#that was years ago and it was only for a short period but it confirmed to me 'yeah no i need. vibrancy'

[xxplastic-cubexx]

I love the colors you use, they’re so cartoony and fun and full of life

thank you !!!!!! BIG fan of colors i am really

[watsittoyah]

Along Came A Spider…2099

Warnings-Sexual content, sex dreams, time travel, oral sex, rough sex, fang play, size kink, and slight blood play.

(My Spanish isn’t great, so I did use google translate to help…)

Chapter 2- Bites & Fangs

The last time you had a depression episode, it was in the tenth grade when your old boyfriend, Peter Parker had dumped you for some girl named Gwen.

Well that was many years ago and now you were depressed because you were watching good burger in your ratty old polka dot robe.

But you were in denial, because every time Erica asked if you were depressed you just lied and said you were just working on something important.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come out? It’s been two weeks.” Erica asks as you press play to Good Burger. “Yeah, I’m good. I got a pizza coming and I got some drafts to work on.” You half lie. There was a pizza coming.

“Tomorrow let’s go to the park and get some fresh air. You need it.” You ignore her and Milo cuddles up close to you. “Please make sure you clean your dishes. I’ll be back around midnight.” Erica calls out.

When she finally leaves you look down at Milo’s orange little face and you kiss his nose. “I think you’re the only boy I can trust, Milo. I’m sure you’d never leave me in a club bathroom with my panties at my ankles right?”

His blue eyes just seem to stare at you and you nod because you’ve entered your crazy cat lady era. “Don’t answer that. Let’s get you some food and I’ll…clean up.” You pause the movie and bring Milo into the kitchen with you.

You pour him a bit of dry food and mix it with some wet food. You place his food down and he look down at the food then back at you. You kneel down and scratch under his chin and he licks your fingers.

“Milo, don’t ever become one of those jerk cats that leads girl cats on. You keep being a good boy.” You comments after you stand up. You look at the kitchen and decide to start cleaning there.

You get some cleaning supplies and sigh heavy. It’s been two weeks since the club incident and you haven’t let yourself think about Miguel since. Sure he lives in the building but you have no clue which apartment. And yeah he lives in the same city as you but you don’t know which parts he goes to.

Sure you still dream about Miguel, you still dream about his touch, his smell…No. No you weren’t going to do this. You were not about to cry over him again.

You sniffle back the tears and wipe your face with the back of your hand. “Stupid good looking bastard. With your good looking hair and cute accent.” You toss some water into a bucket and Milo just stares at you.

“Milo, you might want to leave the kitchen it’s about to get crazy in here.” You tell him. He simply meows and licks your leg.

Maybe you’re about to be on your period. Or maybe you’re just hormonal but him doing that just made you break down and cry. “Come on Milo, stop. I need to mop up my tears.” You say through your cloudy vision….

••••

After two good cries and half a mental breakdown, you were happy with how the apartment looked. You hear the doorbell ring and you make sure Milo was still sleeping at your feet before you went to answer it.

You grab the money from off the counter and open the door to see a young girl with your food. “Medium cheese pizza with garlic knots?” She asks confirming your order. “You got it.” You hand her a twenty and tell her to keep the change. “Actually miss you’re five dollars short.” You give her a side eye and nod. “Let me go and grab you some more money then.” You prop the door open a bit so Milo can’t leave out and you place the food down on the counter.

You go into your wallet and pull out the money you need and go to give it to her. “Here you go.” You hand it to her and she gives an extra big smile. “Tip?” I know fucking we-

“You have a good night.” You tell her. Just as you’re about to close the door. Milo runs between your legs and out the door. “Milo!” You shout after him as you run down the hall.

You almost have him but a door opens and he runs inside. “Milo!” You yell as you start to run inside of the apartment. But something screams stop and you obey that voice in your head.

When you look up your heart was pounding because it was just your luck that it was his apartment. You take several steps back as you see him go back into his apartment. If Milo wasn’t inside you’d be flying back to the apartment and locking yourself inside.

You hear his little meow and you don’t look up because you know those hazel eyes are looking down at you. “Thank you.” You mutter as Miguel hands Milo back to you. “You can’t go running into strangers apartments, Milo. What if they would’ve hurt you? That’s it you’re grounded. No cartoons for a week.” You scold him as you hear Miguel chuckle.

“Isn’t that a bit harsh? I’m sure the little guy didn’t mean it.” You raise a sculpted brow at him and turn without saying a word. “Amo-”

“Don’t call me that. My name is Tommie! Do you understand, Mr. O’Hara? Tommie. Not Amor, not mi corazón. None of those nicknames. You don’t get that privilege after what you fucking did.” You snap at him, causing Miguel to flinch.

“I’m sorry. But I can explain.” You roll your eyes at him and you march to your apartment with Milo tucked in your arms.

You go to slam the door but Miguel stops it and you go to snap at him but he raises his hands to show he means no harm. Instead of arguing, you tell him to close the door before Milo gets out again.

He does what he’s told and you place Milo down on the floor in front of you. He jumps down and he circles Miguel. “Hola niño pequeño. How are you?” Miguel says as he scoops Milo up in his arms.

“Milo isn’t friendly. He loves to scratch, especially at peoples eyes.” You tell Miguel. Milo, the little traitor licks Miguel’s nose and stands on his shoulder.

You narrow your eyes at the cute little monster. “You sleep on the couch tonight.” He gives a cute meow and Miguel picks him up and rubs his belly as Milo goes to lick his fingers. “Your mom is mad at me, do you think you can help me out?”

“First things first, you talking to my roommate kitten isn’t going to get you off of the hook, Mr. O’Hara. He is in the apartment, you can leave.”

You turn away from him and get your pizza and garlic knots. “That smells good, are you and Milo going to eat that?” Miguel asks as he leans against the wall and holds Milo close. You see him from the corner of your eye and you keep the scowl on your face.

“You get one small tiny slice, a glass of tap water and a crumb of my garlic knots. After that you take your crack back to your place.” You say as you motion him to follow you into the kitchen.

He places Milo down and he watches you as you grab two plates from the cabinets. “We wash our hands in this apartment, Mr. O’Hara.” You announce to him. “Yes, Ma’am.” Miguel stands up and as you wash your hands, you pass the soap to him. He takes it, as his fingers brush against yours. Those fingers that have touched you. Those fingers that have been on your mind, those fingers that you’ve been tempted to taste.

You clear your throat and you give him a slice. “I’m sorry about leaving like that. I was an ass and if I were you I wouldn’t talk to me ever again either.”

“So I shouldn’t talk to you? Got it.” You say stubbornly. He sighs and you feel a bit bad for making this difficult for him. But he deserved it…a little. “Am-Tommie. If it helps, I’ve been miserable for not talking to you.”

“You have my number, Miguel you could’ve texted me.”

“The phone works both ways, Tommie.” He says as he accepts the pizza from you. You turn away from him because deep down, you’re actually happy that he’s here. In fact this has been the happiest you’ve been in past two weeks.

You grab a pitcher of ice tea and grab two glasses. “Would you like some ice?” You ask as you place the glasses down on the counter. “I thought you were giving me tap water.” He says with a smirk playing across his lips.

“I can give you tap water if that’s what you want, Miguel.” You grab the glass but he gets a hold of your wrist and he gives you a look that says he’s sorry. “Yes, I’ll have ice.” He says as he uses his thumb to rub your inner wrist.

You stand there longer than necessary and just look into his eyes. Why does this all feel so familiar? You go to speak but the glass knocks out of your hand and you expect to hear a crash. But it never comes because Miguel had caught it effortlessly.

He placed the glass on the counter and you gently take your wrist back. “How many would you like?” You ask as you open the freezer door and try to crack the ice cube tray.

You turn and he was right there. “Here let me.” He takes the tray from you and he cracks it. He takes a small piece and he brings it to your lips. It’s an action you’ve done since you were a child.

Whenever you cracked some ice, you would take the smaller pieces and you’d chew on it. You take it from him and he turns away from you, placing ice in both of the glasses.

“How did he…” You whisper as you suck the ice. You walk over and you pour the ice tea in both of the glasses. You two sit down on the stools and as you eat you pass him the chili pepper flakes. “Gracias, mi amor.”

“You’re welcome.” You say as he shakes some flakes onto his pizza. You take a big bite and you hear Miguel cough from the flakes. “Are you sure you’re part Latino? Can’t even handle pepper flakes.” You tease as you reach over and bite his slice. “Hey, that’s mine.” He says with a laugh.

“Well consider me getting my pouring your tea fee.” You joke. “Then what do I get for cracking the ice for you?” He asks as he leans in close to you. “What do you want?” You ask as you take a sip of your tea.

“I think you know what I want, Tommie.” His eyes travels over your body and you feel warm all over and secretly happy you’re not wearing your ratty robe. “Oh I don’t think that’s equal value, Miguel.” He licks his fingers and you can’t help but think of something else you could be sucking.

“I don’t know, that ice was pretty hard to crack. Maybe I can crack something else for you though.” Miguel says as he places a heavy hand on your bare thigh. He squeezes it and you suck your bottom lip.

“Mmm, don’t go sucking that bottom lip, amor.” You release your lip and pout. “Then what should I do with it?” You ask as you open your legs and feel his thumb rubbing your inner thigh. “Let me suck it for you. You know I do love sucking your lips, mostly these.” His hand travels up your thigh and you let out a moan.

Miguel leans in to kiss you but you jump back. “No, no, no. Not like this. We’re staring over and we’re going to start over as friends.” You close your legs and scoot your chair back from him.

“As friends. Good.” Miguel says as he keeps eyeing you like a hungry dog. “Yes, friends. So how was your day?” You ask as you bounce your leg. “It was miserable in the beginning, all because I mistreated my friend.”

“Oh! Well I hope you groveled and got on your knees to get her forgiveness.” You say as you continue to bounce your leg. “I don’t mind groveling. But I do know she loves when I’m on my knees.” The swallow you made was definitely loud enough for Miguel to hear.

You look at him and Miguel was no longer touching his food, instead he was standing up and letting his chair scrape across the floor. “If you want to be friends, then that’s fine. But I don’t want to be friends. I want you, and I’ll never leave the way I did, Tommie. Now I don’t know about you but I’ve been thinking about the taste of your pussy for the past two weeks and to know the only thing stopping me is your consent and those shorts is making me a bit crazy. So do I have your consent? If no then I’ll unders-”

“Miguel shut up and fuck me.” When you give him the green light he pounces and he lets his chair fall on the floor as he pulls you in.

He lifts you up and he pins you against the refrigerator. He kisses your lips and your hands work on getting his shirt off. “Mmm, Tommie where is your bedroom?” He asks as he sucks your bottom lip. “Down….the hall.” He cups your ass under your shorts and starts walking out of the kitchen. You manage to get his shirt off and you toss it. As you walk pass you grab your glass of ice and Miguel kisses your lips again, twirling his tongue with yours. You suck it and you grab the wall. “That way.” You tell him.

He kicks your door open and then kicks it shut once he’s inside. Miguel places you down on your feet and he looks down at you. “Eres tan hermosa.” He goes to kiss you but you press your fingers against his lips. “I need you to take off these jeans, and take off these boxers.” You tell him as you take a piece of ice into your mouth.

He doesn’t say a word, he simply just does what you’ve asked of him and he stood there like a chiseled stoned god. You press your hand against his taught stomach and he sits down on your bed causing it to creak.

You lower yourself onto your knees and press his thighs apart. He leans down and he kisses you, sucking and biting at your bottom lip as he reaches under your t shirt, massaging your right breast.

You break the kiss first and you grab another piece of ice. “You know, if I would've known you were just down the hall from me, I would’ve invited you over sooner. And we could’ve done this." You press the ice cube against the head of his dick and you watch Miguel’s eyes flutter closed.

“I’ll…remember that when I need a cup of sugar, mi corazón.” He lets out a soft moan and you grip him in your hand. God he was huge, how was this going to fit in your mouth? Let alone inside of you?

You needed at least two hands to hold him properly. So you popped the ice into your mouth, took him in both of your hand and you rolled the ice with your tongue over the tip.

You let the head and the ice past your lips and you suck slowly so you can get use to the size. “Una chica tan buena para mí. My good girl.” You look up at him and see his eyes full of lust. You then suck a bit faster, letting the ice melt away and Miguel lets out a whimper.

You decide to take him in your throat and you feel the tickle in your throat. The gag reflex. But you push past it and Miguel runs his fingers through your hair. “Mine, all fucking mine.” He says as he caresses your face.

You slowly start to bob your head up and down which causes pre to leak from Miguel. You taste it and he shutters. “Amor, amor you don’t have to do…th…that.” You were sucking and using your tongue at the same time which was starting to cause your throat to get tighter.

You don’t answer him, you just keep going. Keep sucking. You see he’s breathing heavy and he tries to move you off but you pin his arms down. Which was ridiculous because you knew he was the stronger one.

Then again maybe he’s weak around you.

He whines about how good your throat feels on the tip and he keeps still so he doesn’t hurt you. You look up into his eyes and you see the lust and want. You try to deep throat him but you feel yourself about to choke. “S…stop. Stop Tommie. Don’t hurt yourself.” Miguel moves you back and you have drool down your chin.

“But I want more, I want you to fuck my throat.” You say staring down at his hard thick dick. “I know, but baby next time. We have all the time in the world. Come here.” He helps you off of your knees and he sits you on his lap.

You spread your legs and his dick was pressed against the front of your shorts. “You feel that?” He presses it up harder against you and you let your head fall back and moan. “Yes, I do.”

“You want this inside of this little pussy don’t you?” You nod, looking into his ruby eyes. “I don’t think you do, amor. I think it’s too big for you to handle.”

You pout and caress his cheek. “I want you, I want you inside of me. I want you to fuck me till I can’t stand. Miguel please.” You beg as you flick your tongue out against his puffy bottom lip.

“Esa boca tuya...it’s gonna get you in trouble.” He says as he sucks your tongue. You moan and flick your tongue against his teeth. “I think my mouth is worth the trouble.” You say to him. You feel his hands grip your thighs and that’s when you hear your shorts rip. You don’t even both to look down, you can feel that he has it positioned right against you.

He slaps the head against the head of your clit and you let out a moan. “Relax for me, Tommie. I want this to feel good. Let me help you feel good.” You nod and as he slides his dick in you, your mouth forms a big O and you grip his forearms.

He hisses and moans how tight you are against your neck. He thrusts in slowly and you rest your body against him. He picks up his pace a little and turns your head so that he can kiss you.

“Does this hurt? Please let me know if I’m hurting you.” You shake your head. “Issgood.” You moan out as you take his hand and bring it to your clit. He rubs it slowly as he thrust in a bit faster.

“God I could fuck you for hours, mi princesa.” He continues to rub your clit as he grips your waist with the other hand. You were in heaven right now, getting your pussy filled while inhaling this man scent. You were in such lust, your legs were aching.

His thrusts start to get animalistic and you can feel his teeth starting to scrape gently across your brown skin.

You lean your head back against his shoulder and you moan out the first thing that comes to mind. “Do it…I want you to.” Miguel’s breathing starts to become heavy and his grip on you feels as if it’s going to leave bruises.

“Whatever you want, amor. I’ll do it. Whatever you want.” His voice sounds harsh and his starts to rub you slower as he thrusts faster, which makes your body start to shake. “Bite me…please bite me.” You moan out as your eyes roll back from him fucking you like a rag doll.

He lets go of your waist and he grips your shoulder. You feel the sharp pain for only a second and you feel not just his fang like teeth biting down on your shoulder, but you feel him coming deep inside of you. You groan out a few words in gibberish and you come hard.

You feel him let go and your body feels weak against him. He leans his head against your back as you feel warm liquid roll down your breasts. When you finally feel some strength enter your body you see four bite marks on your shoulder.

Before you can open your mouth, Miguel licks it clean and he slides out of you. You wince and he places you on the bed. From his body language you can tell he was going to bolt.

And you were right he stands up abruptly and he was about to leave but you grab his hand. “Stop. Don’t you dare leave me again.” You say in a command you didn’t know you could muster.

“It’ll be wise for you to let go, amor.” Miguel says in a strange tone. “I’ll let go when I know your aren’t going to leave me…” His shoulders were tense and you stand up trying to look Miguel in the eyes. But he turned his face.

“Miguel look at me.” You say to him. He looks away and this time you reach up and grab a hold of his face. “Look at me, please.” Your voice cracks and he looks down at you.

He had the same face you saw back from the club only this time he looked vulnerable. Your grip on him loosens and you give a gentle smile. “You are so pretty.” You tell him.

He bursts out laugh and you see his four fangs in the moonlight. His laugh was contagious because your started laughing as well. “You, are so odd, amor.” Miguel says as he wipes the corner of his eyes.

“Well I’m sorry I had to say the first thing that came to mind and you look pretty.” Miguel rolls his eyes. “I’m a man, I’m not meant to be pretty.”

You place your hands on your hips. “Well to me you are pretty, Miguel O’Hara.” You smile at him and you take a step forward. Carefully because you don’t know if he still might leave.

“May I?” You ask as you reach up. You can see the hesitation in his face and you reach back. “You don’t have t-” He takes your hands and places them on his face. He slowly opens his mouth and he shows you his teeth. You don’t say a word. Instead you rub your fingers against his four fangs. They feel sharp and they should scare you, but oddly enough you like them.

“Does that mean I’m going to turn into a vampire?” You finally ask. He gets a hold of your hands and he kisses each finger. “No mi corazón, you won’t turn into a vampire, because I am not one.”

“Then what are you?”

“Oh I’m something much worse than that.” You furrow your brows trying to get an answer out of him but he isn’t budging. “Does it hurt? Your fangs?” He shakes his head. “Are you hurt? I didn’t mean to bite you that hard. I was kind of lost in the moment.”

You feel your face get hot as you shake your head. “No, it…felt good.” He crouched down and and study’s your face. “Are you hurt down there?” He asks. You look down at your feet and shake your head again. “No, that felt good too. Could we?”

Miguel laughs again and holds a hand over his stomach. “Of course you’d want to have sex again. And I want to but right now, I’m…a little too excited in another sense. And you look tired.”

“No I’m not.” You yawn and you hate that your body betrayed you. “Come, come. Let’s get you into bed.” He leads you to your bed and helps you in.

“But I have more questions.” You tell him. “I know you do, and I’ll have answers for you in the morning.” He leans down and kisses your forehead and before he leans back you grab his arm. “Miguel…I forgive you.” You tell him.

He gives you a warm smile. “Thank you.” He says as he searches your eyes. “W…will you be there when I wake up?” You ask, not wanting him to leave. Because maybe this is a dream and if it is, you didn’t want to wake up.

“I’ll stay the night. Now give me a second.” You let him go and he looks around the room. He finds his boxers and you watch as he puts them on. He leaves the room for about ten minutes and when he comes back. He hands you a glass of water and he crawls under the covers and lays beside you.

“Is this better?” He asks as you take a sip of water and place the glass on your nightstand. You nod and curl up close to him. You place your hand against his bare chest and maybe it’s the trick of the light or maybe you’re just tired. But you see a ring on your finger as you look at your hand.

You blink and the ring was no longer there. “Night, Miguel.” You whisper as your body relaxes. “Good night, mi amor.” Miguel says as he pulls you close to his body.

The last thing you think of is if this is a dream, you just didn’t want to wake up…

Previous , Next

[jemichi90]

okay OP, in your recent art you mentioned that "you will explain if needed" and gave a detailed explanation of what might have happened (to Charlie and Maxwell).

I'd LOVE to hear more of your thoughts, and the "explanation" that you said you'd provide (⁠ﾉ⁠◕⁠ヮ⁠◕⁠)⁠ﾉ⁠*⁠.⁠✧

ps i really like your art.

Oh! Hello there! 👀

And yes indeed I did. Alright then, get ready for the brainrot. xD

For a long time I've thought that Charlie died and came back wrong, and in the recent updates there have been several things hinting at it.

Here is a list of the ones I can remember right now:

Maxwell says ”There's a story behind that...” when inspecting a touch stone.

After the recent update, the ”dark side” Winona can sense traces of Charlie on the touch stone, confirming it's related to her (the quotes vary).

In the Encore animated short, there is a brief flashback of Charlie with the Ancient Fuelweaver behind her, and then her Chess piece is seen falling and sinking inside a black square on the board - some heavy symbolism there, sparing us from the gory details, I guess...

In Charlie's stageplay, the doll that represents her breaks, but she's brought back to life by the Mirror (Them?) - alive but different, as she says.

And then there are things that fall more into the headcanon territory, until more evidence comes up that either proves or debunks those ideas entirely, but I'll explain those as well, since they heavily influece my art inspiration.

I subscribe to the idea that the two characters in the ancient murals represent Maxwell and Charlie themselves in their early years in the Constant (but depicted by the locals that were unfamiliar with human anatomy). Time moves differently in that world so it could have been thousands of years ago, but the two made contact with the locals and briefly improved their life through the use of Their magic – until it backfired and the entity that must have been sealed for a reason broke free. Assuming the character with the torch really is Charlie, she died protecting Maxwell from the consequences of his own mistakes. In the final mural image, only her cracked head can be seen.

Another headcanon I have comes from the fact that one of shadow Charlie's arms seems to be entirely made of shadows (curiously, there are also arm bones attached to the touch stone, although they could have belonged to a pigman too, like the heads), so I think that whatever happened to her basically shattered her to pieces, and some pieces may still be missing - like that arm. But details like this are only a headcanon for now.

This also falls in the time period between 1906 and 1910-ish, when apparently some crazy stuff happened that Klei hasn't showed us much about – yet (according to their own post some years ago). ^^

So based on all this, my idea is that Maxwell summoned the Fuelweaver (as seen in the murals), but he messed up big time and Charlie got caught in the crossfire trying to protect Maxwell. She died a gruesome death (that may have torn her to pieces even more brutally than in my drawing). Maxwell in his desperation made the touch stone in a hurry (which is why it looks so rough compared to all his other constructs), carried what was left of Charlie there, and made a deal with Them to bring Charlie back to life no matter the cost. And they did. They just didn't bring her back exactly like she used to be, and she would probably fall to pieces and die instantly if she was separated from the entity that she now shares the body with...

I think Maxwell had been able to move freely in the Constant (maybe even out of it, based on his disappearances earlier) until then, but deals like that come with a price, so he lost his freedom and became Their tool (sold his soul to save Charlie?). Or something like that anyway.

There are also the parallels between Charlie and Abigail with their connection to their special flowers, as highlighted in the newest animated video. Charlie just might be another ghost inside a flower herself, but thanks to Them, she got to keep her body, or at least a form that resembles her body.. But I prefer to think that her actual broken body is still a part of the deal, as messed up as that is. We already know that They can keep a body that should have died a long time ago alive for an eternity, thanks to Maxwell. When he was released from the Nightmare Throne and time caught up to him, he didn't just die, he turned to a skeleton that crumbled to dust in an instant..! That's some old corpse, but he'd been conscious all that time because They wouldn't let him die.

So yeah, these happy thoughts inspired that piece. I might draw more about that if I still feel like it later. :D

[bakugoushotwife]

TLC

a/n: this lovely lil comfort fic was requested by my lawfully wedded wife, @keigotakamiz !! i know hawks if your brainchild, so i hope i did him justice! as for everyone else, i know i know, a sfw fic???

pairings: keigo takami (hawks) x fem!reader

cw: periods, comfort, just fluff tehee

wc: 2k

Keigo was extremely perceptive. He may have a carefully curated persona for the other pro-heroes and the hero commission, and that was not one of a loving and considerate partner. But for you, his character was thrown out the window. He was empathetic, highly in tune with you and actually a very doting and caring man. That’s why he was so anxious, you haven’t been yourself all day. Your replies have been short and almost angry with him while he’s been on patrol, and you turned down every option for lunch he offered. This was utterly unlike you, his easygoing, warm, and bubbly girlfriend. So he cuts his patrol short, Mirko owes him one anyway, she’ll take over. He realizes what must be interfering with his pretty girl’s mood, so he stops to get you the food he knows you’ll like because it’s the only thing you ever crave on your period. He takes the liberty to get some other stuff too, some flowers just to see you smile, a few sweet snacks for after lunch, and the ugliest stuffed animal he could find, an inside joke for the two of you. It started years ago, when you were both still teenagers. He found a Frankenstein-esque plush and held it up next to his face, claiming it was his twin. Ever since then, you’ve gifted each other horrendous stuffed animals just to get the other one to laugh. 

He’s hoping this plan will be foolproof, cutting his day short to come check on you was rarely something you took as a good thing, never wanting to be the reason that he didn’t take his job as seriously as you would hope. However, he felt like this was a special exception, given your curt texts and irritated looking snapchats. He takes the bags and carefully secures them, flying over to your place to get there as quickly as possible. He ducks inside through the open window, looking around your vacant living room and kitchen. He tucks his wings back down, not noticing anything out of place. He approaches your closed door, extending his hand to push it open. His suspicions are confirmed by the darkness of your room, the curtains drawn tightly and the TV on low volume. You were splayed out on the bed, cuddling a pillow for dear life. At the sound of your door creaking open, you sit up quickly, prepared to chuck the pillow at your intruder. 

Your arm falls to the side when you see your boyfriend standing in the doorway, slightly illuminated by the light in the hall. He closes his eyes and gives you a sweet soft smile, holding the shopping bags up by his face. 

“Hey pretty girl. I thought you could use some TLC.” He hums, closing the door behind him before making his way to the edge of your bed. Your irritated gaze slightly softens at the sight of him, and you flop back into laying down, groaning aloud. 

Your back is turned to him, arms still wrapped tightly around that pillow. He sighs a bit. You’re definitely on your period. He reaches his hand out to rest on your hip, squeezing the bone gently. He pushes his glasses up to function as a headband, and he tugs his earmuffs down around his neck. 

“I brought you some food.” He coos, a singsong lilt to his voice as if he’s enticing you to eat. 

You groan again, flailing your body against the pillow. “Don’t wanna eat.” 

“Yes you do, you just don’t wanna sit up.” He chuckles out knowingly, his gloved fingers wrapping around your wrist to pull you into a seated position. You certainly don’t help him at all, all your body weight working against him. He sighs, moderately amused by you. He knows better than anyone how clingy you tend to be around this time of the month. You’re powerful and independent, all things he values about you, but he can’t deny how nice it feels to be needed, even if you were playing hard to get. You wouldn’t admit it, but he’d ask anyway.  “Aw, babygirl, did you miss me?” 

You huff, rolling your eyes at him before snatching the bags he brought. You squirm under the covers, a sure sign that you’re pleased by his offering. You fished out your food and some medicine he brought, and finally, your gaze towards him becomes loving, and you lean into his body. He smiles, knowing you missed him more than anything, and while all these goodies were nice, all you ever wanted was him by your side. Sure, you’ll feign annoyance in the fact he took the rest of the day off to hold you and eat shitty convenience store snacks, but after that, you’ll cry your annoyance out in his shirt and then fall peacefully asleep to him telling you all about patrol. 

“Somebody definitely missed me.” He gleams, a shit-eating grin splayed across his cheeks as he presses a kiss to yours. 

You hum in agreement, popping the pills for some relief and picking at the food he brought you. He reached over you and grabbed the bag, digging out the ugly stuffed animal he brought you. It was supposed to be some sort of bird, he thinks, but the way it was printed across the fabric made it look more like a feathered…deer or something. What a perfect gift. He holds it up excitedly. 

“Another one to add to the collection, it made me think of you.” He jests, setting it in your lap. He watches you in adoration, the giggle you give him after you see it was worth any attitude he needed to disarm to get to his sweet girl again. 

You pick up the stuffed animal and hug it close, chuckling at the ugly thing. “Say you, I’m pretty sure this was a misprint of your merchandise.” You tease, checking the tag to confirm your suspicions. Now you’re howling, the ugly stuffed animal was no animal—it was a severely fucked up version of your superhero man. 

He yanks it back from you to see the tag himself, shaking his head at his hero name scrawled across the label. He’s chortling too, horrified by such a mistake but glad it could bring you such joy. Laughter is the best medicine after all, aside from snuggles, of course. You reach over and tug the toy back, cuddling it back to your chest. 

“This is my prized possession now.” 

He rolls his eyes, taking the opportunity to properly remove most of Hawks’ uniform, placing his glasses, earmuffs, and gloves on the bedside table. He shrugs out of his heavy coat and slips out of his boots, tossing the fabric to the floor. He’s certainly not getting out of bed now, not when you’re eating willingly and leaning into his side, an appetizer to cuddling. You groan at the feeling of another cramp rolling through, the medicine not kicking in yet. You pout, your bottom lip wavering and wobbling as you remember how bad the day has been, and that Keigo must have taken the day off to come to your rescue too, and you laid out of work! 

He knew it was coming, so he turns his body a little more to give you access to his chest, where you promptly bury your head under his guidance. His hand comes up to secure you there, resting on the back of your head. The sounds of your little sobs and sniffles soon follow, and he nearly chuckles at how you try to quieten yourself even after all this time. He figures you’re a bit embarrassed to be vulnerable, and he supposes that bit still applies to him as well. But still, you were a leading lady on your own, perhaps it made you feel a little silly to reduce yourself to needing his comfort, so he wouldn’t rub it in too bad. 

“Oh, c’mon babe. Let loose. It’s just you and me anyway, let me be your lil tissue.” He hums encouragingly, his other hand rubbing circles in your back. 

“It’s just be-been such a r-r-rough day!” You stutter through your tears, your wails certainly increase in loudness though, and your hands grasp at his black and yellow turtleneck. He hums through it, knowing you just needed to get it out for a second. 

“I bet, sweets. I’m sorry you’re feeling so bad, but you know I’m not going anywhere ‘til you feel better.” He says, leaning back a little so he could see your face. He smiles sympathetically, holding your tear-stained cheeks in his warm hands. “And before you even start, Mirko owed me a favor anyway so everything’s covered.” 

You smile softly at his comforts, your eyes fluttering shut from the sweet paths his thumbs rubbed in your skin. His smile spreads a bit, and he leans forward to kiss your forehead. 

“Wanna lay down? I’m multi-use, tissue, wallet, sex machine, heating pad, etc, etc.” He smirks a bit, laying back against your impossibly comfortable pillows. He understood why you clung to one until he got here. “C’mere, wanna hold you.” He says a little bit more commanding, just in case you were thinking of being difficult. 

You laugh softly, crawling on your hands and knees back up to your positioning on the bed. He lay on his back, his arms spread to the side as he waited for you to pick exactly how you wanted to curl up on him. He gives you such a kind smile, amber eyes twinkling with his adoration for you. You can’t help but return his grin, his energy always contagious. He reaches out for your hip, tugging you closer to him. You both snicker a bit as you fall the short distance to his chest, laying with your top half stomach down on top of him, legs tangled together in an effort to create maximum comfort. 

“There. Much better, now, huh?” He quizzes, the pads of his fingers smoothing circles into your lower back. You nod, heaving out a long sigh as you snuggle your face into his warmth. 

He knew it wouldn’t be long until you fell asleep, and the prospect made him smile. Whether you ever said it or not, being the only person that could ease your pain and lull you back to sleep was the highest of achievements in his book. He would relish the way you snore lightly and the way you would squirm closer and closer to him as if you wanted to be in his skin. He’ll flip on a show to watch, mostly just for the background noise, because he would watch you sleep. You always looked so peaceful, the stress lines in your face relaxed and your nose twitching on occasion. You were a work of art, maybe a difficult one, but his nonetheless, and he wouldn’t trade this for anything. He prided himself. He can read all your signs, know exactly what you need, and be that. It was the only thing he really wanted to be good at, and luckily he seemed to be a natural at it. He looks down, and sure enough, your lips are parted and barely audible snores slip out. He smirks, and turns the TV up a little, his eyes comfortably watching you sleep until a nap claims him, too.

[gyeomsweetgyeom]

[6:19 pm]

cw: mostly angst, i said shit a few times, read more bc she's a little long

Being in a relationship with Jeno was much different than being just friends. He still knew you better than anyone else thanks to many years of friendship, but that didn’t mean there weren’t difficulties in the relationship, especially so early on.

There was the issue in the first few months of lack of affection. Going from friends to lovers was simple sure, the titles changed, but Jeno was still treating you like a friend at first. He showed you almost no affection which made you question whether or not you were really even in a relationship. You both talked it out, and the problem was resolved.

Now there was the very apparent issue of being busy. When you were just friends it was easy to just take a break from each other until the stress was gone or you were both less busy, but that’s not how you wanted your romantic relationship to work. You weren’t trying to point fingers at just Jeno, you were busy too, but it had come to a head about a month ago when Jeno had forgotten your birthday.

You were never one that was for big celebrations on your birthday, but you were kind of excited to see how your birthday with Jeno as your boyfriend would be different. The difference had been that he miraculously remembered the dinner he had helped plan with your friend group and showed up 30 minutes late. He was able to recover from that with a lot of groveling, apologies, and a day fully dedicated to you.

Needless to say he felt very bad and had promised to never make a mistake like that again. But here you were, on your one year anniversary sitting in your favorite diner, alone.

You had both agreed on nothing big, your anniversary fell in the middle of the week and he had been so stressed and busy with work. You hadn't seen him in person for just over a week, just facetimes and text conversations that were always short because he fell asleep 90% of the time.

You had both made the plans for dinner a few days ago, he had confirmed the time and told you that he couldn't wait to see you, only after he made you promise you hadn't gotten him anything. You had lied, of course you got him something, he just wouldn't be getting it today now.

You gave him a 20 minute grace period, maybe practice was running long and you'd be getting a text soon. Then 40 minutes passed with no communication and you just ordered for yourself. Then an hour later with nothing from Jeno, you paid your bill and went home. He hadn't responded to any of your texts and your calls went straight to voicemail.

Unfortunately for you, you could tell from Instagram stories that Jeno was very much safe and having fun with his friends drinking beer and bowling like it wasn't your anniversary. To say you were furious would be an understatement. He made the plans, he wanted to go out even though you insisted on just doing something intimate at home, he left you sitting alone in a restaurant feeling sick to your stomach with nerves over whether or not he was ok.

The next day, you ignored his texts, letting him know with one text that you were fine but needed some space from him to clear your head. He had spammed you with confused texts asking what he did, if there was anything he could do, if there was anything you needed, which though sweet, just deepened the hole he dug for himself. He still had no idea.

Now, you were sitting on your couch watching your favorite guilty pleasure reality show when there was s series of heavy knocks against your door. You heard your name, "Can you just let me know that you're ok? You've been ignoring me all day."

You scoffed, he didn't like it when the shoe was on the other foot? Serves him right. He persisted with his knocking making you sigh with a roll of your eyes before you walked over to the door and pulled it open.

"Oh, thank goodness. Why have you been ignoring me? What did I do?" Jeno questioned.

You turned and grabbed his neatly wrapped gift, pushing it into his chest, "I don't know, how about you ask the guys? Happy anniversary, Jeno."

The door closed, as he stared blankly at the door with his jaw hanging. Shit.

He started again with the knocking, his mind running a million miles a minute trying to think of some way to fix this. Of course you didn't answer. Hell, he wouldn't open the door if he was in your shoes either.

The knocking had stopped, which saddened you because Jeno had put so little effort into fixing things. You felt like you had done a good job at stopping the tears, but now you couldn't help it. Maybe you were better as friends, maybe being in a relationship had completely ruined all the history you had together, maybe that was Jeno leaving your life for good.

You openly sobbed, doing nothing to fight the endless stream of tears or loud sobs.

You didn't even know how long you had been crying when a knock came from the door. It was probably one of your neighbors begging you to shut up because your ugly sobs were getting irritating.

You wiped your face and stood straight, ready to apologize when you faced them, but it wasn't a neighbor. It was Jeno, "Can I come in? Please."

You stepped aside, watching as he paced across the length of your living area. "I don't know where to start," he mumbled to himself.

"Ok, then I'll start. Do you even want to be in a relationship with me?" You asked.

He froze, looking up from the carpet with a hurt look on his face, "Baby, of course I do. Why would you even ask me that?"

"Things were easier when we were just friends Jeno, you have to admit that. There was less pressure on us to put any effort for anything. There have been so many issues between us since we started dating, and I don't know if I want to keep putting our friendship at risk if I'm going to keep getting disappointed and hurt."

"Keep hurting you?" Jeno questioned out loud.

"For the first four months of us dating you wouldn't kiss me or hold my hand and I was the one who planned all our dates. Even though you were the one to ask me out and you knew how hesitant I was for things to change between us. You forgot my birthday and showed up to a dinner you helped plan half an hour late, and a year into this you ditched me on our first anniversary to hang out with our friends when you planned the date. I was worried sick wondering if you were even safe, blowing up your phone only to see that you were perfectly ok getting drunk while I sat alone in a restaurant." You told him.

He sighed, taking a second to gather his thoughts, there was no use in him arguing, because you were right. "I know me saying sorry isn't going to fix things, but I still feel like I should say it. You're right, I've been a shit boyfriend, but I want to be with you."

"You keep saying that but then you continue to mess up bigger than the time before and I get more hurt, I don't want to keep getting hurt Jeno."

He pulled you into his embrace, pressing a kiss to the crown of your head, "I don't want to keep hurting you. You deserve so much better than me, I know that, but I also know how much I love you and it will always be you for me. There is no combination of all the letters of any language that could put into words the way you make every time I think of you. You're on my mind every second of everyday, I see you in the sunshine on a sunny day, I see you in the flowers that bloom in the warm weather, and the plant you make me keep in my room. I see you in all the little things that make life so great. I never want to lose you."

You shed a few tears, tilting your head back to look him in the eyes, "I need you to show me that then Jeno, I need you to try because I don't know how much more I can keep letting you get away with."

He pressed a gentle kiss to your lips, "I'll make it up to you and be the best boyfriend and best friend all in one. You're it for me baby, and I'm going to show you that."

You nodded against his chest, "I'm trusting you with my heart, Jeno."

[merp-blerp]

My Gaylor Journey: A Year Later 🌈

So, I posted about my Gaylor opinions a year ago today, my first (intentional) post about Gaylor after properly looking into the community for the first time and eventually joining it. I can't believe it's been that long, Jesus! Feels both too long and yet too short of a time. Well, I want to commemorate that; hopefully, I'll make sense, as there's so much I feel and want to say. I don't think I'll ever truly get it all out of me. But here:

I've enjoyed my time here so much! This period has been surprisingly influential for me. For one thing, I've gained some lovely mutuals! I've never had so many before, so it's new, but I enjoy you all. You guys are so kind, smart, and welcoming!

I've also learned so much about queerness, the queer experience, and queer history that I just never would've known before. And I was already very into queer history before. I adore how I listen to Taylor's music now. "Wrong" interpretation or not, looking at her music from a queer lens is so interesting and so easy. I had looked at it from a queer perspective before, but it was more through my eyes. How could this song relate to me and my queerness? Never in regards to the possibility of Taylor's. It's crazy to remember being younger, listening to her music, and getting queer vibes, but assuming I was projecting. Nice to know I was never alone in my thoughts. Looking at the potential real muses is fun, but just daring to look at things another way has been fulfilling alone. I had no clue I could get more connected with Taylor's work, but somehow this community has proven me wrong.

Being here has also saved me from a lot of worrying probably. The Swiftie community since Joe ended whatever he had with Taylor has been very much so changed since I discovered it in 2018, so while I have nothing against nice Swifties, I'm glad I mostly stick to the Gaylor side of things these days. This fandom's less crowded and I like experiencing Tay's art this way. Being a fan shouldn't feel so crazy. Not too long ago, I was having a conversation with one of my college mentors, who's a Swiftie, the day after TTPD was announced, I believe. We were both excited and I spouted out several watered-down versions of Gaylor theories (can never be too careful who you Gaylor in front of), cutting out the gay parts, and what I thought they meant for what TTPD was expected to be; theories like the burning lover house symbolizing "a new phase of her career" starting with TTPD, or white symbolizing rebirth, blah, blah, you know. And absolutely no offense to my mentor, she's lovely, but I was a bit gobsmacked when her theories only had to do with Joe. It was so... bare-bones. Dry. Boring. Don't you wonder what this means for Taylor herself, not just some boy she may or may not be dunking on? She also had so much seemingly incorrect info about the Toe narrative, saying Joe has a music career (he doesn't???) and that Taylor herself confirmed, word of mouth, that she cheated on Joe, which definitely would not be very characteristically "cryptic and Machiavellian" of her to just confirm like that. Just saying it would not be how she tells us a detail like that. I didn't realize people truly thought she cheated till that conversation. They were just very hard to believe things, whether or not you believe in Gaylor or mainstream narratives. She said a lot of her theories came from TikTok, so misinformation isn't shocking in the slightest; people rarely give good sources over there, so if you find someone who does they seem to be a needle in a haystack, sadly. But that conversation reminded me just how much things have changed, both in me and the fandom. Having fresh relationship drama for the first time in 6 years made some Swifties feral and I'm glad I'm not in it. Getting swept up in that shit is easy and I fear I could've if it weren't for jumping ship in time. As Taylor's signaling gets louder and louder again, possibly gearing up for another coming-out attempt, I think I joined just in time. The goddess of timing found me beguiling, I guess.

It just makes me sad that for these types of fans, Taylor's music and craft aren't about her anymore, but about the guys. It's so weird to see fans introduce new Swifties by going over all the supposed muses instead of talking about her and how this song or album communicates her emotions about a situation. They are deeply missing out. Even when I was only in the general fandom, despite my jokes about the boys, I ultimately thought Taylor was the most important factor in her songs. And it seemed like others thought that too, until all this new Joe-Travis-drama eclipsed that. Or till some bad new fans came in just for the drama and to hop on the more trendy version of "loving" her that's going on now. Or maybe I was in my own bubble and it's always been like this. She was never simply "Mrs. Alwyn" and she's not "Mrs. Kelce" or even "Mrs. Kloss" and it's strange to see her get called that as if she's not TAYLOR FUCKING SWIFT. That's not enough? Maybe I'm taking it too seriously or literally, but it feels so wrong to boil her down to just that. I get where it comes from, Taylor's music appeals to the hopeless romantics such as myself, but there's more to Taylor, us, and life than just romance and being someone's "spouse".

Many Swifties rightfully criticize the media for only focusing on Taylor's alleged love life, but some of them hypocritically do the exact same thing, only I'd argue it's worse because they seem to think they're entitled to do so because they're fans or feel like her friends. We don't know Taylor. I don't know Taylor. If she's openly talking about her album(s)/re-record(s) and the craft behind creating it, or her emotional journey creating it, maybe don't yell out to her face about some trivial thing connecting to whoever you think the muse is (looking at you TIFF 2022—I'll never be over that). I'm glad Taylor seems to recognize this behavior and has at least tried to remind fans of the distance between herself and them in recent years; I mean, compare the songs she wrote for fans years ago like "Long Live" and "The Archer" vs "Dear Reader" and potentially "You're Losing me" and "But Daddy I Love Him" if you interpret them that way. They're all wonderful, but more recent songs remind us that she's a stranger to us as opposed to just talking about how grateful she is for us (which I'm sure she still is). I've mentioned in the past that I think this is part of why the TV eras beyond the Red TV era and promo for TTPD have been so laid back in comparison; she doesn't want fans getting way too into "defending" her from [insert "ex-boyfriend" here] like they did during Red TV's release, so she's making it less "exciting". 1989 TV didn't even get music videos. She's never dignified invasive questions with a response to interviewers, so why would she for some fan(s)? You aren't any more special or any less of a stranger to her than those interviewers were. None of us are, including Gaylors (that's why we can't out her, strangers can't out strangers with only pure speculation).

I find it interesting to see how differently the two sides of this fandom treat the potential ex-muses of songs. In the general fandom, there's a lot of animosity, where swifties love to joke about hating or destroying whomever (and I'm chill with jokes), but sometimes it goes way too far. Many Swifties hate most potential exes, exceptions being people like Harry Styles or Taylor Lautner because they have their own fandoms that tend to overlap with Taylor's. But Gaylors rarely do the exact same with exes. Potential exes aren't brought up unless necessary and I've never seen anyone even jokingly hate anyone purely because they are an ex and therefore bad; it might be around, but the fact that I can't find it nearly as easily is something. We'll hold ex-muses (and Taylor) accountable for potential mishaps in past relationships and that's it. Say what you will about Gaylors, but I've never heard of any Gaylors sending someone like Dianna Agron death threats like some Swifties have done with John Mayer.

One huge thing I was not expecting when joining this fandom was becoming slightly disillusioned by the Swiftie title. Don't get me wrong, I'm fine with being called that, as I know that's what I am ultimately and it's not terrible to be a Swiftie inherently by any means. But being opened up to the deep homophobia, bullying, and even doxxing in the Hetlor community has really made me feel odd lumping myself in with "Swifties", as they still call themselves, at times. I don't know how I never stumbled across it when in the general fandom, at least not that I can recall (I feel like I would if I did). From what I gather, Swifties have a rep for being a pretty sweet fandom, and many people are, but I can't help but feel sour about it sometimes after seeing what I've seen from some Swifties. I hope one day the homophobia and just basic vitriol with these types of fans can be lightened up by a cultural shift or something. Way too many people are unaware of the layers of the conversation about outing, closeting, speculation, etc. I myself wasn't before entering the Gaylor fandom and I'm glad I am now. I knew lots of history, but didn't properly apply it to how we can see things now. It's very odd, almost embarrassing, looking at some of my old Swiftie posts now, especially ones about Joe and Gaylors, because I don't feel that way anymore. I was never hateful, but I had some wrong ideas. I guess I'll keep them up though, in order to be honest with myself and anyone who wants to maybe dig into my blog. Plus there's not actually anything to be too embarrassed about from what I remember, it's just a very "in my head" type of thing. I'm glad I'm not as emotionally invested in Taylor's supposed exes anymore. Even when it comes to Karlie as an LSK, I'd be fine if Kaylor was broken up or never together. Surprised and maybe a little sad, but I expect to be okay if that were to be a revelation. It feels much healthier.

I even suspect that being here has helped me with accepting my own queerness further, and I thought I had fully done that already. I guess internal acceptance is a forever journey, at least for me. I came out to my grandparents mid last year and early this year, something I was planning on delaying till I went away to college (I'm doing college virtually for now). I think this community helped me.

I deeply wish that both sides of Taylor's fandom could come together, hear each other, and co-exist. I hate that Gaylors are so vilified for simply suggesting a random lady might be queer as if seeing potential hints of queerness in other people and pondering their sexuality hasn't always existed in queer culture and continues to prevail. We still see primarily femme sapphics ask how they can signal that they're queer without saying so, much like what Taylor might be doing with her hairpins and games. Why is it wrong to be on the other end of that interaction, seeing and acknowledging the signals? In my personal opinion, I think it's at least a bit homophobic in and of itself to say that queer people must come out in a loud, upfront, obvious-to-straights way in order to be seen as queer, otherwise they are forcibly slated as the default of straight. Yes, some people have a boundary about speculation, and that should 100% be respected for those folks, but Taylor specifically has set no such boundary as of me typing this out. Why still force her into the straight box when she's never plainly said she's straight, always toeing the line no pun intended, not giving any clear answers for now, which she doesn't owe. Honestly, I feel like it's more likely that if she were straight she would have such an issue saying plainly; straight people don't coyly tiptoe around saying they're straight like that, but that's just my perspective. When the discourse around speculation is brought up, I often see people say something along the lines of, "Well, I wouldn't want someone to speculate on me," and that's completely fine to feel, but that's your boundary. Not everyone feels that way. Some want to be seen without a definitive word out of their mouth beforehand. This is coming from someone who, when offline, sometimes gets a bit internally antsy when people inform me they could tell my lesbian-ness with or without me intending to signal, though not offended. Yet I also sometimes hate to tell people in verbal words. It can be exhausting, not in just a scary way, but in the sense that it can be akin to explaining that you breathe; being queer just comes so naturally for me because it is natural, so explaining gets tiresome, especially since straights never have to. For me, and in general, speculation is not as black and white as "you should never do it" or "you should always do it". You shouldn't cross people's boundaries, but you shouldn't assume people's boundaries either; that can be just as wrong and dangerous.

Gaylors and Swifties are the same fandom, so why can't we act like it, even when we disagree?

Everyone and everything I've involved myself in here has been so enriching and even if all the Gaylor theories were somehow proven wrong, I wouldn't regret my time here. It's meant too much to me. I'm very grateful and excited to see how this progresses for me. I can't find enough words to express it.

To any rude Hetlors out there, I hope you find it in your heart to treat others with kindness instead of throwing shade at those you simply don't understand/agree with. If you're going to hurt others, I don't want anything to do with you. Kindly leave for both our peace of mind.

To the vast majority of you who have been wonderful, welcoming, and kind, especially the ones who were here before I entered the Gaylor fandom, and didn't leave after, I love you all. You can stay. ♥

🩷❤️🧡💛💚🩵💙💜

[opera-ghosts]

By Troy Lennon /Daily Telegraph; May 5, 2018

Gaston Leroux was inspired to write Phantom of the Opera after Palais Garnier accident

WHEN a counterweight crashed through the roof of a Paris opera house, Gaston Leroux stored the story away to help create the Phantom of the Opera.

THERE had long been rumours that a ghost walked the halls of the opera house in Paris, known as the Palais Garnier. Some dismissed it as superstition, but many believe that confirmation came on May 20, 1896, during a performance of the opera Helle, by Étienne-Joseph Floquet. Act one had just finished and the audience had called for an encore from soprano Madame Rose Caron. As she finished her aria a loud noise was heard through the auditorium, followed by a crash and a cloud of dust.

A fire in the roof of the opera house had melted through a wire holding a counterweight for the chandelier. The weight had crashed through the ceiling injuring several people and killing Madame Chomette, the concierge of a boarding house, who was watching her first opera.

Some newspapers reported that the chandelier itself had crashed to the stage. Gaston Leroux, a journalist working for the newspaper Le Matin, read about the accident and used it, and the rumours of a ghost, as inspiration for a story about a disfigured man who menaces the cast and stage crew of an opera company at the Palais Garnier. Titled Le Fantôme de l’Opéra, it was first serialised in the periodical Le Gaulois in 1909 and as a novel in 1910. It was published in English as The Phantom of the Opera.

Leroux, who was born 157 years ago, was mostly known for his detective fiction, which inspired writers such as Agatha Christie. Yet outside France he is really only known for the Phantom, a story that has inspired plays, films and a hit Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.

Gaston Louis Alfred Leroux was born on May 6, 1868. His parents were travelling in a coach from Le Mans to Normandy when they had to stop so his mother could be taken to a nearby house to deliver the baby.

His father was a wealthy shipbuilder and Leroux lived a comfortable childhood, with a love of sailing, fishing and swimming. Straight out of school he went to work as a clerk in lawyer’s office, but spent his spare time writing stories and poetry. He was then sent to university to study law, winning awards and prizes and giving every indication that he was headed for a glittering law career.

But when his father died in 1889, leaving him a million francs, Leroux sank into a life of self-indulgence, gambling, going to the theatre and partying so hard he ended up broke after six months.

Faced with the need to work and frustrated by the legal system, Leroux pursued writing, taking jobs as a theatre critic and court reporter. By 1890 he had become a full-time journalist, impressing his editors by using forged credentials to score an interview with a high-profile prisoner awaiting trial.

His expertise in law also saw him reporting on the Dreyfus Affair, when anti-semitic elements in the French army conspired to accuse Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus of espionage, seeing him drummed out of the army and sentenced to life in prison in 1894. Leroux described Dreyfus’s trial as a farce and was one of the many journalists who campaigned to free Dreyfus.

Leroux also became a foreign correspondent travelling the world, including to Africa and Antarctica. He even reported on the 1905 revolution in Russia, although at times using his flair for creative writing to embellish his copy. At the time he could be relied on to boost circulation with his colourful stories.

But Leroux tired of being at the beck and call of editors, decided to concentrate purely on his forays into fiction. He had been publishing short stories in newspapers for years, so in 1907 he published his first novel, Le mystère de la chambre jaune (The Mystery of the Yellow Room), introducing amateur sleuth journalist Joseph Rouletabille. Inspired partly by his own experiences as a court reporter and Arthur Conan Doyle’s “consulting detective” Sherlock Holmes, it was light on action but struck the right balance of mystery and intellect to appeal to French readers.

He followed this with many other mystery novels featuring Rouletabille but, in between, he wrote other novels, including The Phantom of the Opera.

After several of his works were adapted to film he realised the cinematic potential of his fiction and in 1919 formed a film company with another writer, Arthur Bernede, to make films of his own novels and plays.

In 1922 Leroux gave a copy of Phantom to the head of Universal Pictures, Carl Laemmle, while Laemmle was visiting Paris. It resulted in the 1925 Lon Chaney adaptation, which made Leroux’s name famous outside France and helped him pay off gambling debts.

Some of his other works were also adapted to film in the US, but his detective works, despite winning fans like Christie, were not as popular in the English-speaking world.

Leroux died in Nice in 1927.

[heyho-simonrussellbeale]

Having played parts from Prospero to Stalin, Hamlet and now the poet AE Housman, Simon Russell Beale is convinced he has one of the best jobs in the world. Why? Every new role offers a new area for intellectual investigation, not least when he gets to take on the logical arguments and ‘linguistic fireworks’ of one of his friend Tom Stoppard’s plays, he tells Fergus Morgan

You cannot complete acting – but if you could, Simon Russell Beale would be coming close. Over a three-decade career, he has taken on dozens of classic roles in canonical plays: Konstantin in The Seagull, Ferdinand in The Duchess of Malfi, Oswald in Ghosts, Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard, Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, the title characters of Edward II, John Gabriel Borkman and Uncle Vanya, and loads more.

And, when it comes to Shakespeare, there are few parts the 63-year-old has not played. Hamlet? Tick. King Lear? Tick. Macbeth? Tick. Richard II and Richard III? Tick, tick. Benedick, Iago, Malvolio, Leontes? Tick, tick, tick, tick. Falstaff and Prospero? Tick, tick.

With a theatrical résumé as comprehensive as that, where does Russell Beale go next? In a recent interview with the Telegraph to mark the release of A Piece of Work, the memoir he “slightly sheepishly” wrote, the actor said he would be keen on playing Cleopatra. Why not? It would not be his first foray into gender-swapped Shakespeare: he played both Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Desdemona in Othello as a schoolboy.

“Unfortunately, I wasn’t being serious,” Russell Beale says. “I was being facetious, although I did see Mark Rylance do it 20 years ago and it was sensational. It is one of the great parts, but I don’t think that would work. It would probably be too scary for the audience.

“I would love to do Falstaff on stage as I’ve only done that on film,” he continues. “I would like to do another King Lear. I wasn’t particularly happy with my Macbeth, so I’d quite like to do that again one day. I’m getting a bit old now, though, so it has become slightly difficult. Perhaps one day I should try my hand at directing. I don’t know, really.”

Before he has a go at directing, or revisits Lear, or has a stab at Cleopatra, Russell Beale will be playing poet AE Housman in Blanche McIntyre’s revival of Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love at Hampstead Theatre in north London. Our interview is taking place via Zoom, with Russell Beale – black jumper, big beard – sat in an office somewhere inside the Swiss Cottage venue.

“There’s a very good novel here about Booth, the man who assassinated Lincoln,” Russell Beale remarks, browsing the bookshelves in front of him. “Anyway, nice to meet you.”

Russell Beale’s pre-interview bookshelf inspection confirms what he subsequently says about his character, about his approach to playing parts and about his professional motivations. He is, first and foremost, driven by an insatiable intellectual curiosity. He once described acting as “three-dimensional literary criticism”.

“I have one of the best jobs in the world, really,” he says. “Every single project potentially offers a new area of study. I know that sounds sort of dry, but if someone says: ‘I’d like you to do a play about a poet in the late 19th century who also happened to be the greatest classical scholar of his time,’ I think: ‘Wow.’ And, for a very short period of time, I get to become a bit of an expert on AE Housman.

“Or take Samuel Foote,” he continues, referencing the 18th-century actor and title character of Ian Kelly’s play Mr Foote’s Other Leg, which he played at Hampstead in 2015. “Doctor Johnson called Foote the most famous man in England, but I’d never heard of him. Now I could tell you all about him – where he lived, how he was arrested for sodomy and the legal case that followed. That sort of intellectual buzz is, I think, the most interesting thing of all about acting.”

Different jobs have different intellectual appeals, says Russell Beale. Some plays are stimulating for their historical subject matter. Shakespearean work is all about “digging around in this incredibly complicated, malleable script to find the emotional life of a character”. Other projects are attractive on a conceptual level, he says, like Joe Hill-Gibbins’ drastically cut, fast-forwarded staging of Richard II at London’s Almeida Theatre in 2018.

“I was far too old to play Richard II,” Russell Beale says. “I’d sort of assumed that was one part I would never do. Then along came this director who wanted to do it in a completely different way. It was incredibly cut down. It was staged straight-through with all the other characters milling around on stage. That was the challenge there.”

From screen to Stoppard

Where, then, does Russell Beale’s work in film and television fit in, beyond boosting his bank balance? His screen CV is not as formidable as his theatrical résumé, but it still encompasses Armando Iannucci’s comedy The Death of Stalin, the latest series of HBO’s blockbuster House of the Dragon, and the forthcoming Downton Abbey film.

“I suppose I just do that for fun, although I do have an interest in how those projects work,” Russell Beale says. “Take House of the Dragon. I remember wondering how they physically achieve a show like that. That was intriguing to me. I thought: ‘How the hell do you do a great big castle in a thunderstorm?’ It was this huge set with water literally cascading down the walls. The sheer skill was extraordinary. That was fascinating.”

If any writer could satisfy Russell Beale’s voracious intellectual appetite, it is Stoppard, whose plays frequently dazzle with their virtuosic use of history and intertextuality. Think of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, his existential 1966 riff on Hamlet that echoes Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Or 1972’s metaphysical murder-mystery Jumpers, perhaps the most philosophically and athletically gymnastic play ever written.

Those Stoppard plays are the only two that Russell Beale has performed in until now. He played Guildenstern at the National Theatre in 1995, having previously performed in the play as a teenager, then took on the lead role in Jumpers – the philosopher George Moore – at the same venue in 2003. That production transferred to New York, and provided Russell Beale’s Broadway debut. The New York Times critic Ben Brantley hailed a “dazzling” performance of “sharp inventiveness and peerless emotional depth”.

“I’ve only done two Stoppard plays, but I’ve always been quite fierce in defending him against accusations of being over-intellectualised,” Russell Beale says. “Stoppard is intellectual, of course. He plays intellectual games. But what Stoppard always comes down to is people feeling passionate about something, usually another person. That, I think, is fundamentally the most important thing about his writing.

“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is about two men who are lost in a world they don’t understand,” he continues. “Jumpers is about trying to cling on to a broken marriage. I saw The Real Thing recently at the Old Vic, which I saw with the great Stephen Dillane a couple of decades ago. That play is more directly about love than anything else.”

Playing with words

The Invention of Love, which premiered at the National in 1997, begins in the afterlife. Housman, dead at 77 in 1936, stands on the bank of the mythical river Styx, preparing to board a ferry. The play then unfolds through Housman’s memories of his time studying classics at the University of Oxford, with the older Housman – played by Russell Beale – interacting with his younger self, played by Matthew Tennyson. At the heart of its fizzing academic ideas is Housman’s unrequited love for fellow scholar Moses Jackson.

“The play is very complicated,” says Russell Beale. “This morning, we were rehearsing this very elaborate scene with all these 19th-century academics playing croquet. Stoppard ties in so many references to Victorian cultural icons like Jerome K Jerome and Henry Liddell and Lewis Carroll, too. Everyone has these great arias about philosophy and art.

“Underneath that, though, it is about an old man remembering his love for another man,” Russell Beale continues. “It is about a particular event in their lives, a rowing trip on the river when they were both at Oxford. It is about memory. It is about what you do with a love like that. It is about what a love like that means at the end of your life.”

The “incredible enjoyable” challenge of performing the play, says Russell Beale, is really getting to grips with its intellectual complexities and “linguistic fireworks” – as is the case with most Stoppard plays. If you can master the tongue-twisting dialogue and head-scratching arguments, he says, then the profoundly emotional core of the drama will come.

“Years ago, I remember the actor John Wood, who was one of the great language magicians, talking about Bernard Shaw,” Russell Beale says. “Now, I don’t particularly like Bernard Shaw, but Wood said that if you observe all the punctuations that Bernard Shaw set down as indications of when to breathe and so on, he does the work for you. “It is sort of like that with Stoppard,” Russell Beale continues.

“It is like a technical exercise. You have to end the sentence when it ends and make sure you give yourself gaps to breathe. And then it is about the clarity of the argument. The play does explore emotion. The word ‘love’ is in the title, after all. But performing it is not an emotional thing. It is more about a series of arguments. If you can get the grammatical, syntactical construction of the sentences, and then the actual logic of the argument, then you are on your way.”

It helps, says Russell Beale, that director McIntyre read classics at Oxford herself.

“My God, she does know what she is talking about,” he says. “I have no idea what I’m talking about when it comes to Latin or Greek, but she does have that string to her bow.”

The admiration is mutual. Via email, McIntyre says that she finds Russell Beale “extraordinary”.

“I think he is our greatest living Stoppardian actor,” she writes. “The wit and depth of feeling he brings to the character are breathtaking. It’s a privilege to watch him work.”

It helps, too, that Russell Beale is friends with Stoppard, who turned 87 this year. In fact, he adds, he received a first-hand insight into the playwright’s process of putting The Invention of Love together nearly 30 years ago when performing at the National. “I met Tom, I think, when we did Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,” Russell Beale says. “My memory is that he was writing, or thinking about writing, The Invention of Love at the time, because I remember he gave me a lift home once because he was driving in the same direction, and he started talking about Oscar Wilde and Housman on the way.

“I’ve known Tom for years now,” Russell Beale adds. “He was in last week, actually. He was on great form. He likes revisiting his plays, I think. He reads the script very intently, as if he is rediscovering it. It is rather lovely to see him do that. It’s quite moving, actually.”

Russell Beale was born in Penang in what was then Malaya – now Malaysia – in January 1961, one of six children of military physician Peter Beale, who would later become the British Army’s surgeon general, and his wife Julia, who was also a doctor. He was sent to boarding school, first at St Paul’s Cathedral School, where he was a chorister, then at Bristol’s Clifton College.

It was there that Russell Beale first discovered his love for performance, both theatrical and musical – he is an accomplished pianist, oboist and singer, and frequently presents radio and television shows about classical music. He has often credited a stern English teacher called Brian Worthington with instilling in him that respect for intellectual rigour and academic curiosity.

He went on to study English at the University of Cambridge, where he threw himself into student drama and made friends with Tilda Swinton, then trained at Guildhall, initially as a singer before switching to acting, graduating in 1983.

He started his professional career at Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre, but his big break came two years later with a role in Women Beware Women at London’s Royal Court, alongside a young Gary Oldman. It was not until 1991, however, five years into his long relationship with the Royal Shakespeare Company, that Russell Beale felt like he could fully express himself on stage, when he was cast as Konstantin in a production of Chekhov’s The Seagull staged by the company’s director Terry Hands.

“Until then, I’d done a lot of comic parts,” Russell Beale says. “That was the first time somebody said: ‘No, you can do something serious. You can play someone with an emotional life that is serious.’ Terry did it deliberately, I think. He thought: ‘Here’s this guy who is being typecast and I’m going to cast him against type.’ And that changed my life. It led to people suggesting I do Hamlet and other stuff. I am enormously grateful to him.”

It was Hands, too, who forged one of the great collaborations of Russell Beale’s career, with director Sam Mendes. The pair first worked together at the RSC in the 1990s on productions of Troilus and Cressida, Richard III and The Tempest, then at the National Theatre on Othello in 1997 and, at the Donmar Warehouse, King Lear in 2014 and Twelfth Night in 2002, as well as on the globe-trotting production of The Lehman Trilogy in 2019.

“Sam and I have been doing stuff together for 30 years and it was Terry that put us together,” Russell Beale says. “Sam actually called me when Terry died in 2020. I was in the dressing room for The Lehman Trilogy in New York. He was very emotional. He told me Terry had died and that he was the one who had originally put us together. Terry was the one who said to Sam: ‘I think you’d like that actor over there.’”

There is an alternate reality in which Hands never cast Russell Beale as Konstantin in The Seagull and Russell Beale continued working as a comic actor. He would no doubt have been successful – witness his hilarious turn as spymaster Lavrenti Beria in The Death of Stalin – but he would not have plumbed the remarkable depths he has in this world.

What makes him stand out as an actor – and what has earned him countless accolades, including three Olivier awards, two BAFTAs, a Tony and a knighthood – is his ability to incarnate familiar characters in unexpected ways. He has played the majority of the most famous roles in the classical canon, but his interpretations are always invested with a distinct air of isolation or awkwardness. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that he has frequently approached those roles at an unconventional age.

“In retrospect, my career sort of looks like this marvellous plan, but it wasn’t,” he says. “It was all an accident. I’ve done all the parts at the wrong age. I was a very old Hamlet and a very old Benedick, and a very young Richard III and a very old Richard III.”

Empathy with outsiders

Nicholas Hytner, another director with whom Russell Beale has a long relationship, having starred in his stagings of The Alchemist, Much Ado About Nothing and Collaborators at the National Theatre in 2006, 2007 and 2011 respectively, and, more recently his versions of A Christmas Carol and John Gabriel Borkman at the Bridge Theatre in 2020 and 2022, has said of Russell Beale: “He has extraordinary empathy with outsiders, the wounded, the foolish, the warped and the lonely. He hears their music and can sing it.”

“What did he say?” asks Russell Beale. “I’ve not heard that before. That is the most beautiful, lovely thing to say. And yes, I’m always excited by those characters. The most interesting parts are those that are looking in from the outside or confused about their position. I don’t know what that says about me. I’ve never interrogated it. I refuse to.” 

If Russell Beale does not interrogate his own interest in playing isolated, uncomfortable characters on stage, does he ever interrogate theatre’s wider role in society? “That’s a very interesting question,” he says. “I suppose it is always in the back of your mind. Perhaps theatre is a bit of a sideshow now, although Wicked has just been turned into a film, for God’s sake. The biggest movie of the year started as a theatre show. Perhaps theatre only has a relevance when it is adapted into a medium now.

“No, I don’t think that, actually,” he adds. “That implies it is all about numbers, that something is only important if a lot of people see it. I don’t believe that. I still believe theatre has weight and relevance. I suppose I would fall back on the Tom Stoppard argument in The Invention of Love: ‘There is no little too little to be worth having.’”

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

JWST unveils the mysteries of distant quiescent galaxies: Why do they stop growing?

Galaxies are astronomical objects composed of billions or even trillions of stars. Our Earth and solar system are just a tiny part of the Milky Way; it is one of countless galaxies in the universe. These immense systems are the fundamental building blocks of cosmic structure. During the universe's 13.7 billion-year history, the first few billion years marked a golden age for galaxy formation, when galaxies actively turned their gas reservoirs into new stars.

However, recent discoveries reveal that some galaxies stopped growing as early as 1 billion years after the Big Bang—less than 10% of the universe's current age. These "quiescent galaxies" have become a major astronomical mystery: Why did they stop growing so early?

Now, using data from the James Webb Space Telescope, Prof. Wu Po-Feng at National Taiwan University uncovered the secret behind these early galaxies' rapid shutdown: Their gas reserves were rapidly blown away by powerful forces generated inside the galaxies. The findings are published in The Astrophysical Journal.

The researchers discovered a quiescent galaxy approximately 12 billion light-years away using the spectroscopic data taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. The light of this galaxy originated from a time when the universe was only 1.5 billion years old, around 10% of the current age of the universe.

The research revealed that the star formation rate plummeted dramatically in a short period and now the galaxy has almost stopped growing. Data further indicate that the galaxy's gas is being expelled at speeds of more than 200 kilometers per second, depleting the raw material necessary for star formation.

The study also suggests the presence of a supermassive black hole at the galaxy's center. The immense energy released by the black hole may drive the gas outflow, dispersing the fuel for star formation into space. This galaxy provides critical evidence for understanding the core mechanisms behind the rapid shutdown of star formation in the first billions of years of the universe and an important empirical foundation for developing theories of early cosmic evolution.

This galaxy is currently the most distant massive quiescent galaxy confirmed to exhibit such powerful gas outflows. "With the unparalleled sensitivity of the James Webb Space Telescope, we are not just glimpsing the early universe;" Prof. Wu said, "we begin to decode the physical processes behind its evolution."

He plans to analyze more similar galaxies to determine whether gas outflows are a widespread phenomenon, whether the expelled gas might return to reignite star formation, or whether it will permanently escape, altering the galaxy's ultimate fate. These studies will enhance our understanding of how galaxies transform over time, ultimately shaping the structures we recognize today.

TOP IMAGE: The target galaxy from this study: a quiescent galaxy 12 billion years ago, which is expelling its gas reservoir. This is the most distant example of its kind known so far. Credit: National Taiwan University

LOWER IMAGE: A supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy may be the energy source driving the gas outflows. Credit: National Taiwan University

[on-partiality]

January 22nd, 1782 - The day Philip Hamilton was born!

Happy 242nd birthday to the sad rake! For his birthday I've decided to write about all of the information we know about him from letters sent to him, letters written about him and any other scintilla of information relating to him that I can find!

So, on this day 242 years ago, Philip Hamilton was born. The first son of founding father, Alexander Hamilton and the wealthy Elizabeth Schuyler. He was named after his grandfather (on his mother's side of course), General Philip Schuyler.

The earliest piece of writing we have on the young Philip Hamilton is this snippet of a letter:

'If you are not in the humor to read a long letter do, prithee, give this to the child to play with and go on with your amusement of rocking the cradle. '

This letter's from Mchenry, a doctor and aide of George Washington's, to Alexander Hamilton, written on the 11th of August, 1782. While it's short and just a simple humorous opening to a long letter it does give us the fact that Hamilton watched over his son well so there's that. The next letter is far more detailed because it's written by Hamilton himself and as you're about to read about he was very proud of his son. Here's the letter:

'You reproach me with not having said enough about our little stranger. When I wrote last I was not sufficiently acquainted with him to give you his character. I may now assure you... [h]e is truly a very fine young gentleman, the most agreeable in his conversation and manners of any I ever knew—nor less remarkable for his intelligence and sweetness of temper. You are not to imagine by my beginning with his mental qualifications that he is defective in personal. It is agreed on all hands, that he is handsome, his features are good, his eye is not only sprightly and expressive but it is full of benignity. His attitude in sitting is by connoisseurs esteemed graceful and he has a method of waving his hand that announces the future orator. He stands however rather awkwardly and his legs have not all the delicate slimness of his fathers. It is feared He may never excel as much in dancing which is probably the only accomplishment in which he will not be a model. If he has any fault in manners, he laughs too much. He has now passed his Seventh Month.'

This letter is from Alexander Hamilton to Richard Kidder Meade, written on the 27th of August, 1782 (yes, that is Laurens' death day) If I could find Meade's letter to Hamilton that prompted this letter in response then we could've had another early mention of Philip Hamilton as Hamilton says 'you reproach me with having not said enough about our little stranger', this sentence makes no sense if Meade didn't actually tell Hamilton he hadn't told him enough about his newborn son. From this letter we can conclude the obvious: Hamilton's really god damn proud of his son already, he loves him so dearly and it shows. He already calls him handsome, says he'll be great at anything but dancing and that he's intelligent.

+ Around this time I've heard that Hamilton said something about Philip Hamilton being ' attended with all the omens of future greatness' however I've never seen any picture of a letter that has this sentence in it? I've only heard of this through Tumblr so whether this is an actual quote from Hamilton or something made up is a mystery, if anyone actually has a link to a photo of the original letter or just proof that this was in fact written that'd be great. I've also heard of Hamilton rocking young Philip's cradle for very long periods of time (perhaps this idea came from the Mchenry letter?), yet again I've never seen or read anything that confirms this as true. The next mention of Philip Hamilton I could find in a letter is from Hamiltom to his wife, Betsy.

'My beloved Betsey the fifth day after we set out, the three first days with every favourable circumstance but the two last through very bad weather. I am however as well as I can be absent from you and my darling boy—nor was I ever more impatient to be at home. I can have little pleasure elsewhere.'

The darling boy that Hamilton refers to here is Philip Hamilton, this letter is undated but as founders.archives.gov points out, there is no mention of Hamilton's second oldest child, Angelica, Hamilton cared a lot about all of his kids so mentioning his son but not his infant daughter would be weird unless he hadn't had Angie so this trip would have to have been somewhere in the two years in between when Philip was born and when Angelica was born.

The next letter we have that mentions him is also undated:

'Give my love to my darling Philip & kiss with all possible tenderness the other two. Adieu my dearest angel. Heaven bless you'

His name appears as just a sweet little ending to a letter his father wrote to his mother sometime between May 1786 and April 1788 these dates are once again based on the number of children mentioned in the letter (3) and the time his next child was born. This bit of information is so short I debated even putting it in here but I said all facts about young Philip Hamilton's life and that means all (except for stuff about his death, that seems rather grim to be bringing up on his birthday)!

The next time we hear about Philip Hamilton is in a letter from 1789:

'The good Baron has more than ever rivetted himself in my affection: to observe his unaffected solicitude and see his old eyes brimful of sympathy had something in it that won my whole soul and filled me with more than usual complacency for human nature.'

The letter's about when Philip's aunt Angelica left to go back to London after a trip to America (I think). The only part of this letter that relates to little Philip Hamilton is this little snippet which we can guess is about Philip because earlier in the letter Hamilton refers to him as 'The Baron little Philip'. I thought this sentence was cute because in modern language it's just 'I love my 7 year old son so much, his big ol eyes make me have more hope in humanity :D' It is a little strange that none of Hamilton's other kids are mentioned in this letter though, he had 4 at the time it was written (perhaps I skipped over part of it? Who knows).

Up until this point Philip's been too young and whatnot to go to a boarding school so everything we know about him comes from his father absolutely adoring him but we've gotten to 1791, the year Philip started going to school! And we know he started school in late 1791 because a man who lived in Trenton, where Philip's school was on the 26th of November, 1791, wrote: 'Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton came to town last night they have brought their son to put to boarding school to our Episcopal Church Parson'

I received with great pleasure My Dear Philip the letter which you wrote me last week. Your Mama and myself were very happy to learn that you are pleased with your situation and content to stay as long as shall be thought for your good. We hope and believe that nothing will happen to alter this disposition.

Unfortunately, the letter from Philip that Hamilton's talking about hasn't been found so we can't learn more about his personality from that. But we can tell what it was - at least partially - about, Philip being content with his boarding school.

Your Master also informs me that you recited a lesson the first day you began, very much to his satisfaction. I expect every letter from him will give me a fresh proof of your progress. For I know that you can do a great deal, if you please, and I am sure you have too much spirit not to exert yourself, that you may make us every day more and more proud of you.

This part of the letter shows us how much Hamilton cared about Philip's schooling. He had high expectations for all of his children, wishing them to be the best they could possibly be so he paid a lot of attention to how his kids were doing academically and made sure they did well (The strict study regimens come later on). The 'Master' Hamilton mentions here is William Frazer, a clergyman and episcopal rector. The rest of the letter is just Hamilton asking his son whether he can wait until the upcoming Christmas holidays to go home or if he still wants to be picked up on the next Saturday. The letter was written on the 5th of December 1791 in Philadelphia while Hamilton was working on his 'Report on Manufactures'.

The next bit we have on Philip Hamilton is a letter from Philip himself and the only letter he wrote that we still have today. The letter was written on the 21st of April, 1797, Philip would have been 15 years old and he'd started going to King's college, the same school his father attended two decades before him and his younger brother Alexander Hamilton Jr. started going to the Boarding school at Trenton that his older brother had been to. The letter Philip wrote goes like this:

'Dear Papa:

I just now received the enclosed letter from grandpapa, in answer to a letter I wrote to him, in which he has enclosed to me three receipts for shares in the Tontine Tavern, amounting to £100. I have given the receipts to mama.

I delivered my speech to Dr. Johnson to examine. He has no objection to my speaking; but he has blotted out that sentence which appears to be the best and most animated in it; which is, you may recollect it

“Americans, you have fought the battles of mankind; you have enkindled that sacred fire of freedom which is now,” &c. Dear Papa, will you be so good as to give my thanks to grandpapa for the present he made me, but above all for the good advice his letter contains—which I am very sensible of its being extremely necessary for me to pay particular attention to in order to be a good man. I remain your most affectionate son

P.S. You will oblige me very much by sending back the letter I have enclosed to you.'

It's a nice, short letter about Philip's time at King's College and a present and letter of advice Philip received from his grandpa. When he writes about his favourite sentence in his speech being blotted out by Dr. Johnson (presumably a teacher), he doesn't read as angry, just confused. This gives me the idea that he's alright with change, another thing that supports this idea is how quickly he adjusted to his boarding school which we know about from Hamilton's letter to him in 1791.

Sometime later that same year, Philip fell dreadfully ill with a horrible fever, it's said that his father paid for all kinds of doses of medicine and hired several of the best doctors to help him recover.

Hamilton as a father was very over-protective this could've come from his fear of abandonment that he had since he was a child or just because he cared about his kids so much and didn't want anything bad to happen to them, some combination of these two or even something else entirely. But because he was so over-protective he coulf be a bit of a control-freak at times (here's when the crazy study regimens come into place) here's Hamilton's

'Rules for Mr Philip Hamilton from the first of April to the first of October he is to rise not later than Six Oclock—The rest of the year not later than Seven. If Earlier he will deserve commendation. Ten will be his hour of going to bed throughout the year. From the time he is dressed in the morning till nine o clock (the time for breakfast Excepted) he is to read Law. At nine he goes to the office & continues there till dinner time—he will be occupied partly in the writing and partly in reading law. After Dinner he reads law at home till five O clock. From this hour till Seven he disposes of his time as he pleases. From Seven to ten he reads and Studies what ever he pleases. From twelve on Saturday he is at Liberty to amuse himself. On Sunday he will attend the morning Church. The rest of the day may be applied to innocent recreations. He must not Depart from any of these rules without my permission.'

We don't know when this letter was written outside of it being written in 1800 and that's pretty vague, we also don't know who this was sent to. I assume Hamilton must have given it to either Philip or one of his Masters in person because the letter isn't addressed to anyone. The routine described in this letter is very, very similar to Hamilton's routine from when he was a student, perhaps he didn't realise how strict this routine was?

Anyway Philip decided to go to Boston and passed through Providence, Rhode Island on his own and his father needed people to look after his boy because like I mentioned before, he was a bit of a control freak and a bit over-protective. Hamilton sent this letter to Jeremiah Olney, the Collector of Customs of Providence:

'As my eldest son Philip, who lately graduated, will pass through Providence on his way to Boston, I give him this line barely to introduce him to you; since the time I have prescribed for his return will not permit the stay of more than a day at Providence.

Yrs. with true regard

A Hamilton'

From this letter we can tell that Hamilton wanted his son back QUICK, the only other thing it does is reaffirm things about Hamilton as a father like that he wants his children to be near him and doesn't like them to be away and he always needs to have an eye on them. Sadly, (for Hamilton) his son went on another trip the next year to Philadelphia. During this trip Philip saw Benjamin Rush and according to Benjamin Rush, Philip was very pleasant:

'His visits to us were daily, and after each of them he left us with fresh impressions of the correctness of his understanding and manners, and of the goodness of his disposition. To One of my Children he has endeared himself by an Act of friendship & benevolence that did great honor to his heart, and will be rememb[e]red with gratitude by Mrs. Rush, and myself as long as we live. My Son has preserved a record of it in an elegant and friendly letter which he received from him After his return to New York.'

(I am once again annoyed that a letter from Philip is mentioned but said letter has been lost to time) But after Philip's death his parents received a letter about an unpaid tavern bill from Charles W. Hare:

“I have paid 20 Dlls 67 to the keeper of the city tavern on account of your son’s bill and have taken a receipt in full. I enquired for other bills, but could not find any, and I believe he owed nothing more.”

20 dollars and 67 cents in 18th Century American currency translates to about 503 dollars in modern day USD. 19 year old Philip spent 503 dollars on booze 😀

Because there was not much written about Philip we don't know about his dynamic with everyone in his family, but we know he looked up to his father and was really close to his sister, Angelica Hamilton, who was only 2 years younger than him. We also know that his namesake, Philip Schuyler was very proud of him from this letter about Philip's graduation, written on the 25th of August, 1800:

'I rejoice My Dear Son that My Philip has Acquited himself so well, and hope that his future progress may correspond with Your & My wishes.'

Robert Troup's - Hamilton's college roomate - writing on Philip is particularly funny as in one letter he writes:

'was very promising in genius and acquirements, and Hamilton formed high expectations of his future greatness!'

whereas in a private letter he states:

'alas Philip is a sad rake and I have serious doubts whether he would ever be an honour to his family or his country'

From all of this we can conclude that Philip as a person was intelligent, charming and polite but a tad immature with liquor and a little mischevious though his father viewed his mischief warmly in a fond 'oh you cheeky little rascal!' kind of way as we see with this letter to Eliza, written on the 25th of October, 1801:

'I am anxious to hear from Philip. Naughty young man. But you must permit nothing to trouble you and regain your precious health.'

With all that said, I wish the naughty little lad a happy birthday! :)

[e17omm]

Alright doing my review of the chapter while I play it, today its HI3 Part 2 Chapter 7.

Spoiler free opinion now that I've cleared the chapter: Literally that horse getting drawn worse meme, except its absolute peak until the very last moment.

And already this looks interesting

I like that they put effort into showing Helia pinning Coralie to the wall, but in the same breath I have to ask why they didn't use the 3d models they were already using to show Coralie turning the tables on Helia.

I have no idea what is going on. Calamities? Is this bubble world Helia? I dont want to believe that Hoyo started an event right after part 1.5, then skipped a few years ahead to part 2, and only mentioned the Calamities happening on Earth in chapter 7. I dont want to believe that, but also I dont know how this bubble world Helia plays into the story.

WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWAIT a moment. The burning of Helia's blood wasnt metaphorical? Seeing visions? Saying she'll give up her flesh and sense of pain to get vengance? I'm not sure what is happening yet, but I feel like this is already the best written chapter of part 2. So far the opening is extremely interesting.

There's something about strength and giving up something else to gain it going on here.

Okay okay, Vita being kinda antagonistic finally. Also it would've been fun if Helia actually pulled the trigger but Vita managed to tilt her head out of the way. She took all of Sa's power, having hyper fast reflexes wouldn't be out of my book.

Oh and also, once again, "Helia, look at yourself.", First the mirror, then Dudu, then Theresa. That's 3 times now. Something's going on here.

Kinda extremely short dip into the sim but otherwise the writing of this chapter is VERY solid.

Im not a fan of flashbacks since I'd rather just experience them instead of timeskipping over them and then flashing back to them, but whatever's going on with Helia is interesting and if I have to speak to past Coralie to continue whatever arc Helia is on atm I'm all for it

I dont want to say it but to not disappoint myself but...

could Helia be having a Herrscher awakening?

(or equivelant, you know)

This is so freaking cool. If this actually is a Herrscher awakening or something similar, this is the best one they've done. Period. If it isn't, then this is fucking amazing for Helia as a character.

I DID NOT REALISE SHE WAS HOLDING A KNIFE UNTIL HER HAND BEGAN TREMBLING

And back to wierdo flashback bubble world but actually not? You can not be telling me that Earth is facing these Calamities after Honkai Eruptions and before the Sky People. Everyone is so chill both currently on the Moon but also in APHO, but Helia has these memories of her and Coralie going to the battlefield to fight off these "Calamities" and there's basically no truly safe places on Earth any more. This is so fucking wierd if this isnt a bubble world. 1. Because it wasnt mentioned before this point. 2. Because they've already confirmed APHO is canon.

For as negative as I sound about it, I actually dig the Calamity stuff. I just still cant tell if its actually happening or not. And I still dont like that we're learning about it in freaking flashbacks. This sounds like the stuff you would start Part 2 on. Something like "we follow a new squad as they train to fight off a new threat after the End of Honkai". Calling them Calamity Pollutants to differentiate them from Honkai beasts makes sense.

And if this is a bubble world, why the fuck are we flashingback to it??

Okay I know this might be hard to believe, but I just wrote a scene like Helia and Nessa like, 2 days ago. Holy shit.

Oh my god why couldn't they have portrayed the Honkai like this???

Okay this HAS to be a bubble world, right? No fucking way they just skip over and dont mention an event like the Eight Calamity that made battlesuits unusable. BUT THEN ASJDI POHas dwhy am I seeing this then?? I dont hate the writing - I hate that I dont know how this connects.

Is the "She" Serapeum mentioned Leylah? I feel like the simulation plotline is finally getting interesting.

HOLD THE FUCK UP

WHAT

Oh wait that was the first mention of Senadina in like, 3 chapters? 4?

Oh also missed it, but DAMN Hoyo is actually using 3D models for 3D stuff! fucking FINALLY. There's been a lot of that this chapter and just honestly great. Took them long enough to learn that 3D gacha stories requires more efforts than just making cutouts or 2D images.

Im so happy I am recording myself playing because I can go back and pause, something we fucking lost for some reason like oh my fucking god Hoyo please bring back replayability.

Back to my point, that was either Leylah or Helia's hooded friend behind Smolrandal.

Back to Helia now.

Fire, power, burning self away, looking at herself. Those get repeated over and over for Helia. Something's definitely up.

Also I wish enemies still moved while aiming. I can move around. Cmon. Would actually make aiming at all of them feel impressive instead of "and now I wait for 2 seconds"

I kinda really really really really really really want to see Helia snap. Like I REALLY want to see it. If she does - best chapter in a LONG time. If she doesnt - what the actual shit is Hoyo writing.

Completely unrealated to the chapter, but I am getting better at listening to Japanese speech. Like, I can tell when a sentence ends and begins. Because the voice acting is really good this chapter, I've caught myself several times going "its not over yet, they havent said the last part of the text yet" this chapter.

I can also point out specific words here and there. Feels good. Anyways, back to the chapter coz

Oh my god Helia is sacrificing her heart

Is the hooded figure Helia? Like, is she actually just Helia? She speaks of wandering snowy fields like the area the "bubble world" and Calamity stuff happened in. She speaks as if "Helia can't save Coralie" is something that has happened over and over and over and over and over again.

YUP, Hooded friend is Helia from another world! What the fuuuuuuuuu

HOLY FUCKING SHIT. You know, I thought of keeping Coralie heavily injured but alive in my Snippets AU.

No shot.

Nope.

No way.

I would be doing Helia such a huge disservice.

Oh my god. "Oh, right... Aria, whose life or death is uncertain." GIRL YOU SHOT HER TO MAKE HER YOUR BAIT SO YOU COULD GET TO CORALIE IN TIME. I was fully expecting it to go into a fast paced competition of who can clear the most monsters with the voice saying how Helia is weak and wasting time.

And then Helia pulled out the fucking gun.

I didn't even pull the trigger, the game did that for me!

Wait Smolrandal and Entropy got teleported to the middle of the tower then.

Is Senadina Leylah and Entropy? The Day's are dressed similarly to Leylah.

Also I still want to see Helia snap and burn the tower to the ground.

"Make a puzzle and dont put markers to exactly guide the player to the solution challenge (impossible)" -Hoyo.

Immortality is a lie! Coralie cant be saved! Is this where Helia snaps? Its coming, it has to, the entire chapter is building up to it excellently.

...............

..................

........................

Did the writing team slip their pen at the end? That plottwist literally made me go "heh?"

What the fuck?

That wasnt even a good twist! What the fuck was that? What? Huh? Excuse me?

This chapter is literally that horse getting drawn worse meme, except its absolutely amazing until the very end.

HEH?

What was that twist?

It literally makes no sense.

Its on the level of "Vita pulls off her suit and it was actually Kiana all the time!" twist. That'd make no sense! And neither does this twist! What the fuck???

Unless this is just a red herring and "killing Helia" is just her way of sacrificing the last of her humanity. In which case this cliffhanger is still awful because HEH?

[sleepy-crypt1d]

i'm gonna be autistic about borderlands for a sec, everyone stay with me okay

i do not understand why the borderlands games try to make moxxi so important to jack, i dont get it, genuinely it doesn't make sense

so, spoilers for BL2, the pre-sequel, tales from the borderlands, and BL3 moxxi's heist- the general info you need is that jack and moxxi canonically dated for a period of time between the first game and TPS, how long this was we arent sure but we can make a guess that at the VERY most it was less then six months of them being together

we can piece this together by the vague timeline of TPS happening about a year or less after the first game

(this is estimated by the fact that Athena said she worked with jack five years ago, meaning TPS happened five years ago by the time the second game takes place and five years is also the amount of time that's passed between the first and the second game so- TPS took place in a very short few month period after the first game)

now we know that they couldn't have been together for long because moxxi was together with BOTH mordecai AND jack during this only a few month period of time between games- this is confirmed in a line of dialogue from BL2 where mordecai says moxxi left him for jack at the end of BL1 but then in TPS moxxi and jack are already broken up, which means they could have only been together for a few months for the timeline of five years to make sense! at the VERY most they were together for like, three months or even just a few weeks. all that matters is that it was not very long

in BL2 there's also a line about jack destroying moxxi's fighting dome because he thought she cheated on him, which is a thing he does AS handsome jack not as the normal dude jack he was when they broke up, the reason for which is still unknown but we know it was Vaguely Messy which is like whatever, sure, that sorta makes sense for him to do but what DOESN'T is the games trying to convince you that jack is in love with her.

okay you still following? cool

in TPS jack is visibly uncomfortable around moxxi and doesn't like working with her, even going as far as asking her to stop calling him 'sugar' a request she just, ignores and continues doing anyway, also during TPS is when jack gets together with nisha, his canon girlfriend he's had through the five years between BL1 and BL2. jack is INSANELY in love with nisha, we see this in the after credits art of both TPS and BL2 same with the way he talks to her/about her in TPS and in outside game material where he literally stutters when talking about her AND in the way he proudly displays her hat in his office in TFTBL alongside his most prized possessions.

he LOVES his woman with his entire heart, he gave her a whole town to prove it!! nisha is his everything outside of hyperion so, tell me, PLEASE why BL3 tried to tell us that jack was still in love with moxxi? because i do not get it at all

what im talking about here is 1. in moxxi's heist timothy is in love with moxxi, this is made canon in TPS where he fumbles through trying to flirt with her and in the heist dlc this is brought up again and timothy has a line about how jack asked moxxi on a date during his reign as handsome jack and sent timothy to go as him because he was busy but like, why would he do that? we know that jack is insane about nisha why would he then?? ask his ex that he visibly hates on a date??? and then 2. they added a fucking painting of her in his office in the casino.

i do not even know where to begin on how much i hate that detail

when you get to jack's office in the casino there are two paintings you find, one is of angel- makes sense, is his daughter who he loves even if he is really bad at it, it's the same as him having the picture of her in his office on helios, he loves his daughter, a painting of her being here is in line with everything else!! plus it's really pretty and i like it

then across from that is a painting of moxxi, which makes no fucking sense!!! why isn't it nisha!! it SHOULD be nisha!! the woman he is CURRENTLY TOGETHER WITH AND MADLY IN LOVE WITH????

i have DETESTED this detail since i first played the dlc, as much i love moxxi's heist and credit it as my favorite borderlands dlc the whole 'moxxi is jack's true love' thing makes me so confused?? they dated for MAYBE three months between BL1 and TPS and then he got into a five year long committed relationship that is never properly explored in the games and then the devs have the gall to say they wish they had done more with nisha like!!! good news you still could have!! but you didn't

anyways, i apologize for this, it has just been bothering me for months and i had to get it out and see if anyone else had noticed this and was bothered by it?? because it makes me go a little insane every time i think about it

then again maybe the character writing in BL3 is just bad

[icedroplove]

Chapter 3

-------x-------

It was already morning, Gray felt well rested and ready to start the day. The mages were at the lobby waiting for Natsu to join them since he hadn’t left the room yet. 

“Do you guys want me to go check if everything’s okay?”

“Please, Lucy.” Erza answered.

As Lucy went upstairs, Wendy sank on the puffy chair she was sitting on and sighed, petting her friend ecxeed who rested on her lap. Erza kept her firm, yet impatient posture. Gray leaned against the column and watched from the corner of his eye as Juvia played with her necklace. She looked so absorbed by it and he noticed how her lips were curved in a slight smile.

Gray looked away and crossed his arms, trying to hide the little blush on his cheeks from his friends. It was not that any of them were looking at him, though. 

Suddenly, they all heard someone yelling. It was Lucy, raging because Natsu had fallen asleep again after changing his clothes. They looked at each other and chuckled (except Erza who looked even more irritated with the delay). Ten minutes later, everyone was set to go.

First thing to do was visit their client, whose house was by the wealthier part of the village. Octavius, a short old man with a taste for vintage clothing, welcomed them into his place with a big smile. He ushered them to sit and served them hot tea. The team was getting impatient with making small talk about how the trip was and if the inn was amiable, but they waited. After a bit, Octavius calmly put his cup down, cleaned his round glasses which got blurry from the smoke and looked at them. 

“I deeply apologize for holding you so long in this conversation. I just wanted to certify myself that you were a qualified group for my request. Even though I’ve perceived that some of you lack proper manners…” He glanced quickly at Natsu, who was on his third teacup. The fire mage gulped it down at once  without even waiting for it to cool down. ”...I’ve considered that this fine team of Fairy Tail mages has the virtues I was pursuing. Now. allow me to explain what is that I need from you mages. ” Octavius acted like he was a character in a period drama story, which made sense considering the aesthetics of his clothes and house.

“I indulged myself for seven years to the work of a novel which I was convinced would become the newest classic on the market. It was a beautiful and completely original story about royalty, duties, forbidden love and a happy ending. I even ventured myself into including more… passion… on some interactions between the main couple. Of course, only because I consider that a younger audience would further appreciate the narrative with the inclusion of such scenes.”

Gray noticed how Lucy, Erza and Juvia looked at each other. Natsu and Wendy, on the other hand, just continued listening without any further thoughts. The increase of the girls' attention on what Octavius was saying confirmed his hypothesis on what those scenes were. 

“What I’ve been meaning to tell is, I sent the final draft to my editor a few months ago and got no response from her. I concluded she hadn’t received it, but a week ago I heard that this unknown author had just published a book with the exact same premise as my draft and it’s a success. I bought the novel, and Upon reading, I’m certain that it's a full copy of my work. However, I don’t have any concrete proof that Ludovic plagiarized me, that’s what I need from you mages.

”It has come to my knowledge that he’ll be attending a party tonight at his place. I can get tickets for all of you.” Octavius eyed the group, his gaze stopped at Wendy. “I wouldn’t advise the little girl’s entrance, though. It is a more adult party.”

Wendy shrugged, but didn’t look much disappointed. 

“Don’t worry, she can stay at the inn. Speaking of which, it was very kind of you to pay for our accommodation, mister. We appreciate the gesture.”

Lucy spoke, easily adapting to Octavius’ weird kind of speech. This seemed to make him happy, since the man got up and kissed Lucy’s hand. 

“I see that my choice of mages for this mission has been the most fortunate.”

Natsu gulped his fourth cup of tea and threw his fist in the air. 

“Okay, I’m all fired up! Let’s kick some ass!” 

Erza elbowed him. Octavius did not show any reaction besides eye Natsu. Apparently, the gentleman wasn't one to be rude. He reached for his pocket and handed Lucy a paper.

“If you may, please write your names here so I can get you on the guest list for tonight.” He wrote on another paper and gave it to Wendy. “This is the address of my publisher. It is possible that she has some information on what happened, she was the only person who read my draft.”

After talking a bit longer, they returned to the inn. Erza ordered Natsu and Gray to wear their best outfits since they didn’t know how fancy that party would be. The boys got ready in thirty minutes, but the girls were still inside the bedroom. Natsu huffed loudly. 

“I’ll go hurry them up.”

“Don’t.”

“But they’re taking too long!”

Gray rolled his eyes, sure that if any of them walked in they’d definitely get Lucy-kicked. After convincing his friend that it wasn’t worth it, they sat in the lounge ready to wait a good while.

-x-

“I’m lucky I brought an evening dress by precaution.” Lucy looked at herself in the mirror, examining her outfit. What heels do I wear? The red ones or black ones?”

Juvia looked away from her open suitcase to give her opinion. The red shoes were pretty, but too fancy for an event that they didn’t know how the other guests would be dressed at. The black ones were more versatile and matched the maroon dress Lucy was wearing. The girls agreed that the black heels were better. 

Wendy came to Juvia, who was still looking at her suitcase. She asked her what happened.

“Juvia didn’t bring any fancy dresses…” The girls turned to her, confused.

“Why didn’t you say anything? You can wear one of mine!” Erza said. 

“Oh...” Juvia felt embarrassed, she still felt weird asking for things like this. Even though now she had friends she could count on, she’d been used to being alone for so long that keeping things to herself was a normal thing. “Thank you, Erza-san.”

The redhead smiled and gave her a navy blue dress. “Go on, try it!”

Juvia wasn’t used to wearing revealing clothing like this in her day-to-day life. She liked it, though. The color looked good on her. She adjusted the thin straps to better support her breasts and took another look in the mirror.

“Juvia-san, you look so pretty!” Wendy said.

Lucy looked at her from head to toe and winked. “Oh my, you’ll end up killing Gray like this.”

Juvia squealed and covered her head with her hands, blushing hard. Erza made her sit on the bed and started working on her makeup. While she rambled about which winged eyeliner would match best her eyes, she let her mind wonder about what Lucy had said. Would Gray like her look?

“And… done!” Erza took a step back to look at her work and gave Juvia a hand mirror. She liked her look. It was sexy, but not too different from her own style. She put on her heels and gathered her purse.

“Okay, everything’s set?”

Suddenly, Natsu opened the door.

“Yo, you’ve been here for an hour! Let’s go!!!” To no one’s surprise, he got Lucy-kicked in the face.

After assuring that Wendy and Carla would be okay at the inn, they all left the inn.

-x-

They were lost. The instructions Octavius gave them weren’t enough to find the venue. After walking in circles for a while, they stopped at the main square as Erza went to ask for directions.

Gray crossed his arms and stole another glance at Juvia. She looked… different. Her normal attire was so chaste that he was awlays caught by surprise when she wore more revealing clothes. Of course he already knew that she was sexy, but having her wear a dress that flattered her body was… different. 

He looked away before his eyes lingered for too long on the dress' neckline pushing up her breasts. Gray didn’t want to stare at them, nor at the slit on her skirt that showed a bit of her toned thighs. Shit. It was becoming hard for him, even harder when she walked to his side as they waited for Erza’s return.

“Is everything okay, Gray-sama?”

He nodded, crossing his arms. Juvia looked at the square, toying with the necklace he gave her the night before. His chest warmed upon noticing that she enjoyed the gift that much. It assured him that he was off to a good start.

However, Gray was unsure what move he should make next. He was nervous to just ask her out. His plan was taking small steps. He wanted to make Juvia happy, but rushing wouldn’t be of any good. After all, romance was still an unknown matter for Gray Fullbuster. 

“I’ve never seen you wearing this dress.” Was everything he managed to say.

“Erza-san lend me. Juvia’s not used to this…” She gestured to her outfit “But it’s not a problem.”

Gray hummed. He saw Erza walking back to them.

“You look good.” 

He smiled lightly at her. Juvia blushed. While they followed Erza to the venue, Gray walked by her side.

[shoechoe]

Donatella and Diavolo for the ask game? (And maybe Squatizi? 🦈)

For Squatizi- I remember the mix of surprise and excitement I felt when I saw the two of them on my first watch of VA. At that point, I had kind of just assumed that Jojo had no actually on-screen LGBT+ characters (The only canonical non-cishet at that point was DIO, whose bisexuality was only confirmed by Araki and is never actually stated or shown in the work) and was simply popular with the community due to its general nature (which does appeal to a lot of gay subcultures and tastes in that way). The notorious Bury-Your-Gays moment with Sorbet and Gelato didn't help either.

So, when Tiziano and Squalo showed up, going so far as to fondle each other on-screen, I just went "holy shit". These two are actually gay? And we get to see it? Honestly, I cared less about the fight in that arc and was just interested in seeing what would be done with those two- I suppose it wasn't explicitly stated they were together, but the on-screen groping was kind of enough to tip you off. Just for that reason, I do have a fondness for them, and I do understand why people love them and mess around with them so much in fanon.

Though, while the novelty of an actual gay couple in Jojo excites me alone, much of their writing still frustrates me and they were far from what I'd consider "good representation". They had very little screentime and were really less two individual characters and more just two halves of one whole. The fight itself was underwhelming (which you articulated perfectly in a previous post of yours) and Squalo dying almost instantly after Tiziano instead of putting up any sort of fight after his mantra of revenge was disappointing. While "good representation" is not exactly my expectation knowing... the way Jojo is, it was still annoying.

I do like them and enjoy how people take their characters and expand upon the underwhelming amount that canon gives. They're not my favorite couple and I don't talk about them a lot, but I certainly favor the pairing and see why people focus on them so much.

As for Diavolo and Donatella: As you might've guessed, I have many thoughts about the two of them. I don't know how long this is going to be, so I'll put this under a cut.

I would not say I think about Donatella and Diavolo as a pairing in a particularly "shippy" way. In a lot of ways, I don't even really see them as a romance. They only interacted for an extremely short period of time, at about a few weeks maximum, and despite apparently growing attached enough to sleep together, they barely found out anything about each other and Diavolo abandoned her without so much as giving her his name.

I find Donatella incredibly interesting (and frustrating) to think about just for that reason. Diavolo is obviously extremely avoidant of people and has been so for his entire life, using aliases since he was young, killing his mother and burying her under his house's floorboards, and then killing his adoptive father and burning down his town when he found out. In all other ways, he shows dangerous precision, determination, and intelligence when it comes to erasing himself from the world.

So, on one hand, Donatella is a really interesting deviance in his behavior and a representation of the moral of Diavolo's character. Connecting and being known by other people is simply a part of being human; Diavolo tries his hardest to scrub every trace of his existence away and isolate himself in the search of evading the inevitable pitfalls of being human, but this is an impossible task. Even one little connection from years ago- in this case, a brief fling- spiralled into an unignorable marker of his existence, and that led to his downfall.

For anyone else, a brief date as a teenager would hardly be anything remarkable or consequential, but for Diavolo, his goal to erase himself completely just multiplies the consequences of any and all relationships he's had. What would likely be a connection anyone else would overlook is instead the main reason for the fall of Diavolo's empire. (You also have the fact that Diavolo was apparently irresponsible enough to get Donatella pregnant, which could say something about how Diavolo's avoidance of relationships makes him act haphazardly and make big mistakes in the relationships he did have.)

However, at the same time, Donatella is... odd to think about (and I believe this is also part of why she's talked about as little as possible in the story). It's very hard for me to imagine Diavolo, someone shown to be secretive since he was very young, having a fling with a random girl out of nowhere. Sure, him having a relationship could work, but a seemingly random brief date leading to an accident-baby just seems off and hard to imagine considering everything else we know about him. Believably expanding upon the idea with more detail while keeping Diavolo in character sounds rather difficult, which is why I think Vento Aureo just doesn't bother doing it. (Also, why would someone date and then sleep with a guy whose name they don't even know?)

Not to mention, throughout the entire story, in all of Diavolo's spiels about how the past is coming back to haunt him, I do not believe he ever even says Donatella's name. Trish only mentions her once when prompted in the Notorious B.I.G. arc, and the only information she gives about her father are the basic facts that he was Sardinian and briefly dated her mother as a teenager. We learn essentially nothing about the relationship that these two had to Donatella, and that's a big problem.

Diavolo is at least built to be mysterious, but Trish... isn't. Could she not have asked Donatella about what her father was like personality-wise during any point in her life? Did she have no opinion on what she was like as a mother? Did she garner no opinion on her father before it was revealed he was a crime boss?

While I can speculate, it's obvious to me that Donatella pretty much only exists in the story as a plot reason why Diavolo has a daughter and not much thought was put into her or this detail of Diavolo's past beyond that. I think it's equally hard for others to envision this, which is part of the reason why the misconception of Trish actually being Doppio's daughter is a thing; the anime even plays into this by expanding on their backstory to have Doppio be the one to meet Donatella instead.

However, as I've said before, we know that this isn't true and this anime addition is in fact kind of a plot hole. We see that Doppio doesn't recognize Donatella, being unreactive when holding a picture of her in both the manga and anime and laughing at the concept of having a daughter or a girlfriend.

This anime change is especially irritating considering the fact that there are other implications in how Donatella apparently knew Diavolo and not Doppio. According to their backstory in the manga, the described personality that their adoptive father and village came to know them as is "cowardly and clumsy, yet open-hearted"- describing Doppio to a T.

For clarification, the manga goes on to state that in the Jojo universe, people with DID have alters that are fully present since adolescence.

This suggests that both Diavolo and Doppio were around since early childhood, but the village people and his father only knew Doppio- which makes sense, because knowing Diavolo, he would probably keep to himself. So, then, the fact that Donatella apparently knew Diavolo and Doppio doesn't even recognize her would say something really interesting about their relationship alone; what made Diavolo comfortable enough to show himself to her? What prompted him to go out and meet her in the first place?

Also, this may be a bit of a tangent, but I really dislike how they attempt to characterize Donatella in the anime. Her dialogue comes across as extremely stilted and odd, which makes sense, considering it's just her repeating the list of Trish's interests in the manga. (Literally- rewatch the scene and compare it to the page.)

Unlike Trish, she gets no characterization beyond this "I love sparkling water and I hate smelly men and anything that isn't beautiful" spiel- honestly, she somehow comes off as more shallowly written than the grand total of zero lines she got in the manga... but I digress.

Diavolo and Donatella are really interesting to me, but the information we get about them in canon is almost less than bare-bones, which I find to be one of the major flaws in the story. (Seriously, Jojo's creation of really interesting implications about characters and then simply refusing to do anything with them is one of its most annoying tendencies, and it especially shows with Diavolo.) I do enjoy people attempting to expand upon them in fanworks with the very little we get, but I don't know if I'd call that "shipping"; just expanding upon a hinted relationship. All in all, it's a pairing with a lot of food for thought.

[cbk1000]

How have you been feeling?

Not well, unfortunately. Like can't get out of bed because any exertion makes me lightheaded and gives me heart palpitations kind of not well. But it randomly occurred to me yesterday that the symptoms making me feel so crappy are very reminiscent of when I had severe iron deficiency years and years ago, so I'm going to have my doctor check my levels and see if I'm low on iron. Last time I supplemented for a bit and like magic started feeling better. The only reason it got caught so quickly last time was because it happened a few days after I donated blood so my mom (I was still living at home at the time) made the connection after I got really weak and breathless and couldn't do anything more than shuffling to the bathroom.

I have several risk factors for iron deficiency too, mainly that I have heavy periods, and my cycles are as short as they can be and still fall within the normal range, so I get them more frequently than women with longer cycles. I also work out a lot and intensely, which depletes iron, and I'm not a vegetarian technically, but I don't eat meat very often, and I very rarely eat red meat, so there's a very good chance my diet is deficient in it. I had my period right before I started feeling poorly, and just had my period again and felt even worse, so there's a good chance this could be the culprit. Hopefully supplementation will help me at least get back on my feet while I wait to be seen by the cardiologist.

Also, especially anyone who is menstruating, if you have a lot of fatigue, brain fog, breathlessness when you exert yourself, etc., get your iron levels checked. I haven't confirmed that's the problem right now, but when I was 20 and iron deficient, I was EXTREMELY weak, had terrible heart palpitations when doing anything, even just standing, got out of breath just talking, had no exercise tolerance, and just felt overall absolutely terrible. Obviously if you have chest pain and shortness of breath, please go to the ER, but if all your tests are coming back normal, have your doctor check your iron levels. After researching iron deficiency, I realised several issues I've had for years that I never got checked out because they were annoying but not indicative of anything serious (restless legs at night, for instance, and cold hands and feet) are signs of low iron.

[belicioustummy]

DISCLAIMER: THIS IS A KINK STORY. DO NOT INTERACT IF YOU ARE UNDER 18.

A vampire hunter shows up at a party prepared to slay the vampire host, but finds it more difficult than expected.

(full disclosure: this story doesn’t focus on belly kink as much as my other stuff, but it’s still present. hope you enjoy anyway!)

“Bradley Givens is a librarian who works the night shift. He’s been described by people who know him as friendly, scholarly, and handsome. He also happens to be a vampire.”

Lloyd Brewer chewed his lip as he typed up the information his team would need for their little outing that night.

“Every few months, like every vampire, Bradley will get an irresistible craving for human blood. We know this because he’s been posting online for a couple years about events where a real vampire will feed on you.” He grimaced. To think a killer creature of the night had been menacing innocent, misguided people for so long! It was enough to make you sick… though he had to admit, he was a little excited too. As a vampire hunter, he’d had several false starts that were embarrassing to look back on. But tonight, this little vampire party? This would be the one. He’d bring an end to this monster, and nobody would have to worry about getting their blood sucked in this town again!

Lloyd was feeling slightly less confident upon arriving at the door of a nice-looking two-story house. Luckily several other vampire hunters were with him for backup- a couple of old college pals and a guy he’d met on a vampire information forum. True, none of them had any real experience with vampires either, but there was safety in numbers.

He’d been expecting a ravenous, snarling monster descending on clueless and terrified partygoers to kill them, but what he found upon arriving was a charming, well-dressed fellow feeding on guests all too eager to give him a taste. The guests themselves came in a wide variety, he noted as he glanced from goths in full makeup to guys in casual dress chatting about a film festival with a middle-aged businesswoman. There was a table covered in plates of delicious-looking food, which partygoers periodically stopped to enjoy.

Lloyd noticed a few people looking nervous or uncomfortable as they approached the vampire Bradley, and watched them, ready to jump in at the moment he struck. The moment never came, though. Bradley seemed perfectly happy to let them decline, directing them to go mingle or try the snacks. It wasn’t as though there was any short supply of people willing to give him a sip straight from the source. Lloyd wondered if this many people showed up to all Bradley’s parties- were they repeat guests? He definitely seemed familiar with some of them. His suspicions were confirmed when he overheard a duo of women gushing over how Bradley had “filled out” since a few years ago. The fact that he’d gained that weight from snacking on people didn’t seem to bother them, judging from the bandages on their fingers. Lloyd tried to ignore the uninvited thought that Bradley’s large figure was pretty attractive. That was how they got you.

As the night progressed, he and his fellow hunters kept to themselves. He didn’t even sample the food, not trusting it. However, when all the guests willing to be bitten had gotten enough blood drained away, Bradley turned his bright eyes to the many new guests who’d declined a drink.

“Come now, it’s a party!” he said, grinning at them with his sharp teeth on display. “You may not have wanted to have me feed from you, but there’s no reason you can’t eat some of this spread! I want all my guests to enjoy themselves.”

Lloyd took a deep breath. It was now or never. He stepped forward, his hand on the holster that concealed his stake.

“Actually,” he said, willing his voice not to shake, “I’d enjoy myself more if I could slay you.”

Several guests around his target gasped, but Bradley himself only gave him an easy smile. “Really? That’s exciting. Come over, then.”

Lloyd made his way across the floor. Though it was only a few feet to the vampire, the feeling of everyone’s eyes on him made it feel a lot longer. Bradley made no move to defend himself, sitting prone in his chair with the grace of an aristocrat.

“Shall I unbutton my shirt? It will make for easier access,” he said. When Lloyd didn’t answer, he began to do just that. Two buttons were open before Lloyd finally found the guts to say something.

“I’d rather do this somewhere we don’t have so many people watching,” he said.

A woman beside Bradley began to whisper something in his ear, but he murmured something to her that seemed to put her at ease.

“Of course. Come with me.” And with that, Bradley took his hand and led him upstairs, then down a long hallway. Lloyd began to wish he’d taken along one of his slayer friends. They’d come after him if he was gone too long, though… wouldn’t they?

Bradley opened the door to a room with a large, curtained four-poster bed. It was very clean, with unlit candles in jars and moonlight streaming in through a window. He lay on the bed, exposing his pale collarbone in a way that made Lloyd blush. It wasn’t bedroom eyes, he told himself. He was just trying to mess with his head.

Lloyd narrowed his eyes. The only way to win this was to beat the vampire at his own game. “Would you mind taking off your shirt?” he asked. “For practicality’s sake.”

“So polite for someone trying to kill me,” Bradley remarked, undoing the third button. There were soft, dark curls of hair on his broad chest.

“If I was too cocky, you might get sick of playing with me and decide I’m perfect for dessert.”

“You think so?” He undid another button, requiring a bit more attention than the others before it. Lloyd hadn’t noticed before, but the shirt looked rather tight around the middle. It must have been all the fresh blood Bradley had drank- and yet, his clothes were spotless, as though he hadn’t spilled one drop.

“It’s not hard to tell you’re playing mind games.”

“Mind games? I’ve been nothing but courteous to you,” he said calmly, undoing yet another button. “In fact, I’d say I’ve gone beyond being a good host.” The last button free, he shrugged off the shirt and placed it beside him on a pillow.

Lloyd stared. No wonder the shirt had looked a little strained. The vampire was so bloated with blood that his round stomach had a slight pink blush. He was a predator after a hunt, full and sleepy and, most of all, vulnerable. He gazed up at him, almost seeming to expect something.

“I don’t think good hosts usually eat the guests,” Lloyd shot back, pulling his stake from his holster and advancing on him. He wouldn’t let his guard down, not for a minute. He wouldn’t be next.

Bradley shrugged. “It’s not as if that was in fine print on the invitation. These people like when I feed from them. As long as my guests leave happy, what’s the issue?”

“I think we need-“ Lloyd thrust out his non-occupied hand, pinning it to Bradley’s chest “-to get to the heart of the matter.”

There was a brief pause.

“Your hand is warm,” Bradley said.

“I just- can’t find a pulse,” Lloyd said, trying not to show his embarrassment. “Your heart is here, right?”

“No, that’s my breast. It would still hurt if you stabbed me there, though.”

Lloyd scowled and hoped the blush creeping up his neck wasn’t visible. He moved his hand over and readied the stake. He searched the creature’s eyes for a spark of fear, anger, anything to show that he realized what was about to happen-

And he felt a gentle hand on his shoulder.

“Is this your first time?”

He blinked.

Those bright eyes were looking at him, not with fear, but with curiosity. Lloyd swallowed, not lowering the stake.

“I… yes. Why should that matter?”

“You seem like you’re the type of person who wants their first slaying to be special.” He didn’t make a move to grab for Lloyd’s weapon. His hand, pressing gently into his shoulder, felt almost comforting. “Is that right?”

He nodded slowly. “I was so sure tonight was going to be the night. Everything seemed perfect, but now that it’s time to actually do it…”

“You have performance anxiety?”

Lloyd sighed and finally put the stake down. “I really blew it, I guess.”

“No,” Bradley said consolingly, patting his hand. “You did a lot just by coming here! If you’re not comfortable with slaying me tonight, that’s your choice.”

“Are you sure that’s not just your instinct to stay alive talking?”

“Well, partially,” he admitted. “But I’d still say that even if you weren’t bent on putting a stake in me.” He pushed his hair back. “I don’t take blood from anyone who isn’t ready, either. But you already know that. I saw you watching me all night.”

Lloyd had thought he’d been subtle. He sat on the corner of the bed, brows furrowed in resignation. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said. “Everyone expected me to slay you tonight, but you’re not hurting anyone. I can’t.”

Bradley considered this. “You could go back and say that you put up a hell of a fight, but I got away. I could even tear your clothes a little to really sell it.”

“I feel like they might come to look for you,” Lloyd said. Bradley seemed like he could handle himself, but he didn’t want his friends to try and finish the job. “Couldn’t you turn into a bat and hide out of sight til we leave?”

“Ordinarily, sure. But at the moment, I’m so full that it’s not feasible.” He rubbed his belly. “It’s going to take me a while to digest all this.”

“Ah. Too bad,” said Lloyd, trying not to imagine how it would feel if he brushed his fingers over that satiated stomach. There were more important things at hand. “Maybe if we-“

The sound of quick footsteps came from down the hall, followed by another pair close behind. The door handle turned. One of Lloyd’s friends threw open the door, stake poised at the ready. Their eyes met Lloyd’s panicked ones, then traveled to Bradley, lying shirtless and slightly bemused on the bed.

“Oh,” they said, and then, dropping their stake, “oh, shit. Sorry.” The woman from earlier caught up to them as they closed the door. Lloyd caught her expression change from concern to relief right before it shut.

They stared at each other for a moment. Finally, Lloyd started to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.

“That could’ve gone worse,” he said. “I know it’s kind of bold to ask this as a party crasher, but can I take a minute before I go face the music?”

“Stay as long as you like,” Bradley said. “This is the most fun I’ve had in a while.”

Lloyd lay on his side along the width of the bed, perpendicular to his new friend. “Is it cool to ask how you became a vampire?”

“Sure, but you have to tell me what got you into vampire hunting afterwards…”

A little while later, they came downstairs together. Bradley had his shirt back on, though he hadn’t bothered to button it. Lloyd’s friends were gawking at the two of them with various astonished expressions, but he found he didn’t really mind. 

After he’d ushered them out of the house, Bradley gave Lloyd a quick peck on the cheek. “Feel free to come to the next one,” he said. “I always appreciate good company.”

Lloyd squeezed his hand. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”