in.

TCfBtS!: Heroic Land Dwellers

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed

Ex3 Monthly Stuff

Cults of the Blood God (KS)

Chicago Folio – Got most of the finals in. Need to run through my list and match everything up to make sure I’m not missing anything.

Mummy 2 (KS) – Going.

City of the Towered Tombs

Let the Streets Run Red – Going over artnotes and dividing stuff up.

CtL Oak Ash and Thorn – Awaiting artnotes.

Scion Mythical Denizens – Contracted.

Deviant

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad – Getting it going.

Vigil Watch – Awaiting artnotes.

In Layout

They Came from Beneath the Sea! – Working on it.

Trinity Continuum Aeon: Distant Worlds

VtR Spilled Blood – Josh is working on it.

Pirates of Pugmire

Proofing

Memento Mori – On second proof.

Dark Eras 2 – Aileen finalizing second proof.

Trinity Continuum Aeon Jumpstart

At Press

Trinity: In Media Res – PoD proofs coming.

V5: Chicago – Printing. Prepping PoD files.

Aeon Aexpansion – PoD proofs coming.

Geist 2e (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition) – At press, waiting for proofs.

Geist 2e Screen – Getting print files ready.

DR:E – At press, waiting for proofs.

DRE Screen – Getting print files prepped.

DR:E Threat Guide – Helnau’s Guide to Wasteland Beasties – PoD proof ordered.

M20 Book of the Fallen – Backer PDF errata being gathered.

Trinity RMCs

Scion Origins Iphone Edition – Should be good to go this week!

Today’s Reason to Celebrate!

Happy Birthday, in a way, to Alan Moore – one of the most influential comic book writers ever. Swamp Thing, Watchmen, V For Vigilante, From Hell, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen…his list of highlights just goes on and on, along with plenty of other works, that turn our ideas of what comic book writing styles and themes are inside out. I say “in a way”, though, because his huge novel Jerusalem postulates that all time is an illusion and we are born, live, and die all at the same time – so the concept of a separate day of birth seems a bit artificial and limited to our perception of reality. Can’t have that!

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

why Christians need to stop forcing forgiveness

I got an ask from someone who heard someone at their church say that hating someone is as bad as murder and that Christians need to forgive everyone. It’s about time I talked about forgiveness at length, because it’s a concept that’s misused by too many people.

To start out, have a quick rant on forgiveness as preached in a lot of churches these days:

The pressure to forgive everyone hangs over a lot of Christians’ heads. While yes, it can be a beautiful thing to offer someone forgiveness, the way Christian communities threaten and pressure persons who have undergone abuse and other harm to “just forgive” the wrongdoers is horrible and completely against what Jesus instructed, as this long ass post will prove.

God is always, always on the side of those who have been abused, those who have been wronged – God saw and cared for Hagar, an abused slave; God saw and liberated the Hebrews, also abused slaves; God instructed Their people again and again to take special care of orphans, widows, foreigners, poor people, and other vulnerable persons of society (and became wrathful whenever Their people failed to do so); Jesus protected a woman from her would-be stoners, and promised woe to those who bring harm to “little ones;” and on and on and on.

With the knowledge that God has compassion for the abused and vulnerable and demands that they be protected, Christian communities need to speak about forgiveness with more compassion and sensitivity so that they will stop causing further harm to already hurting people.

Okay, time to discuss the “hate = murder” idea, which comes from 1 John 3:15:

“Anyone who hates their brother is a murderer: and you know that any murderer does not have eternal life abiding in them.”

That seems like….quite the hyperbole, doesn’t it? When I experience a feeling of hate towards someone, it’s not like I literally leave them dead. So…is it figurative?

Let’s look to the surrounding verses of this 1 John 3 passage for context:

11For this is the message you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. 12We must not be like Cain who was from the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous. 13Do not be astonished, brothers and sisters, that the world hates you. 14We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another. Whoever does not love abides in death. 15All who hate a brother or sister are murderers, and you know that murderers do not have eternal life abiding in them. 16We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. 17How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a sibling in need and yet refuses help? 18 Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. 19 And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him 20whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. 21Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God; 22 and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him.

So this passage tells us a good bit about what it means to love, vs. what it means to hate. Both love and hate are very strongly tied to action in this passage – neither hate nor love is just a feeling in your heart (because, vv. 19-20 tell us, sometimes what is happening in our hearts will “condemn” us but the way we love “in truth and action” will “reassure” us) but an active way of living.

Actions associated with hating in this passage: Cain’s murder of Abel – for Cain, hate literally made him a murderer; it wasn’t just a feeling he held in his heart but a violence that he acted out. The writer also notes that the little faith community to whom he is writing is hated by “the world” (v. 13); we can assume that this hatred isn’t just a feeling that “the world” holds in its heart against these early believers, but an active persecution – just as Cain’s hate murdered Abel, “the world’s” hate is likely manifesting in violence.

Actions associated with loving: The passage says that “we know love by” the following: first, in the act of laying down one’s life for others (v. 16); second, in the action of using our worldly resources to help our sibling in need – you can’t claim to have love in your heart and not translate that into the active offering of resources to those who need them (v. 17).

So for the writer of 1 John, could you potentially have some hateful feelings in your heart yet not be counted among the “murderers” who “do not have eternal life” (v. 15)? I think so, so long as the hate in your heart does not manifest itself in hateful actions – I might harbor resentment and anger and even hate against someone and still treat them with love. My heart might ���condemn” me (v 20), because it’s so hard not to feel resentment or anger or hate if someone has truly wronged you; but my “word and speech” can “reassure” me that I am still “from the truth” (aka God) (v 19), if that word and speech is loving.  

So yeah, for the writer of 1 John who wrote that hating a sibling is the same as being a murderer, the kind of hate he’s talking about will necessarily manifest itself in violence. A person who has suffered abuse or pain at the hands of someone else and can’t help but feel hatred for that person is not “a murderer” in 1 John’s writer’s eyes, unless that hatred manifests itself in active violence. (We’ll get back to whether I think violence against abusers can be justified – spoilers: I do not think that one is a “murderer,” literally or figuratively, for fighting back against an abuser or oppressor.)

Now, where did the writer of 1 John even get this idea that he could equate hatred to murder? (Why didn’t ancient writers have to cite their sources??) Well, maybe 1 John had heard tell of one of Jesus’s little speeches, as recorded in Matthew 5:

21 “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’  22But I say to you that if you are angry with a sibling, you will be liable to judgment; and if you say “raka” [“empty-headed one!”] to a sibling, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the Gehenna of fire.”

So before the writer of 1 John equated hating to murdering, it seems that Jesus made a parallel between murdering and being angry at someone + calling them empty-headed or foolish (sidenote about being against saying “raka” or “moron” to someone: maybe Jesus was just super against ableist language?).

So wow, being angry at someone is really bad, huh. …But hang on – Jesus got angry sometimes!! He got wrathfully angry at the people selling crap in the temple; he snapped at Peter and said “get behind me, Satan!”; he looks around in anger at the people who try to stop him from healing a man…..the guy had a temper. So why does he say that those who get angry are “liable to judgment” just as a murderer is?

Well, if we keep reading in Matthew 5, we’ll see that the kind of anger that Jesus is comparing to murder is the same kind of anger the author of 1 John discusses: it’s anger that brings about violence. It’s anger that causes harm.

23 So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your sibling has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your sibling, and then come and offer your gift.

The person whose anger Jesus likens to murder is the person who caused some sort of harm – “your sibling has something against you,” rather than you having something against your sibling. You did something to hurt your sibling, not the other way around – you are the culprit, and it’s your anger that is, like murder, “liable to judgment.” It’s up to the wrongdoer to seek out reconciliation, to make things right; Jesus says nothing about it being on the wronged sibling to seek out reconciliation with you.

Jesus’s next example is set up the same way, with you, the one whose anger is “liable to judgment,” being the one accused of some sort of wrongdoing:

25 Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. 26Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.

Jesus doesn’t compare the type of anger that the one’s who’ve been wronged – the “accuser” in v 25 and the “sibling” in v 23 – are likely feeling to murder. Their anger, the anger of one who is wronged or who has witnessed some sort of wrongdoing, is justified (much like Jesus’s own instances of anger as I cited a little while back).

Note also that Jesus does not tell the hypothetical accuser to “just drop your accusations and forgive the person you’re accusing.” He doesn’t say that bringing a wrongdoer to court instead of immediately dropping charges and forgiving them is a bad thing to do. Instead, the onus is on the wrongdoer to reach out to the one wronged, to “come to terms” with them before court, if possible. If they make it to court before the wrongdoer has reached out, the accuser “may hand you over to the judge” – and Jesus does not indicate that the accuser is making the wrong choice by handing over the unrepentant wrongdoer to the judge!!

That’s the really important part of this hypothetical court scenario, so I’m gonna go ahead and repeat what Jesus says for the people in the back: “Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.”

Dang, Jesus. That’s not very “forgiving” of the accuser!

That brings me to the conclusion of this post, the

TL;DR

Churches often tell those who have been wronged to drop charges, to “just forgive” their wrongdoer.

Jesus tells the wrongdoer that it’s up to them to make things right, and if they fail, “your accuser may hand you over to the judge.” The blame goes on the wrongdoer, not the one wronged. The pressure to reach out for reconciliation is on the wrongdoer, not the one wronged!

And look at that “may” – “your accuser may hand you over.” Maybe the one wronged will choose to forgive the wrongdoer, that’s cool! Or maybe they’ll choose to get the wrongdoer locked up – that’s 100% acceptable too. According to Jesus’s words in this passage, it’s up to the one wronged – no judgment either way. No pressure to pick forgiveness.

So churches that pressure people who’ve been wronged to forgive their wrongdoers are going about the reconciliation process backwards and causing further harm to persons who have already been hurt. In the above conversation on Matthew 5, we see that Jesus puts the onus on the wrongdoer to make things right, and does not pressure the one who is wronged to choose forgiveness over justice. Whew!!

Okay. Let’s wrap this up already. I’m just gonna throw some miscellaneous extra stuff about the concepts anger and forgiveness are under the readmore and then call it quits. I welcome comments! 

Anger itself is not a sin; it just puts you in danger of (“liable to”) sinning – see this post and this post for more on that. If you experience anger, you should pause and consider whether it’s a righteous anger or a toxic anger, and move forward from there.

Ephesians 4:26 says, “Be angry and do not sin.” There’s some food for thought!

And here’s a really cool quote from a book called Rage Becomes Her

Leviticus 19:17 offers some wise instructions: “You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, lest you incur sin yourself.” While I talked earlier about how the onus is on the wrongdoer to reach out to the one wronged for reconciliation, and there is no pressure on the one wronged to forgive, it is important for the person wronged to tell the wrongdoer what happened. Sometimes a person causes harm without realizing they did so – the one wronged shouldn’t hold a grudge internally, but communicate their pain to the wrongdoer. It’s then up to the wrongdoer to act on that information.

What is forgiveness, anyway? It’s not a simple act of one person saying “I forgive you” and the other saying “cool thanks” -- there’s got to be genuine remorse and regret on the side that did the wrong. There’s got to be genuine reconciliation, wherein a promise is made that the wrong will not happen again. And the one who was wronged is not obligated to keep the wrongdoer in their life, especially if doing so would put them in risk of being hurt again.

I mentioned above that the writer of 1 John would probably consider violence enacted out of hate by the oppressed person to be “murder,” I do not. “A riot is the language of the unheard;” when someone being oppressed is forced to resort to violence, that’s not on them.

I refuse to judge the reaction of someone experiencing abuse or oppression, whatever it is. 

I believe it is much more important to focus on the wrongdoer and preventing them from causing further violence. Why are we more anxious about someone “fighting fire with fire” than we are about helping them put out that fire that’s killing them?

See this article: “My ‘nonviolent’ stance was met with heavily armed men”

A little more on anger or hate being akin to murder: There is a difference between the hate or anger that simmers in the heart of a person who has been abused, oppressed, or otherwise wronged, and the hate that poisons the one who does the abusing, the harming, the acts of bigotry and violence. One can feel hatred against someone who wronged them and still act with love; when a bigot or abuser feels hatred, the fruit that hate bears is violence.

James Cone has a lot of important stuff to say about violence, such as this quote

[carmenlire]

Higher than the Big Trees Ch. 47

read chapter one

read on ao3

Grabbing two flutes of champagne from a passing waiter, Alec holds one out for Magnus while taking a deep drink from his own glass. There are over a hundred people in the restaurant that had been booked out for his album release party.

It’s early June and the sun is shining brightly outside, no matter that evening’s growing later. It’s warm and Alec pulls a little at the collar of his shirt, desperately trying to calm the fuck down. Tonight’s nothing new. He should be happy, ecstatic, over the moon at the finish line that’s bearing down on him.

His album comes out tomorrow. A year of his life, captured in nineteen songs, released onto the public in just a few short hours. Just the thought has him taking a desperate swig of his drink, has him irrationally thankful for the open bar tonight.

He looks over to see Magnus taking an absent sip from his own flute as he studies the scene around him. It’s nothing extravagant. For his seventh album, the label had reserved one of the most popular restaurants in Brooklyn for his launch party. It’s casual with a dozen waiters making the rounds in the small space, hefting trays of appetizers, with the bar running along the back wall.

His family are milling about and he sees a few friends interspersed with other people from the industry. Lydia’s mingling somewhere with her fiance and he can just make out Jia Penhallow, the president and CEO of Institute Records, talking to Helen and Aline in the corner.

He and Magnus are to one side, just taking everything in, and Alec startles when Magnus slides an arm around his waist, squeezing just a little.

“What’s going on in that head of yours, darling?”

Looking up, Alec smiles as he makes out a few lines from I Like Me Better audible over the din of the crowd. His album’s been on repeat the entirety of the party and he tries not to think about it too much.

He’s been unsuccessful since they stepped foot in the restaurant an hour ago.

Still, he smiles at his boyfriend and kisses the side of his head, nose wrinkling a little as Magnus’s hair crunches under the sheer amount of product in it.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about, babe,” Alec tries to deflect and Magnus levels him with an unimpressed look.

“You’ve been tense since we left home. It’s like trying to cuddle up to a stick right now.”

Shrugging, trying to get rid of some of that tension, Alec scowls. “Is it hot in here or--”

“It’s just you, Alexander.” His voice softens a little as he adds, “Talk to me, Alec.”

Alec sighs, turning to look around at everyone. This is far from his first time at this sort of thing-- with a sardonic bite of amusement, he knows that it’s the seventh-- but it’s like a vise is gripping his throat. Eyes scanning the room, Alec takes his boyfriend’s hand and starts toward an empty doorway.

They’re stopped a few times by someone wrapping a hand around his elbow, by another calling out his name. Alec, of course, flashes his trademark grin and knows that no one sees the way it strains at the corners except Magnus.

There’s small talk and rounds of congratulations and when one of the record label execs speculates that projections have placed Feel Something on track to sell over a million copies in its first week, Alec’s grin grows a little weaker though he laughs along with everyone else and gives a sheepish shrug, merely offering, “Let’s hope so, Imogen,” in a light voice that doesn’t betray the sheer intensity of nerves that are digging their little hooks into his back.

Finally, they make it into the darkened corridor. A waitress passes them, hardly sparing them a glance, and Alec all but collapses against the wall, sighing out a ragged breath.

A moment later, his chin is being tilted up by a hand he’d know anywhere and he loses himself in Magnus’s eyes. He sees the warm concern in them and it settles something in him, those eyes that have come to mean home and safety and a world of comfort.

He watches as Magnus quirks a brow and then his eyes are falling shut as he focuses on his breathing-- deep, slow breaths to help relax his shoulders. The party is only a few feet away but it’s like he and Magnus are in their own little world right now.

Pulling him closer with hands at his hips, Alec’s eyes are still closed as he leans down, nosing along the column of Magnus’s throat where his scent is the warmest. Magnus, for his part, lets him have a few moments. He raises his hands until dexterous fingers can slide through his hair. A thumb sweeps along the nape of his neck and that helps ground Alec, too.

Like this, it’s like no one else exists and Alec can shut everyone else out. Like this, it’s the easiest thing in the world to pull back after he regains his equilibrium and meet his boyfriend’s gaze.

He clears his throat. “I’m a little nervous tonight.”

Humming thoughtfully, Magnus smiles a little and it reaches his eyes, sets them shining in the low light of the hallway. “Yes,” he humours Alec. “I’d picked up on that.”

“It’s just--” Alec breaks off with a frustrated sigh and his eyes fall to the front of Magnus’s shirt, a navy and gold button down with military accents. He trails a hand over the gold chain pattern and frowns. “This album means a lot to me. And it’s-- it’s different to anything I’ve released before. This isn’t playboy Alec Lightwood singing about one night stands on tour. This is Alec, singing about being in love for the first time. There’s a world of difference between this era and my last.”

Taking a shuddering breath, Alec raises his eyes to meet Magnus’s. “What if they don’t like it?”

While the single Feel Something had been on Billboard’s charts for weeks, Alec still can’t quite cut the doubt that’s been creeping up on him the past month or so. Once he’d gotten the album back, mastered and packaged-- a finished product-- he’d started rethinking everything.

The past year has been tumultuous. Meeting Magnus had been the catalyst for so much and Alec had eventually thrown himself into production for his album, working like a dervish as he recorded and met with producers and artists and had regular check-ins with the label.

Perhaps surprisingly, they supported him one hundred percent. While his new style was a bit softer, there was an undercurrent of energy that he realizes now had been missing for awhile.

He felt renewed, energized. His music reflected that.

But it doesn’t mean that he’s not worried that fans will abandon this new style, the aching sentiment in his new material. Fuck but it’s nerve-wracking, airing his deepest feelings and thoughts and wishes for the world to hear and judge.

He’s startled out of his thoughts as Magnus leans in. He kisses him and it’s soft, gentle, and soothes Alec more than he thinks a simple kiss probably should.

When Magnus pulls back, his face is serious. “And what if they love it?”

Alec starts to scoff but Magnus holds up a finger to stop him. He’s struck by the gesture, the easy grace that imbues every movement Magnus makes and he smiles a little, entranced.

“Let me finish, darling. What if your fans-- who love you and support you-- see how happy this new music makes you and love it just as much as you do? What if this seems like a natural progression of your style and they love it just as much-- more-- than your older stuff? Have you stopped to think about that?”

Opening his mouth to reply, Alec abruptly closes it. He sees Magnus’s mouth twitch in bemusement and frowns.

“And if I’m right? If they think it’s too-- what? Sappy? Boring? Different? And forget about the fans for a minute. What about the critics? The press? What if they say I’ve gone soft, that I took a chance and it backfired stupendously? I could be staring down at the implosion of my career, Magnus. This could be the end.”

Magnus shrugs, leaning close, pressing Alec against the wall. “Forgetting for a moment that you have the tendency to be just the tiniest bit dramatic, so what? For sake of argument, what if all of that comes true? What if your fans hate it and the magazines declare this album to be a goddamn catastrophe of heretofore unseen proportions? Will that make you hate the album? Will it turn your own opinion on the record?”

Alec takes a deep breath as he digests Magnus’s words. He knows the answer and it’s a little terrifying that he doesn’t even have to think about it. “No,” he replies hoarsely, voice sure. “I made this record after suffering the worst writer’s block of my career. I wrote that album for you, because of you. I’ll never regret writing those songs or letting the world know just how much you mean to me. I can’t, not when it’s become a love letter to you.”

Magnus grins softly at the words, ducking his head to hide his reaction. Alec doesn’t want that, though and he reaches out, lifting Magnus’s chin with a finger.

“I love you, you know that?” His voice is a whisper between them and his heart feels so full that it’s a wonder it doesn’t burst out of his chest, it aches so much.

“I do,” Magnus says, laughing a little as he nips a quick kiss to Alec’s hand. “And I hope you know that love is returned in spades, Alexander.”

Alec answers on a breath. “I do,” he echoes before sighing. “I love when you call me that,” he confides, voice low as he lets his head fall against the wall, tilting it to the side as Magnus starts kissing along his throat.

“What,” Magnus laughs, nibbling down the column of his throat. “Alexander?”

“Yeah,” Alec gasps. “No one else calls me that except you. It drives me crazy.”

“Well in that case--”

Whatever Magnus was going to say is cut off as Alec turns and kisses the words right from his lips. Whatever worries and anxieties have been plaguing him disappear when they’re like this, close enough to touch, to block everything else out.

He hears the breaking of a glass that comes from the kitchen down the hall and the raucous crowd in the restaurant. This is an in-between space, though, a moment stolen from everything else.

Losing himself in Magnus, it’s not a heat that burns. It simmers, low in his gut, and distantly, Alec knows he’d be content right here for an eternity, kissing Magnus, feeling the shift of muscle under his hands, the dig of fingers into his own hips.

Breath leaves him in a thready moan as Magnus rests a hand along his neck, on his jaw to change the angle, to deepen the kiss. His mind grows hazy and God, he loves this, wants nothing more than to sink into this feeling forever--

“Yo, cut it out, bro! They need you up front.”

Breaking the kiss, Alec’s eyes fly open. Magnus’s labored breathing is harsh in his ear and he knows he’s not faring any better.

All of a sudden, it’s like coming up from water, from almost drowning. Noise fills his ears and seems louder, more grating than it was before. He meets Jace’s eyes and scowls.

“Fuck off, Jace.”

Chortling, Jace just raises his brows along with his hands in a surrendering gesture. “Don’t shoot the messenger. It’s time for you to give a speech, Mr. Bigshot.”

Alec doesn’t let up on his glare and Jace just snorts and points a finger in his direction. “That’s what you get for all those times you’ve walked in on me and Clary. Trust me, I’d bleach my eyes if I could bro.”

Turning to leave, Jace looks over his shoulder and even from here, Alec can see the glee in his eyes as he points to his own neck. “Might want to cover that mark up, though.”

Laughing to himself, he leaves without another backwards glance and Alec groans as he falls against the wall. Magnus is a steady present in front of him and when he looks up, he sees his boyfriend wince.

“I may have gotten a little carried away,” Magnus admits as he eyes Alec’s neck. “Oops.”

Rolling his eyes, Alec straightens as he runs his hands down Magnus’s arms until he can lace their fingers together. “Really, babe?”

“You’re just too damned irresistible, Alexander.”

Growling a little, Alec leans close for a searing kiss before pulling back a bare second later. “You think you’re so funny, don’t you?”

Shrugging, Magnus grins coyly. “I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about, darling.”

Alec huffs out a laugh, shaking his head. “Whatever you say.”

Squeezing his hands a little, Alec takes a deep breath before releasing his grip. They take a few seconds to straighten up their appearance as best they can and Alec gives a little mental shrug and an internal fuck it to whatever the hell Magnus had done to his neck.

The next couple of hours go by quickly. Alec doesn’t know how, but he feels remarkably steady as he gives a little speech, thanking everyone for coming tonight to support him and his music. He gives special thanks to the label, to the producers and other crew and technicians that helped make this album.

He performs a couple of songs on a little stage that’s been set-up. Slinging his guitar over his shoulder, Alec sings a handful of songs from Feel Something and it eases something else in him.

The crowd sings along to the choruses after the first time or two and he doesn’t see anyone walk out so maybe he’ll avert complete disaster after all.

Taking Magnus’s hand, they make the rounds. He introduces his boyfriend to Jia and they spend a few minutes talking to Lydia and Catarina and Ragnor and Simon. Raphael is a silent sentry beside him but Alec sees the way he leans into Simon’s touch when he throws an arm over his shoulder and grins a little into his drink.

The night is just starting to wrap up, the waitstaff starting to dwindle, people starting to leave, when Alec announces that he’s going to the bar to get a refill. He and Magnus have been talking to Jace, Izzy, and their dates for the last little bit as everyone retreated to their friends and he wants one last drink before it’s time to leave.

“I’ll go with you,” Isabelle says easily and pulls away from Maia with a quick kiss and a warm smile.

Making their way toward the bar, Alec leans against it as he waits to be served. Isabelle mirrors his stance, resting her elbows on the dark wood, shoulders touching.

“So,” she starts and Alec looks over at his sister to see her looking uncharacteristically nervous.

“So,” he echoes with a raised brow, nudging her shoulder with his own.

He’s treated to exasperated laughter and then Izzy’s shaking her head, clearly impatient and self-deprecating.

He watches as she takes a deep breath before turning to look at him, trepidation clear in her eyes along with certainty.

“I have something to tell you.”

Alec doesn’t say anything, merely turns until he’s facing her, making sure she knows that he’s given her his undivided attention.

“I’ve decided to stay in New York.”

Frowning a little, Alec’s confused for a few seconds before Isabelle clarifies, “For good.”

“For good,” he repeats before his eyes widen. “You’re quitting modeling?”

Isabelle shrugs and picks at a nonexistent chip in the bar’s wood. “I’m actually going back to school in the fall?”

She looks up and doesn’t give Alec a chance to respond as she continues in a rush, “I’m not getting any younger and I’ve managed to save quite a bit of money over the years. Modelling always was just something I sort of fell into and while I’ve enjoyed it a lot, I think it’s time for a change now. You know that I’ve always wanted to go into medicine and I was thinking that--”

“Now’s the perfect time,” Alec says with a grin rapidly spreading across his face.

He pulls her into a hug. “That’s great, Iz! I’m so happy for you.”

Pulling back, Isabelle looks up at him. “Yeah?”

“Of course,” he replies. “You always were a science nerd,” he teases and he gets to watch as she snorts and pokes him with a sharp nail.

“And you were a literature nerd, you big dork.”

The bartender comes over at that moment and they order their drinks-- Alec getting Magnus a refill too-- and as they wait for them to be made, the silence is comfortable.

“What made you decide to stop now?”

Isabelle shrugs but he catches the look she throws behind her and the look her girlfriend returns in spades. When Izzy looks over at him a few seconds later, there’s a warmth to her happiness that he’s getting used to seeing lately.

“I’m happy here. I’m tired of spending so much time away from home.” Away from Maia. She doesn’t say it but it’s clear in the way she smiles, the way her hand trails over the bracelet that was a birthday present from the woman in question.

“You’ve applied somewhere?”

“I’ve been accepted to NYU,” Isabelle confirms. “I know I’m older than most freshman but my plan always was college eventually. I’m excited for this next chapter, hermano. Really excited.”

Nodding his thanks to the bartender who drops off their drinks, Alec raises his glass towards his sister with a mile-wide smile. “I’m excited for you, Iz, and really, really proud of you. Happiness looks good on you.”

Iz raises her own drink up to meet his in a toast and then she’s surprising him by setting her drink down and stepping close. She wraps her arms around him, holding tight, and rests her head against his chest in a move that’s achingly familiar from when they were teenagers, so much younger and unsure about their future.

Kissing the top of her head, Alec holds her just as tight and they spend a moment or two just like that, frozen in time.

Eventually, Isabelle steps back and laughs a little. They both ignore the way she raises gentle hands up to wipe under her eyes.

“Maia has an early shift tomorrow, so we need to be heading home. I’ll see you tomorrow night, right?”

“Right,” he confirms and then Isabelle is sending him one last smile before downing the rest of her drink and making her way over to Maia.

Everyone else leaves shortly after and then it’s just Alec and the waitstaff.

Magnus joins him, reaching over for his martini, downing it in a few efficient swallows. He looks over at Alec, running a hand through his hair before asking, “Ready to blow this popsicle stand?”

Alec laughs before wrapping an arm over Magnus’s shoulders and hauling him close for a quiet kiss against his temple.

“Yeah,” he breathes. “Let’s go home.”

Less than an hour later, Alec turns his key in the lock and they enter the loft. The city’s visible through the french doors and it makes something ache in his chest.

Magnus heads towards their bedroom to change but Alec doesn’t follow him. No, instead he wanders over to the piano. It’d been a bitch to move from his penthouse and he’d had a dozen heart attacks as he’d overseen the movers try to wrestle the thing through the door but any home of Alec’s couldn’t be complete without his Steinway.

One hand lifts the cover of the keys while the other undoes a few buttons on the shirt he’d worn tonight. Settling onto the piano bench, Alec plays a few keys aimlessly before finally picking out a tune.

It’s a slow song that hadn’t made it onto this record but Alec thinks it’s already a strong contender for his next. He barely has lyrics, humming scarce words under his breath and finally his shoulders relax as he loses himself in the music, the slow melody, the chords he already knows by heart.

And now I need you to feel the vibe I need you to see the point I need you to feel alive I need you to fill the void

Eyes closed, Alec still doesn’t startle as arms wrap around his shoulders. His hands don’t stop finding their meandering way around the keys as Magnus leans close.

Shivering as he feels his breath against his ear, Alec smiles a little as Magnus says, “Come to bed, darling.”

He’s shaking his head before Magnus is finished. “I can’t, babe.”

Making room for Magnus on the bench, Alec slides over and looks up at his boyfriend. The sight eases his heart. Magnus has taken his makeup off, changed into a pair of pajama pants that hang low on his hips with a matching robe thrown on. His hair is flat, eyes betraying the late hour.

Turning back to the piano, Alec looks down at rows and rows of black and white. His fingers rest against the keys but he doesn’t press any, content for a moment to soak in the silence between them before breaking the spell that seems to have fallen over the living room.

“It’s the night before my album drops. I always stay up-- sometimes until dawn-- to read first reactions.”

“Refreshing your Twitter feed every millisecond,” Magnus breaks in, smiling a little.

Looking over at him, Alec shrugs. “Each record is a piece of me thrown into the world. I can’t ever sleep without knowing what everyone thinks. For better or worse, I’m an artist. An entertainer. I need to see what public consensus is before I can rest.”

Magnus doesn’t say anything for a moment. His expression is thoughtful as he straightens, resting his hands on some keys next to Alec. “Teach me to play, then.”

“What?”

“If we’re not sleeping tonight, we might as well be productive.” With a quick glance at the clock, Magnus continues, “We have a couple of hours until midnight. So. I do believe a promise to teach me to play Yankee Doodle one day. What do you say?”

Alec just stares at his boyfriend a minute before he laughs and it’s a little breathless. All of it’s overlaid with relief, though, and he’s so goddamned grateful that he’s found someone who recognizes his little ticks but indulges him anyway.

The light in the living room is low, a single lamp lit near the couch. Moonlight fills the rest of the living room as Alec teaches Magnus a song or two. Magnus, for all his achievements, is decidedly not musical in the slightest though he gives it his best effort.

They’re laughing as Magnus finally manages to pick his way through Mary had a Little Lamb, slow but competent enough given the amount of practice he’s just had.

As he listens to Magnus snort a little, inelegant but charming all the same, Alec tries to imprint this moment into his mind. It’s one of dozens that he’s trying to remember. There have been so many firsts over the past year and he never saw any of them coming.

He wants to make sure he doesn't miss a moment.

Looking over at his boyfriend, his heart ache, chest shuddering under the onslaught of emotion. It’s the night before his career changes once more. There’s always another era, another mountain to climb that seems infinitely more challenging than the last. This time around, he has Magnus.

They have each other.

Seeing the slightest bruising under Magnus’s eyes, Alec’s lips quirk up a little before he’s standing and reaching for his boyfriend. Interlacing their hands, he guides them to the bedroom and urges Magnus to lay down.

Alec lays down next to Magnus, intending to stay put just long enough for his clearly exhausted boyfriend to fall asleep. There’s no way he’ll be able to sleep when his album is due to drop in less than an hour. He needs to be on the forefront of reaction, wants to engage with his fans who will no doubt be tweeting at 12:01am with their brutally honest, endearingly intense opinions.

Magnus is a long line of warmth along his side and when he hums a little, clearly almost asleep, and rests his head on Alec’s chest, Alec closes his eyes at the feeling.

Five minutes, he gives himself and relaxes deeper into their sheets.

When he wakes up in the morning, bright sunshine spilling across his face, it’s to an empty bed.

He hears Magnus padding around the kitchen and smells coffee strong enough to kill a man. Throwing the sheets off, he rubs a hand over his face while the other reaches for the phone he’d left charging on his nightstand. His movements are a little jerky, adrenaline rushing through him.

There’s a Google Alert pending on his notification bar and when Alec clicks on it, the breath leaves his body for one dizzying moment.

Feel Something, Alec Lightwood’s seventh studio album, became available at midnight EST. It’s reached number one in 89 countries. Last updated one hour ago.

Closing his eyes, Alec grips his phone in a tight fist and lets his head fall. He feels like a puppet whose strings have been cut, relief dizzying as pride surges in his chest.

Fuck. He’d done it.

Hearing a noise, Alec’s eyes fly open as he turns his head to see Magnus leaning against the door jamb looking adorable rumpled, sporting a mile-wide grin.

“Looks like you haven’t tumbled down from your pedestal since you fell asleep.”

“No,” Alec rasps and he can feel the tears welling as he smiles, as his laughter echoes in their bedroom. “Number one album, babe. I’ve got the number one album in the whole fucking world right now.”

Pushing away from the doorway, Magnus ambles over to his side of the bed. Straddling his hips, he settles against Alec.

Alec’s hands automatically go to his waist, securing him, while Magnus cups his face. Leaning down, he kisses Alec’s forehead before pulling back to meet his eyes.

“You did it, Alexander, and I’m so proud of you.”

Surging up, Alec kisses him and it’s a desperate thing, full of joy and bone-jarring relief. Full of so much love that he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

When he twists, pushing Magnus onto his back in their bed, Magnus laughter rings out. They pull each other closer, lose themselves in the heat of the moment.

Days later, Alec gets the call that his album has exceeded all expectations, selling a record-breaking 2.6 million records in its debut week.

The first person he tells is Magnus.

[darkzorua100]

So I’ve gone through the new opening a few times now and I’m ready to dissect it. Hopefully they will continue to update this one, unlike the last one, because it looks like some of this stuff might be happening in a few episodes based on what we know from the summaries while other bits look like they can be continuous elements/themes throughout this season.

Also just a quick note. I’m not going in complete order of what was shown since some shots later down the line overlap with previous ones that look like they could be happening in the same scene.

So two of the beginning and ending shots are of Yusaku’s empty duel disk. Since it looks like Ai (who isn’t even shown in his Ignis form at all in this opening) is going to be the main villain of the season, it really does bring home the point that Yusaku really is finally alone during this season. Because lets be real here, once we get to the season 3 finale, everyone is going to get killed off again while Playmaker is going to be the last one standing to beat the bad guy. Only difference this time around is that the big bad is Ai, Playmaker’s partner, meaning that Playmaker isn’t going to have anyone to stand next to him and to help him beat his old partner.

We have these two shots of our main cast of characters in the real world and in Link Vrains. The thing I like to note is that when we get the transition Spectre, Emma, Akira, Go, and Kengo disappear, leaving just Playmaker, Blue Maiden, Soulburner, Revolver, and Kusanagi. Our main fighters from last season aren’t much of a surprise since I figured they would continue to be the main focus but this makes me wonder now if Kusanagi will start to go into Link Vrains more if they included him in the shot of the Link Vrains characters and will start playing more of a role there instead of the real world side of things.

On a unrelated note, I love Takeru’s pose in the real life shot XD

Yusaku and Ai (I’m just going to continue to call this guy Ai until they show tells me it isn’t him) standing in the rain, both of them looking miserable. Yusaku missing his partner probably while Ai is probably missing his kin and probably Yusaku as well for having to leave him when he did.

However you can tell there’s a difference in their tone once they shift. Once Yusaku looks up, he still looks sad but when Ai turns and is now facing forward, he now looks determined, like he’s putting his doubts, his human friendships to the side in order to complete his goal of getting the other Ignis back. The moment he has his resolve to do whatever he has to to bring them back even if it means he has to go against Yusaku. 

These two shots look to be taking place in the same area so I’m grouping them together. It looks like Blue Maiden is trying to talk someone out of something (maybe her brother or another character that’s not in the shot) which looks like it is going to lead into a Akira and Blue Maiden tag duel. First off FINALLY we get a tag duel in Vrains and FINALLY we get to see Akira duel again since freaking the beginning of season 1. I’m interested to see how this is going to play out and I’m curious to see if Aoi is still going to be playing Marincess or will she go back to using Trickstars now that Aqua is gone?

We see that Go has gone back to playing Goukis so Aoi could go back to her original archetype as well. Speaking of Go, I’m curious to know what kind of role he’s going to be playing this season if he’s important enough to be in the opening with the other characters. Hopefully he’s in better health this time around and will finally just get over himself.

More proof this new guy is Ai? Evil Decode Talker (btw his monsters look awesome). And apparently these two are going to be dueling in freaking space. I’m so looking forward to this duel because one Ai looks like he’s going to go crazy in it and two I very much want to know if Yusaku will know this is Ai when this duel happens. It is hard to tell with Playmaker if he recognizes this as Ai in the preview. If he does find out, then this is going to hit hard for him and if he doesn’t know this is Ai at this point, he’s might just fight this like any other fight. I’m also curious to know how he’s going to find out if this is Ai. If Yusaku will put the pieces together himself or if Ai will just tell him that this is him.

I’m very much hoping this means we are finally going to be getting more real life scenes and not just the writers trying to throw in Angelmakershipping out of nowhere. Seriously don’t do this to Aoi’s character. She does NOT need to fall for him. This is what ALWAYS leads to the females going to sh*t. I mean I have my own personal problems with Aoi’s writing but don’t make it worse.

I’m very curious to know what Roboppy’s role in all of this is going to be. Ai is probably going to be trying to get the other Ignises back but why is Roboppy along for the ride? Honestly it is probably just to be with her “big brother” which is honestly just adorable in its own right. It looks like she’s going to be dueling as well which judging by her monsters looks like her duels are just going to be fun in a Yuya sense. I wouldn’t say an entertainment style of dueling but something like that is how I see her duels playing out.

It looks like we are getting all of the brother sister team ups this season because it looks like Blood Shepherd and Ghost Girl are also getting a tag duel together. Judging by the fact they we see Roboppy in a Speed Duel and these two are also in a Speed Duel, maybe we might get a Speed Tag Duel between Ai and Roboppy against Blood Shepherd and Ghost Girl. And if that’s the case, well these two are dead. Also Blood Shepherd can also say “I told you so!” to everyone along with Revolver. 

Speaking of Revolver, it looks like him and Soulburner are actually getting a rematch! HELL YES! Finally have these two flat out murder each other!

No seriously, after this death glare Takeru gave Ryoken in today’s episode, I want Takeru to punch Ryoken so badly. I will be so disappointed if we go this whole show without Takeru punching Ryoken in the face. Takeru lost his impulse control in Flame, he might actually punch him and honestly I’m expecting Takeru to get into so much crap now because of the fact that Flame is gone to keep his temper in check. Yusaku, you might want to keep Takeru under constant supervision, especially considering Ai might actually go after him in order to bring back Flame. Takeru really is not in a good position right now, is he? 

But back to the Revolver vs Soulburner rematch, I’m still willing to bet that Revolver is going to win this only because of three reasons (damn you Yusaku)

Revolver wasn’t even trying the first time around and with the opening hand he drew, he could have easily destroyed Soulburner on his first turn. If the writers go the route with how everything at the beginning of the duel will be the exactly same as their last one, Revolver is easily going to be able to overpower him in seconds.

I’m pretty sure this duel will air around the time the Revolver Structure Deck will be out and you all know how it works when it comes to new products. The anime has to advertise the hell out of them to get them to sell. And considering the fact that Salamangreats are meta and the OCG is probably sick of them by now, they are going to make this duel seem like “hey Salamangreats are so last format! Here try Rokkets!”

Takeru no longer has Flame who again was 100% his impulse control but was also a big reason why Soulburner won 99% of his duels. Flame gave him advice and the encourage for Soulburner to keep on fighting to win. Without Flame, I’m 100% sure Soulburner’s dueling is going to take a big hit from it. If Soulburner does lose this duel from this reason alone, I think it will be a good driving force for him to legitimately try and get his partner back. 

And speaking of Flame and the other Ignis, the opening and today’s episode really was hitting it home that the rest of the Ignis are gone. Now I don’t think Flame, Aqua, Windy, Earth, and Lightning are going to stay permanently dead. That just doesn’t seem like something a Yu-Gi-Oh series will do (since it is extremely rare for anyone to stay permanently dead in this franchise) but I do think these five are going to be staying dead for quite a while from the looks of things and won’t actually return until the middle, middle end, or the end of the season/show if season 3 is the final season of Vrains. 

We get this quick screenshot of what looks to be a new female-like android character and it appears to me that she is in the Knights of Hanoi’s base. Since we know that SOL created these androids, is this the spy Ryoken has been hinting at from within? On one hand, that’s pretty freaking smart but on the other, Ryoken, if this is your spy, you are a giant freaking hypocrite. You don’t trust Ai (which I mean at this point might be justified) but you have a freaking android working for you as a spy in SOL? I seriously can’t even with this boy.

It looks like these androids might be playing a significant role this season if they are showing them in the opening. Since I think some of these shots might be actual future shots, this could be the moment before Ai and Roboppy appear and upload their data into two of these androids and that’s how they both have human forms. 

And one final thing I like to note is...when the summaries talked about SOL having a ship, I was thinking along the lines of a pirate ship, not a freaking space ship! Are you kidding me right now?! Playmaker and Ai might actually be dueling in space, like actual space. We are going full on Zexal now. Season 3 isn’t messing around apparently. 

There were a few other shots but these were the ones that interested me the most. Over all, I’m very much looking forward to season 3 and I just hope it doesn’t play out like season 2 in certain scenarios and seriously hoping it doesn’t end like a certain series if this is the final season. 

[bestofthebestandtherest-blog]

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[sparklyjojos]

--[Disco Wednesdayyy 24/?] The brave new world is made out of closed rooms, or are we really switching the genre over 1000 pages into the book? Okay then. [tw: csa, child abuse, brief gore]--

Last time, Disco arrived at the World’s End, accidentally jumped to the year 2019, and discovered that a company called Styron Japan built themselves a nice new skyscraper in Chofu. As soon as Disco enters the building, a bunch of company vicepresidents introduce themselves and tell him JJ Styron is already waiting. Judging by their quick explanations, JJ naturalized himself through marriage with a Japanese woman and was planning on spreading his influence to Japan.

JJ welcomes Disco with tea and sweets and says he’s been awaiting this visit for years. He looks startingly young for his 38 years, but asked about it claims he’s just taking good care of himself, since it’s not like he can jump in time or something, haha! Already unsettled, Disco asks about Sharon Styron’s death.

“Ah, yes, she’s dead.” JJ answers casually. “I killed her. Drugged her so she couldn’t move and cut her to pieces while she was still conscious.”

“...Why?”

“Why? Because she betrayed me, of course! The only thing she cared about was protecting you. I’ve been trying to find you and your family, and she refused to give me any information. She claimed you were an orphan.” So she must have sincerely believed the lies Disco told her about his identity... “Well, but it turns out she wasn’t lying... Mr. William Eady.”

Completely confused, Disco looks at the documents JJ shows him. A birth certificate. ‘William Eady’, ‘orphan’, a slightly different day of birth, ‘St. Paul’s Church in New York’ as the place he was found in. Everything exactly like in the made up story he told Sharon. ...If emotions can take external shape, can imagination, fiction? But then Disco notices the documents were ‘found’ by the law office in which the real William Eady is employed, so it’s likely that the lawyer forged the certificate to protect Disco.

“What were you going to do to me when you found me?”

“Kill you, if you went in my way. But now that the company is big enough to no longer be threatened by you, I don’t really care. And you know what? I can’t help but feel deep respect for you for doing your best to solve the mystery. Which is why I’d love for you to become the sales promoter for our wonderful Kozue Method! I can vouch for its effectiveness -- why, I’m my company’s client as well, and look how youthful I am. Well, my body is physically 11, haha!”

He spreads a variety of pamphlets on the table.

“You’ve heard about using stem cells acquired from clones to grow organs and such, have you? The Kozue Method is bolder! You can exchange the entire body at once! It’s perfectly possible, since the personality of a person is tied to consciousness, and not their physical body. Of course, we cooperate with the Blackswan company, who’s the patent holder for the Main Child treatment and for thouroughly preparing the Jacket, that is, the vessel Sub Child. It’s the single greatest development in the world’s history, and it’s all thanks to you, Disco!”

The Kozue Method involves the following procedure. The client -- the Main Child -- is given horrible abuse, so just like it was with Kozue parts of themselves split off and take over fetuses still in the womb, pushing the original souls out. These split off parts -- the Sub Children -- are born and raised, then mysteriously disappear one day, and the empty bodies (the ‘Jackets’, as JJ calls them) are used as new vessels for the Main Child.

That’s not all. From what JJ says, it seems the global consciousness, humanity’s emotions and will, can now be curated -- after all, there’s a way to get negative emotions and violent thoughts quite literally out of you, and apparently resentment will vanish with ‘split personalities’ too. This resulted in a clean, shiny, perfectly peaceful world with apparently zero creativity, to the point that no new fictional media is really made. [I’m... honestly confused as to how this exactly works, especially considering some later parts. Maybe JJ is just overexaggerating.]

“It really is all thanks to you! You found Kozue and the six others, managed to connect them back together, and the news spread all over the world. You’re a hero, Disco!”

“...How many kids did you... did you sell?”

“In the last 10 years it’d be, hm, two hundred millions? Now, now, I understand you have reservations. There’s a little guilt involved, but it’s not like people don’t live with many little guilts on their backs anyway. We’re improving the procedures, too! We already established that sexual abuse makes the job done the quickest, and hey, the faster it is, the shorter it hurts! The kid will just forget it anyway. The Blackswan guys are true specialists, they can do a lot in just one tiny moment. In a single second the child gets, what did you call it? ‘Abuse’, and in the next, the memory has already been moved to the other personality. It’s good that the parents don’t have to see it, since nobody likes to live thinking their children are being hurt.”

Blackswan. The company’s logo on the pamphlets looks familiar.

[The name Blackswan (or Black Swan? I’m not sure of the spelling here) may be a reference to Project Bluebird, which -- at least according to all the conspiracy websites out there -- involved among other unethical experiments trying to induce DID in healthy subjects.]

“You may think: what about the parents of the Sub Children?” JJ continues. “Aren’t they angry? Here’s where one of our big achievements comes into play. You’ve heard about the vanishing twin phenomenon, right? Of course you have, you met Daibakusho Curry. It happens a lot in nature. The strongest survives. What we’re doing here is just giving the poor weak kids a chance! We retrieve and raise them, so they can get a go at living before... being reused.”

How can this future be avoided?, Disco thinks. Is the Black Bird Man involved? Maybe if Disco finds and defeats him, all this can be fixed. But no, he can’t change the future in any way... so what can he do? Find children. Somehow protect the Main Children from abuse, so this entire system breaks. So twins no longer vanish, just like he promised to Run Run -- oh God, if Run Run can speak and act like a human, does this mean...?

Disco asks JJ if Run Run was a victim of their experiments too (maybe they tried to transfer human souls into animal bodies at first?), but JJ seems to genuinely have no idea what he’s talking about.

“Ah, whatever,” JJ says, waving his hand. “You don’t seem convinced, and I’ll forget everything that happened here anyway once you leave.”

But before Disco can actually leave, JJ turns on a futuristic screen and shows him a documentary called LAMIA SYNDROME (2019), sponsored among other by Styron Japan. “Just so you know I’m not lying to you,” JJ says.

--

The documentary states that 4- to 8-year-old children have been disappearing all over the world since autumn 2006 in a phenomenon called Lamia Syndrome. A few parents talk about how their children suddenly vanished even under close supervision. We see a recording from a mall security camera showing a little girl holding her grandfather’s hand one second and disappearing the next. The footage is then repeated frame by frame. Just before the girl vanishes, another man shows up in the frame.

It’s not the Black Bird Man.

It’s future ‘Disco’. He looks around sixty and seems very happy about something. Looking straight into the camera, he gives it a thumbs up, and with the other hand holds up a sign with a single sentence:

THE WORLD IS MADE OUT OF CLOSED ROOMS

The documentary has a literary critic explain that “this is the title of Ehimegawa Juuzou’s 1996 novel, the 7th book in the Runbaba series. In it, a criminal called the Locked Room Billionaire announces that he’s going to kill a billion people in locked room situations in just ten years. Even if people may try to avoid going inside buildings or returning home, they’re nevertheless trapped in the locked rooms of their own fear.”

[Lore note: this is not even remotely what Maijo’s 2002 novel The World is Made out of Closed Rooms is about. Instead, it seems to be a combination of Seiryoin’s Cosmic and Carnival, with the main villain’s name and modus operandi being a mix of the Locked Room Lord and the Billion Killer. 1996 is when Cosmic was first released, too. I honestly wonder how different JDC is in Disco-verse if Mitamura could get away with this.]

“The crowded mall situation seems similar to one from the book,” the critic continues, “although there’s no proof that the same locked room trick was used. This time, there’s just an evil man at work. He seems similar in looks to Disco Wednesdayyy, a detective and one of the 31 people who disappeared in the Pine House case, which concerned Ehimegawa Juuzou’s death. The same man was involved in finding Yamagishi Kozue, the origin of the Kozue Method. Closed Rooms predicted our current situation in which children are sent to shelters in order to protect them from the Lamia Syndrome. Maybe by using the book’s title, the man is trying to say that he, a great detective, will eventually open the locked room... that is, bust open the shelters and kidnap the children.”

(Disco’s like, no, no, I’m not even a great detective, I’m a hardboiled detective! I don’t know shit about locked room tricks! I haven’t even read Mitamura’s books! [You know, you probably should, Mitamura seems to have put a lot of useful hints in those.] And all this must be a mistake, it’s not like I’d ever start kidnapping children... right?)

The documentary then shows an interview with the only survivor of the Pine House -- Dezuumi Style, now much older, who isn’t sure whether the man in the photo really is his friend Disco Wednesdayyy (and aw, he really refers to Disco as his friend, even if they hardly ever talked). From the interview we learn that this new world doesn’t need writers or great detectives anymore; no locked room murders or tricky false alibi cases or anything similar ever happens anymore. Dezuumi believes that ‘Disco’s’ Closed Rooms message is sarcastic, to show that “in a stiff world without different points of view or creativity, instead of people being closed in locked rooms in mystery novels, it’s now human emotions, ideas and values that are closed in new locked rooms...”

“But isn’t it right to stop the unwanted thoughts and focus on the useful ones?” the interviewer asks.

“No. People should be always thinking about new topics and coming up with new inventions. They should dare to break things. Trying to keep everyone’s thoughts perfectly ordered is terrorism.”

Next, the documentary shows Iwasaki Kousuke, the taxi driver from Nishi Akatsuki, who also isn’t sure if that’s Disco in the photo. When the interviewer brings up that Iwasaki’s family defeated cancer thanks to Kozue Method and that the idea of ‘a lifespan’ may soon be irrelevant to humanity, Iwasaki says that he’s still not sure if that’s a good thing. Death is a fact of life, after all, and we should be grateful for happiness and sadness.

The documentary then says the whoever the mysterious man is, he has kidnapped close to three hundred million children since 2006...

--

JJ stops the movie, saying that what he wanted Disco to see is that there really is only a tiny group of people in Japan standing against him, and the rest of the world is pretty much his. “But do you understand now why I have respect for you? Three hundred millions! For the first two years, we could hardly ever find the kids, since you hid the majority of them! I thought that maybe killing your family would lure you out, but that plan didn’t work out... and it’s not like the Blackswan guys haven’t already killed you seven times.” The time fold effects must have protected Disco from permanently dying in the future.

Three hundred million kids?! That’s be over 60 000 a day! You’d need an entire organization of space-jumpers to pull off something like this... or thirty one people from the Pine House. Did ‘Mercury C’ prevent everyone from leaving because they were meant to form a group, and their mysterious disappearance meant they simply moved to the shadows? Have the others spent years and years helping him hide the kids from Styron and recruit new space-jumpers?...

But where do you even hide three hundred million kids? They could probably warp any small space to accomodate even that number, and since they could jump in time they’d just make it so a child stays there for merely a second before it’s returned to their parents once the world becomes safe. But would they ever return them, considering that Styron won the battle for the world?...

Disco asks if JJ hurt the families of Disco’s accomplices, to which JJ claims he wanted to take down Disco first, so he didn’t bother yet. But anyway, JJ really wants Disco to stop this whole children kidnapping thing, because can’t Disco see how much the parents are hurt by his actions~? [You’re one to talk, buddy.] He resumes the documentary to show one last scene.

--

19-year-old Kozue says she’s not sure if the man in the photo is Disco. “I feel sympathy for the affected parents, and I think it'd be best to return the kids to them. The Disco I knew wouldn't do something horrible like that. Are you sure it's not someone else?” Then, as she’s leaving the shot, she looks back at the camera and yells that maybe it’d be better if she had never gotten involved with Disco at all.

The documentary ends by stating that the global birth rate is drastically falling, since women are afraid to bring children into the world in which the Lamia Syndrome runs rampant. It’s predicted that by 2080 the human race will stop procreating except for the purpose of prolonging their immortal lives.

--

“See? If you keep going, you’ll be the one responsible for the destruction of the human race,” JJ says. “Don’t you feel bad about it?”

But all Disco answers with is “Thank you for the movie, JJ. It was quite illuminating.”

“Huh? That’s not just some movie, that’s reality! Don’t you feel bad? Angry?”

“Not really. All it did was prove me that I’m right. Have you ever seen the kanji for ‘lifespan’ (寿命)? The first one (寿) may mean ‘congratulations’, ‘celebration’, ‘being happy with life’. There would be nothing to ‘celebrate’ if there wasn’t a finite ‘lifespan’. You really aren’t naturalized yet if you don’t get it. Japanese people understand why there would be no charm in making sakura trees bloom all year long.”

“Well, clearly Japanese people are mistaken. You can’t look at kamikaze pilots and tell me there’s nothing wrong with their heads!”

“You really don’t get sacrifices for a great cause, JJ. While kamikaze sacrificed their lives, they yelled ‘banzai’, which means ‘ten thousand years of life’. Not death, but life. You saw me smile in that photo in the documentary, did you? That smile is my banzai. If the future can’t be changed, then all this movie proves is that my future is bright: every single day spent fulfilled as I’m protecting children.”

As Disco sets to leave (again), JJ pulls out his last trump card and calls his Japanese wife to the room.

It’s Norma Brown. Or rather, Fuyuno Norma Brown. JJ’s new name is apparently Fuyuno Shinji.

--

Norma is overjoyed to see Disco and sweeps him in a hug, saying that she’s been looking for him all this time. She’s different than he remembers. Sure, she has the same personality, but she looks Japanese, which overall makes her the spitting image of Norma-faced Koeda.

“Do you not like this body of mine, Disco?” she asks seeing his reaction. “Don’t worry, it wasn’t obtained from some poor child! Shinji, haven’t you explained that to him yet?! The method has been improved, Disco! The Jackets are now cultivated in artificial wombs. No more pushing out souls out of the original to obtain a Subchild! After birth, they’re raised by good volunteer mothers. In addition, we discovered that stimulus other than ‘suffering’ works for inducing new personalities. Children aren’t hurting anymore, Disco!”

“It’s useless, honey,” JJ says. “This isn’t the Disco you knew. He no longer protects children.”

Norma tries to persuade Disco to stop taking children away, but he still won’t budge. She has a little exchange with JJ who seems to be seriously jealous (”Do you love me like you love Disco?”), and assures JJ that of course she loves him, Disco starts considering to bring out one of his hidden knives and attack JJ...

But before Disco can make a move, something explodes. It takes Disco a few seconds to realize that while he’s still holding Norma in his arms, her lower half was blown off by a small bomb hidden inside her body, much like the one Disco once pulled out of Nils. Her last words are, “You’re my hero, Disco.”

Disco desperately puts her body back together, trying not to ‘run away to the Pineapple Home’ [I like that this became a metaphore for withdrawing into your mind from shock]. But no matter what he does, she doesn’t come back to life.

“This isn’t her original body,” JJ says. He looks almost as shocked as Disco by what just happened. “The soul can’t return to it, and the original body is already gone...”

“But there’s a spare one, right? There must be!” Disco yells, mortified at his own response. Would he really sacrifice a child for her?... “No, wait... If I just return to the past, all will be undone. She’ll be alive again--”

“No. Norma is dead,” JJ says. “She’s going to be dead in every possible history from now on. Sure, this is just an imaginary, fictional future... but she wasn’t. She came from the past. We met in 2003, and the Blackswan guys helped arrange it so that she’d be taken to 2008, and then we’d get married. Now that she’s gone, her research will disappear too. She was the one who came up with all the new projects, so our progress will be lost... according to plan. Of course! The Blackswan guys must have swindled me again! She’s been kept here all this time for the sole purpose of being killed in front of you! It’s your fault!”

Was it really his fault?... No. Everything's already decided. Every attempt to change history is already contained in that history.

While JJ is still blaming him, Disco doesn’t take that shit and asks “JJ, what was the phrase activating the bomb? It was the question you asked her, wasn’t it?”

[Wait, those bombs are phrase-activated. Which means Nils openly opposing JJ Styron while in a conversation with him was even more awe-inspiring than I thought. DAMN, kid.]

Disco puts the bomb back together, slam dunks it into JJ's body, and starts the last barrage of questions.

Why isn’t JJ busy with drug cartels anymore? Apparently the Blackswan guys managed to somehow remove the hallucinatory effect of drugs, since it could destroy their idea of perfectly managed global consciousness.

So there’s peace in the world, but no new media is created, no Spielbergs or Hendrixes? Maybe so, but hey, even Disco’s beloved San Diego is now clean and pretty! (Disco finds this fact hard to imagine and honestly quite disturbing.)

What was going on with that case with JJ’s seven underlings, why were they all hanging by just one leg? “I don’t know, have you tried asking that kid that should be in the Pine House, Nils Mikami?” [Yeah, you better remember his name!]

Does JJ know about the Pineapple Home? No clue what that even is.

Alright. As Disco prepares to leave (for the nth time in this sequence), JJ says, “If you go back to the past now, the childless method Norma invented would cease to exist too, you know.”

“No. Norma was a great person, but not a unique one. There are many others like her who can come up with it.” [I assume that since the future is unchanging, somebody else really will come up with it.]

“...in the end, I’m weak and you’re weak. No matter the time or place, the weak are an easy target. No, maybe we just have different kinds of strength. After all, you didn’t run away even as Norma was dying in your arms. ...you know, she didn’t answer my question properly. She said that she loved me. But my question was... Do you love me like you love Disco?”

Disco instantly pulls the bomb out of JJ’s body and tosses it through the window, where it explodes at a safe distance. Not ouf of mercy or anything, just because fuck you, you slimy bastard, you’re not getting off that easy, and Disco will be sure to think of a much, much worse punishment later. [HELL YEAH]

--

Leaving the room (and pretty devastated looking JJ), Disco happens to glance at the sweets he was welcomed with, and notices the logo of a shop called Makuri-ya. ‘Makuri”... “Mercury”? Mercury C did say he was the owner of a traditional Japanese confectionary shop in Chofu...

It may be a good time to go shopping for some explanation.

[shitmoviesonshitwifi]

Rodeo and Juliet

Here is my play by play reaction to this movie. 

1. So there is a girl named Juliet and she is moving to her grandfather’s ranch with her mom after his death. 

2. She is pissed that she has to move, but then she meets this horse, Rodeo, apparently she had riding lessons in NYC but can’t saddle a horse.

3. Seriously, she just like throws it in the air with the strength of a 9 month old infant.

4. She makes friends with Nan, like who the fuck names their kid Nan? Anyway, she is the only black person in the whole town so far. 

5. Nan takes her to a barn dance and introduces her little brother, so two black people so far. (this movie does not seem to accurately represent the beautiful diversity of our nation)

6. Some mean girls approach Nan and Juliet. They claim that Juliet’s outfit looks like, “a clearance rack at Chicos”. 

7. Juliet is wearing like a black leather jacket and black jeans and black heels, I mean they aren’t Prada but the outfit isn’t bad.

8. Anyway, Juliet comes back with “I’ll let Lana del Rey know you said that next time I’m backstage at one of her concerts like last weekend” and, “Oh my mom’s friend Calvin designed this outfit, Calvin Klein.”

9. Super cringey so far and way too detailed for a comeback.

10. Some country boy approaches Juliet and she dips out of the way for another cowboy and pretends he is her date, this movie is so cliche so obviously they fall for each other. Not actually sure what his name is.

11. Meanwhile, Mom is at judge’s office looking for a will or statement entitling her to the ranch meanwhile some Billy Ray knock off comes in saying he has paper that entitles him to half of the ranch. Judge said it was never official.

12. We find out his name is Hugh and he was the grandpa’s right hand man.

13. A lot has happened and I cannot really follow but I guess the mom is now employed at the Judge’s office and is helping look for a will.

14. Juliet’s mom says to stay away from Loverboy since he is Hugh’s nephew and therefore the enemy. 

15. Oh and btw Mom tells Juliet they have to sell the horse.

16. Juliet throws a fit and then learns of a barrel racing competition and thinks that if she and Rodeo win that she can’t sell him or the ranch.

17. Loverboy offers to teach her and says that she knows he’ll do anything for her, so their relationship is going hella fast, like it has only been 2 days.

18. Since Juliet is supposed to stay away from them she convinces her mom to let her ride Rodeo at Nan’s ranch

19. I suspect she’ll be riding Loverboy too, if ya catch my drift ;)

20. Training montage and searching for document montage begins.

21. Hugh and Loverboy have the same haircut and hat, little freaky.

22. Loverboy has a really pointy chin

23. Also horse is pretty little/scrawny for being a barrel racing horse

24. I have been informed by Ari (roommate) that Loverboy’s name is Monty.

25. So Juliet has been practicing for like 2 days and she’s already a god at the game

26. Definitely a hallmark movie due to the nature and quick, hard to follow plot and lack of diversity.

27. Wait! There are two more black people, a receptionist at the county clerks office and a dude in line. Ari: “still no asian people!”

28. Everyone drives really big, really shiny trucks

29. So some random dude with a weird beard shows up while mom is sweeping the driveway. 

30. His name is bill Atterbury and he is looking for the grandpa, mom says he is not here and fails to mention that he is dead. 

31. Okay now she mentions it all dramatic like. 

32. Anyway, homeboy wants to buy the horse. 

33. Oh and apparently mom is trying to get him to buy the land too. 

34. This convo is going down like the opening to a cheesy 80′s porno (at least I am assuming so)

35. Ooh she invited him in for some lemonade..... and probably some sex too.

36. JK it is just really cheesy to invite a stranger in for lemonade.

37. The low visual quality and cheesy movie tropes make me honestly question if this is a hallmark movie or a bad 80′s porn.

38. Juliet is wearing some black off the shoulder shirt with big white lettering that says NYC with neon paint splatters.

39. It looks like it was purchased anywhere but NY, probably the juniors section of a SEARS department store.

40. Her hair keeps changing colors from dark brown to auburn, now she has a blonde streak in it.

41. Okay mom is now explaining her childhood in this small town. 

42. Her mom died when she was 10 and her dad attached to her really hard, which seems normal since she is his only family left. 

43. She was once in love with Hugh, engaged even, she liked the idea of being a rancher’s wife. 

44. Then she fell in love with writing and ran off to New York, her dad and Hugh obviously did not approve. 

45. Whatever she had with Hugh ended when she left and then she met Juliet’s dad and so on. 

46. She admits that she really loved Hugh. Something tells me she still does and that they may get together again.

47. This entire movie I thought that Juliet took WRITING lessons in NYC but she was taking RIDING lessons in NYC, and apparently her grandpa paid for them.

48. This explains why she is so good at barrel racing, doesn’t explain why she can’t put a saddle on a horse. 

49. Another off the shoulder top, what is up with this chick?!

50. Nan is always wearing a Canadian tuxedo ( Denim Jeans, Denim shirt, and Denim jacket)

51. Nan and Juliet are having girl talk and Nan is teasing Juliet for having a crush on Monty but like she’s already been on a date with him and kissed him so this shouldn’t really be a shock for Nan.

52. Monty takes Juliet to a tree grove on their horses and claims he has never taken anyone there before. 

53. They kiss on horseback, as if this movie weren’t cliche enough

54. Why is Juliet always whispering in the horse’s ear like it understands english, it doesn’t.

55. WTF Nan is eating out of a feed bag with her hands, I don’t think it’s feed but that is still weird.

56. Mom shows up while everyone is practicing and Monty hides in the worst hiding spot imaginable, I expect nothing less from this movie.

57. Apparently it’s Christmas time??!?!?!?!

58. Nan pulls the whole flattery trope with the Mom to distract her and of course it works because this movie is cliche AF

59. Hugh drops off a wreath for someone.

60. Ohhh is it the mom, I wonder if he still has feels for her.

61. Ari : “It’s for Juliet” me: ewww gross.

62. Okay mom appears outside wearing some sort of hoodie/jean jacket that 2011 Justin Bieber would wear.

63. I was right. Hugh says some BS about how he always hoped she would come back.

64. Now he tries to convince her that the grandpa always wanted them to share the ranch.

65. Now they are calling each other out on their issues.

66. Alright back to Juliet and Rodeo, just brushing.

67. Mom has decorated a small office tree that doesn’t light up on top.

68. Oh mom has found a will saying that Mom and Hugh have to split the land. Something tells me she won’t mind as much.

69. Wait, mom finds out about Juliet and Monty and now she says she has to withdrawal from the competition because she lied. daughter says she lied too, about her past in this town.

70. Uh oh mom is selling the horse to Hugh.

71. obviously this isn’t the end of Juliet’s racing career.

72. Oh shoot Hugh is ranting about how the ranch and horse should go to someone who loves it as much as the grandpa did. 

73. Mom spills the beans about the will.

74. Now they feel guilty for dragging the kids in when really they were just confused about themselves but really it isn’t that hard because they found the document so move on already.

75. Whoa, Hugh confesses that he went to NYC to find the mom when he heard she was getting married. 

76. Cue the “ I never stopped loving you cliche”

77. They both talk about memories rushing back and all that jazz.

78. Of course, Hugh tips his hat back and they start making out. 

79. EW! If they get married that would make Monty and Juliet Step-cousins that make-out.

80. Okay so it is competition day and mom and Hugh show up. 

81. I don’t know why she is competing anymore because mom is probably not going to sell Rodeo and the ranch now that she and Hugh are together.

82. Monty and Juliet apologize for sneaking around but mom supports the relationship which is gross if they end up being step-cousins.

83. Wait, apparently the current champion is back when they thought she wasn’t competing.

84. Juliet rocks the first round. Cue competition montage. The announcer has a wicked mustache and then Juliet progresses to the finals. This horse is wildin’ and going fast now.

85. Nan is walking away and some slow-mo scene makes me think something bad is about to happen.

86. OMG! OMG! WAIT! I just noticed Monty is Hugh’s nephew, Monty-Hugh. Like Montague and then Juliet! Just like the Montague and Capulet family rivalry in Verona. I CAN’T BELIEVE I DIDN’T NOTICE THIS SOONER!!!

87. I forget that the mom is a writer, she apparently knows what to write about now. Ari: “so she’s going to write about a fucking horse girl?!?”

88. She sets the record. Wait! she doesn’t win. she loses by .2 seconds against the resident champion. 

89. I mean she still is keeping the horse and they do not need money for the ranch anymore since Hugh and mom are a thing, so nothing is at stake anymore. 

90. Okay so Bill Atterbury from earlier comes up and offers Juliet and Rodeo $4000 and wants them to ride pro and wants Monty as a pro circuit trainer. 

91. “ Y’all have a Merry Christmas”

92. All of a sudden it cuts to the ranch house where the mom is typing her paper in some bouji heels while Hugh attempts to light a fire.

93. The Judge has randomly shows up and asks if they have come to an agreement about the ranch.

94. They tell him they have, an agreement to be husband and wife.

95. I CALLED IT!!! 

96. This relationship escalated really fast over the course of like 3 days

97. Monty and Juliet are back at the grove, which isn’t really a grove because there are only like 2 scrawny trees, but they just call it a grove.

98. Ewwww they are step-cousins now.

99. Now they are racing their horses at sunset. 

100. Ari thinks the movie will fade out..... oh! oh! she is exactly right!

Overall, pretty odd movie. It was definitely a Hallmark movie. It was very hard to follow and a lot happened really fast. I’m still not sure if the central plot was the land dispute, horse racing, or forbidden love. The commentary that Ari and I provided was highly entertaining though.

[gallifreyanlibertea]

Sweet (1/2)

a/n: I know JACK SHIT about baking and cooking shows so don’t come at me

click here for part two

also @mi-chan4649 gave me the name for the baking show LOL thanks for literally being my cheerleader 

It wasn’t hard to place a bet on who would end up being the most loved this season.

“Hello, bakers!” Arthur came out from behind the main doors to the large kitchen, followed by gasps and applause from the contestants, and it wasn’t quite hard at all to find the one out of the eight bakers that would inevitably end up a viewer-favorite. The cameras would focus the most on that tanned skin, on that dimpled smile, on the baby blues behind the frames of those glasses.

Arthur would be expected to put him under the spotlight as well, he assumed, in the later episodes. With a face like that contestant had, dear god, what it would do to their ratings.

“I’m Arthur Kirkland,” Arthur had said, crossing his arms. “Welcome to The Next Sugar Daddy.”

His dialogue was followed by laughter, as it always was when he introduced the downright ridiculous name that Francis Bonnefoy had fought to title the show. “Ah, I see some potential sugar mummies and sugar-parents in this mix as well. How are you all today?”

And like he’d expected, the, er, attractive one was the first to speak. Arthur found it hard to maintain a distant composure when his attention was almost demanded by the man who seemed to radiate confidence as well as charm. It was so much so that the contestants had all flocked to the man within the first few minutes of filming the episode. They now stood around next him, like the loyal subjects to a King.

“It’s kinda hot in here, to be honest.” He’d made a show of flapping his shirt, and Arthur opened his mouth with a reply already in mind- a quip about Francis being too cheap to install air conditioners- before the man continued. “And you in that suit of yours isn’t helping either.”

Despite being a world-renowned host of successful T.V. food competitions, and being a part-time novel writer, Arthur forgot how to speak English.

“Ah- I, um…”

Francis seemed to find this funny, and the fact that his laughter came out as wheezes didn’t help Arthur’s situation one bit.

“I’d better go change my suit then.” Was the dialogue Arthur had decided on, red-faced. “Dreadfully sorry about that.”

Needless to say, they’d figured out the ‘game’ for this season’s show.

In the last season, it had been a contestant’s unhealthy obsession with the judge, Francis Bonnefoy, and Arthur and the cameramen had been instructed to amplify it. It bode well for the show’s statistics, and quite well with Arthur himself, seeing Francis as uncomfortable as he was.

That game had definitely been better than the one before it, when a contestant had insisted Francis and Arthur had been secretly in love, and the two had been forced to play along as a humorous appeal to their audience. It had come as a shock to them that apparently, more than one of their numerous viewers had come to that “in-love” conclusion as well.

It had been torture.

But now, it seemed, it was Arthur’s turn alone. If this contestant kept up with his apparent interest in Arthur, the production crew would do whatever it took to utilize it to their benefit.

And the contestant most definitely did.

“Round one- as you all know, your task is to introduce yourself so the judge can get to know you… but with a sweet twist.”

Arthur paused for effect, so the camera crew could get a good shot of the theatrical looks on the contestants’ faces. “You will be given ninety minutes to prepare a cupcake that represents you, and you will be graded on originality, taste, and presentation. Your time starts now.”

This was Arthur’s favorite part. It was to watch as the contestants hurried to their places, brows furrowed in thought. The first five minutes was a valuable time for the camera crew to get videos of panicked faces, and for Arthur to scan his handy sheet for names and quick notes he’d been given about the characters of the contestants.

“His name is Alfred Jones,” Francis whispered and Arthur ignored him, squinting down at the sheet in his hands as Francis peeked over his shoulder.

“Shouldn’t you be in your seat looking stoic?”

“They don’t turn the camera to us for a good ten minutes, Kirkland, now what else does it say about him?”

“Shut up, Francis.” He spared a small glance at Alfred’s workstation only to find the boy gazing intently back at him. Alfred grinned abashedly before turning back down to his work, and Arthur hoped to every god on earth that his pasty white skin wasn’t blushing on camera. “I think it’s some sort of tactic to win the show- to soften up the host, yeah?”

Francis shrugged.

A quick cue from a cameraman told Arthur it was time to walk about and get words out of the contestants.

“What’s going on here?” Arthur said with a smile, and contestant number one began to ramble on about the themes within his cupcakes. A quick glance at his sheet and Arthur looked back up, “So you own your own bakery?”

It wasn’t something Arthur was proud of, but he found that his interest level hadn’t nearly been as high with the others as it was the moment he stepped toward Alfred Jones’ workspace.

“What do we have here, Mr. Jones?”

And if what he saw wasn’t what he’d expected, Arthur didn’t know what would be.

Alfred had decided to display something patriotic, something American, with apple-pie sorts of flavoring in the frosting and red and blue sprinkles of edible glitter.

“I had initially wanted to go with a chocolate, protein-shake kinda thing,” Alfred said earnestly. He then let his lip quirk up in something of a smirk, “You know, since I work out a lot.”

“I see that,” Arthur said, and Alfred turned his attention back to his work with a laugh that had Arthur turning away from the cameras to wait out the red flush in his cheeks.

Get a bloody hold of yourself.

Then, Arthur was back at Francis’ side, aware of the cameras poised in their direction as Francis spoke. “I always look forward to this round because it’s quite interesting to see what they come up with.”

“It’s a good gauge of personality and skill.” Arthur said in response, “Not many people try their hardest on this round, on the basis that it’s only an introduction, which gives us a pretty good understanding of their base-level of expertise.”

Time went by slower when he wasn’t the one baking furiously to secure a place in the competition, Arthur found, yet it hadn’t gone by all too slowly for him either.

His job while the competitors baked was fairly easy. It was to pace around with an inquisitive look on his face and make conversation with Francis, as a sort of gossip about what desserts were being made.

Soon, Arthur was stepping right back to the front of the room, eyes glancing at the large clock mounted behind him, “Bakers, please step away from your creations!”

A pause for dramatic effect, for the cameras to catch the looks of relief and sometimes despair on sweaty, flour-streaked faces.

And then, the judging began.

“Mr. Anderson, please explain your cupcake,” Arthur said, with a smile he liked to call not here, nor there. It was a trick he’d picked up over his years of hosting competitions, a look on his face that served as a complete opposite to what he was meant to do- to comfort contestants.

Instead, this smile served to put them on edge. It served to elicit a look from their faces so priceless that it always made it into the final edit.

Francis would watch patiently as the man explained his creation, and he would break into it with his little fork, face as stony as he could manage.

It was funny considering the faces Francis liked to make when he ate. He was a proper food-whore, really.

“I find this to be a little soggy-” It was also a bit funny to watch a previously cocky contestant’s face melt into one of horror after a harsh critique.

Arthur was definitely bitter enough to enjoy something like this, and those who were close to him often wondered how he made it as a host, someone meant to be warm and friendly, when in fact, Arthur found himself having to hold back a smile as a man who’d been particularly rude to him walked back to his station with head hung low.

“Mr. Jones,” Arthur called, and Alfred seemed to brace himself. He held his chin up, rolled his shoulders back, and popped a quick smile on his face as he placed his plate on Francis’ table.

Arthur found himself rooting for the man.

“Here I have a-” Arthur tuned out Alfred’s long ingredient list and in turn, found himself gazing at the cupcake on the plate. It was rather colorful, with icing piped in red and blue, and what seemed to be a small flag on it.

“A rainbow flag.” Alfred explained with a grin, “I love men, all sizes, shapes, and colors, baby.”

“Amen to that,” Francis replied with a hearty chuckle that Arthur couldn’t help rolling his eyes at. “Well, Alfred, there’s no denying your presentation is very beautiful.”

Arthur steeled himself right alongside Alfred.

“And, I have to say, so are your flavors.”

Brilliant! The look on Alfred’s face brought a short-lived smile onto Arthur’s own. It was one that a cameraman had moved to capture- oh fuck, they were going to put that face on television, weren’t they, Arthur clenched his jaw back into a look of indifference.

Francis had pointed it out that evening, after the contestants went home to rest and the crew had been left to look at the footage. “Aw, look, how sweet!”

“Shut up, Francis.” Arthur had snapped. “Are we really going to focus on this?”

Francis hid a smile behind his hand, “There’s nothing an audience loves more to watch than a blooming romance in the midst of a competition. Haven’t you seen all the best-selling novels these days?”

This would be hell for the poor Jones boy, Arthur deduced.

It was only natural that a man like Alfred be used to flirting around for fun. He hadn’t meant anything of it, and now it would be blown out of proportion for the sake of show ratings.

Arthur supposed that’s how the world worked.

“Watch this,” Francis said one day, with what sounded like a giggle, and Arthur scooted in, peering over his shoulder.

What the audience never saw was the long breaks between each round, up to days of preparation time for the bakers while the production team met each day to watch footage and conduct interviews that could be pieced into the final edit.

“I don’t have a boyfriend back home,” Alfred said into the camera, teeth flashing in a big grin. “I never really had the time or the attraction.”

“And what are you usually attracted to?” The interviewer said. His prompt would later be cut out, so Alfred had to answer in full sentences.

“I usually like a good personality in a person, someone who enjoys my company as much as I enjoy theirs, and who doesn’t like good looks?”

“Does Arthur Kirkland fit into this at all?”

Arthur buried his face in his palms.

Alfred, on the laptop screen, paused. He then grinned, “Arthur Kirkland is definitely my type.”