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iffeelscouldkill · 10 months ago

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IT TOOK ME 9 MONTHS BUT I HAVE FINALLY WRITTEN THIS

Please enjoy the resulting fic: 'Height Advantage', written for the Funuary prompt, "Competing over something silly".

Xenk/Edgin, rated T for mild makeouts/sexiness. Read it on AO3 or just keep scrolling!

---

“So Ed,” Holga says conversationally as she’s knee-deep in muddy bog with Kira riding on her shoulders. “The next time that Xenk shows up to offer us an alternative route that avoids the godforsaken bog-”

“Yeah, all right, lesson learned,” says Ed, weary, also calf-deep in mud and trying to find a way to lift his foot without losing his boot. Again. “In my defence, it would have taken us way out of our way. And just because he’s a paladin and good at fighting doesn’t mean he’s better at navigation. I’m the plan guy! This is my area!”

“Xenk is pretty well-travelled,” Simon points out as Doric, Wildshaped into some kind of wading bird (ornithology was never Edgin’s strong suit) picks her way around him. “Plus, he seems to have a really good memory.”

“And he knows so much history about everywhere he’s been!” Kira adds, in raptures. She’s always starry-eyed over Xenk whenever they cross paths, one big reason why Edgin tries to minimise the time that they spend around him. That, and he’s still annoying. “So many cool stories.”

“Plus, he really is a good fighter,” Holga adds, and Edgin gives her a look of deep betrayal.

“All right, so we’ve established that Xenk Yendar is the greatest at almost everything,” he says testily. “But who was it who got us out of that cave while it was filling with saltwater? Who figured out how to give Forge’s riches to the people? Not Xenk.”

Holga gives him a wry look. “All right, how are you getting us out of this one?”

Edgin nods to Doric. “Doric, can you scout ahead one more time? Try in that direction.” He points off to the north-east. “I’m pretty sure there’s some firmer ground close by.”

Doric takes off and glides overhead to scout a better path. Edgin manages to take a whole, entire step forward, boot and all, and counts that as enough of a victory that he can rest for a minute. Holga and Kira successfully work their way out of the worst of the mud, and Simon is just reaching for a hand up when he slips with a yelp and almost goes down. Edgin dives forward to catch him, and manages to stop him from faceplanting into the bog, but in the resultant flailing they all get showered with globs of mud. And Edgin loses his boot.

“Sorry, everyone,” Simon says sheepishly, as Kira lowers her hands from her face and Holga shakes mud off her arms, extremely fed up. “Er, I can use Prestidigitation to-”

“There’s no point cleaning off anything if we’re still stuck in this bog,” Holga tells him. “But I’m going to need five baths at the end of this.”

Kira suddenly straightens up, pointing. “Look, there’s Doric!”

Doric circles once, twice, and then lands a way away on what might be a firmer patch of shore (though they’ve been wrong about that twice already). Transforming back into a human, she calls,

“We’re almost at the end of the bog. The ground is more solid after this point.”

Holga, Kira, and Simon all cheer in relief, and Ed beams.

“See? What did I tell you?”

Doric glances over her shoulder for some reason, and then she calls,

“Also, I’ve found some help.”

“Help?” Simon perks up, but Edgin’s heart sinks. He has a really bad feeling about this.

Sure enough, a figure in gleaming armour rides up behind her and shouts,

“May I be of any assistance?”

“Xenk!” Kira exclaims happily, and Holga waves. Edgin feels himself sink at least an inch further into the mud in sheer doom.

---

The only saving grace out of the whole situation is that it requires Xenk to get that oh-so-impeccable armour of his dirty.

Obviously rejuvenated by the prospect of dry land, Holga manages to struggle over to Xenk so that he can swing Kira safely up and onto the shore. Doric flies ahead of Simon, guiding him mostly successfully through the bog, and Edgin (boot in hand) tries to follow them. Unfortunately, Doric’s not really able to give instructions in bird form, and he takes a wrong step into something that turns out to be a hip-deep pool of bog.

“Dad!” shouts Kira, and Holga, who was almost out, turns to jump back into the bog – her annoyance with his decisions doesn’t extend to letting him drown in mud. But Xenk holds up a hand.

“I will aid him.”

“I’m fine, I think I’ve got it-” Edgin grabs onto some tough grasses and is in the middle of hauling himself out of the pool when Xenk arrives.

He holds out a hand, and Edgin considers ignoring it for a full two seconds before common sense takes over and he grabs it. Xenk pulls him up, but Edgin’s footing is still unstable.

“Crap!” he wheels his arms around, splashing up muddy bog water. Xenk nearly overbalances before he leans his weight backwards to counter Edgin, and successfully pulls him out – but his feet sink firmly into the mud in the process.

“Xenk, why are you wearing full armour in a bog?” Ed asks him with exasperation. Xenk looks down at his sunken boots.

“My armour is spelled in such a way as to give me surer footing,” he replies. “However, I do not think the spell is a match for our current terrain.”

“You don’t say,” Edgin replies, flicking mud out of his hair.

Still, with a bit of extra help from Doric, they make it to the shore, and Edgin spends just a few minutes sprawled on the ground, marvelling the solidness of it. Xenk, leading his horse, shows them down to a small but fast-rushing stream that they can use to clean up.

“Thank fuck,” Holga says, language that she’s usually a stickler about not using in front of Kira, but Edgin can endorse the sentiment.

“You’re the best, Xenk!” Kira chirps, and Doric even bestows him with a small smile.

“Good timing with the assist,” she says.

“I would not have been able to, if you hadn’t located me as well as the route to shore,” Xenk points out. Edgin begrudgingly trails behind them. He’s a fan of giving credit where credit is due, but if they’d followed Xenk’s original suggestion, they’d still be somewhere off in the middle of the Plains, nowhere near the Festival. Edgin’s idea had worked out, as they always did eventually.

Holga, Doric and Kira splash into the stream first, Holga helping Kira to sluice off her hair, while Simon and Edgin hang back, peeling off muddy boots and sodden outer garments. Simon gives Edgin’s right boot a good go with Prestidigitation, and at least manages to make it wearable.

“Thanks, Simon, that’s good,” Edgin says, because Simon still needs all the confidence boosting he can get. “It’ll get us down to Mosswick, and we can find cobblers and cleaners there.”

Buoyed up, Simon looks over to where Xenk is dismantling his armour. Shiny pieces lie across the ground, and Xenk is in the middle of taking off his heavily reinforced boots. “Xenk, would you like me to use Prestidigitation on your armour?”

“I thank you, Simon Aumar,” says Xenk as he steps out of the boots. “The spell was never my forté.”

Edgin snorts. “That’s your big weakness? Cleaning spells? Well, other than social skills.” Even though he’s seen Xenk out of his armour – he wasn’t wearing it when they met, after all – there’s something weird about the way he looks without it now. He seems almost diminished, but maybe Edgin just got used to seeing him with armour on.

Xenk frowns quizzically. “There are many areas in which I lack aptitude.” Edgin pads over to him in the soft grass until they’re nose to nose, and Xenk’s frown deepens. “Edgin, are you quite well?”

Edgin puts his hand out level with the top of Xenk’s head, and then brings it slowly over to his own. His fingertips graze a point that’s just above his eyebrows. He moves his hand back, and then does it again to make sure, a grin growing on his face.

“Uh, Ed?” asks Simon.

Edgin beams at Xenk. “You’re shorter than me!” He measures a third time, just to savour it.

“That may be true,” Xenk acknowledges.

“Oh, it’s definitely true. I’d say there’s a good inch, inch and a half, in it?” Edgin looks down at Xenk’s feet; he’s wearing some kind of plain socks, but of course, he just took off his boots. “Those boots add a fair bit to your height – what, have you got stilts built into those things? Or is it another spell?”

Xenk ignores the spell comment. “My height is almost six feet,” he says. “By typical human standards, I am considered tall-”

“Oh, sure, you are tall. Ish,” says Edgin, because he’s absolutely going to rub this in until the end of time. “But I’m taller.”

Just then, Holga, Kira, and Doric reappear through the trees. “God, I feel like a person again instead of a Giant Slime,” Holga says.

“Kira!” Ed descends on his daughter and swings her up into the air like he did when she was a lot smaller. She screeches, but she’s laughing. “Hey, how’s that for height, eh? I bet Mister Yendar couldn’t swing you that high!” He swoops her back down and gives her a spin around for good measure. Okay, so maybe Edgin’s back isn’t much of a fan of the whole move, but Edgin doesn’t care. Today is a good day.

“Okay, we need to go clean off! Xenk, I’ll show you where to step so you don’t get out of your depth.” He smirks and leads the way into the trees. Behind him he can hear Doric ask, “What’s put him in such a good mood?”

---

Washing up in a stream is all very well – and a good way to make sure that people don’t run away screaming when they arrive in town – but it’s no substitute for a proper bath. The Festival doesn’t start until the next day, so they have time to find a decent inn and get settled.

Ed was hoping that Xenk would be able to pay his own way with a room, but of course, he’s given all his money away to blind beggars or something.

“I will be content with finding some shelter-” Xenk began, as Doric takes a key for herself and Simon and Edgin gives the second to Holga and Kira.

“Don’t be silly, you’ve got to have a bed,” Edgin says. He holds up their room key. “I hope you don’t kick in your sleep.”

“I have no awareness of doing so,” Xenk replies, serious as ever.

They get to the room, which isn’t the smallest Ed has ever slept in (well, that honour would go to a jail cell, he supposes), but it’s pretty cramped. Money’s still a bit tight, but they’re hoping to pick up some odd jobs at the Festival.

There’s a hook next to the door, and Edgin goes to hang his coat on it, and then smirks. “Want me to help you with yours? It’s pretty high up.”

Xenk’s brow crinkles, and then the penny drops. “You are very fond of this joke,” he tells Edgin, though he also shrugs fluidly out of his jacket and lets Edgin hang it up. “What is it about my lack of height relative to yours that amuses you?”

Edgin snorts wryly. There’s no point making fun of someone like Xenk; he’s either oblivious, or he tries to analyse it. “I’m being petty,” he admits, honestly, sitting down on the bed. Xenk takes off his boots, and Edgin watches him lose that small amount of extra height again. “It’s just a novelty, having something over you. Because you’re amazing at everything.”

“You see yourself as being in competition with me?” Xenk asks, and Edgin wants to run a hand over his face. Apparently it’s Uncomfortable Truths Hour.

“I mean, not really, but also kind of? It’s stupid,” Ed admits. “You’re-” He waves a hand at Xenk. “This ideal guy, with perfect looks, insane fighting strength, and impeccable morals. Everyone trusts you, and thinks highly of you. It’s a lot, to be around that.”

Xenk doesn’t say anything for a few moments, giving Edgin time to really reflect on his words – god, he just said that Xenk had perfect looks. He isn’t even drunk – but then he shakes his head.

“It is strange, because I think of it in the opposite way,” he says, and sits down next to Edgin. “You are a difficult man to live up to, Edgin Darvis.”

Edgin gapes at him for two full seconds, unable to make his throat work. “-me?” he eventually repeats, strangled.

“Is it so hard to believe?” Xenk asks. “You are not possessed of any extraordinarily long life or immortality. Yet you chose to devote your limited time on this earth to doing good. You allied yourself with the Harpers – an organisation known for its great feats, but not for its great rewards. And yes, you may have strayed from a righteous path – and suffered a terrible loss. But you have not allowed this to embitter you. You have strong friends who have become family. People are drawn to you, and to your character. It is enviable.”

Xenk caps off this whole speech – which has left Edgin totally at a loss for words, and also, he’s pretty sure, blushing heavily – with a little smile at him. “Also, you are taller than I am.”

Edgin swallows. “You…” He still has no idea what to say. “You want to take the first bath?”

If Xenk is surprised, or disappointed, he doesn’t show it. “I thank you. I will not need long.” Xenk spent the least amount of time in the mud compared to the rest of them, but he’s been riding around all day – probably putting out fires and saving orphans before he came to join up with their little group.

The door shuts behind Xenk with a click, and Edgin breathes out. What the hell was that? Xenk is a weird guy, and Edgin’s given up on predicting what he’ll do at any given moment, but he wasn’t expecting that… poetic litany of Edgin’s good qualities. Also, what the hell?? Xenk thinks that Edgin is admirable? He even implied he envies him? The whole idea threatens to break Edgin’s worldview.

Edgin thinks a lot about the look on Xenk’s face when he said that Edgin was taller than him – and by the time Xenk gets back, he’s committed to a course of action.

(He has no idea what he’s doing, but he’s committed. That’s one of Edgin’s more frequent modes).

Xenk’s hair is damp around his face when he re-enters the room, wearing only his deep-necked white shirt and a simple pair of trousers. He’s completely unfazed as Edgin crowds him up against the door, looking at him with that small smile again. “You have me at a disadvantage,” he says, voice low.

“Did you really mean all those things you said just now?” Edgin asks him. “About me being…” He almost feels stupid saying it aloud. “…admirable?”

“I am truthful in everything I say,” Xenk replies. Right, of course. Paladin.

“And do you like the fact that I’m taller than you?”

Xenk’s eyes darken. “Yes,” he says immediately, his voice almost gravelly. “I find it unexpectedly enjoyable.”

Edgin’s heart is hammering, but he’s still very committed. “Do you enjoy it if I do this?” he asks and uses two fingers to tilt Xenk’s chin up. Unnecessarily, but that’s not the point.

“I will enjoy it more if you follow the action through,” Xenk tells him. Edgin can feel the words vibrating against his fingertips.

Edgin considers playing dumb for a second but he’s not that cruel, and his restraint also isn’t that good. “Gladly,” he says, and kisses Xenk’s waiting mouth. The difference between them might only be an inch and a half, but it makes for a very pleasurable angle. Edgin leans in to kiss him again, and again. And again.

Eventually, he breaks away. “I should really take that bath.” He fleetingly considers asking Xenk to join him, but he’s not sure he’s ready to go there quite yet, and that’s if Xenk hasn’t taken a vow of chastity or something like that.

Though the way that he kissed back just now sure as hell wasn’t chaste.

Xenk nods. “Do so,” he says. “I will await your return. Although, a word of caution-” Ed pauses with his hand on the door, wondering what kind of problem there could possibly be. “The bathing tub is quite shallow. It may pose some challenges with your stature.”

Edgin blinks once, twice, and then a grin spreads across his face. “Are you making a height joke?”

Xenk looks innocent. “I am simply making an observation.”

“You are.” Ed has to kiss him once more, just for that. “I’m so proud of you.”

I need everyone to be aware of the fact that Chris Pine is taller than Regé-Jean Page, because this means that Edgin is taller than Xenk and that is extremely important to me because you know Edgin would make a huge deal out of it.

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jackrrabbit · 5 years ago

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practice makes perfect /// Mitsuri x f!Reader (18+)

Request: Hey! I read your Shinobu NSFW thing. I was wondering if you could write a Mitsuri NSFW thing but not as intense? Like Mitsuri and her female S/o are cuddling and things get a really steamy so they start kissing and fingering each other? Please and thank you!

A/N: REPOSTING because when I posted this a few hours ago it was glitching and not showing up in tags and stuff :( sorry to anyone who has already seen it!

I love Mitsuri and I get so few f/f reqs so ty for the request 💕 Y’all know idk how to write true vanilla so this is a little more spicy (Mitsuri and reader are not in an established relationship), but I made it soft just for you anon

Summary: When the most popular girl in school offers to help you practice kissing, it’s not like you’re going to say no.

Tags/warnings: inexperienced reader, femme preppy Mitsuri, she’s a little soft dom? like just a tiny bit, mild orgasm control, fluffy smut, crushes, modern high school AU, heteronormativity, reader thinks she’s straight lmao, all characters are adults

Okay, Mitsuri isn’t just the queen bee of your school. She’s also the prettiest girl you’ve ever met. It shouldn’t be possible for a person to be that beautiful, much less fair—what was god thinking when he gave her that pink and green hair that would look clownish on anyone but her? Those thick, dark eyelashes framing eyes you feel like you could drown in? Those long, perfect legs?

(Not that you stare at her legs or something. It’s just—your school uniform skirts are kind of short, and she always wears those striped thigh-highs, and she sits next to you in senior Biology and sometimes she stretches her legs out in the aisle between your desks and flexes them while she sighs during long lectures, and seriously, her legs are perfect.)

Mitsuri is the kind of girl who gets asked out by a different guy every other day. She has a fan club. Boys write Mr. _____ Kanroji in their notebooks, circle it with hearts, and fantasize about marrying her. She has more ex-boyfriends than you have Facebook friends. So you’re really sure why, somehow, you two have become…close?

If you have to, you can trace your friendship back to that Biology class. The teacher has a bad habit of cold-calling students for answers to questions, which makes him pretty unpopular. You’ve gotten used to it over the months, deciding that rebelling is a less productive method of dealing with it than just making sure to review the textbook chapters at least twice before every class, but apparently Mitsuri isn’t quite as familiar with the material.

When the teacher calls on her (a bit vindictively, you think, probably because she’s chewing pink bubblegum and drawing cherry blossoms in the composition book she’s supposed to be taking notes in) to ask her something about determining whether an organism’s life cycle exhibits zygotic, gametic, or sporic meiosis, she just gapes blankly back at him.

You feel sorry for her. It’s always painful to watch when someone can’t answer a question in class—you might be a fairly good student, but you still sympathize with how embarrassing it is to be put on the spot like that. The teacher refuses to move on, repeating her name and prodding her until her face is flushed bright pink and her lower lip is trembling. You’re not trying to pity her, but you can’t help it, and before you can think better of it you’re writing ‘compare diploid and haploid forms’ in the corner of your notebook and surreptitiously sliding it her way.

After the class, she pulls you aside in the hallway to thank you, eyes bright, telling you you’re so smart and kind and thoughtful and wondering how come she’s never talked to you before. “What a waste! We sat next to each other all semester, and I’m only getting to know you now.”

No wonder she’s popular. Her exuberance is infectious, like her good mood is seeping into your skin from her hand wrapped around yours. Mitsuri isn’t just pretty, she’s the kind of person who makes you feel good about herself just by being near her.

You’re about 100% sure that’s the last time the two of you will talk (unless she needs help with Bio homework and decides you’re the best candidate to get answers from). But it’s not. Mitsuri insists on treating you to boba after class—you try to deny her but she refuses to hear it and you can’t say no to her when she looks at you with those pretty jade-chip eyes. You get milk tea with black tapioca pearls swimming in caramelized fried sugar; her drink is jasmine rose fruit tea with tiny cubes of green apple floating at the top. “It looks like your hair,” you tell her, motioning toward the pink-and-green drink.

“Really?” Mitsuri’s cheeks turn red, which you notice is a frequent occurrence for her. “That’s why I got it. Isn’t it cute? I love how pretty all of the drinks are at this teahouse.”

The two of you split a little matcha cake. And then a vanilla taro cake. And then Mitsuri orders sweet potato fries and gyoza and fried chicken and shrimp tempura and wow, this girl can eat. “I kind of have a big appetite,” she tells you shyly some time around her fourth order of hanami dango. “Sorry, is it weird?”

“Not at all! It’s cute,” you blurt out, and then immediately cover your mouth. Cute? Where did that come from? That’s not the kind of thing you’re supposed to be saying to a girl you barely even know, or is it? Maybe you’re overthinking this. Mitsuri is so beautiful it’s hard to think straight around her.

You’re so busy staring down at your lap and blushing that you don’t notice she’s doing the same thing.

Mitsuri seems to take that teashop date hangout as permission to pursue a full-fledged friendship with you. Before you know it, she’s inviting herself over to your house after school, dragging you to cafés and picnics to study together on the weekends, and begging you to sit with her at lunch. Her other friends don’t seem thrilled at your being her favorite new playmate, but she doesn’t mind it so you try not to, either.

Like right now. It’s a weekend, and she’s decided that her house is going to be the setting for an overnight Bio study session slash sleepover in anticipation of the test you have coming up. You’re scouring the textbook for an answer at her desk while Mitsuri lies on her stomach on her bed with her feet kicked up behind her and crossed at the ankles. Graded quizzes are spread out in an arc around her on the cotton candy-colored duvet, and the sparkly gel pen she’s using to write flash cards is poking out of the corner of her mouth. With her fair skin barely covered by a tank top and shorts, loose hair flowing over her back, and dark brows furrowed in concentration, she looks like the centerfold of a teen magazine from the 90s.

I bet guys have wet dreams about her, you think. Then you shut down that line of thinking, shut it all the way down because you’re not supposed to be thinking these things about a female friend, no matter how pretty she is or how glossy her lips look even though she’s just wearing chapstick or how good she smells (like strawberries? honey? or whatever sweet she ate last, you’re not sure). But you can’t quite tamp down the feeling that you’ve stumbled on some unbelievable luck to get close to her.

You’re not the only one having trouble focusing on your studies. “I’m done with this!” Mitsuri exclaims, throwing down her pen so it makes a stray line on the quiz she was reviewing before it bounces off the bed. “I’m so tired of studying, aren’t you? If I learn another thing about cell division my brain is going to explode. Can’t we take a break?”

“Sure, if you want to get another 43%. Didn’t your dad say he’s going to stop paying your snack food fund if you fail one more exam?”

Her pink mouth drops open. “Hey! That’s not fair, I didn’t tell you that to use it against me. Be nice.”

But after a second, Mitsuri’s pout turns into a giggle. She hooks her foot around the stem of the office chair you’re sitting in and pulls it toward the bed along with you. “Come on! Let’s talk about love. Do you have a crush?”

You roll your eyes but relent, sliding off the chair and onto the big, fluffy bed next to Mitsuri. You can always get back to reviewing after you take a short break, right? She gathers up the quizzes and notecards and dumps them unceremoniously on the nightstand by her bed to make space for you, all too eager to stop thinking about Bio.

“I don’t have a crush,” you tell her.

“Really? There’s no one you think is cute? No one you want to get to know a little better?”

Well…if that’s what she means… You glance sideways at her. There’s definitely someone you think is cute who you want to get to know better. She doesn’t have to know it’s her—not that you have a crush on her; that would be ridiculous.

If she’s going to get that excited about your potential crush, how are you supposed to tell her you don’t have one? You’ll just have to pretend, for her sake. “I guess there’s someone. I wouldn’t call it love, but…”

Long black lashes flutter up at you as Mitsuri blinks. “Oh my gosh, who is it?”

“It’s a secret,” you say quickly.

“Aww, but I wanna know who you have a crush on!” She scooches closer to you and pokes you gently in the side. “Do I know him? Is he a senior? What does he look like? What do you like about him?”

“Um yeah, you know…him. He’s a senior but you’ll never—seriously never guess who it is, so don’t even try. He’s…really good-looking, I don’t know. He has nice hair…and, um, nice legs. And he…” you trail off, wondering what you can say about your secret ‘crush’ that won’t tip Mitsuri off that you’re talking about her.

“…I like him. He talks a lot but you can tell he cares about what you’re saying when he’s listening to you. He’s kind of dreamy and self-conscious about dumb things but it just makes me like him more.”

Was that too much? Mitsuri is looking into your eyes in pure rapture, holding onto every word you say. Are you being obvious? But—no way. She’s so loved by guys that she’d never even suspect that a girl could like her too.

Not that you like her. Not like that, at least.

After a moment when you feel your heart beating so deeply that you’re sure she can hear it too, she smiles sweetly and pinches your cheek. “You’re really pretty when you’re talking about your crush, (Y/N). You look like a maiden.”

You bite your lip, not sure whether to be embarrassed or flattered. If any other girl as beautiful as Mitsuri called you pretty, you’d think they were being insincere, but she’s not like that. Her genuine affection shines through in everything she does. If you’re pretty, she’s Helen of Troy.

“What do you mean, ‘a maiden’?” you ask.

“I don’t know,” Mitsuri says, tracing invisible hearts into her bedspread with a fingertip. “You just look…innocent somehow? Like this is your first love.”

You duck down, blushing.

“Wait, really?” She sits up and easily flips you over onto your back (sometimes you forget that a decade of cheerleading has made her at least a dozen times as strong as you are) so she can blink brightly at you. “This is your first love? Ooh…”

“Is that so weird?” you ask a little defensively. “I don’t get a lot of crushes.”

“No, it’s not weird! It’s cute,” Mitsuri says. “But aren’t you nervous? What if you fall in love with him and you guys start dating and you don’t know how to do anything?”

“Do what?”

“You know. Like, kissing and stuff. Aren’t you worried that you’ll have your first kiss with him and he’ll be like, ‘oh my gosh, you can’t even kiss, I don’t like you anymore’.”

“No one would say that,” you reply, but the scenario does strike a pang of anxiousness in your heart. You’ve always been too focused on school and friends and family to bother worrying about love, but the truth is you have worried about the fact that you’re soon going to be a high school graduate who has never so much as kissed another person on the lips.

“You have no idea,” Mitsuri sighs. “Boys are so mean. But I can’t believe you haven’t had your first kiss!”

“That’s rude,” you say, wrinkling your nose.

She flaps her hands in the air frantically. “No, no I didn’t mean it like that! Sorry! I just meant I can’t believe you’ve never had a boyfriend when you’re so pretty and nice. The boy who locks you down is going to feel super lucky that he gets to take all of your firsts.”

You sit up next to Mitsuri and lean back on her cushioned headboard. “I don’t care about that. Honestly, I’d rather have some practice before I get involved with anyone.”

A beat passes. Then— “Really? You want practice?”

You shrug. “I mean, I guess? But it’s not like I can just pick up some random guy and tell him to let me practice kissing.”

Mitsuri cocks her head to the side and long pink fringe falls away from her face. “You don’t need to do that. Just practice with me.”

“Huh? What do you mean?” What, is she going to give you tips on tongue technique or something?

“…Like this,” Mitsuri says softly—and then her delicate hand is stroking up the side of your jaw and carding into your hair, tilting your head to face hers and pulling you closer. She hesitates before she makes contact, looking in your eyes as if to confirm are you okay with this? But (maybe because you’re caught off guard, maybe because you think you do need the practice, or maybe because that angelic strawberry-honey smell is way too intoxicating up close) you don’t stop her, and she leans in and completes the kiss.

It’s soft. Smells sweet. Tastes sweeter.

Mitsuri’s lips are velvety and glossy-damp moving against yours. The scent you thought was honey is really honeysuckle—there’s a fresh floral quality to the taste as her lip balm is transferred from her mouth to yours.

The kiss only lasts a few seconds, but by the time she lifts back from you your lips are tingling. You cover your mouth with your hand like a damsel from a Victorian-era novel and stare wide-eyed at her.

“How was that? Your first kiss?”

“I—um, I liked it I think?”

Mitsuri smiles at you and it’s like a ray of sunlight falling down through a break in the clouds. “Yay! I’m glad.”

The two of you sit in silence for a second, and you wonder what you’re supposed to do now. Go back to studying? You’re not sure you’re capable of that when you feel like she’s…still kissing you. It hasn’t quite hit you yet that this is your first kiss—something special, something you’ll never forget. The feeling of Mitsuri kissing you is going to be written on your heart for the rest of your life.

What have I done? you think, but it’s not condemnatory. It’s a question, maybe neutral, maybe hopeful.

“Come on, come here,” Mitsuri says. “You need a little more practice.”

And then she’s kissing you again, all the while pulling you closer, closer, into her lap. She breaks the kiss just long enough to murmur to you to open your mouth. When you do, her tongue slips in, prodding gently between your lips and sliding up against yours. It’s a weird feeling—you can’t say with certainty that it feels good, but it doesn’t feel bad, either. It feels like something you could get used to.

This kiss is longer and deeper, and Mitsuri is sighing into the place where your lips meet. The kissing sounds are both embarrassing and thrilling. You can hardly believe that you’re actually doing this, kissing Mitsuri Kanroji in her bedroom and sitting in her lap with your thighs hovering over hers because you’re scared to let yourself press any deeper into her.

By the fourth kiss, you think you’re getting the hang of this. Your fingers are laced in Mitsuri’s hair, pulling her bangs out of the way so you can see her face clearly. Her eyes are hazy and intense, a warm glow suffusing her cheeks, and her lips are reddened. The feeling of not knowing whether you like having her tongue in your mouth or not is gone. You like it. You want more of it. You could do this all day.

…But apparently Mitsuri has something else in mind. She moves back and looks at you like she’s got a secret she’s dying to tell you. Her hands slide up your thighs, almost reaching the hem of the skirt you’re wearing—it’s knee-length, comfortable and practical for the weather—but with your legs spread over hers, the fabric is bunched up at the juncture of your hips and legs, exposing your thighs to view. Mitsuri’s fingernails (manicured, short blunt French tips, pale pink with stripes of gold near the nail bed) scratch painlessly into your skin. “You learn really fast, (Y/N).”

“Thanks…” you pant out.

“Can I do a little more? Just a little. ‘Cause, I mean, I don’t know if you’ve ever done this yourself—”

Oh. Oh? Mitsuri’s hand is creeping up under your skirt.

“—but it’s really good to have some experience with this, too, before you do anything with boys.”

She’s touching your pussy through your underwear. Those pretty manicured hands are stroking you through the fabric, fingertips sliding up between your lips with practiced precision. Oh god, can she feel how wet you are? You’ve felt that dewy heat growing at your core for a while, but you didn’t think she would touch you and feel it. “Mitsuri?”

“Are you already wet?” Two soft fingers pet your clit, moving over it side to side through your panties. “Did you get wet for me?”

“Mm—mm—Mitsuri…”

“Can I touch?” She pops her chin up and kisses you on the cheek, and then again on the other cheek, the side of your mouth, your forehead, all the while rubbing your pussy.

On the sixth teasing little kiss, you gasp and kiss her fully on the lips. “…okay?”

“Good…” Mitsuri smoothly pushes your ass up so she can hook fingers under the waistband of your panties and tug them down past your hips. You shift and let her do it—it feels like her touch is too hot, sending trails of warmth over every place where your skin meets. Her touch lingers even as you awkwardly straighten out of her lap for just as long as it takes to remove your panties and deposit them gracelessly on the floor.

Are you doing this right? Even with your shirt and skirt on, you feel more exposed than you’ve ever been in front of another person. You’ve never done anything remotely like this before—how weird is it that the first person to touch you is going to be a female friend? That you’re not doing this for the right reasons (and what are the ‘right reasons’? love? intimacy? desire?), but for practice?

Mitsuri settles you back onto her lap and slowly drags your shirt up over your bra. When the undergarment is exposed, she bites her bottom lip and sucks in a breath, and you feel eternally grateful that you, by some coincidence or trick of fate, decided to wear one of your nicer bras today. She cups the side of your breasts and runs her thumbs over the lacy wine-red fabric. “Beautiful…you’re so sexy, (Y/N). I can’t believe I get you all to myself.”

Your cheeks feel hot. Maybe desire is part of the equation after all.

Leaving your shirt bunched up over your tits, Mitsuri returns to your pussy, petting over your thighs and stroking up your mound. Her index finger dabs into the wetness leaking out of you and then circles around your clit.

Around your clit, not on it. If you didn’t know better, you’d think she’s deliberately not touching the place where you want— need to be touched. Her fingers are light and fluttery, not forceful in the least but making you crave more anyway. You try not to let your hips move, but before long you’re twitching on her fingers, trying to get her to do what you want. Your hands are braced uselessly on the headboard, but you hesitantly pick up your right hand to replace hers and touch your clit properly.

She isn’t having it. Her free hand catches yours before you can do anything. “Arms around my neck,” she tells you.

It’s frustrating to be unable to touch yourself when she just keeps building and building with these little flutters, but you trust her. Mitsuri’s a lot more experienced than you are. Slowly, you wrap your arms around her neck and wind your fingers into her loose hair.

Whatever she’s doing, though, it’s working. Even if you couldn’t feel how wet you are, you’d be able to hear it, the slick sucking sounds of your cunt dampened with your arousal. You’d be humiliated by the way it’s so obvious that you’re turned on if you were cable of thinking straight. Besides, Mitsuri doesn’t mind—at least not judging by the way she’s looking at you.

“Mitsuri…Mitsuri, can you…” You don’t know how to ask her, but you need more.

“Tell me what you want me to do.” Two fingers brush over your clit again and you almost flinch, the light contact sending a spark directly through you. “Tell me what you do when you do this by yourself.”

“I…um…it’s embarrassing…”

“It’s not embarrassing.” Mitsuri lays a short peck on your cheek. “Do you know how pretty you look? I could fall in love with you right now.”

It’s not serious. It’s just the kind of thing Mitsuri says without thinking, but your heart skips a beat anyway. “Touch—a little harder…”

“Where?”

“You know where!” you tell Mitsuri, with as much bite as you can muster.

Mitsuri smiles. “Here?” She pushes a finger into your pussy and you whimper. “Or…here?”

And she’s touching your clit, rubbing over it quickly and franticly, the first direct contact you’ve had since she started. The muscles in your back tense, legs stiffening, toes curling in your fluffy white socks. “Oh— oh, oh, oh— Mitsuri…”

“Does that feel good?”

After all her teasing, it feels more than good. It’s like you’re being filled up with something, some kind of heat that her fingers are bringing out in you, and it’s about to tip over and spill out. You rock your cunt against her fingers, trying to get her to go harder—but she’s already rubbing against you so quickly that you can’t think straight.

Two fingers slip deeper into your pussy, spreading you apart and pumping your slick cunt while her palm provides sloppy stimulation to your clit. You mewl and fall forward onto her, head thrown over her shoulder, so you can feel the vibration of her soft laughter in your chest. “Do you like it? I can tell…you know, your insides are holding me really tight….”

How does she say such dirty things with that pretty mouth? You’d tell her off if you thought you could speak without moaning. “Unff…mmm…”

“I’m going to make you cum, baby,” Mitsuri hums. “You’re going to cum on my fingers, okay?”

She’s right. You’re about to tip over that edge, overflow, get off with Mitsuri fucking you with two fingers twisting and hitting your g-spot and sliding over you so deliciously that you don’t even care that all of this is wrong. “I’m— I’m cumming—“

“Uh-uh.” Mitsuri’s hand stops, still touching but no longer moving, and the heat in your pussy plateaus and then dips.

You’re so frustrated you want to scream. “Mitsuri…!”

“Can you do something for me?” She resumes the teasing movements from before, edging over your clit but not finishing it. “Tell me who you really like.”

“What?”

“I know you like me.” Her free hand, around your waist, slides up and presses her thumb into the divot between two vertebrae in your spine. “When you were talking about your crush, I know it’s me. Tell me you like me.”

“I—I don’t—“

“No, you do. You like me. Say it. Say it, and I’ll let you cum. You want to cum, don’t you? You need it? I’m going to give you what you need, so tell me you like me…”

It’s not like she’s being cruel. Mitsuri’s tone is as sweet and kind and caring as ever. Her pace is agonizingly slow and she’s right, you need it. You’re lucky your chin is resting on her shoulder because you wouldn’t be able to stand it if she saw the look on your face as you choke out, “I like…I like you, Mitsuri! I like you!”

“I like you too, (Y/N),” Mitsuri gasps, and then her fingers are moving again, rubbing your clit, making you crazy, and it’s only a second but you want it so bad that you only need a second before you— you’re— you’re falling apart—

“Mitsuri!”

Oh god. Oh god. It feels good, it feels crazy. You can’t think. You can feel the muscles in your pussy squeezing down intermittently on her fingers. She holds you still as the shocks race up through you, letting you twitch and convulse in her arms.

“See now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Mitsuri sings in your ear.

It takes you a long moment to get the strength to sit up, flopping bonelessly backward on her thighs so you can look her in the eye. “I don’t know,” you sigh finally. “Wasn’t exactly easy.”

Her eyes close when she smiles. “Don’t worry about it. You just need a little more practice.”

#Kanroji Mitsuri x reader #Mitsuri Kanroji x reader #Mitsuri x reader #kny x reader #kimetsu no yaiba x reader #Kny #kimetsu no yaiba #demon slayer #kny imagines #kimetsu no yaiba imagines #demon slayer imagines #demon slayer x reader #Kanroji Mitsuri #Mitsuri Kanroji #smut

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thelastspeecher · 4 years ago

Note

Something from the restaurant au? for the angie prompt

I actually already got the three Angie prompts. But I love the Restaurant AU and your ask randomly inspired me, so here. Have Stan spending the night at Angie’s place after she discovered he was homeless and insisted he sleep somewhere that isn’t the floor of the restaurant.

——————————————————————————————

Angie waited by the entrance of her apartment complex. Stan had followed her in his red El Diablo, but since he didn’t have a parking spot like her, he had to park a couple blocks away. He walked up, visibly winded. She raised an eyebrow.

“Don’t…say…anything,” Stan panted. He bent over. “Ugh.”

“Didn’t ya tell me ya used to box?” Angie asked.

“Yeah.” Stan straightened. “Damn good at it, too.”

“How did walkin’ a couple blocks make ya out of breath?”

“I haven’t boxed recently,” Stan said defensively. His eyes began to dart from side-to-side.

“Hmm.” Angie cleared her throat, deciding to change the topic. She’d come to learn Stan’s body language well, and he seemed ready to bolt. “Well, if ya ever get back in the habit, maybe ya could give me a lesson or two. My older brothers ‘re always gettin’ on my case ‘bout how I should learn some self-defense skills.”

“With how tiny you are?” Stan asked. “I agree.” He stuffed his hands in his hoodie pockets and craned his head back to look at the apartment complex. “So. This is where you live.”

“Yep. Come on in.” Angie opened the front door. The two entered. Stan made a beeline for the elevator. “No, I live on the ground floor.”

“Really?” Stan asked. “All the traffic noises and shit don’t keep you up?”

“Pfft. Nah.” Angie went to her apartment. She unlocked the door. “My folks used to say I’d sleep through the Rapture.”

“The what?”

“End of days.” Angie looked back at Stan. “It’s somethin’ some Christians believe in. My fam’ly don’t, but that didn’t stop ‘em from usin’ it to make jokes.”

“Ah.” Stan pointed at himself. “Jewish.” Angie grinned.

“I recall.” She pushed open the door. “Well, come in. Make yourself at home.” Stan followed Angie into her apartment. He looked around idly. “Normally, I’d tidy up a bit ‘fore havin’ a guest over, but since this was a spur of the moment decision-”

“What are you talking about?” Stan asked. “This is the cleanest home I’ve ever been in.” He wrinkled his nose. “Except…it smells a bit weird.”

“Oh, that’s prob’ly Tubbs,” Angie said.

“Tubbs?”

“He’s right over there.” Angie nodded at the terrarium by her bookshelf. Stan wandered over to peer inside.

“A lizard. Oh, right, you’re in lizard school.”

“I’m studyin’ herpetology,” Angie corrected. “And Tubbs ain’t a lizard. He’s a salamander.” She smiled fondly. “He’s actually the reason I got into West Coast Tech. When I found him, his species was thought to be extinct.”

“Hang on, you go to West Coast Tech?” Stan croaked.

“Yeah. Why?”

“Nothing. It’s just…impressive, that’s all.”

“…Thanks.”

That didn’t sound like a compliment, but how else do ya respond to somethin’ like that? An awkward silence fell. Angie coughed politely.

“If ya want to go shower and get ready fer bed, I’ll get yer sleepin’ arrangements set up,” she said.

“Bed already?” Stan asked.

“Well, I have to go to bed soon or I’ll pass out standin’ right here,” Angie replied. “You can stay up later if ya want, though.”

“You got a TV?”

“Yes.” Angie smiled. “And I’ve got cable, too. Feel free to watch as much as ya like.”

“Sounds good,” Stan said. “Show me where the shower is.”

-----

Angie yawned widely as she made her way to the bathroom. Bleary-eyed and tired, she didn’t realize the door was closed until she walked into it.

“What the…” she mumbled.

“One sec,” said whoever was in the bathroom. The door opened to reveal her boss. Angie looked him up and down, absentmindedly noting that he was in his underwear. “I’ll put my pants on in a second.” Angie blinked at him. “Look, a lot of guys sleep in boxers-”

“Yer…” Angie frowned at Stan. “Yer in my home?”

“Uh. Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Do you have amnesia or something? You invited me here.”

“Huh?” Angie asked. Stan waved his hand in front of Angie’s face.

“Earth to McGucket. Why isn’t your brain working?”

“I’m…” Angie rubbed her eyes. She straightened her back. “Gimme a mo’.” She stretched. “Okay. I’m awake. I ‘member invitin’ ya to spend the night on my couch.”

“What was that about?” Stan asked.

“I wake up slow. Always have.”

“It’s probably because you’re such a heavy sleeper,” Stan said wisely. “You fell off your bed in the middle of the night and didn’t even make a peep.”

“Hang on.” Angie held up a finger. “How do ya know that?”

“Uh…” Stan rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. “When you fell off, it was loud enough that it woke me up. When I checked your room to see what the noise was, I saw you snoozing on the floor.”

“Well, at least ya have the courtesy to be a bit embarrassed ya poked yer head into my room,” Angie said after a moment. She shrugged. “I ain’t the only person in my fam’ly to sleep like a rock. I’ve got an older brother what does, too.”

“That sucks for your parents.”

“Hmph.”

“Hey, uh…” Stan cleared his throat. “Thanks for letting me stay the night. Like I said, you were right. I haven’t slept that well in months.” Angie smiled.

“I’m glad ya had a good night’s sleep. Now, get out of the way.” She pushed Stan to the side. “I have to get ready. After I’m done, I can make some breakfast.”

-----

When Angie emerged from the bathroom, ready for the day, it was to the sound of the TV blaring and the smell of something cooking. She looked around. Stan stood in the kitchen, staring at a skillet on the stove intensely.

“Uh, what are ya doin’?” Angie asked, walking over. Stan looked up.

“Figured I’d make breakfast.”

“I said I would.”

“Yeah, but you were taking a long time and I was hungry,” Stan said idly. Angie felt herself suddenly flush. “Also…” Stan grimaced. “I don’t like owing people.”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“You let me sleep on your couch and use your soap. I’ve seen that soap at the store. It’s not cheap.” Angie snorted. “I owe you one. Deal with it.”

“It’s always some weird pride thing with ya,” Angie sighed. She put her hands on her hips. “Well, how can I help?”

“Can’t,” Stan grunted. “This is the last pancake.”

“Pancake?”

“There are a lot of things I’m bad at cooking. Pancakes aren’t one of ‘em.” Stan deposited the pancake onto a plate. “Why do you think we serve breakfast all day at the diner?”

“Ya really took it to heart when I said to make yourself at home, didn’t ya?” Angie asked. “Most folks don’t hear that and decide to walk ‘round in their underwear and ransack their host’s pantry.” Stan smirked. He held out a plate with pancakes on it.

“Eat up, McGucket.” Angie took the plate from him with a smirk of her own.

“Don’t have to tell me twice, Pines.”

#one of my favorite Angie traits is her weird relationship with sleep #no one can wake her up even if she's awake #you just have to wait for her to wake up on her own #also I tried to keep this pretty platonic. just as a change of pace.#Restaurant AU #Angie McGucket #Stanley Pines #ficlet #my writing #ask #iconicanemone

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darkficsyouneveraskedfor · 6 years ago

Text

On Demand

This is for a request made by two readers who have chosen not to be tagged. I hope that you like it <3 Please let me know what you guys think in the reblogs/comments! 💜

Warnings: noncon sex (masturbation, voyeuristic elements, oral, intercourse).

This is dark!Steve and explicit. 18+ only.

Summary: The reader becomes a camgirl to ease her financial woes but money is soon the least of her problems.

Your stomach was doing somersaults. Your chest filled with fire. You couldn’t keep your leg from shaking as you waited for Megan. You glanced around her apartment enviously. She had upgraded in the last year. It was a mansion compared to your tiny city bachelor which was little better than a closet. She interrupted your covetous inner monologue as she entered in an ivory silk robe trimmed with black lace.

“Hey, sorry. Session went a bit long today,” Her cheeks were still flush as she swept around the couch. She dropped onto the cushion next to you, her arm draped over the back as she sat at an angle to face you. “But five hundred in an hour isn’t something to complain about.”

“Is it really that much?” You asked, your finger dancing along your throat nervously.

“On a good day. A bad day, I still make at least half that. You just gotta know how to keep them interested,” She chuckled. “These lonely men aren’t too hard to string along.”

You glanced away nervously and cleared your throat. This was more awkward than you expected. You were never this uptight around Megan. She usually brought out the freak in you. “Oh…” You leaned your chin in your hand. “They cut back my hours at work again.”

“Bastards,” She bent forward and turned on the cushion as she reached under the polished coffee table. She pulled out a joint and leaned back, “Want some?”

“You know I don’t do that,” You peeked over to watch her light up. “It makes me paranoid.”

“You? Paranoid? Ha,” She scoffed playfully before puffing deeply.

“Meg,” You said in a low tone, “Please.”

“So, you looking for another job?” She asked as the smoke seeped from her lips.

“I’m always looking for another job,” You grumbled, “But no one’s biting.”

She nodded and thought as she took another drag. Her eyes narrowed and she tilted her head. “Spit it out.”

“I...I dunno, I was thinking…” You clasped your hands together and shifted on the cushion, “How does all of it work?”

“Oh my god,” She sat forward sharply and tossed her lighter on the table, the joint disposed of in the square ashtray. “You’re kidding me, Y/N?”

“I’m just wondering,” You put your hands up defensively, “I’ve got rent in two weeks and my next check isn’t going to cut it. I’m kinda up shit’s creek here. I gotta consider my options.”

“Well, it’s quite simple. You set your own hours; you have control over everything. Money’s up front,” She snapped her fingers, “They pay before you even touch yourself just to see you. From there, they can give more as things progress but there’s a paywall to each tier; rubbing, fingering, toy play. The more they pay, the further they get.”

Your cheeks were burning. “Hmm,” You bit your lip as you thought, “I...I don’t think I could. I mean…” You sighed, “I still haven’t, you know…”

“I thought you and Jordan?” She lifted a brow.

“No, he was too pushy about it,” You leaned back and crossed your arms, “It’s kinda why things didn’t work out.”

“Well, you don’t need to be sexually active. You just need to know how to work with yourself,” She smirked, “And don’t tell me you don’t get lonely in your cloister.”

“Hey!” You laughed despite yourself. “Well,” You let out a deep breath, “I guess it would be worth a try?”

“Girl, it would be amazing,” She trilled, “You know, if you put in your description that your a virgin, you could ask for twice the standard rate. Hell, you’d have rent in a single session. Even two months’.”

You nodded and uncrossed your arms. You stretched out your fingers and examined the wrinkles along your knuckles. Three rejection emails this morning; they always decided to go with another candidate. Even if you did get something new in the next week, your first pay wouldn’t be in until after rent day. You gulped, accepting that one day you would look back on this dark time and laugh. Well, hopefully.

“Can you help me get set up?” You asked quietly.

“Babe, I gonna do more than that,” Megan flipped her long hair over her shoulder. “I’m gonna do your nails and we’re going to buy you some cute lingerie. Oooh, and I’ll show you how to contour...but, if we’re going for the pure look, the less, the better. And we’ll have to do something about your apartment.”

“Okay, okay,” You poked her shoulder, “One thing at a time. Let’s get the account started first and then I can embrace the crippling dread of what I’m about to do.”

This was it. A little less pathetic than your usual Saturday night. Your bed was draped in a pale pink comforter, the frilly pillows added to the facade. A tripod held the webcam aimed at the perky bed, your computer on a folding table nearby. Megan had covered the expenses of your new gig and you would repay her directly after with the money made from it. Well, if you made anything. You still weren’t sure this was going to work.

You stared in the mirror at yourself. A white baby doll hid little of your figure and you looked the dreamlike innocent. Well, that’s what you were, really. None of your boyfriends had gotten past using their mouths or even fingers. Often you stopped them from the latter as they were never very skilled and it was more uncomfortable that pleasing. You shook out your arms as you glanced at the time. Just do it. The sooner you began, the sooner you’d be done.

You climbed onto the bed, positioning yourself on your knees just as Megan had shown you. Of course she hadn’t given you a real show, merely a fully-clothed walk through. The test screen came on and reflected you perfectly. The mic showed that it was working and you took one last shuddered breath to brace yourself. You forced a smile and hit ‘start’.

You waited, preening yourself as Megan had demonstrated. One viewer popped up with a bloop. Then a second. Then ten! You began to rub your hands up and down your torso, pulling apart the baby doll for a peak of your stomach and the lace panties below. When it reached twenty, you began the real show. You wiggled out of your panties, turning to display your ass as you did. You sat back and spread your legs, vaguely following the little comments on the text feed and typing back here and there. A little post-it of suggested responses by Megan stuck to the frame of the screen.

Your nerves were rattling but you just pretended you were alone; that this was all for you. Not them. You thought of the money and your rent; even at the first paywall you had enough to cover what you didn’t have. As the next was approaching, a peculiar beep sounded and a private chat request popped up. You kept your fingers on your clit as you leaned over to read the attached message and green letters highlighting the offer.

‘Hey, baby girl, how about a private show?’ Viewer has offered $1000

Your lips fell open and your motion stuttered, your fingers slipping between your folds carelessly. Holy shit! It was a lot of money and well, it saved you from pleasuring yourself in front of all these viewers. Just one; that was easy. You looked to the counter in the session; already fifty. You accepted the offer and the screen went black; a message in the chat alerting all that you had gone private for the rest of the show.

A new screen popped up, similar to the first. You were there, looking back, legs splayed, your hand on your pussy. Another notification blipped requesting that the private viewer be allowed voice chat. You accepted again. The thousand dollars was already in your wallet and it would be a lot easier than typing and reading.

“Hello?” You called to the camera curiously.

“Hey, baby girl,” The deep voice was oddly alluring. Not the expected gristly voice of a middle-aged pervert. “Shall we continue?”

“Of course, honey,” You mimicked Megan’s example as best you could, “Do you like this?” You set to drawing circles around your clit again. An audible purr came from the speakers. You leaned back as the heat started to build. You hadn’t really expected to enjoy it. “Mmmm,” You let out a moan, louder than intended.

“Can you go inside, baby?” The viewer asked, and you hesitated. You fingered yourself sometimes but not often. You took a breath and coated your fingers in your arousal as you felt along to your entrance. “Are you really a virgin?” The question had your mouth agape. Your eyes widened as you weren’t quite ready to discuss that with a stranger. Even as you were about to fuck yourself for one. “You are,” He hummed contentedly.

“Y-yes,” You rasped out.

“You’re so precious, baby, how is that possible?” His voice was too much, it was driving you wild. He actually sounded attractive; it would be better if you clung to that fantasy.

“I...I’m saving it for someone special,” You lied. A rush ran through you at the words.

“Mm-hmm,” You could hear his smirk. You pushed your fingers inside and his sigh was audible. Your own was unintentional. It actually felt nice. You dropped your head back, almost forgetting that you were being watched as your palm brushed against your bud. “Yeah, baby, are you going to cum for me? Already?”

You whimpered and your thighs tingled. You fought to keep your legs apart as the rapture mounted. Your chest rose and fell as you felt the orgasm rising. You had thought it would be much harder than this. Hell, it usually took you a lot longer to cum. Something about his voice, about him watching, maybe even the money, had given you an unnatural high. You cried out as you reached the peak all so suddenly. Your legs shot out straight and you heard a grunt from your laptop. “That’s it, baby girl.”

As you stilled your hand, you shivered, you fingers still inside of you. “Can you take the rest off for me, baby girl?” You kinda liked the nickname, it helped you dissociate.

You slowly removed your hand, your fingers soaked. You sat up and nodded, speechless as the after waves shook you. You reached back and unclasped the babydoll and slid the straps down your shoulders. You tits fell free and you heard the man breathing heavily. You slipped out of the sheer lingerie and tossed it aside, once more on your knees as you tried to figure out what to do next.

“What kind of toys do you have, baby?” You blinked and stared down at the line of devices behind you. Megan had bought an array of beginner’s toy. Nothing too big. Mostly just vibes, some nipple clamps. You hadn’t wanted anything going inside of you really. You held up the small purple vibe. “That’s good, baby girl. I wanna see you cum again.”

You sat back on your ass and opened your legs, bending them to display your pussy to him. “Just like that, yeah.” He purred. You leaned back on one hand and clicked the vibe on. You reached down and pressed the buzzing toy to your overwrought clit. “You’ve got beautiful tits, baby.”

You giggled into a moan as the sensations began to radiate from your bud. Your feet arched as your muscles tightened. Sparks trickled along your flesh and you were panting once more. You barely noticed the other heavy breaths coming from the laptop. You could guess what the man was doing on the other end. What else would he do? You squeaked as you came, biting down on your lip as you pushed your head forward and held the vibe against yourself.

You fell back without thinking and rolled onto your side, the vibe still on and pressed to your clit. You could hear the groans from the speaker. “Such a nice ass,” He muttered, his voice curtailed by a sudden grunt and hiss. You didn’t need to see him to know he had cum, too. But it didn’t feel gross like you thought it would; it was intoxicating.

“Will you be mine, baby girl?” He asked after a airy silence; the two of you trapped in a rush of adrenaline.

“What?” You slowly pushed yourself up to face the camera.

“Just mine. Private shows only. Same rate as tonight.” His voice was smokey, “Gratuities every time you cum for me. “

“I...are you sure?” You crossed your legs in front of you. You weren’t exactly planning on do this again.

“A girl like you shouldn’t be shared,” He said. “So?”

“Um, okay,” You smiled, “I think I could do that…”

“Call me ‘Captain’, baby doll,” He offered in a dusky lilt.

“Captain,” You uttered with a pout, “Do you want more?”

You should just delete the app. Your phone hadn’t stopped for the last hour. You were with Megan enjoying a drink and a new life of financial stability but the cost was starting to wear on you. ‘Captain’ as he called himself, wouldn’t stop messaging you. It had been over a month since you had began this little online foray into scandal. It was exciting to be admired but as of late, it was growing quite irritating. Still, you couldn’t really complain as your savings account had grown exponentially.

At first, it was twice a week but now it was almost every other night. You were quite honestly exhausted. You had even fallen asleep on camera last night. And now he was nagging you like your mother during that trip you had taken to Spain in college. You silenced your phone and drained your cocktail as you smiled at Megan. You signaled to the waiter for a refill.

“So, how’s it going? Great?” She asked emphatically.

“Pretty good, I guess,” You shrugged, “You?”

“The usual. I made almost twenty-five hundred last night,” She giggled, “First time I’ve ever done anything anally.”

“Jesus,” You yelped, “Meg, you can’t just say shit like that.” The waiter set down another electric blue drink in front of you and you thanked him.

“Well, you know, it was kinda fun,” She grinned, “You making out okay?”

“Yeah, I just…” You ran your finger around the rim of your glass, “This one guy, he pays a thousand per private show but I don’t know if I can keep up.”

“Shit, Y/N, do we need to get you fucked?” She laughed, “I mean, maybe if you really loosened up--”

“Ugh, don’t,” You sipped from your cocktail. “It’s like every other night. I was late for work this morning.”

“Do you really need to keep working? A thousand per show, three times a week?” She sang, “Sound better than minimum wage at the electronics shop.”

“I don’t plan on this being my career,” You shook your head, “Get a nice nest egg going until I can find something better than retail.”

“The money, it can be addicting. Moreso the feeling,” She breathed, “It might just be creeps on the internet, but I’ve never felt more appreciated.”

“Hmm, yeah,” You picked up your phone and checked the endless queue of notifications. “Definitely feel needed.”

You swiped open your phone and opened the app. ‘Sorry, I’m just having some drinks with a friend. Can I message you later?’ You hoped the acknowledgement would placate him for the time being.

‘Okay, baby girl.’ The single message floated before you shortly before another popped up. ‘Later then.’

You tucked away your phone, content that you could enjoy your night. You took another drink and leaned your elbow on the table.

“Well, maybe it is a bit addicting,” You joked as Megan was glued to her own phone.

She laughed and showed you the dick pic she had just been sent. You covered her screen and you both fell into a fit of laughter. A girls’ night was a great relief from your new normal.

Another tedious day in retail. As none of your co-workers knew the meaning of work ethic, you were spending a whole hour of your shift re-organizing and pricing the headsets. It was simple enough work and gave you a reason to not be standing at your till doing nothing. You’re life had grown monotonous again as you had found the Captain mysteriously silent. The last session you had together had been a whole week ago. You hadn’t yet gone back for another public show.

Tearing your worries away from your extracurricular work, you finished re-arranging the hooks. You ran to print out new tags and returned to the section to find a customer staring at your newly tidied display.

“Did you need some help?” You asked the man. His blue eyes squinted as he looked along the hooks of nearly identical headsets. His dirty blonde hair and beard framed his chiseled face handsomely as he turned to glance at you. He didn’t resemble your typical gamer.

“Actually, I might just,” He smiled and you tried not to blanch. His voice sounded so familiar. Very familiar. “I don’t really know what I’m looking for. My buddy bought me one of these video game systems and he can’t hear me.”

“Well, when it comes to headsets, you get what you pay for.” You tried to hide your discomfort; your inner dialogue running wild. It couldn’t be. He said he lived in New York and you had only admitted to living up north. He couldn’t possibly be in the same city as you. Couldn’t possibly know where you worked. And besides, he didn’t seem to recognize you. “If you want something decent, you should start around the eighty dollar mark. I’d suggest Astro as a brand, but Turtle Beach is good enough if you’re just a beginner.”

He nodded and looked back to the headsets. You turned your attention to the price tags in your hand and began switching them out with the old ones. You glanced over as you felt an unusual warmth hovering over you and found the man watching you as you went about your work.

“I can’t decide. Which one’s would you suggest?” Again, his voice was so terrifyingly familiar.

“Um,” You turned to the shelf and pulled of the basic Astro’s. They were your default choice for the clueless. “These one. If you don’t mind the price tag, it’s worth it.”

“Thanks,” He took them from you, his fingers brushing against you. “I’ll give them a try.”

He nodded and you clung to your customer service tone. You wished him a good day as he walked away and turned to finish up your task. It was just a coincidence. You were imagining things. Besides, you could barely remember exactly was the Captain’s voice sounded like.

Coincidentally, you had a message waiting from the Captain when you got out of work. As you changed into your street shoes you read the single line; ‘can I see you tonight?’ You replied with ‘sure’ a surge of relief washing over you. He was still just a faceless man thousands of miles away. You slipped on your jacket and hooked your purse over your shoulder. You were already getting excited.

Back at your apartment, you set up your bed for a show. You plain grey bedding replaced with the dainty pink sheets and frilly duvet. The tripod at the end of the bed, the light you had bought angled towards you to give a better view. You opened your laptop and typed a message to the Captain. ‘Hey, where are you?’ You stared at his icon, waiting for it to turn green, but it remained grey and lifeless. Your shoulders dropped and you sighed. Maybe something had come up.

You felt stupid in the new lingerie. The white corset, see-through bra and panties, thigh-high stocks and a pair of platform heels. A whole thirty minutes and you shut your laptop. You moved it aside and were about to start stripping the bed when a knock came at the door. Who the fuck? You grabbed the plain terry cloth robe slung over the back of the chair and covered yourself. You approached the door down the narrow hallway and unlocked it, opening it just a crack.

You gasped and slammed it back shut as you saw the recognized the unexpected guest. You were too slow and weak to keep him from entering. It was the same man from the store. He swiftly pinned you against the opposite wall and kicked the door closed behind him, dropping a bag at his feet as he seized you.

“Sorry I’m late,” He said in a low tone.

“It--it is you,” You gaped up at him, his hands firm on your shoulders. “How did you…?”

“Shhh,” He raised a hand to press a finger to your lips. “You’re still gonna put on a show for me, baby girl,” He licked his lips as he leaned in, “Rather with me. Same rate as usual.”

“Get out,” You shoved his hand away from your mouth, “You’re crazy. Get off of me! Go!”

“Baby girl, I thought you wanted some fun tonight,” He forced you away from the wall and pushed you towards the main room of you apartment. Your bedroom, living room, and kitchen conjoined in an affordable open concept. You heard the door lock before he followed behind you, his hand on your back as he guided you forward.

“Please, don’t do this,” You whined as you turned to face him, “I’ll give the money back...as much as I have left.”

“I don’t want the money,” He chuckled, “I want what you’ve been saving for me, baby girl.”

You gulped. His broad figure blocked the hallway as he crossed his arms. You glanced over to the folding table where your laptop sat and seized your cell phone from beside it. He was on you in a moment, easily ripping the device from your hand. He released you sharply and smashed it on the corner of the table, nearly tipping it. He tossed it across the room and huffed.

“Why don’t you do it, hmm? Try to get past me and see what happens.” He challenged as he pushed his shoulders back. “You think you’re fast enough?”

You stared at him as your teeth chattered. You hung your head in an act of submission but quickly dove around him. You couldn’t even get past him before he had his arm around your stomach, your legs kicking out desperately. His other hand went to the knot of your robe and easily untied it. He grabbed onto the robe as you struggled and tore it from your body as you stumbled to your knees.

“One more try, baby girl,” He teased and you stood, reaching for the door frame of the hall as you teetered in the platforms. He had you in an instant, lifting you off your feet as he pulled you back into the room. “You’re cute.” He praised, “Feisty.”

“Let me go!” You yelped as you clawed at his thick arms.

“Let you go? You’re mine, baby girl,” His hot breath glossed over your hair, “I paid for you, fair and square.”

He twisted and shoved you towards the bed. You stumbled onto it as you wobbled in your heels. As you righted yourself, you heard him walk back down the hall. He returned with the bag he had brought in with him. His bright eyes burned you as he watched you rise to your feet.

“Sit,” He pointed to you, “Or I’ll make you.” You did as he said, the fear crawling up your spine. “Now, this can be easy or hard...and baby girl, I want you to enjoy your first time. You’ve waited so long.”

You dug your fingers into the duvet as you watched him set the bag down in the only chair. He unzipped it and pulled out a camcorder. He crossed to the tripod and removed your webcam, replacing it with his own camera. He clicked it on and you watched the light flash signaling that it was recording. He adjusted the angle and stepped back, looking over it to where you sat on the bed.

“We can start as usual,” He said, gesturing to the bed. “Go on. We gotta get you warmed up, baby doll.” You swallowed and stared at him. Then into the camera. You glanced to the door once more and you heard his sigh. “Y/N, really, let’s stop with the games?”

You turned back to him in shock. “How do you know my name?” Your voice cracked.

“I’ve seen so much of you, baby girl, a name hardly matters,” He smirked and moved the bag off the chair. He sat down and once more waved you over to the bed. “Go on. I like the little outfit but a body like yours doesn’t need any decoration.” You slowly brought your foot up on your knee and slipped out of the platform heel. You pulled the other off and stood, fingers under the top of your stocking. “Look at me, baby, come closer.” He flicked his fingers, “Smile for the camera.”

You bit down and set to rolling down your stockings one at a time. As you bent down, you heard a low growl. Your tits threatened to spill from your bra, though it offered little coverage as it was. You stood straight and slowly untied the laces of the corset until it went slack. You shimmied out of it, your vision blurred as you stared at the far wall. You couldn’t look at him. You just couldn’t.

As you unclasped your bra, he hissed and you let the straps fall down your arms and the cups folded onto the floor. You hooked your thumbs in your panties and he tutted. “Turn around,” He urged, “Let me see that ass of yours.” You obeyed, your movement jagged, and slowly pushed the lace down your thighs. You bent until they were past your knees and they slid to your feet. You stepped out of them and spun back. “On the bed,” He ordered.

You sat back and slowly pushed yourself back on the bed until you were in the middle. He nodded, a simple but overt command. You knew what he wanted. And as much as the situation frightened you, you wanted it too. You were wet and wanting. You needed release if only to quell the suffocating wave of fear.

You laid back as you spread your legs. “I wanna see your face, baby doll,” He warned and you cursed silently. You sat back up, bending your legs as you leaned on one arm. You slowly slid your hand down your stomach and hovered over your pussy. You pushed your fingers down, grazing your clit as you delved between your folds. You trembled at the sensation. How were you so wet?

You began to rub yourself, biting down on your tongue as you held your breath. Even so you couldn’t hold back the rush of nerves. The stirring of the tide as it wrapped you up. Your back arched as you exhaled, unable to hold back as your heart raced. You could almost forget that you weren’t alone. You whined as your body got the best of you and you came. Your head lolled back and you gasped, rubbing yourself through your climax.

You fell back as you panted heavily. You could hear him moving but he was upon you before you could react. The bed shifted as his hands ran the length of your legs. He gripped your thighs and you felt his nose tickle along your pelvis. You lifted your head as he nuzzled you, your hands fluttering down as you tried to wave him away. He easily ignored you as his hot breath crept lower. You squeak as his lips brushed your pussy.

“It’s okay, baby doll,” His blue eyes flashed up to your face, “Just relax.”

He bent his head and his tongue flicked over your clit. You mewled and arched into him. You couldn’t help it. You could barely thinking as your overly sensitive bud thrummed. As his tongue went deeper your voice caught in your throat. He pushed your legs apart as he dove into you, lulling your body with only his mouth. It wasn’t long before you entire being was spasming as an orgasm rattled you.

He slowly raised himself up, sitting back on his knees as he pressed his fingers along your pussy. You bucked in surprise, still recovering from the surge of pleasure. He poked around your entrance and slowly pushed a finger inside. You felt your walls contract around him and he shoved another finger in. You moaned in a mixture of pain and bliss.

“Oh, you really are a virgin, baby girl.” You closed your eyes in shame as he felt around, “Your so tight.”

He removed his hand and licked your juices from his fingers as he stood. He began to undress as you laid prone before him. Your head fell to the side and you stared at the door. Even if you could leave, you weren’t sure you had the strength left in you. Completely naked, he approached the bed and turned your body. You offered no resistance as he moved you, retreating to the camera to check the angle. You were shaking; in ecstasy and fear. This was it. It was going to be taken from you and there was nothing you could do.

You watched him approach. His cock was huge. The most you had ever done was a blow job and you weren’t even sure you could get him in your mouth. You pushed yourself up on your elbows as he climbed up on the side of the bed, parting your legs to get in between. You were suddenly frantic, the adrenaline filling you with a second wind. He caught your legs behind the knees and pulled you closer.

He draped your thighs on top of his as he bent his legs beneath himself. You tried to pull away but he kept you in place. He held your hip with one hand and his other went to your pussy. He played with you again, dipping his finger inside once more. You squirmed, reaching out to the duvet above your head. There was nothing there to save you.

“Shhh, baby doll, it’s okay,” He continued to explore your walls, “We��ll go slow.”

He pulled out his finger and ran his fingers along your pussy. He grabbed his cock and spread your juices along his length. He pressed his tip to your folds and rubbed it back and forth, from clit to your entrance. He lined himself up at last and shifted a little closer. You brought your hands up to shove him away, his torso a wall of muscle.

“Please, I’m not ready.”

“You feel ready to me,” He purred and you felt his head stretching you as he pressed inside slowly.

You hissed and he went deeper, a little at a time. He pulled your body to him as he pushed further, your pelvis tilted as he entered you. Your nails dug into his abs and tears filled your eyes as you felt him reach the thin barrier. You took a breath and he sighed as you felt it break. You let out a withdrawn whimper and he continued on without pause. You sniffed as he stretched you painfully, reaching his limit as he forced himself inside.

He stayed at his hilt and bent over you, placing a breathy kiss on your lips. “Baby girl, it’s okay,” He whispered, “You’re doing so good.” He pressed his pelvis to you, “You’re taking all of me. You feel that. You’re made for me.”

You were shaking, the tears streaming down your temples. He pulled back and you exhaled at the relief but he pushed back in and you gasped. He kept his thrusts careful at first, easing himself in and out as you whimpered beneath him. He sat back and gazed down at you as your face and body contorted against him. The more his cock filled you, the better it felt, the agony fading to fervor.

“That’s it,” He sped up just a touch, his thumb pressing down on your clit as his hand stretched over your pelvis. “Is that better, baby girl?”

You pressed your thighs around him as he rocked into you. Your eyes rolled back as a shock flowed up your spine. You bit your lip as you tried to resist it. You could barely feel the pain anymore as fire licked at your flesh. “M-m-m…” You stuttered, your hands kneading mindlessly at your chest, “M-more.”

You were surprised by the very word but it had risen so naturally. He groaned deliciously and his motion picked up. He plunged into you without restraint. You were like a ragdoll, your body at his mercy. His thumb sent chills through you as he kept rubbing your bud, an orgasm melding into the endless euphoria. The noises escaping you were inhuman; rabid.

“Ah, baby doll, you’re so good,” He breathed.

His thrusts grew even more rapacious as he hammered into you. You clenched your jaw as you dared to glance down at him. The sight of his cock entering you had you once more crying out in delight. Another orgasm took hold of you. Not even the hint of blood along his pelvis could deter you.

He bent forward once more and slid his arms under you, drawing you up so that your chest was against his. He moved your body up and down his cock. His blue eyes found yours and you couldn’t look away. His irises were on fire as he grunted. You hugged him with your legs, clinging to his shoulders as you came again. You were starting to lose count.

“I’m going to cum, baby girl,” He mumbled through his excess, “I can’t--”

He threw his head back and you felt a spurt of warmth within you. He let his head hang back for a moment before he looked to you and slowly lowered you to the bed. He stayed inside of you, looking down at your vulnerable body. His hand glided over your skin, leaving goosebumps in their stead.

“Don’t worry, baby doll,” He cupped your breasts and bowed his head between them, “We’ve got all night.”

#dark!steve rogers #steve rogers x reader #dark steve rogers #steve rogers #fic #mcu #marvel #au #request #dark fic #dark!fic #darkverse #dark!verse #one shot

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legacysam · 5 years ago

Text

It’s a day late for the fic challenge with @fieryfurniss, but it’s almost 3k instead of like... 500 so I think I’m okay with that. Completely unedited bc I am TIRED and I want to at least draft today’s fic before bed so I’m not TOO far behind. Anyway I have feelings about season 4 Martin, enjoy:

[SOUND OF SHUFFLING PAPERS]

MARTIN

Oh. Oh, hello. Suppose you’re all ready, aren’t you? Do you... I mean, we’re going to record the statements, it’s kind of what we do around here. You don’t have to keep turning up all spooky-like and turning yourselves on, we aren’t that bad at our jobs. I mean, not that performance reviews are... standard here, but still.

Do you just, do you enjoy it? Do you... I dunno, feed on this stuff? Eventually going to evolve into a, a boombox or something, like a tape recorder pokemon?

No. No, I suppose not. Probably for the best. Only just starting to get used to you at this size...

[CLEARS THROAT]

Alright, so. Martin Blackwood, assistant to Peter Lukas, Head of the Magnus Institute, recording statement #0070105. Statement of Marina Adamos, given first of May, 2007.

Statement begins.

MARTIN (STATEMENT)

It started in January, right after I got back from my parents’. Or, maybe a week or so after. Came back right after Christmas, it was just too much in that awful little house will the whole family there, all the nieces and nephews and my gran going on about why didn’t I have kids yet, all those people and since I’m the single one, I got the couch for the duration, might as well have booked a hotel really. In any case, got through the holiday, answered all the usual questions, took the dog for a lot of long walks, and got out of there as soon as I decently could.

I don’t mean to sound awful, I love my family, I do. I just get used to the quiet here, in my own place, and when we’re all together it’s a bit... overwhelming.

In any case, I was back in Exeter, getting good and settled in for the rest of winter. I’ve been writing my doctoral thesis, and I’d been at it for... god, must be four years now, four and a half maybe? And I finally got a grant to just sit down and write for a year. No teaching, no committees, just me and the thesis and field trips to a few of my favorite archives. Not this one, sorry. Don’t think I’d even heard of this one until last week.

Anyway, I suppose there was part of me that... I don’t know, maybe missed home? Had some lingering feelings about home, anyway, made my flat seem too empty to get proper work done, and I thought a change of scene might be helpful to get my gears going again after the break. There’s a cafe on the corner across from my flat, one of those that’s coffee during the day and wine and beer at night, can’t miss a chance at getting all the university students in for their various vices. Vices including poetry, apparently.

I didn’t know it was an open mic, obviously, or I never would have stepped foot in the place. Awful tradition, listening to nineteen-year-olds go on about being hopelessly in love as if anybody you date at that age is some grand romance. I almost preferred the angry feminist ones about getting felt up on the tube. I’d already dragged my notebooks over there, though, and in fairness the wine was really good, so I stayed. I had a table at the side, well out of mic-range, and once I got started working I could tune it out alright. I think the only thing that interrupted me was somebody asking if they could take one of the chairs from my table, which was great, actually. Kept anybody from being tempted to join me.

It was maybe an hour or two later that one of the readers got my attention. I still can’t figure out why. He was nothing special, just some nervous, chubby lad whose friends must’ve had to shove him up onstage, because he looked absolutely mortified being there. Though thinking back, I don’t remember seeing anybody he seemed to be with. Nobody cheering him on or anything. Dunno, maybe he was just braver than he looked.

I don’t remember much about the poem he read. It was long, I know that. But there was a bit in there that I don’t think I’ll ever forget. I don’t think I can forget it. He wasn’t looking at me when he read it, but it felt like he was standing at my table reading directly at me, like there was nobody else in the room, and not in a romantic way. In a really scary way, like when you accidentally make eye contact with somebody who’s been staring at you. But he was just looking at his notebook, and he said, “the winter snow that falls at night will cover us in purest white. The sun that comes at break of day will melt the snow and us away.”

It was spooky, I don’t think it fit with the rest of the poem, but I don’t remember any of that. Just those lines. I’m not a nervous sort of person, but I didn’t want to hear anymore, I just got up and left. I sat on my couch the rest of the night watching outside, waiting to see if it snowed. I don’t... I don’t remember seeing the guy leave the cafe, though. I don’t remember seeing anybody leave, but I must have fallen asleep at some point, so maybe that’s why.

I knew I’d been asleep because when I looked outside again, there was snow on the ground. A lot of it, and it was still snowing hard, and all I could think was “the winter snow that falls at night...” I could have strangled the guy, to be honest. Maybe if I’d seen him again I would have, or at least given him a piece of my mind about his creepy poetry.

Anyway I don’t know if it was his fault, what happened. Maybe it was all in my head from the start. That’s what anybody I tell seems to think, anyway. “Oh, poor Marina, the thesis pressure got to her. Such a shame.” Maybe it’s better if they think that.

I didn’t... I didn’t go out again until late the next day. It never got properly light, anyway, just that sort of glowy grey you get when street lights bounce off the snow and clouds. I stayed in and tried to work. It was... maybe 3 or 4 in the afternoon before I checked my phone. It was weird, normally I got loads of texts and things from my parents after I left from a visit, like they were trying to make it longer, you know? But I hadn’t gotten any. No missed calls, either. Everything was just... quiet. It didn’t worry me, I just figured with the snow people were taking a day off and curling up on the couch and not doing anything. I certainly wasn’t, kept reading the same passages over and over. That damn poem kept getting tangled up in them, I’d try to copy something out and find myself writing about snow and people melting.

Late in the afternoon I decided to go for a walk. Quit being a chicken about it and go out in the snow, see everything was normal and all that. And it was. I walked by houses and saw the lights on in the windows, shops were open with people behind the counters, just nobody shopping, really. It looked like I was the only one out, but that’s fair enough in a snowstorm, isn’t it?

So I went home and watched some reality cooking show until I fell asleep.

It was... different when I woke up. Still no messages on my phone. I was starting to think there was something wrong with it, so I opened up my contacts to call somebody and test it and... there was nothing. No contacts. No old messages. Just like as if the phone was brand new. I still know my dad’s number, of course, so I punched it in to call him but it just rang and rang, never went to voicemail. Mum’s too. It had to be broken, right? Factory reset or something, took it back to before it was programmed to make calls properly maybe? I told myself that anyway, though saying it now it sounds stupid.

I put the phone in my pocket and went to look out the window and... the snow was gone. I don’t mean it was melting, I mean it was sunny out and the street was dry. The sidewalks were dry. There wasn’t even any of that grey-yellow slush in the grass by the road, nothing. Like there hadn’t been any snow or rain or anything in days. And there was nobody out.

I told you, I don’t spook easily, I’m not nervous, but I was getting nervous then. Just a low level sort of adrenaline, I was not panicking, I was just... everything was weird and I still had that poem stuck in my head, and I wanted to make sure it was all just some fucked up coincidence, you know?

So I went to the cafe. It was the only thing I could think to do. I think I told myself I was going to borrow their phone, but I don’t think that was really the plan. I think I was looking for... evidence. Evidence of something.

There was nobody in the streets. Nobody. Not in cars, nobody in their yards. I couldn’t even see anyone through the windows. It was like everyone had left without me. Even the cafe, which should have been packed on a day like that, there was nobody. The door was unlocked and the lights were on, but I couldn’t find a single person. I tried to call my parents again. No answer.

I did find the open mic sign up from that night, though. They kept those in a binder by the register. I didn’t recognize any of the names, but I kept it anyway. You can have it, it just spooks me carrying it around, but I couldn’t think what else to do with it.

I don’t... I’m not sure I can properly explain how I felt in that moment. I stole a scone. Didn’t even think twice, just took it out of the case. Definitely tasted like it had been in there more than a day, but it didn’t really register with me. I sat in the window like that for ages, watching the street, just cold. I was thinking about how big whatever this was might be. Was I the only person left in Exeter? In Devon? Was it bigger than that? Had I missed an evacuation notice, was there some natural disaster coming? I’m not religious, but I had a school friend who was, and I wondered if maybe I was the only one terrible enough to be given a miss at the rapture. I was desperate to find something, some explanation, something sensible that would put the world back on track.

That was when I noticed the water in the street. Just a bit at the edge where something hadn’t drained properly, and it looked like it was moving. I went out to see, and it... Listen this is going to sound mad, and I’m sorry, but you’re just going to have to take my word for it that it’s true. It was... there were hands in the water. I don’t mean like physical hands, I mean it was as if people were standing over the water waving at it, and it just made waves of reflections of hands. It wasn’t trees, or clouds, or me, it was in the water. That was when I started to run.

I was in and out of shops, went in and out of people’s houses, through yards, everywhere I could think where people should be. I went to the university and opened every office and classroom door in the Washington Singer building. My advisor’s desk had a cup of tea on it, like she’d just stepped out, but it was stone cold and there was a ring above the tea like it had been sat there a while. She practically lives in that office. Something about that, that damn cup of tea, that broke me a little.

I didn’t know where to go. I sat on the steps outside and just watched the empty world. There were birds and things just like there always were, but there was no movement that could possibly be a person. No sound like a human voice. I think... I started to think about whether I ought to go home, barricade myself in and hope that people came back, or if it would be better to go looking. I didn’t have a car, but my landlady did. I knew where she kept her keys and everything. It wasn’t as if she was using it.

I laughed at that. I don’t know why, but I started laughing, sitting there all alone on campus, laughing at the idea of stealing my sweet old landlady’s car. I’d have to leave a note, I thought. She’d think she just forgot where she parked it and she’d go mad looking for it. If she came back. If that water...

I think I tried to ignore what I’d seen in the water, and the way the snow melted, and that damn poem. It was still in my mind, but I had closed off that part of it because it wasn’t helpful. It wasn’t helpful to think that maybe some stammering undergraduate with a terrible poem had somehow magicked the world into...whatever this was. I can’t remember how I locked it all away, but I remember walking down the street toward home just... muttering to myself. “No, no, no...” The kind of muttering that makes you look crazy to passersby. But of course there weren’t any. I could say whatever I liked and no one would know. I could stay in my flat for a week and no one would bother me to come out with them. I could ignore my phone and not miss any messages from my parents. They always worried if I took too long to answer them.

I yelled “FUCK” once, in the middle of one of the bigger intersections, just to see how loud I could be. It hurt my throat how loud I could scream.

I wonder if that was what did it, actually. Looking back, it was right after that that I saw the dog. I don’t know how that would make a difference, but it makes as much sense as anything. Just a glimpse, but I could see a tail and a trailing leash going around a corner a block away, and without thinking I started to follow.

I’d already done a lot of walking and running that day, but I think that was the fastest I’d ever gone in my life. All I could hear were my feet hitting the pavement, and then I started to hear the sound of tags on a collar. And then he was in sight, a big lab like my parents’, running full out, tail wagging like he was playing his favorite game. I didn’t think I could possibly catch him, but I kept going, because what choice did I have? I chased him through yards and parks and down empty streets, and when I finally got close enough, just as he was about to zig zag away again, I threw myself on the ground and got hold of the leash. I still have a scar from my elbow hitting the sidewalk.

It was... like when you unpause a movie and it’s not just that the world starts moving again, it’s like something that was just a picture becomes alive again. I heard a voice behind me, and a woman pulled up in a minivan thanking me for catching her dog, the kids were so upset when he got away from them. And then the kids were there, piling out of the van, and a lady came out of the house we were in front of and offered me a bandage for my arm. There was traffic again, I could hear music from a couple streets over. It was all back.

I didn’t go to the cafe again. I just... couldn’t. I couldn’t risk it. Whatever happened to me, wherever I was that day, I knew it all started there. I wasn’t going to give it a chance to get me again.

I don’t... I don’t know if this is helpful for you, I don’t really know what you do here aside from collect creepy stories, but I just. When I heard about you I felt like I should tell you my story, maybe get it off my hands. I’ve got things I want to do with my life, you know? Time to stop thinking about all this. Time to let it go.

Statement ends.

MARTIN

[LONG PAUSE]

The... the list from the cafe is here. It’s... I... yes. Yes, my name is on it and yes, I used to go read there, but this isn’t... I don’t recognize those lines, I didn’t write them. I didn’t... I wasn’t...

I think I need to talk to Peter about this. I don’t want to. If the Lonely was... I don’t think I want to know. I don’t want to have been... I dunno, destined for this. I don’t want any of it. I...

[DEEP BREATH]

I... I’ll ask Melanie if she can do the follow up on this one. I think she’ll understand.

End... end recording.

#martin blackwood #tma #the magnus archives #okay listen #i haven't read a single tma fic yet i only just caught up BUT #my assumption is that statement fics are a thing and i cannot wait to read some

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televinita · 5 years ago

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Little Women (2019): Thoughts

REQUIRED READING: the prequel post about my background going in to this film.

SNAPSHOT VERSION: Though I have some casting qualms, and may adjust my opinions after I reread the book, mostly I think this is everything my heart has needed since the magic of the ‘94 movie was broken for me. My heart is very full.

FULL VERSION: Twice as long as the prequel post (a.k.a. 1800 words), starts below.

I did not expect LW to be the first Unexpected Comeback Fandom of 2020 (or a comeback fandom ever, really), but here I am, having spent every day since I saw this film mooning about this story and looking up different editions and supplemental books in the library catalog, so I'd better process how I feel about it while the memories are relatively fresh.

Most of my thoughts are on casting rather than specific scenes because like I said, I can’t remember the book super well, so I’d like to get my movie memories to fade so that the book can surprise me. Also because I think I will have a more in-depth post about them when I watch the film a 2nd time, whether that’s in theaters or on DVD. But here’s what I’ve got for now.

ON CASTING

In no particular order --

* Emma Watson is very pretty but it is so hard to take her seriously as an actress. She's just Emma Watson, Famous For Being In Harry Potter and Getting Hired For Other Big Name Projects. I feel like she's so consciously acting all the time. She made a not-terrible Meg, I guess? No worse than she made a Belle. But it was roughly as hilarious watching her try to be a mother now as it was watching her try to be a mother in the last Harry Potter movie. To the point that I just kept hearing the "Damn! I'm SO maternal!" song playing as her theme in the background at all times. * I realized 6 days prior to seeing the movie that Florence Pugh is recognizable because she's in Midsommar and honestly, that just ruined everything for me. I didn't even see that film, I just know it's gross and I would hate it and while she is not tainted forever like the 50 Shades actors, she is definitely too tainted for Little Women. Also I could not stop thinking about how I associate Amy with being very dainty and prim and Florence, while perfectly lovely, is not. * Laura Dern was kind of strangely modern and kooky for Marmee, but I love her as an actress and I loved that she was just like "HELLO STRANGE NEIGHBOR BOY, COME BE MY FIFTH CHILD." So I was OK with that. * ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH BOB ODENKIRK. What kind of anachronistic garbage. What crack were you on, because it was obviously not the good stuff. "Did I stumble into an SNL parody??" I wondered more than once. * Meryl Streep as Aunt March was AMAZING. Ten Oscars. * Beth consistently looked younger than Amy, so that was weird. She was okay but kind of childlike, and failed to make Beth my favorite like she is in the book. * JO! Saoirse Ronan is by far my favorite actress in this set, but I didn't think she was right for Jo going in. "Jo's not a redhead!" I said, indignantly stamping my foot, because my childhood-era love for this novel reigns defensively supreme like for no other classic besides Black Beauty. (another 1994 classic they should remake soon, even though I love that version. Just saying.)

But damned if she did not COMPLETELY embody every essence of Jo there is and make Jo my favorite character this time. Truly, nobody except Meryl Streep so thoroughly matched my expectations for their character. Ten Oscars, part II. Or at least the one she is actually nominated for. If Jo loses to ScarJo I will riot. * John was nice. I feel like he was exactly what he was supposed to be, which is to say kind of plain and milquetoast but perfect for Meg. I don't actually remember him existing in the novel, so that was an interesting game of "how important is this guy?" until suddenly Meg was getting married and I realized I did, in fact, have a very dim memory of a wedding from the book. I think I will like their romance more the second time around, though. * Mr. Laurence was VERY EXCELLENT. IDK why I know the actor, even after looking him up, but I liked him in this role a lot. His grandfatherly quasi-adoption of Beth was so sweet. * As for Professor Bhaer...UGH. I hated him on sight and my brain wouldn't even let me recognize who he was for like 3 scenes, I was just like, "who is this random boarding lodger and why are we focusing on that weirdo." I mean, he's objectively handsome? But he did not do it for me. He lacked the gravitas I expect from this character and his thick accent scraped my ears and drove me insane (update from the future: his accent is also driving me insane in the book, where I have peeked in at a few chapters as incentive to reread. whyyyyyyy). * LAURIE: maybe it's been too long since I read the book, but never could I ever have imagined I'd want to use the term "fuckboy" to describe Laurie. It wasn't even Ski Chalet's face so much as it was that in all present-day scenes (post-rejection), he is such an insufferable, melodramatic, pouting trash heap that I didn't want him to marry any of them at that point. (Also YOU STILL DIDN'T MAKE ME UNDERSTAND WHY HE GOES FOR AMY, so good job.**) However, I took especial delight in paying attention to all the cuddly platonic friend cuddling he heaped on Jo growing up, in focus or in the background, and I loved it...kind of a lot? The ship radar made noise. That noise is getting louder by the day, smoothing away his faults. He may have permanently taken up residence in my mind's eye as the new Laurie. ...this is the worst. Make it cease. (**update from the future, I am peeking at the book and it looks like it's a lot easier to understand both in text and when you're inside Laurie's head. He is still clearly sulking his way through Europe, but in a way it's easier to recover from. Also, I don’t have time to unpack this but as I finish the edits on this post I started 5 days ago, I’m starting to think I could not only ship Laurie/Amy, but believe in it from the start.) ACTUAL PLOT AND FILM QUALITY

+ The shifting between past and present was very jarring right off the bat, but after that I think it worked.

+ I loved the attic play rehearsals so much

+ I am so glad Jo’s shorn hair is both fleeting and as hideous as it should look, and not Pixie Cut Chic (Childhood Me wailed at that part reading the book)

+ I remember hardly anything about the book's Part II / Good Wives, so basically everything in their adult lives was news to me. Amy and Aunt March go to Europe? Jo goes to live by herself in New York? Meg marries a relative pauper? Any of this could be true to the book or just made up as an alternate idea to explore, and I would be none the wiser. That made it more fun. (NOBODY SPOIL ME ON WHAT'S TRUE)

+ It did not occur to me until just now that the part where Jo publishes her version of Little Women is not in the book (right?), but that was beautifully done.

+ The house interiors were breathtaking. It's not like I don't regularly watch period pieces, but this time there was just something about seeing an old house, like the ones I am often in for estate sales, decorated the way I always imagine seeing when I enter those homes, that kind of made me tear up. + The outside shots were pretty too + Jo made me cry with her I'm so LONELY! speech, rude. (I went into this movie thinking I was 100% on board to finally read Alcott’s sequels for their Jo/Professor content, and now I'm like 'ah damn it is gonna be the season for the Jo/Laurie AU novel, isn't it.')

+ A strike against Beth and/or the actress playing her: I did not cry about her death (in my defense I was busy crying about Jo's pain).

+ I did NOT remember precisely how Laurie & Amy got married, so even though I knew it happened eventually, I felt that sucker punch to the gut reveal just about as hard as Jo did. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOUR WIFE.

+ My mom said she’d heard this movie was lauded as being super feminist, which rarely goes well for me, but I thought it felt like really authentic "married women literally were not allowed to control their own income and it sucked" 19th century feminism, and not someone using their 21st century voice to claim this is how people would have REALLY talked if The Patriarchy Of Historical Record hadn't silenced/suppressed it. Nothing rankled me. I’m very confused by the people who think it says Jo is queer and/or didn’t end up with the Professor, but if that’s what you see then I guess it’s a win/win situation for all of us. + LOVED the closing montage. + Basically, at all times that I wasn't annoyed by the casting, I was feeling the same magic I did while reading the book and/or while watching the 1994 movie as a child. I can’t think of any parts I really hated.

IN CONCLUSION

Part of me is honestly kind of sad I didn't reread the book before watching this movie, because even though I usually prefer to go movie first and then get the Expanded Edition that is the book, in this case I wish I'd taken my last chance to properly visualize everything in my head on my own -- since I’ve mostly forgotten the ‘94 film -- before the new movie washed it away forever. This is one of the rare times I would have liked to hope and guess what would be shown vs. cut, and be able to anticipate the thrill of seeing the page come to life.

However, seeing it was the impetus I needed to finally take my childhood copy off the shelf (and thank heavens I have it, because the library request is backed up 3 or 4 deep for every copy), and it took all of 5 minutes to get instantly sucked into chapter 1 and feel such rapturous joy and familiarity that I consciously cut myself off and decided I am going to journal out my feelings after each chapter on this reread. So that’s something!

#the biggest surprise is that maybe Timothee Chalomet is not the worst thing ever #and I frankly do not know what to do with this loss of identity #little women #little women spiral

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pjmnns · 6 years ago

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Sue Me

You walked out when he broke your heart. Words were left unsaid, thoughts pushed away, unanswered questions left unanswered— remember when he said there was no second chance? When you run into each other at the same place you first met, he’s hoping to change the past. You say: So sue me for being something you couldn’t forget.

Lawyer!AU, ex-lovers!AU + twist // angst, fluff, crack (?)

Pairing: Reader X Jungkook

Rating: T (swearing)

Warnings: swearing and sum horrible attempt at writing crack, maybe shitty character development idk i tried guys

Word Count: 2.5k-ish

>> 1 / 2

High school y/n got nothing on you now.

The cool silk fabric trails down your curves, tickling at your skin as you slowly guide your dress down, the hem meeting a teasing length mid-thigh. Gazing into the mirror, you take in the new you. Although you’ve had the same body, the same skin, the same curves and dips for twenty years, a new confidence blooms in your chest, radiating through your bigger, brighter smile. You grin easy now, dimples deep and eyes shining as you finally have the confidence to feel yourself.

It’s been a slow burn towards this state of mind, recalling the throbbing numb that came after walking away from your first love. You still remember the empty silence, the blatant lack of words the moment both of you walked away without a second glance back, without a falter in your steps. Too many nights after, you laid in bed overwhelmed by every single theoretical thought and what if.

What if you hadn’t walked away?

What if you made it work by changing?

What if you fought for a second chance?

But then you remembered his words, remembered that there was no second chance. And with that, you chose to walk away with your head held high and step over the hole in your heart, choosing to ignore the burning wetness in your eyes and the throbbing numb in your chest.

Taking a final look in the mirror, the silk is a burning cool underneath your fingertips, hugging your figure in all the right places, teasing at all the perfect spots. You tuck a strand of hair behind your ear and move to leave your apartment, resounding determination in your step to make the night worth while.

The music reverberates through the club, vibrations and bass pumping through your bloodstream as the neon lights illuminate your glistening skin. The club where you first met him. Going back, the feelings and memories wash over you as you clearly remember the night of your eighteenth birthday. Despite the good memory that mars the past, you instantly melt into the night, feeling high off of the music and the night lights, feeling yourself as a grin plays on your lips the entire night.

That is until you’re feeling yourself a little too much. As you move yourself to the music, your heel comes down on someone’s foot and your elbow collides with someone’s face.

“Shittt oh my god I am so sorry, are you okay??” genuine concern painted across your face as you immediately grab at the person whom you managed to assault twice. The person’s face is scrunched up in pain, a deep grimace settled into their features as they begin to follow the worried voice—

“Y/n?”

“Jungkook?”

Shit. Out of all people to run into at a club and of all people to accidentally attack, it had to be your boss. Coughing, you manage a sheepish smile as you correctly address him as Mr. Jeon and lead him to the bar to sit, your boss managing to limp along with you.

“Again I am so sorry Mr. Jeon, I didn’t notice you, I’m so sorry.”

He had never seen you outside the firm before, even more so he never would’ve expected to see you at a club. He found it funny how you were mumbling, at a loss for words clearly as you never had intended to hurt anyone, much less your boss. Jungkook managed the courtesy to offer you words of solace, rolling his foot and rubbing at the tender place where you had managed to strike him before.

“It’s okay y/n, stop worrying about it, I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going either, it’s more so my fault than yours.” He flashed a genuine smile in hopes of comforting you, quick to notice the flush of rose that painted your cheeks.

—

You started working for Jungkook and the Jeon Firm your second year of undergrad, lucky enough to land a spot at one of the nation’s largest law firms as a legal intern. The fact that you had drowned yourself in work after the breakup really paid off since you were immediately hired to lend your skills and creativity as an extra person on staff, performing valuable work for the firm’s clients. You were placed under Jungkook, the Jeon family’s own youngest son and youngest lawyer at the firm who had made quite the reputation for himself considering so. You’ve been diligent and dedicated enough to secure your spot as the Jeon Jungkook’s intern.

—

Again remembering that you were at a nightclub, Jungkook asked if you wanted anything to drink, politely declining before stating that you had come by yourself so you were the only means of getting yourself home. Curious and albeit, surprised at the feat, he began light conversation, lifting your anxious nerves because of the fact that you still kept stealing glances at his now-bruised cheek.

Fighting back a smile, Jungkook couldn’t help but notice how different you appeared. Rather than your usual high ponytail, tonight your hair is down and softly curled, pouring down over your shoulders in waves, your hand moving through your loose hair simply. You wear an easy expression, a content smile that somehow makes Jungkook feel at ease too. He notices your eyes also soften underneath the night glow instead of the sharp and determined gaze you don at work, your eyes glimmer with a new longing for the night to last. The dress and heels really accentuating your body that was always disguised by conservative business wear. Jungkook had never really noticed how unfairly pretty you were, not just your appearance but your poise and the way you emit rapture for the moment. He really was taken away by how pretty you looked tonight and he was just starting to acknowledge the stir in his chest that blossomed whenever you walked into his office or addressed him.

Other than cases and clients, you never had the chance of witnessing the alleged charm that Jungkook carried. You’ve only heard about it through quiet whispers at the firm and the gossip that lingers in the coffee shop below the office. As of now, you were able to experience it first hand as he made the air around you comfortable and lax, talking about anything and everything that had you rolling your eyes and cracking smiles with your boss.

As the night wore on and you remained talking to Jungkook for maybe an hour now? Two? You were interrupted by: “Y/n?”

As your gaze moves away from Jungkook— Fuck. Oh god. WHY?

A part of you knew that there was a possibility of this happening. A part of you swore to yourself that this would happen. A part of you saw this coming. But you ignored it and chose to indulge in yourself.

He was there. He was really fucking there.

“Hoseok, um hi,” managing a small, forced smile.

Your ex. Your first love. One and the same.

The quirky smile and delicate gaze that you once adored was now adorned by a devilish smirk, dangerous intentions behind the glimmer that his eyes now bore. Despite his arm held around a girl’s waist, pressing her in closer to his athletic build, his face reflected genuine surprise at the fact that you were really there right in front of him. However his initial reaction quickly dissolved and he wore on the fuckboy expression that he had tried so desperately to procure after you guys broke up. Now he bears it so naturally, so effortlessly that it physically pains you.

Sensing the unspoken tension, Jungkook introduces himself to Hoseok, rising from his seat to stand in between the two of you. You hadn’t realized your shoulders were so tense, your hands clenched in white-knuckle fists, until Jungkook brushed your wrist, a brief sign of assurance.

Hoseok’s eyes dart between you and Jungkook, adamantly curious about your relationship and a part of you wishes that there wouldn’t be any mention of your strictly professional relation. As if Jungkook read your thoughts, he introduces himself as a close friend, the tension now wavering between the two men as neither of them moved to shake hands.

“Well, you seem a bit busy and we were just leaving so it’s been nice Hoseok.” Jungkook stands, taking you with him as he turns to leave, grabbing your hand to ensure you follow.

“I’ll see you again y/n” Hoseok calls after you but unlike the last time, you do look back, you do spare a glance, and you do feel the regret burning in your heart.

After the encounter with your ex at the place you first met, you really had lost all motivation for making the most of your night. Although it was supposed to be your big comeback, at least in your own regard, you still felt defeated by the lingering thoughts. You were more than grateful for Jungkook’s ability to read the situation and interfere, otherwise you wouldn’t have known what to do, although it might’ve been something along the lines of breaking down in tears or having a dramatic outburst of pent up anger and careless thoughts. He announced to you that he would walk you to your car, chuckling at the fact that he himself felt the need to. Cute.

Because you were grateful to your boss as well as still majorly apologetic for assaulting him twice, you felt obligated to offer an explanation for the encounter with Hoseok. You detailed the very cliche yet sentimental start to your relationship, Hoseok being your first love in high school and for a while, it felt like it was the two of you against the world.

“Forever and always was his thing. I didn’t think much of it besides the fact that it was basically a promise, a commitment I guess, and a part of me will always think that I took it for granted.”

“He cheated on me for about three months before I caught on, with the one person that really made it the worse,” shaking your head in embarrassment as you recall the past. “My childhood best friend,” you laugh as you explain. “He had this twisted aspiration for fucking around but who knew it meant screwing your best friend.” As you steadily explained to Jungkook the mutual breakup, your choice in walking away yet succumbing to the doubts and unanswered questions, you told him that a part of you really wanted to go running back to Hoseok, wanting a second chance. “No second chance he said… I was devastated, like, like I owed him something and he didn’t even give me the opportunity to make it up to him. What a dumbass,” acknowledging yourself.

While you were telling Jungkook, he silently listened and recognized the fallout of a once-promising relationship. He nodded his head often, urging you to go on whenever you hesitated, feeling like you were being an annoyance. Yet Jungkook felt good, he felt comfortable hearing your talk about your personal life, especially to him. He wanted to say something but he really didn’t know exactly what to say so as you made your way into your car, he simply wished you a good night and thanked you for talking to him.

“I’ll see you tomorrow then y/n,” sending you a final smile as he leaned into your car window, his stare lingering for a moment as he searched your face, looking for more words to say. Both of you forgetting the initial cause of your encounter concerning a sore foot and slightly bruised cheek, rather indulging in the last moments of your time together as you moved on into the later hours of the night.

For some reason, you felt a little more at ease as you drove home. As if finally telling someone about what had happened to your relationship with Hoseok really lifted deadweight off your chest, letting you breathe a little easier. Even after the shitty run in with your ex, you drove home smiling to yourself and you didn’t even know why.

Y/n! Please attend the Seoul High School Reunion Night! 7pm at the Grand Resort for reception, 11pm begins After Party at Club SeoulNite. RSVP.

Clutching the invite, your thoughts wager between wanting to go for yourself and not wanting to go for your sanity. After the night at the club, you’ve gone slightly insane over reliving the memories, good and bad. As much as you tried to convince yourself, your newfound conviction didn’t run as deep as the past that you had with him, the scars still throbbing with a dull pain.

“Y/n, do you need a day off?”

You’re quickly startled as you realize Jungkook had asked you a question, obviously inquiring about the invite. As he stood with you in the coffee shop underneath the office, ordering and then settling with you at a table near the window, he asked to see the invite. After sliding it towards him across the table, you watch as he picks it up and scan the paper, the edges of his mouth tugging upwards as he tries to play it off.

“Okay I’ll go with you. It’ll be fun.”

Despite the fact that you actually hadn’t asked him to be your plus one. Despite the fact that you actually hadn’t asked your boss to be your date. Your expression reflected the same sheer amount of shock and surprise and confusion that washed over your thoughts like a tidal wave, gaping mouth, wide eyes, and all. You quickly searched his face for any hint of sarcasm or major antics, yet all you could read was genuine interest and earnestness.

“Uh, what.”

“Obviously judging by your face while you stared at the invite for two straight minutes, you were debating on whether or not to attend which may or may not be completely motivated by your ex-douchebag boyfriend making a guaranteed appearance. So what I mean by is, I’ll be your date so you have a little boost of confidence in really showing off the new old you while managing to one up that asshole,” casting a defiant and smug look on his face when he finished.

You really couldn’t deny what your boss was saying because he basically summarized your thought process from the last five minutes. Except for the part where you take your boss as a date. Yet as you mulled over his proposition, your desire to finally be able to let go of Hoseok once and for all, to purge all the unanswered questions and mindless thoughts from your head overshadowed any conviction against the proposal.

As you carefully write a number two on the line besides the RSVP, you couldn’t help but wonder at what outcome was to be expected from this entire situation. A part of you was honestly terrified of what would happen, terrified of the consequences affecting more than you were ready to let be affected. Yet the other part of you wanted this, constantly reminding yourself that doing this would be doing one for yourself, realizing that letting yourself free was more important than any other thing in the world right now.

“Fuck it y/n. Hoseok can sue you for moving on. His sorry ass can sue you for doing everything right.”

—

Helloooo everyone!! I hope you enjoyed this fic! I’ve been meaning to write this after I kept listening to Sabrina Carpenter’s new album, especially Sue Me,, obviously. The lyrics are pretty good so I kinda wrote this loosely based off of them so hopefully its not too bad. Lmk if you caught the plot twist and if I actually got you, ngl I was pretty impressed with myself. Like always drop me a message and thanks for reading xx

#bts #bts ff #jhope #jimin #jin #jungkook #rm #suga #taehyung #v #bts jungkook #bts oneshot #bts fluff #bts smut #bts angst #jungkook one shot #jungkook angst #jungkook fluff

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chubbychasershortstories · 6 years ago

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Early Lessons - Chapters 5, 6 & 7

Chapter 5: Linda, John and Butch

There was a sweet girl about my age working at BK at that time named Linda. She always seemed to smile through the grueling work and I had no idea how she managed it. I worked really hard, but I wasn’t particularly happy while doing it.

We ended a dinner shift together at 10pm and as we left, we headed down the same street. I offered to escort her home as we didn’t live in the safest of neighborhoods. She accepted, thanking me, and asked me in when we made it to her apartment.

We chatted and got to know each other better while sipping on sodas. She was a very warm and caring person. I suddenly had a strange urge and just blurted it out, “I’m gay.” I had never admitted this to anyone I wasn’t in love with. Her response was, “Wow, I’ve never had a gay friend before.” She called me a friend on our first meeting and it felt great. She seemed totally intrigued and asked me questions I hadn’t even considered and couldn’t really answer, given my limited experience.

She opened up to me too and told me she was almost 18 now and had been kicked out of her home for dating someone her parents disapproved of vehemently. The two were married in a civil ceremony 2 months later and shared this apartment. He worked construction on a 10 days out - 4 days in schedule. I really liked John when we met and the three of us would party together and shoot pool at a nearby hall.

Linda had already explained to John that she had a gay friend now and he took it in stride and never made any untoward comments about it. I really respected him for that. We were in Texas after all. The second time we met, John gave me a hug when he got home right after giving Linda a hug and a kiss. He thanked me for being a good friend to Linda. He said he felt better about leaving her alone knowing I would be there for her. It felt really good to have close friends from whom I didn’t need to hide anything about myself. It felt very liberating.

I soon met Linda’s ‘lover on the side’, Butch. He was a reform school kid about our age. He had a very lanky build, weighing barely more than I. He had reform school tattoos that looked horrible and a peculiar haircut with the straight bangs cut at an angle across his face, high to low. He was an exhibitionist as well and I ended up watching him plow Linda with his massive cock on the day we met. Massive didn’t cover it. His cock looked to be 14 inches in length and as thick as a can of beer. I’m not exaggerating. Linda had her head thrown back in a rapturous pose. Butch kept looking back at my awed expression and looked quite pleased with himself at my stunned reaction. Afterward, he would often come by my garage apartment on his own to chat and party and we had a decent friendship of our own going.

John’s current work project finished before the 10-day mark. He arrived home at mid-day unexpectedly and heard a huge commotion in the bedroom. Butch had barely scrambled out the 2nd story window leaving the screen in tatters. John pressed Linda for what was going on and why the window had no screen left.

I heard a knock on my door. It was John with Linda in tow. She was staring at the ground. “Did you just jump out of my bedroom window?” he asked, incredulously. Linda had fumbled for her explanation on his return and resorted to accusing me since John knew I would not have been screwing her behind his back. She really didn’t want to admit to the truth.

I answered, “No?” wondering where the question would have come from. Then the pieces fell into place in my mind. “You LIED to me!” he directed at Linda as she started to cry. “Who WAS it?!?”

I asked them to come inside and talk about it. I don’t know where I found the “wisdom” having no experience, but I sat them down and walked through having them explain what their needs and expectations were. I told them I could feel that they belonged together and that they should work on accommodating each other’s needs to make their marriage work. Otherwise, one or both of them would be suffering until they would inevitably have to break it off. They agreed and worked out a new set of boundaries that they could both accept so that they could remain together in a more honest arrangement. They both hugged me hard and thanked me before leaving for home, hand in hand. Who would have thought that an inexperienced, gay 16-year-old could be a successful marriage counselor?

Chapter 6: The Descent

At work, I continued to outpace every other worker with at least twice the production. I learned my work ethic with my first job at age 5 reclaiming salvaged bricks from demolitions with a hand hatchet and huge screwdriver for a penny a brick.

I had been closing on the weekends for 3 years now. I always hustled while others plodded overnight. I was a smoker and really needed at least a drag or two but wasn’t going to ask for a break. So, I had my smoke in my mouth and lighter in hand as I hustled out the back door with another full trash bin on wheels, headed towards the dumpster in the back of the parking lot. Without missing a beat, I lit the cigarette and enjoyed a partial smoke while quickly dumping the trash and bouncing back. I stomped the smoke out in stride as I hit the back door buzzer.

The closing manager was a tall, skinny Hispanic guy who really didn’t like me for some reason. I think it was straight up racism, but I had tolerated his “white boy” comments and extra assignments without protest. He called me into the tiny back office as soon as I cleared the door. “There was a District Manager parked down the block and he saw you smoking and told me I needed to fire you right now.”

It was 3:30am and I knew he was lying and that he had seen me go out prepped for my partial smoke and was just using the situation to harass me again.

“I know you’re a fucking liar, but here, let me save you the trouble.” I spit my words and pulled my dorky BK uniform off in one motion and threw it into his chest and left. I had another kitchen job in 2 days. Unfortunately, they failed to let me know it was only seasonal and would end with the University’s home-game football season. To my complete surprise, I was laid off in mid-December. This time the job market sucked and no one was hiring. I was set to lose my lease on New Year’s Day.

Chapter 7: Rock Bottom with Butch and Richard

When I let Butch know I was unemployed and about to be homeless, he talked with his roommate and benefactor Richard. Richard decided to take me in, as he had Butch, although neither of us had any resources. He said it would be fine. He laughed and told me I could ‘sing for my supper’ and sleep on the couch. He liked my jokes and loved to hear me play and sing. Richard was very average looking and about 23 years old, I believe.

I was wondering how he could be so generous on his meager salary as an electronics assembler at the Texas Instruments plant. He arrived home on the afternoon of our first Friday as a household grinning like the Cheshire Cat holding his $120.00 weekly paycheck. How could he be so pumped to be holding a weekly check that only covered a third of the rent on his 2-bedroom apartment? I soon found out.

“Come on!” he shouted on the way to his old beater of a car. We piled in and drove by the bank to cash his check then on to his “connection’s” place. With $100.00, he purchased 20 ¼ gram packets of what I later learned was some of the purest crystal meth to hit the city in ages. They called it ‘Crank’. I was clueless but didn’t let on. We sped over to Party A and quickly unloaded the stash for $200.00. We repeated the process, doubling up leaving Party A with $400.00. Back we went to purchase twice the volume then and headed to Party B. $800.00, then $1600.00. I couldn’t believe what I was a part of. I had seen the stuff being snorted at Party A, but at Party B the product seemed to disappear into a back room where the door was always kept closed. I found out later that the users in the backroom at Party B were injecting the stuff. 7 of the IV users migrated to Richard’s apartment to continue the action. I had been given lots to drink and smoke at these parties and was fairly well lit when we got home around 1am.

There was a guy that I was attracted to among the 7 tagalongs. Feeling very uninhibited, I was deep in conversation with him when Butch moved into my side with his back to me while grabbing my right arm off the back of the couch securing it out of my sight in front of him. I tried to finish a thought I was expressing to the cute chubby guy when I felt a sting at the crease of my elbow. Butch held my arm tightly so I couldn’t move. Without my knowledge or consent, Butch and Richard had just mainlined me with 5 of the individual user packets worth of the stuff prepped for a syringe, 1.25 grams. This was apparently my “cut” of the action, along with $50.00 cash.

Before I could get an explanation, the solution pumped through my heart and up to my brain. It felt like being strapped to a rocket. I could feel my rapid, pounding pulse at my temples, ears and neck. After maybe 15 minutes, the initial rush was replaced by a complete sense of euphoria that lasted the majority of 2 days before subsiding. Day 3 was HELL. Every cell in my body ached and yearned. I was grateful that the supply was exhausted or I would have begged, borrowed or stolen for another dose to regain the euphoric effect.

Butch and I were home alone having not slept or eaten yet on Monday, Day 3. That’s when I found out that Butch was Bi. He asked if I would have sex with him. He told me he had wanted to ever since his exhibition show with Linda. He had helped me out of a tight jam and I felt obligated but uninspired as I agreed to try. I warned him there was no way I could take it like Linda had. He assured me he didn’t expect that. Surprisingly, he wanted me to screw him. Try as I might, I couldn’t get my equipment to function for him in my compromised and unenthused state and he settled for a combination BJ and two-handed jerk. I could barely get the head of it in my mouth while guarding my teeth. The experience made me feel hollow inside. I vowed to never have that sort of sex again. Neither Butch nor Richard were my type and I figured they’d expect me to pay for my room and board by having sex with at least one if not both of them. I knew I couldn’t continue down this road. Staying with Butch and Richard would turn me into a meth addicted sex toy.

Stay tuned. More to come.

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drink-n-watch · 7 years ago

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Genre : Happiness, otome, mullet reverse harem, magical boy

Episodes: 12

Studio: Brain’s Base

Yui is just your average run of the mill, beautiful, smart, sweet, kendo practicing high school girl capable of immediately accepting and adapting to any situation no matter how outlandish and one day she is swept away to a magical garden/high school full of god boys from various mythologies brought together by Zeus to develop a better understanding of mankind. That old story. We’ve all been in this exact situation a billion times right? It’s happen to me twice this week alone! You know how these things go, eventually we have to drown a pretty blond boy to avoid a Matrix type Ragnarok. Yawn.

I never know how to qualify these shows. They’re not exactly cute boys doing cute things, I mean they don’t really fall into the slice of life category at all. Technically you could call them reverse harems, I mean that is what they are but this title could fool you into thinking they are romantic storylines. The are not. The romance (if any) is usually completely secondary and only serves as an excuse to bring the characters together. It’s rarely central to the story and in this case was completely irrelevant to the main conflict.

If anything, you can recognize these shows by their standard dating sim adaptation structure which means we get separate mini storylines for every boy and their unabashed embrace of kitch. When done well these are pleasant, slightly manservicy comedies that will make you giggle, when they’re done badly they are annoying and infinitely stupid. When done very badly – the are comedy Gold! I’ll level with you, at this point I find it really hard to tell the difference.

nice hair…

All of this as just to explain that I have to be in a particular mood to review these types of shows. A mood I like to call: frantically rapturous. It’s achieved by eating absolutely nothing but processed sugar for 3 days then writing the post real quick before the crash comes. The diabetes is more than worth it.

One of my favorite commenters Dawnstorm, clued me into this series by showing me this clip:

Please note the hair transformation!

Needles to say, I immediately took the rest of the day off and proceeded to binge this. As you can see, the art style is what you would expect, and you shouldn’t look too closely at angles or distant characters, but the transformation sequences are phenomenal. Sadly, there are very few of these, most characters only get a brief one in the last episode. This is unfortunate as the god costumes are one of the greatest cinematic achievements of our age. The mere sight of them will touch you in ways you did not think possible. Try not to drink before one as getting wine up your nose can really burn.

The animation is sporadic at best. Essentially, characters are mostly stationary or going through slow minimal movements and suddenly there is a burst of action that immediately dies down. It’s not a bad way to disguise limited resources and I enjoyed the visuals as whole. Voice acting is competent although I never quite got use to Loki’s voice. The best part however, is the ED which features actual bad lip-synching from our boys complete with moody scenery and art school project desaturated colors. It was my everything.

I’m just gonna throw this screencap in…

In structure, Kamigami no Asobi follows the standard otome template pretty closely. It should be noted however that there wasn’t enough time to concentrate on all the boys. This means that while Baldr and Loki are personally established and get their own quite important storyline, Thor is largely ignored. We see kitty boy Anubis cameo through the show but I’m not sure main character Yui even knows who he is. As a result, the world feels a little fuller than your standard otome offering where the only characters that seem to exist are the main cast. Otherwise, the show is fairly stereotypical but deeply enjoyable. Dawnstorm had already sold it as one of the best offerings of the genre and although I am not yet well versed enough to make this type of sweeping statement, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The archetypical boys are all there, but they have been given just enough personality to be endearing and the narrative is careful to never take itself overly seriously. In fact, here’s Toth aptly describing the entire harem better than I ever could:

The lighthearted, obviously caricatural hand with which everyone has been drawn is a great way to keep things light and easygoing. I get annoyed when these silly little shows try to take themselves too seriously and give their shallow characters overdramatic characterizations. It was also nice to see the ditzy trope applied to the otherwise perfect prince character.

However, otome heroines are usually one step up from plant life in these things. They seem an after thought with little to know personality beyond nice and unable. Unable to do what? Anything. In this, Kamigami towers over the competition with Yui who while undeniably nice is capable, restrained and seems to have actual interests and motivations of her own. Her character gets sideline a bit in later episodes and she becomes much less interesting but for the first half at least she is a refreshingly down to earth and rational heroin. In fact, watching Yui react just like any normal reasonable person would when put in traditional otome situations had me cracking up the entire time. For my money she could have been even more forceful and self-reliant but I still loved Yui and that’s saying something under the circumstances.

a rare example of the femullet

Like I said, the romantic aspects are usually a surprisingly small part of these shows and Kamigami pushes that even further. Although there are brief mentioned of attraction and vying for Yui’s attention here and there, the emotional core of the show, and most of the driving force behind the ultimate plot point has absolutely nothing to do with her at all. I must say this was quite unexpected and very welcomed. I sort of wish this was a different type of show that would have explored the Norse Mythology retelling they were going for instead. I mean with all the pretty magical boys of course.

The fact that these boys are given a touch more personality and backstory beyond their tragic pasts and how much they love the MC is an important element to flesh out the story a bit. The bigger established mythologies that get hinted at also add a bit of depth. By creating much sturdier foundations for the narrative than these shows usually get, the jokes land much more cleanly and I found that I was laughing along with the show almost as often as I was laughing at it.

ombre – fancy!

I was about to end this post without even going into the most important part. The mullets. Look at these glorious mullets! These are epic. Loki even has this awesome gradient in his that makes me want to dye my hair red again. (I won’t – it was a huge pain getting it white, I’m not messing with it now). Maybe it’s because I’m also watching FMA at the moment and Ed is rocking how own impressive mullet when he lets his hair down, but I’m starting to associate the hairstyle with pretty boys. THAT IS NOT ACCEPTABLE!!!

When did anime start to conspire to make me think mullets are attractive? I know this isn’t the first show to do it

Still the mullet king – Pixiv Id 79390

but it’s the first time even the heroine sports one….and I really dig it! Thankfully my hair isn’t quite long enough to copy the look or else I probably would have cut it like that and be really sad now. But honestly, why is anime doing this to me? What’s the end game here? Guys, I’m scared…

the elusive side mullet

Favorite character: Thoth!!!

What this anime taught me: We must not get complacent in the fight against bad hairstyles

Adulthood has shown me that you really don’t need fun to have alcohol.

Suggested drink: Mount Olympus

Every time you see the Ame-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi – take a sip

if it’s in actual sword for – take another!

Every time Baldr is a clutz – point and laugh

Every time we see Melissa – take a sip

Every time Apollo is super eager – clap

Every time the blondes stick together – be suspicious

Every time Hades says misfortune – take a sip

Every time Thoht *corners* Yui – take a sip

Every time someone days “human” or “humanity” – drink some water

Every time they get the mythology right – take a sip

Every time spontaneous stripping – raise your glass

the actual emotional core of the series

Kamigami no Asobi and the Great Mullet Conspiracy Genre : Happiness, otome, mullet reverse harem, magical boy Episodes: 12 Studio: Brain's Base Yui is just your average run of the mill, beautiful, smart, sweet, kendo practicing high school girl capable of immediately accepting and adapting to any situation no matter how outlandish and one day she is swept away to a magical garden/high school full of god boys from various mythologies brought together by Zeus to develop a better understanding of mankind.

#blonde bishie #comedy #drama #otome #reverse harem #School

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networkingdefinition · 5 years ago

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Surveys Quotes

Official Website: Surveys Quotes

• A good aim surveys the present state of experience of pupils, and forming a tentative plan of treatment, keeps the plan constantly in view and yet modifies it as conditions develop. The aim, in short, is experimental, and hence constantly growing as it is tested in action. – John Dewey • A man with deep far-sightedness will survey both the beginning and the end of a situation and continually consider its every facet as important. – Takeda Shingen • A man’s feet should be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world.- George Santayana • A new survey found that 12 percent of parents punish their kids by banning social networking sites. The other 88 percent punish their kids by joining social networking sites. – Jimmy Fallon • A new survey indicates that Obama supporters love iPhones. So if you have an iPhone, chances are you are going to be supporting President Obama. In a related story, if you support Governor Chris Christie from New Jersey, chances are you love IHOP. – David Letterman • A new survey out says 64 percent of Americans own a smartphone. Which is interesting because in a related survey, 100 percent of smart phones say they own an American. – Jimmy Fallon • A new survey reveals that women would rather give up sex than give up the remote control for the TV. Men, on the other hand, would be willing to have sex with the remote for the TV. – Conan O’Brien • A new survey shows that the American public is more conservative now than at any point since 1952. The bad news is that all the liberals that died since then are still voting. – Fred Thompson • A perfect Judge will read each work of Wit With the same spirit that its author writ: Survey the Whole, nor seek slight faults to find Where nature moves, and rapture warms the mind. – Alexander Pope • A recent Pew Hispanic survey found that more than 70 percent of illegal immigrants from Mexico are interested in a guest-worker program and then returning home. – John Shadegg • A recent survey or North American males found 42% were overweight, 34% were critically obese and 8% ate the survey. – Banksy • A recent survey stated that the average person’s greatest fear is having to give a speech in public. Somehow this ranked even higher than death which was third on the list. So, you’re telling me that at a funeral, most people would rather be the guy in the coffin than have to stand up and give a eulogy. – Jerry Seinfeld • A stunning survey of the latest evidence for intelligent life on Mars. Mac Tonnies brings a thoughtful, balanced and highly accessible approach to one of the most fascinating enigmas of our time. – Herbie Brennan • A survey asked married women when they most want to have sex. 84 per cent of them said right after their husband is finished. – Jay Leno • A survey carried out across the U.S. between 2004 and 2006 showed that frequent church- or synagogue-goers are more likely to give money to charity.- Jonathan Sacks • A survey has shown that the average man has had sex in a car 15 times. Something to keep in mind next time you’re looking for a used car. – Jay Leno • A survey released today found that men spend twice as much on their mistresses for Christmas as they do on their wives. On the other hand, men spend half their income on the wives when the wife finds out about the mistress. So it all balances out. – Jay Leno • A technical survey that systematize, digest, and appraise the mid century state of psychology. – Stanley Smith Stevens • A telephone survey says that 51 percent of college students drink until they pass out at least once a month. The other 49 percent didn’t answer the phone. – Craig Kilborn • Academics, who work for long periods in a self-directed fashion, may be especially prone to putting things off: surveys suggest that the vast majority of college students procrastinate, and articles in the literature of procrastination often allude to the author’s own problems with finishing the piece. – James Surowiecki • According to a new survey, 40 percent of adults in Mexico say they would move to the United States if they got a chance. The number would have been higher, but the other 60 percent already live here. – Conan O’Brien • According to a new survey, 90% of men say their lover is also their best friend. Which is really kind of disturbing when you consider man’s best friend is his dog. – Jay Leno • According to a new survey, almost half of the voters in Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania say that they do not trust Hillary Clinton. Republicans immediately got together and said, ‘OK, this is a huge opportunity for us. How are we going to screw it up?’ – Jimmy Fallon • According to a new survey, people who get divorced die early. People who stay married live longer. The difference is they just wish they were dead. – David Letterman • According to a new survey, women say they feel more comfortable undressing in front of men than they do undressing in front of other women. They say that women are too judgmental, where, of course, men are just grateful. – Robert De Niro • According to a Public Policy Polling survey, most Americans find lice and colonoscopies more appealing than Capitol Hill. – Ron Fournier • According to a recent survey, kids are receiving an average of 40 cents less from the tooth fairy. That’s right, the economy is so bad that even make-believe people are feeling the pinch. – Conan O’Brien • According to a recent survey, men say the first thing they notice about women is their eyes. And women say the first thing they notice about men is they’re a bunch of liars. – Jay Leno • According to a survey in this week’s Time magazine, 85% of Americans think global warming is happening. The other 15% work for the White House. – Jay Leno • According to one study by the United States Geological survey, 86 percent of oil reserves in the United States are the result not of what is estimated at the time of discovery but of the revisions and additions that come with further development. – Daniel Yergin • According to the National Crime Survey administered by the Bureau of the Census and the National Institute of Justice, it was found that only 12 percent of those who use a gun to resist assault are injured, as are 17 percent of those who use a gun to resist robbery. These percentages are 27 and 25 percent, respectively, if they passively comply with the felon’s demands. Three times as many were injured if they used other means of resistance. – Gary Kleck • Additional federal studies are under way to see if any contamination reaches taps or ground water used for drinking, but the program under which they are conducted, the toxic substances hydrology program of the geological survey, is slated to be eliminated under budget cuts proposed by the Bush administration, government officials said… estrogens and similar compounds are increasingly the focus of research by the Environmental Protection Agency and many scientists because of hints that they alter sexual characteristics in fish and other aquatic species. – Andrew Revkin • After all, a creature without passionate conviction doesn’t cling to extremes. He surveys the scenery and makes sure his outfit doesn’t clash. – Frank Bruni • After starting a blood feud with Fox News, something no Republican presidential candidate has dared to do before, [Donald] Trump seems to have successfully undermine the network in the eyes of its core audience with perception of the Fox News brand among Republican adults hitting its lowest point in three years according to a new YouGov survey. – Chris Hayes • All great expression, which on a superficial survey seems so easy as well as so simple, furnishes after a while, to the faithful observer, its own standard by which to appreciate it. – Margaret Fuller • All over the world there are enormous numbers of smart, even gifted, people who harbor a passion for science. But that passion is unrequited. Surveys suggest that some 95% of Americans are “scientifically illiterate.” That’s…the same fraction…of slaves who were illiterate before the Civil War. – Carl Sagan • Along the way, I’ve worked as a waitress, I’ve done phone surveys, and worked as a receptionist, and for the last twenty years I’ve taught. When I was an actor, the key was to find a job that kept your days free to audition. – Debra Dean • Although the traditional focus of Valentine’s Day is on women and the gifts they desire, this survey found that not only do men like to get gifts for Valentine’s Day, but they also like those gifts to be luxurious. Sixty-three percent of the people we surveyed agreed that this Valentine’s Day, Johnnie Walker Blue Label is a great gift for the men in their lives. – Christopher Parsons • And when midst fallen London, they survey The stone where Alexander’s ashes lay, Shall own with humbled pride the lesson must By Time’s slow finger written in the dust. – Anna Letitia Barbauld • Any survey of the free world’s defense structure cannot fail to impart a feeling of regret that so much of our effort and resources must be devoted to armaments. – Dwight D. Eisenhower • As a great man’s influence never ends, so also there is not definite finality, no end, to a great survey; it runs along for centuries, ever responsive to the strain of the increasing needs of a growing population and an enlarging domain. – Cleveland Abbe • As a Mark brand ambassador, I became extremely cognizant of the devastating statistics about dating abuse and partner violence via the mPowerment campaign and knew I wanted to help change those statistics. mPowerment by Mark and the Avon Foundation for Women funded the No More study, which explored dating abuse, partner violence, and sexual assault. I was honored to be part of it and report the results of the survey in a Capitol Hill briefing. – Ashley Greene • As a scholar who regularly surveys archival material, I think that, a century from now, cultural historians will find David Horowitz’s spiritual and political odyssey paradigmatic for our time. – Camille Paglia • As the most romantic day of the year approaches, and as a brand that is uniquely male, we wanted to find out how men really feel about Valentines Day, and how they want to celebrate it. The Johnnie Walker Blue Label Luxury Survey tells us what gifts men really want versus what gifts women think men want for Valentine’s Day – and the reality is that we’re not as far apart as we like to think. – Christopher Parsons • As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency-or, rather, Agency-must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit? – George Greenstein • As you may recall, Truman was extremely unpopular when he finally left Washington in 1953, thanks largely to the Korean War. Today, however, he is thought to have been a solidly good president, a ‘Near Great’ even, in the terminology of those surveys of historians they do every now and then. – Thomas Frank • Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945 and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. – Paul Nitze • Based on current surveys of public opinion in the United States, it turns out that the majority of Americans think I’ve done a pretty good job. -Barack Obama • Biblical social scientists have an advantage because they know truths about human nature. Those who dismiss the Bible and create surveys that don’t measure crucial factors are the ones who have closed minds. Sometimes the Bible gives us clear answers and sometimes it doesn’t, but it always helps us to ask the right questions. – Marvin Olasky • But because we accept the sanctity of life, the responsibility that comes with freedom and the supreme sacrifice of Christ expressed so well in the hymn: ‘When I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died. My richest gain I count but loss and pour contempt on all my pride.’ – Margaret Thatcher • But honestly, if you do a rigorous survey of my work, I’ll bet you’ll find that biology is a theme far more often than physical science. – David Brin • By contrast with history, evolution is an unconscious process. Another, and perhaps a better way of putting it would be to say that evolution is a natural process, history a human one…. Insofar as we treat man as a part of nature–for instance in a biological survey of evolution–we are precisely not treating him as a historical being. As a historically developing being, he is set over against nature, both as a knower and as a doer. – Owen Barfield • Censure is willingly indulged, because it always implies some superiority: men please themselves with imagining that they have made a deeper search, or wider survey than others, and detected faults and follies which escape vulgar observation. – Samuel Johnson • Combining in our survey then, the whole range of deposits from the most recent to the most ancient group, how striking a succession do they present:- so various yet so uniform-so vast yet so connected. In thus tracing back to the most remote periods in the physical history of our continents, one system of operations, as the means by which many complex formations have been successively produced, the mind becomes impressed with the singleness of nature’s laws; and in this respect, at least, geology is hardly inferior in simplicity to astronomy. – Roderick Murchison • Completing a large or difficult survey can be a very satisfying thing, especially if there have been hurdles or setbacks along the way. In our work, we get to “tick” off jobs quite often, so the sense of completion can also be rewarding. – Mark Mason • Cultural tourism surveys consistently rate San Francisco’s art industry as a core reason for visiting – Gavin Newsom • Don’t wait till you get bigger to put in place key items, such as staff surveys, peer interviewing for hiring and clear standards of behavior [developed by staff]. – Quint Studer • Even when educators survey grade school texts and create new bibliographies to help teachers include Asians, Eskimos, and other Americans, females in and out of those groups may be down-played or forgotten. – Gloria Steinem • Everyone takes surveys. Whoever makes a statement about human behavior has engaged in a survey of some sort. – Andrew Greeley • Experiencing a massage therapy session is its own best advertisement for changing perceptions. A recent national consumer survey found Americans had overwhelmingly positive feelings about their massage experience. Ninety-four percent express favorable feelings. Fully 85 percent expressed very favorable feelings about their most recent massage, with 37 percent rating it a perfect ten-out-of-ten. What is striking is that there are very few detractors. Most of those who haven’t yet received a massage simply haven’t felt a need for it – Bob Benson • Faults are beauties, when survey’d by love. – Theocritus • Few men survey themselves with so much severity as not to admit prejudices in their own favor. – Samuel Johnson • Few men survey themselves with so much severity as not to admit prejudices in their own favour, which an artful flatterer may gradually strengthen, till wishes for a particular qualification are improved to hopes of attainment, and hopes of attainment to belief of possession. – Samuel Johnson • Financial literacy is not an end in itself, but a step-by-step process. It begins in childhood and continues throughout a person’s life all the way to retirement. Instilling the financial-literacy message in children is especially important, because they will carry it for the rest of their lives. The results of the survey are very encouraging, and we want to do our part to make sure all children develop and strengthen their financial-literacy skills. – George Karl • For Hades is mighty in calling men to account below the earth, and with a mind that records in tablets he surveys all things. – Aeschylus • Forget romantic fiction, a survey has found that most women would rather read a good book than go shopping, have sex, or sleep. – Janet Street-Porter • Forget socialism, capitalism, just-in-time deliveries, salary surveys, and the rest … concentrate on building organizations that accomplish that most difficult of all challenges: to make people look forward to coming to work in the morning. – Ricardo Semler • Global warming activists claim a serious public concern presently exists and the overwhelming majority of scientists agrees humans are creating a global warming crisis. The survey of AMS meteorologists, however, shows no such overwhelming majority exists. Indeed, to the extent we can assign a majority scientific opinion to whether all the necessary components of a global warming crisis exist, the AMS survey shows the majority does not agree humans are creating a global warming crisis. – James Taylor • God gave man an upright countenance to survey the heavens, and to look upward to the stars. – Ovid • He with a graceful pride, While his rider every hand survey’d, Sprung loose, and flew into an escapade; Not moving forward, yet with every bound Pressing, and seeming still to quit his ground. – John Dryden • History is the arbiter of controversy, the monarch of all she surveys. – Lord Acton • Hope is an explorer who surveys the country ahead. That is why we know so much about the Hereafter and so little about the Heretofore. – Ambrose Bierce • How sublime Upon a time-blanch’d cliff to muse, and, while The eagle glories in a sea of air, To mingle with the scene around! – Survey The sun-warm heaven. – Robert Montgomery • Human beings are compelled to adopt a belief system; some paradigm to provide meaning, purpose, and understanding to our lives. A quick survey of the world shows that pretty much any idea will do – it need not reflect reality or truth, merely function to fascinate, distract, and compel. We are designed for belief, not for truth. – Terry Rossio • Humor implies a sure conception of the beautiful, the majestic and he true, by whose light it surveys and shape s their opposites. It is a humane influence, softening with mirth the ragged inequities of existence, prompting tolerant views of life, bridging over the space which separates the lofty from the lowly, the great from the humble. – Edwin Percy Whipple • I actually did a quick survey of how caste plays out in contemporary India. The idea that democracy and development have in some ways eroded caste turned out not to be the case, that it has in fact been entrenched and modernised. – Arundhati Roy • I am somewhat influenced by the years that I’ve spent trying to actually get things done, whether it was reforming education in Arkansas or a survey and Legal Services Corporation board when President [Jimmy ]Carter appointed me and trying to get lawyers for poor people. I have worked in these areas. I know it’s more than just a hope. You’ve got to translate it into a policy that leads to action. – Hillary Clinton • I am the first person to go to Barnes & Noble and buy the new self-help book. I like to fill out the surveys, then I get my friends’ opinions on how I answered to see if I was being honest with myself or not. – Jessica Simpson • I automate some tasks and delegate many others. Doing research, job organization, data processing, field surveys, and plan preparation can be tedious, detailed work. – Mark Mason • I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I was a child. I did want to be a cartographer but that was partly because I liked Ordnance Survey maps and when I used to go to my grandparents’ house from Southampton Station one went past the headquarters of the Ordnance Survey. – Jonathan Meades • I don’t hire a lot of number-crunchers, and I don’t trust fancy marketing surveys. I do my own surveys and draw my own conclusions. – Donald Trump • I don’t know if [Barack Obama] saw the latest religion survey, but almost a quarter of the country are Nones. I don’t mean the ones who hit me on the knuckles with a ruler in Sunday School – I mean they put “None” for religion. – Bill Maher • I don’t need somebody behind a desk to tell me what a marketing survey says is funny. I got 3 million miles and 70,000 tickets sold, telling me that I know how to make people laugh. – D. L. Hughley • I don’t think it’s surprising we will have to look for them. I’m confident that when the Iraq Survey Group has done its work we will find what’s happened to those weapons because he had them. – Tony Blair • I feel pain everywhere. A lot of guys in chairs do feel their legs. But if you don’t, there’s a thing called disreflex, so you know if something happens, say, you can’t feel your foot or your leg and your body reacts. You know something’s not right and you survey what’s going on. – Mark Zupan • I had a survey done on my house. 8 out of 10 people said they really rather liked it – Jimmy Carr • I have a lack of fear, whereas in the past the fear of failure was a powerful motivator. Anyway, I have great expectations for the future, but I just don’t know if I’m the monarch of all I survey. – Sylvester Stallone • I maintain an ongoing survey of Internet Publishing and self publishing, so that it is now possible for any writer with a book to get it published at nominal cost or free, and to have it on sale at booksellers like Amazon.com. – Piers Anthony • I saw a survey and it is that NFL fans are fed up with listening to players talk about politics. – Rush Limbaugh • I sometimes think we ought to bring a bill before Congress changing our national symbol from the eagle to the buffalo, because we are more like the buffalo than the eagle. The eagle is a powerful bird. It flies alone. It rises up into the sky with authority. It is master of all it surveys. The eagle is an individualist and was selected from among the rest of the birds to be our symbol. But the buffalo was never alone. It always ran in a herd with other buffaloes. And, friends, I call your attention that the buffaloes are gone from the open range, but the eagles are still soaring. – Norman Vincent Peale • I speak as a private citizen and not as a representative of the Executive Branch of the United States government. The impression that people of faith are uniformly opposed to stem-cell research is not documented by surveys. In fact, many people of strong religious conviction think this can be a morally supportable approach. – Richard Dawkins • I think my great book is Born to Sing: An Interpretation and World Survey of Bird Song. – Charles Hartshorne • I think somebody ought to do a survey as to how many great, important men have quit to spend time with their families who spent any more time with their family. Probably less. – Walter Cronkite • I think that if anyone bothered to take a survey, they would find a sharp decline in atheism during the winters in Cleveland, Ohio. – Drew Carey • I was rather discouraged when I discovered that Paul and Hotch had no marketing survey, no business plan, no budget, no organized strategy for the introduction of the sauce. When asked about this lack of preparation, the haphazard nature of their business, Paul said, ‘Me in this business is just part of life’s great folly. Stay loose, men, keep ’em off balance.'” – Paul Newman • I’m always fascinated when people really fervently believe, because I have such a hard time believing anything. When people have real faith in something, it’s fascinating to me. And the fact that so many people, in surveys, so many people say they do. It kind of blows my mind. – Conor Oberst • If a man could mount to Heaven and survey the mighty universe, his admiration of its beauties would be much diminished unless he had someone to share in his pleasure. – Marcus Tullius Cicero • If I were to peruse a survey of label options, as they exist now, they either sound like a time bomb disorder or manic depression or Bipolar divide or mental illness. How can I find an identity in that? It certainly isn’t something I can bring up in conversation, without a reaction of judgement or even fear. – Paul Dalio • If we take a survey of the greatest actions…in the world…we shall find the authors of them all to have been persons whose Brains had been shaken out of their natural position. �� John Adams • I’m required to do every job well enough that I’d use it as evidence in court – that doesn’t come cheaply! Property is a critical asset for individuals. Maintaining the cadastre (legal survey fabric) is an important job and a valuable service. – Mark Mason • I’m sure if you could survey the unborn they would prefer the chance for life over the options of solar power. – Greg Gutfeld • Immense deposits of kimmeridge clay, containing the oil-bearing bands or seams, stretch across England from Dorsetshire to Lincolnshire. [An early political recognition of the native resource. The Geological Survey had identified the inflammable oil shale in reports since at least 1888.] – Winston Churchill • In 1989, I started the National Association of Business Women. We incorporated microfinance and different job training for women. We did a survey, with USAID, that found women lacked training, credit and information. – Joyce Banda • In a bird’s eye view you tend to survey everything and decide on a particular point, then you swoop down and pick it up. In a worms eye view you don’t have that advantage of looking at everything. – Muhammad Yunus • In all our academies we attempt far too much. … In earlier times lectures were delivered upon chemistry and botany as branches of medicine, and the medical student learned enough of them. Now, however, chemistry and botany are become sciences of themselves, incapable of comprehension by a hasty survey, and each demanding the study of a whole life, yet we expect the medical student to understand them. He who is prudent, accordingly declines all distracting claims upon his time, and limits himself to a single branch and becomes expert in one thing. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe • In my judgment, based on the work that has been done to this point of the Iraq Survey Group, and in fact, that I reported to you in October, Iraq was in clear violation of the terms of U.N.Resolution 1441. – David Kay • In my totally unscientific yet enthusiastic survey of Communal Experiments Throughout American History, I’ve discovered that the thing most likely to break up said experiments is: Sex, all that murky, dark, dirty gunk simmering beneath human relations. – Lauren Groff • In one survey, respondents listed Princeton as one of the country’s top ten law schools. The problem? Princeton doesn’t have a law school – Alexandra Robbins • In survey after survey, people report that the greatest dangers they face are, in this order: terrorist attack, plane crashes and nuclear accidents. This despite the fact that these three combined have killed fewer people in the past half-century than car accidents do in any given year. – Will Self • In survey after survey, the Iraqi people say, ‘We want to choose our leaders.’ – Scott McClellan • In this country, the health concerns and the environmental concerns are as deep as in Europe. All the surveys show that. But here, we didn’t have the cultural dimension. This is a fast-food culture. – Jeremy Rifkin • Interesting survey in the current Journal of Abnormal Psychology: New York City has a higher percentage of people you shouldn’t make any sudden moves around than any other city in the world. – David Letterman • Ironically, survey after survey shows that married men are happier and healthier than unmarried men. Oh, and they also have more sex. – Michael Kimmel • It is an inherent property of intelligence that it can jump out of a task which it is performing and survey what it has done. – Douglas Hofstadter • It is in the field of prayer that life’s critical battles are lost or won. We must conquer all our circumstances there. We must first of all bring them there. We must survey them there. We must master them there. In prayer we bring our spiritual enemies into the Presence of God and we fight them there. Have you tried that? Or have you been satisfied to meet and fight your foes in the open spaces of the world? – John Henry Jowett • It is one of the defects of modern higher education that it has become too much a training in the acquisition of certain kinds of skill, and too little an enlargement of the mind and heart by an impartial survey of the world. – Bertrand Russell • It is proved by surveys that happiness does not come from love, wealth, or power but the pursuit of attainable goals. – Helen Fielding • It is true that the path of human destiny cannot but appal him who surveys a section of it. But he will do well to keep his small personal commentarie to himself, as one does at the sight of the sea or of majestic mountains, unless he knows himself to be called and gifted to give them expression in artistic or prophetic form. In most other cases, the voluminous talk about intuition does nothing but conceal a lack of perspective toward the object, which merits the same judgement as a similar lack of perspective toward men. – Max Weber • It is vain and useless to survey everything that goes on in the world if our study does not help us mend our ways. – Madeleine de Souvre, marquise de Sable • It takes no compromising to give people their rights. It takes no money to respect the individual. It takes no survey to remove repressions. – Harvey Milk • It would be very interesting to make a survey around the world, from wealthy countries to the most advanced countries to see what influence Americans have had. IEmilio Pucci • It’s about average for us. Behavior always draws more than survey. We’re the sexy ones,’ Nate said with a grin. Amy snorted. ‘Oh, yeah, you guys are the Mae Wests of the nerd world.’ We’re action nerds,’ Nate said. ‘Adventure nerds. Nerds of romance. – Christopher Moore • It’s not possible to present an accurate picture of our culture without all the voices of the people in the culture. So at the emerging level, you can’t have a good survey art show without women and artists of color. – Frida Kahlo • I’ve done an informal, anecdotal survey about marriage, and I’ve found no evidence that it brings happiness. – Mary McCormack • I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The U.S. Geological Survey has told me that the proven potential for oil in Alaska alone is greater than the proven reserves in Saudi Arabia. – Ronald Reagan • Jocelyn Bell joined the project as a graduate student in 1965, helping as a member of the construction team and then analysing the paper charts of the sky survey. – Antony Hewish • Latest survey shows that 3 out of 4 people make up 75% of the world’s population. – Stephen Hawking • Laws, it is said, are for the protection of the people. It’s unfortunate that there are no statistics on the number of lives that are clobbered yearly as a result of laws: outmoded laws; laws that found their way onto the books as a result of ignorance, hysteria or political haymaking; antilife laws; biased laws; laws that pretend that reality is fixed and nature is definable; laws that deny people the right to refuse protection. A survey such as that could keep a dozen dull sociologists out of mischief for months. – Tom Robbins • Let observation with extensive view, Survey mankind from China to Peru; Remark each anxious toil, each eager strife, And watch the busy scenes of crowded life. – Samuel Johnson • Look back to 1948 when the British Medical Association denounced Aneurin Bevan as ‘a would-be Führer’ for wanting them to join a National Health Service. And Bevan himself described the BMA as ‘politically poisoned people’. A survey at the time showed only 10 per cent of doctors backed the plans … But where would we be today if my predecessors had caved in? – Andrew Lansley • Look. Survey. Inspect. My hair is ruined! I look like a pan of bacon and eggs! – Diana Wynne Jones • Luckily, a recent survey published in the American Sociological Review revealed that atheists are the least trusted group in America—less trusted, even, than homosexuals. It makes sense at least we trust the homosexuals with our hair. – Stephen Colbert • My colleagues and I have done a survey of 13,000 students on more than 17 campuses, and we found that while sex in college has always been a bit more casual, “hooking up” has pretty much replaced other traditional forms of dating.- Michael Kimmel • My father was a soil scientist with the Geological Survey. – Jim Fowler • My mind was once the true survey Of all these meadows fresh and gay; And in the greenness of the grass Did see its hopes as in a glass. – Andrew Marvell • My zest for exhibition has over a long career become increasingly a mania. The ecstasy I feel as I survey work I have done I want to share with the world – not the whole world which couldn’t care less, but my private world, which is my country, Canada. – Joseph Plaskett • No man can survey himself without forthwith turning his thoughts towards the God in whom he lives and moves; because it is perfectly obvious, that the endowments which we possess cannot possibly be from ourselves; nay, that our very being is nothing else than subsistence in God alone. – John Calvin • No one likes doing chores. In happiness surveys, housework is ranked down there with commuting as activities that people enjoy the least. Maybe that’s why figuring out who does which chores usually prompts, at best, tense discussion in a household and, at worst, outright fighting. – Emily Oster • Oh! that you could turn your eyes towards the napes of your necks, and make but an interior survey of your good selves. – William Shakespeare • Oh, sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise. By mountains pil’d on mountains to the skies? Heav’n still with laughter the vain toil surveys, And buries madmen in the heaps they raise. – Alexander Pope • One survey found that ten percent of Americans thought Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. – Rita Mae Brown • One survey that I saw that was published I think in Variety or Electronic Media within the last three weeks says that now the average hour of radio in the United States has 18 minutes of commercials. – Robert Waterman McChesney • Only by being suspended aloft, by dangling my mind in the heavens and mingling my rare thought with the ethereal air, could I ever achieve strict scientific accuracy in my survey of the vast empyrean. Had I pursued my inquiries from down there on the ground, my data would be worthless. The earth, you see, pulls down the delicate essence of thought to its own gross level. – Aristophanes • Osama bin Laden’s organization has spun out from him and is now probably independent of him. There will be others who will appear and reappear. This is why we need a much more precise, a much more defined, a much more patiently constructed campaign, as well as one that surveys not just the terrorists’ presence but the root causes of terrorism, which are ascertainable. – Edward Said • Our objective is to begin a national conversation to better support individuals and families living with ASD in Canada. The Summit will review the recent National Needs Assessment Survey and provide leaders with a better understanding of ASD surveillance across the country. We are pleased that Minister Bergen will be part of this important discussion. – Cynthia Carroll • Perhaps, in retrospect, there would be little motivation even for malevolent extraterrestrials to attack the Earth; perhaps, after a preliminary survey, they might decide it is more expedient just to be patient for a little while and wait for us to self-destruct. – Carl Sagan • Personal weapons are what raised mankind out of the mud, and the rifle is the queen of personal weapons. The possession of a good rifle, as well as the skill to use it well, truly makes a man the monarch of all he surveys. It realizes the ancient dream of the Jovian thunderbolt, and as such it is the embodiment of personal power. For this reason it exercises a curious influence over the minds of most men, and in its best examples it constitutes an object of affection unmatched by any other inanimate object. – Jeff Cooper • Philosophy, most broadly viewed, is the critical survey of existence from the standpoint of value. – Sidney Hook • Physiology is the basis of all medical improvement and in precise proportion as our survey of it becomes more accurate and extended, it is rendered more solid. – John Gorrie • Piety practiced in solitude, like the flower that blooms in the desert, may give its fragrance to the winds of heaven, and delight those unbodied spirits that survey the works of God and the actions of men; but it bestows no assistance upon earthly beings, and however free from taints of impurity, yet wants the sacred splendor of beneficence. – Samuel Johnson • Readers, on the other hand, have at least 7.5 books going all the time. Actually, the number of books a reader takes on is usually directly related to the number of bathrooms he has in his home and office. I am working on a survey that will show that, over a lifetime, readers are in bathrooms seven years and three months longer than nonreaders. – Calvin Miller • Recent surveys of Church members have shown a serious erosion in the number of families who have a year’s supply of life’s necessities. Most members plan to do it. Too few have begun… It is our sacred duty to care for our families, including our extended families. – Thomas S. Monson • Recent surveys show 3 out of 10 men have a problem with premature ejaculation. The rest just didn’t really think it was a problem! – Frankie Boyle • Roberto Calasso’s survey of the renewed interest in myth demonstrates how decisive the gods’ influence was on modern literature. Calasso is not only immensely learned; he is one of the most original thinkers and writers we have today. – Charles Simic • San Francisco can start right now to become number one. We can set examples so that others will follow. We can start overnight. We don’t have to wait for budgets to be passed, surveys to be made, political wheelings and dealings … for it takes no money … It takes no compromising to give the people their rights. It takes no money to respect the individual. It takes no political deal to give people freedom. It takes no survey to remove repression. – Harvey Milk • School choice opponents are also dishonest when they speak of saving public schools. A Heritage Foundation survey found that 47 percent of House members and 51 percent of senators with school-age children enrolled them in private schools in 2001. Public school teachers enroll their children in private schools to a much greater extent than the general public, in some cities close to 50 percent. – Walter E. Williams • She couldn’t survey the wreck of the world with an air of casual unconcern. – Margaret Mitchell • So their combinations with themselves and with each other give rise to endless complexities, which anyone who is to give a likely account of reality must survey. – Plato • Suddenly, in the space of a moment, I realized what it was that I loved about Britain – which is to say, all of it. Every last bit of it, good and bad – old churches, country lanes, people saying ‘Mustn’t grumble,’ and ‘I’m terribly sorry but,’ people apologizing to ME when I conk them with a careless elbow, milk in bottles, beans on toast, haymaking in June, seaside piers, Ordnance Survey maps, tea and crumpets, summer showers and foggy winter evenings – every bit of it. – Bill Bryson • Survey 2001: Men who never married, never had a child, worked full time and were college educated earn only 85% of what women with the same criteria earn. – Warren Farrell • Survey and test a prospective action before undertaking it. Before you proceed, step back and look at the big picture, lest you act rashly on raw impulse. – Epictetus • Survey data suggest that war has become more unpopular. The majority of the American people now think it was a mistake, in a shift away from the 51 percent that endorsed it on Election Day. Admittedly this is only a small change in the population, from a majority to a minority. Nor do the changers earn grace for their new opinions. They still endorsed the war on Election Day and are still responsible for it. – Andrew Greeley • Survey says: one more for the bad guys. – Scott Hall • Surveys have shown going back as far as you and I can remember that people have perceived a leftward tilt in the basic coverage that they get on TV news. – Brit Hume • Surveys show that many talented and committed young people are reluctant to enter teaching for the long haul because they think the profession is low-paying and not prestigious enough. – Arne Duncan • Surveys show that more than 50 percent of people in the U.S. have prayed the sinner’s prayer and think they’re going to heaven because of it even though there is no detectable difference in their lifestyles from those outside of the church. On this issue- the most important issue on earth- we have to be absolutely clear. We need to preach salvation by repentance before God and faith in the finished work of Christ. – J. D. Greear • Surveys show that surveys never lie. – Natalie Angier • Surveys show that the #1 fear of Americans is public speaking. #2 is death. That means that at a funeral, the average American would rather be in the casket than doing the eulogy. – Jerry Seinfeld • Take the back door,” she said. “Claire, you and your strang friend-” “Eve,” they both said simultaneously, and Eve held out her fst for a bump. “Or, you could call me Eve the Great, Mistress of All She Surveys. Eve for short. – Rachel Caine • That I had never heard of such a bird did not surprise me…. But others more experienced also did not know of the Carolina Parakeet. The more I spoke of the bird, the more it seemed that, somehow, its existence had been a chimera. Admittedly, my survey was small and unscientific, but intelligent people who could reel off the names of various dinosaurs and identify sparrows at epic distances could not name the forgotten parakeet. I realized, forcefully, what I suppose I knew abstractly: Histories, like species, can go extinct. – Christopher Cokinos • The American people want to make sure that the rules of the game are fair. And what that means is that if you look at surveys around Americans’ attitudes on trade, the majority of the American people still support trade. But they’re concerned about whether or not trade is fair, and whether we get the same access to other countries’ markets that they have with us. Is there just a race to the bottom when it comes to wages, and so forth. – Barack Obama • The BBC did a survey of the top 50 things to do before we die. Not while we’re still alive, before we die.- Bill Bailey • The camera relieves us of the burden of memory. It surveys us like God, and it surveys for us. Yet no other god has been so cynical, for the camera records in order to forget. – John Berger • The distribution of wealth is even more unequal than that of income. …The wealthiest 5% of American households held 54% of all wealth reported in the 1989 survey. Their share rose to 61% in 2010 and reached 63% in 2013. By contrast, the rest of those in the top half of the wealth distribution —families that in 2013 had a net worth between $81,000 and $1.9 million —held 43% of wealth in 1989 and only 36% in 2013. – Janet Yellen • The drys seemingly are afraid of the truth. Why not take inventory and ascertain the true conditions. Let us not leave it to the charge of an antiprohibition organization, or to any other private association, let us have an official survey and let the American people know what is going on. A complete and honest and impartial survey would reveal incredible conditions. – Fiorello H. La Guardia • The earliest religious texts in the West ascribe to humankind both a prehistory and a destiny among the gods. M. David Litwa presents a striking survey of the varieties the latter of these beliefs has had, both within and outside the Christian tradition. Becoming Divine reconstructs an accessible and fascinating mosaic of this too-long neglected idea, utilizing figures as disparate as Orphic cultists, Augustine, and Nietzsche. – Terryl L. Givens • The fact disclosed by a survey of the past that majorities have been wrong must not blind us to the complementary fact that majorities have usually not been entirely wrong. – Herbert Spencer • The fact is that surveys which media people openly admit to show that fewer than twelve percent of their customers believe they’re doing a good job, while the average profit margin in television is in the neighborhood of eighty percent. – L. Neil Smith • The good news from the U.S. military survey of focus groups is that Iraqis do accept the Nuremberg principles. They understand that sectarian violence and the other postwar horrors are contained within the supreme international crime committed by the invaders. – Noam Chomsky • The hawk is aerial brother of the wave which he sails over and surveys, those his perfect air-inflated wings answering to the elemental unfledged pinions of the sea. – Henry David Thoreau • The Iraq Survey Group has already found massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories. – Tony Blair • The Italian historian Armando Petrucci has done more than anyone else to revive interest in public writing. His groundbreaking Public Lettering: Script, Power, and Culture surveys the forms and uses of epigraphic writing from classical antiquity to the twentieth century. – Geoffrey Nunberg • The leader is the one who climbs the tallest tree, surveys the entire situation, and yells, ‘Wrong jungle!’ … Busy, efficient producers and managers often respond … ‘Shut up! We’re making progress!’ – Stephen Covey • The main object of the work was to present such a survey of the advances already made in physical knowledge, and of the mode in which they have been made, as might serve as a real and firm basis for our speculations concerning the progress of human knowledge, and the processes by which sciences are formed. – William Whewell • The majority of surveys throughout this Nation show that the American people are advocating for a comprehensive and realistic approach to immigration reform. – Raul Grijalva • The media transforms the great silence of things into its opposite. Formerly constituting a secret, the real now talks constantly. News reports, information, statistics, and surveys are everywhere. – Michel de Certeau • The much-vaunted sex appeal of American women is drawn from films, reviews and pin-ups, and is in large print fictitious. A recent medical survey in the United States showed that 75% of young American women are without strong sexual feeling and instead of satisfying their libido they seek pleasure narcissistically in exhibitionism, vanity, and the cult of fitness and health in a sterile sense. – Julius Evola • The other three incoming calls were from his building superintendent, his pharmacy and a telephone survey company.” “Bastards. They always call during dinner.” Liv laughed as I slid the sliced steak onto a platter and topped it with sautéed vegetables. “Forget crime lords and corrupt politicians – telemarketers are the root of all evil.” “Now you’re getting it. – Rachel Vincent • The Place of Religion in Chicago is a clearly written account of a little-studied aspect of American landscape. Based on unique field surveys and supported by photographs, tables, and beautifully crafted maps, the book will form a lasting contribution to our understanding of an overlooked element of the American urban scene: the religious landscape of a major metropolis. – Peter Haggett • The Playtex Secrets survey truly uncovered some thought-provoking and provocative secrets of real American housewives. In fact, many of the findings would make great fodder for a storyline on the show! – Alfre Woodard • The pool of illegal immigrants is like a qualified bunch of people. You don’t have to do surveys. You don’t have to interview them. You know they are ready-made Democrat voters. Not only that, they are readymade Democrat constituents. – Rush Limbaugh • The public conviction that a railroad linking the West and the East was an absolute necessity became so pronounced after the gold discoveries of ’49 that Congress passed an act in 1853 providing for a survey of several lines from the Mississippi to the Pacific. – John Moody • The pursuit of science has often been compared to the scaling of mountains, high and not so high. But who amongst us can hope, even in imagination, to scale the Everest and reach its summit when the sky is blue and the air is still, and in the stillness of the air survey the entire Himalayan range in the dazzling white of the snow stretching to infinity? None of us can hope for a comparable vision of nature and of the universe around us. But there is nothing mean or lowly in standing in the valley below and awaiting the sun to rise over Kinchinjunga. – Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar • The repeat run of Fawlty Towers (BBC2) drew bigger audiences than ever and deservedly so. Statistical surveys reveal that only the television critic of the Spectator is incapable of seeing the joke, which is that Basil Fawlty has the wrong temperament to be a hotel proprietor, just as some other people have the wrong temperament to be television critics. – Clive James • The spirit’s there and that’s not just my imagination. I think if you look at surveys and attitudes among young people, you see it. – Barack Obama • The survey findings reflect the growing trend toward incentive compensation programs as a way for employers to share the wealth with workers, … Roughly 80 percent of those surveyed offer bonus programs and 401(k) or profit-sharing plans . . . as they compete for the best and brightest workforce. – Jerry Jasinowski • The survey of more than 100 waterways downstream from treatment plants and animal feedlots in 30 states found minute amounts of dozens of antibiotics, hormones, pain relievers, cough suppressants, disinfectants and other products. It is not known whether they are harmful to plants, animals or people. The findings were released yesterday on the Web site of the United States Geological Survey, which conducted the research, and in an online journal, Environmental Science and Technology. – Andrew Revkin • The task of getting the Gospel in an adequate way to every ethnic person is tremedous. There is but one solution. I’m sure that it isn’t man, money, surveys, not talk. They all have their place, but if the basis of all of it isn’t fervent, believing prayer, they are in vain. And prayer should not only be the basis but it should permeate and vitalize the whole work. – William Cameron Townsend • The teachings or the information in the Venus project is not what Jacque Fresco dictates. It’s first doing a survey of the carrying capacity of a given environment and maintaining a population in accordance of the Earth’s resources, not Fresco’s opinion. – Jacque Fresco • The truth is that relative income is not directly related to happiness. Nonpartisan social-survey data clearly show that the big driver of happiness is earned success: a person’s belief that he has created value in his life or the life of others. – Arthur C. Brooks • The whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind so that I can survey it at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What delight this is I cannot tell! – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart • There are ancient and modern poems which breathe, in their entirety and in every detail, the divine breath of irony. In such poemsthere lives a real transcendental buffoonery. Their interior is permeated by the mood which surveys everything and rises infinitely above everything limited, even above the poet’s own art, virtue, and genius; and their exterior form by the histrionic style of an ordinary good Italian buffo. – Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel • There are arguments for atheism, and they do not depend, and never did depend, upon science. They are arguable enough, as far as they go, upon a general survey of life; only it happens to be a superficial survey of life. – Gilbert K. Chesterton • There are literally thousands of sites. As I was told in Iraq, information is coming in the entire time, but it is only now that the Iraq survey group has been put together that a dedicated team of people, which includes former UN inspectors, scientists and experts, will be able to go in and do the job properly. – Tony Blair • There is a kind, I might almost say, of artistic satisfaction, when we are able to survey the enormous wealth of Nature as a regularly ordered whole a kosmos, an image of the logical thought of our own mind. – Hermann von Helmholtz • There is a new survey out about the happiest professions. I think the whole premise is flawed. You’re supposed to find true happiness outside of work. From friends, family, and YouTube videos of old people falling down. – Craig Ferguson • There isn’t a clear goal in sight. Osama bin Laden’s organization has spun out from him and is now probably independent of him. There will be others who will appear and reappear. This is why we need a much more precise, a much more defined, a much more patiently constructed campaign, as well as one that surveys not just the terrorists’ presence but the root causes of terrorism, which are ascertainable. – Edward Said • There once was a demographic survey done to determine if money was connected to happiness and Ireland was the only place where this did not turn out to be true. – Fiona Shaw • There was a research I think team, which conducted a survey about what Indians think of Americans, and 71 percent I believe said, well, I think all the nice things about our working together with the United States. But there are people I think that are old mind-sets, who still I think remain mired in the Cold War ideology. – Manmohan Singh • There was a survey done a few years ago that affected me greatly. it was discovered that intelligent people either estimate their intelligence accurately or slightly underestimate themselves, but stupid people overestimate their intelligence and by huge margins. (And these were things like straight up math tests, not controversial IQ tests.) – Harvey Pekar • There`s plenty of other evidence Trump is in sync with the base, including a major survey released that found that 76 percent of Republicans think Islam is incompatible with the American way of life. – Donald Trump • They say the full potential of the human being is called enlightenment, which is infinite consciousness, infinite happiness, zero negativity, zero dying, complete freedom, total fulfillment, and being at one with everything. You can say it’s God realization, or you can say you sit at the feet of the Lord as master of all you survey. You could say it’s totality, total knowledge, and that you are that totality. This is every human being’s birthright: to one day enjoy supreme enlightenment, unity. It’s like the big graduation. – David Lynch • They took a survey: Why do men get up in the middle of the night? Ten percent get up to go to the bathroom and 90 percent get up to go home. – Rodney Dangerfield • This party will not take its position based on public opinion polls. We will not take a stand based on focus groups. We will not take a stand based on phone-in shows or householder surveys or any other vagaries of pubic opinion. – Stephen Harper • Though it is very easy to do valuations, eyeballs and brand prominence surveys, you should never allow any of them to influence the balance sheet. – Ashwin Sanghi • Though with those streams he no resemblance hold, Whose foam is amber and their gravel gold; His genuine and less guilty wealth t’ explore, Search not his bottom, but survey his shore. – John Denham • Time, that takes survey of all the world, Must have a stop. – William Shakespeare • To glorify the past and paint the future is easy, to survey the present and emerge with some light and understanding is difficult. – Lin Yutang • To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity; the next is, to strive, and deserve to conquer: but he whose life has passed without a contest, and who can boast neither success nor merit, can survey himself only as a useless filler of existence; ad if he is content with his own character, must owe his satisfaction to insensibility. – Samuel Johnson • USA Today has come out with a new survey – apparently, three out of every four people make up 75% of the population. – David Letterman • Verse is the natural speech of men, as singing is of birds’The Week’s Survey, 18 June 1904 – Edward Thomas • Very strange bridges are used to make the passage from one state of things to another; we may lose sight of them in our surveys of general history, but their discovery is the glory of historical research. History is not the study of origins; rather it is the analysis of all the mediations by which the past was turned into our present. – Herbert Butterfield • We are here to celebrate the completion of the first survey of the entire human genome. Without a doubt, this is the most important, most wondrous map ever produced by human kind. – William J. Clinton • We constantly see surveys that reveal this ignorance, especially among our high school students,78 percent of whom, in a recent nationwide multiple-choice test, identified Abraham Lincoln as ‘a kind of lobster.’ That’s right: more than three quarters of our nation’s youth could not correctly identify the man who invented the telephone. – Dave Barry • We must, like a painter, take time to stand back from our work, to be still, and thus see what’s what. . . True repose is standing back to survey the activities that fill our days. – William McNamara • We of the third sphere are unable to look at Europe or at Asia as they may survey each other. Wherever we go, across Pacific or Atlantic, we meet, not similarity so much as ‘the bizarre.’ Things astonish us, when we travel, that surprise nobody else. – Mary Ritter Beard • Well for everyone to make a study of astrology for, as indicated, while many individuals have set about to prove the astrological aspects and astrological survey enable one to determine future as well as the past conditions, these are well to the point where the individual understands that these act upon individuals because of their sojourn or correlation of their associations with the environs through which these are shown – see? Rather than the star directing the life, the life of the individual directs the courses of the stars, see? – Edgar Cayce • Well, first of all the Dominion Bureau of Statistics made a survey in the spring of 1970, which showed that on balance the difference in the cost of living between Canadian cities and American cities was 5 % to the advantage, of course, to the Canadian cities. – Leonard Woodcock • What is true about (ex-Iraq Survey Group head) David Kay’s evidence, and this is something I have to accept, and is one of the reasons why I think we now need a new inquiry – it is true David Kay is saying we have not found large stockpiles of actual weapons. – Tony Blair • What we also know is we haven’t found them [weapons of mass destruction] in Iraq – now let the survey group complete its work and give us the report… They will not report that there was no threat from Saddam, I don’t believe. – Tony Blair • When a lion stalks a herd, he sneaks in close, lies down, and surveys them to choose his victim. He takes his time. The deer or buffalo have no idea he’s near. He finds his prey and then he explodes from his hiding place and grabs it. Even if another, perfectly serviceable animal ends up within his reach, he isn’t going to alter his course. He has chosen, and he would rather go hungry than change his mind.- Ilona Andrews • When all thy mercies, O my God, My rising soul surveys, Transported with the view I’m lost, in wonder, love and praise. – Joseph Addison • When Gordon the Brown, in London in 1997, commissioned a great inquisition or survey of his new realm, the result was the so-called national asset register (NAR), which was immediately dubbed by the boomers of the UK Treasury “the modern Domesday Book”. – James Buchan • When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair. – Blaise Pascal • When the United States invaded Iraq, a New York Times/CBS News survey estimated that 42 percent of the American public believed that Saddam Hussein was directly responsible for the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And an ABC news poll said that 55 percent of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein directly supported al-Qaeda. None of this opinion is based on evidence (because there isn’t any). – Arundhati Roy • When they take surveys of women in business, of the Fortune 500, the successful women, 80% of them, say they were in sports as a young woman. – Billie Jean King • When we mean to build, We first survey the plot, then draw the model; And when we see the figure of the house, Then must we rate the cost of the erection. – William Shakespeare • When we started NFL Films, there were no focus groups, there were no demographic studies, there were no surveys. Every decision that we made, we made with our hearts, not with our heads. And, in the very beginning, we really didn’t even have a business plan. – Steve Sabol • When we survey our lives, seeking to fulfil our creativity, we often see we had a dream that went glimmering because we believed, and those around us believed, that the dream was beyond our reach. – Julia Cameron • When we take a slight survey of the surface of our globe a thousand objects offer themselves which, though long known, yet still demand our curiosity. – Oliver Goldsmith • When William the Conqueror commissioned a great survey of his English realm at Gloucester in 1085, the result was a work so thorough, fair, dispassionate, and wide-ranging that it seemed to the succeeding generations to have come from another world. – James Buchan • With respect to trust, people tell me that it is essential for organizational functioning. Maybe, but most surveys of trust find that trust in leaders is low and nonetheless, organizations role along quite nicely.- Jeffrey Pfeffer • With Twitter and other social networking tools, you can get a lot of advice from great people. I learn more from Twitter than any survey or discussion with a big company.- Daniel Ek • Write, if you must; not otherwise. Do not write, if you can earn a fair living at teaching or dressmaking, at electricity or hod-carrying. Make shoes, weed cabbages, survey land, keep house, make ice-cream, sell cake, climb a telephone pole. Nay, be a lightning-rod peddler or a book agent, before you set your heart upon it that you shall write for a living…. Living? It is more likely to be dying by your pen; despairing by your pen; burying hope and heart and youth and courage in your ink-stand. – Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward • You know all the surveys say that evangelicals have the best sex life of any other group. – Ted Haggard • You may have read that I went to M.I.T. In 1982 I filled out a Who’s Who survey with joking responses, and they never bothered to check the facts. – Chevy Chase • You’d think experienced political professionals would know better than to place their trust in exit polls, notoriously inaccurate surveys that had John Kerry winning the 2004 election by five points when he actually lost by three. – John Podhoretz

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dfnews · 7 years ago

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Episode Recap of "Joy's Wedding" "Joy's Divorce" will air in 2020.

Season 4, Episode 1 - June 12, 2017

"In the season premiere, Joy and Austin's wedding day finally arrives; and another Duggar reveals a surprise that leaves the guests in shock."

So here we are again. Another season of life of recaps and high blood pressure spikes for me. This year looks to be about the same as the previous years. Another Duggar marriage is conveniently arranged to fall at beginning of a new season. This time it's 19 year old tomboy Joy. Joy, who said she hates wearing dresses is now wearing a wedding dress. Joy who recently graduated from homeschool and then sadly stated she wasn't going to college or to work but would stay home and help her family. Did she ever have a choice? No! Religious abuse is holding her hostage. This episode is about her transfer of authority. Authority from living under the rules set by her father to the rules set by her husband.

Jill married an outsider who pleased the Godbobber with his missionary wannabe a preacher ways. Jim Bob arranged that marriage. Jessa married a family acquaintance who pleased the Godbobber with his anti-abortion work and preaching ways. Jim Bob arranged that marriage. Jinger married an outsider who pleased the Godbobber by hating on Catholics and being a preacher. Jim Bob arranged that marriage. Now it's time to pick another child to sacrifice to keep the show on the air. Since Joy is young I'm sure the Godbobber thought it best to pick a family friends' son that he knows well and will keep her in the area. It will also connect him to the Forsyths business which the Godbobber has admired and advertised for years. So Joy has had a young man chosen for her because the Godbobber claims God talked to him and encouraged this betrothal and if she protests in any way, she will be hellbound and disowned. This is abuse. I hope one day a family friend will be able to convince these girls that what is happening to them is not godly...it's evil.

1. The episode opens up at Cross Church in Rogers. All of the Duggar kids have been married in different locations. Jill at Cross Church in Springdale, Jessa at First Baptist in Bentonville, Jinger at Church of the Ozarks in Siloam Springs and Josh in Florida. What is with all the different locations? Do the Duggars go all rock band on these churches and destroy the place so they are never allowed back again? My belief is that you should marry in the church you or your spouse was raised in which means all of the Duggar kids should have married in the homechurch of the blacked-out windows.

2. Austin arrives at the church carrying suits and is met by Laura DeMasie, the party planner. LOL! Laura has been working at IBLP cult headquarters for many years and her being called a party planner for the Duggars is ridiculous. Laura is 31 and heads up the COMMIT program along with many other functions for IBLP. She worked under Gothard and lived through the storm of his resigning due to sexual assaults. Laura visits the Duggars often and I tend to think her visits are for counseling purposes. She helps to keep the girls in line. Now she's Joy's party planner? Mmmmkay.

3. Joy arrives with her little sisters who she quickly abandons to greet Austin. She says all the gushy things a fundie girl is supposed to say to her godly arranged man. Her phony fundie smile and stare are near perfection. This is not the Joy we've watched grow up. She's some sort of pod woman now. Joy says "Today is the day I've been dreaming about for a very long time." She's 19! She only got her braces off a couple of years ago. She graduated from homeschool just last year! When she asks Austin if he can believe it...that they're getting married, he snorts and says, "No". He really doesn't look excited. After talking about what they think their favorite part of the wedding will be they go off to pray alone as all the couples before them were shown doing before their weddings. Same ole, same ole.

4. Michelle's friend Cindy is back as wedding designer. She probably should have skipped this disaster. Dried flowers thrown on the floor, hay and weeds hung like they've been lynched from the ceiling. All I can think is I hope the church has a good sprinkler system. The bridal party shows up for hair and makeup. We see Jessa for the first time this season and of course she's talking about herself and her wedding day. Jinger appears and acts all bubble headed about what to do with her hair. Jill shows up to talk about her baby belly. Nothing really interesting happening here and it goes even more downhill when the guys are being filmed. Cindy appears to pin the corsages on the guys and they all look kind of annoyed by her. It was probably all the judging her in her jeans that made them look pissy. Can't have bossy pants wearing women tellng misogynistic jerks what to do. When Cindy tries to pin John she asks him if he's "Arrested anybody lately?" We don't get an interesting answer. We get John pretending to be stuck by the pin like an idiot. Then Joy suddenly appears during the pinning to ask Austin about how she should wear her hair. She looks terrified to make a decision for herself. Austin asks if she is going to wear a veil or not and Joy is like, you make the decision. I don't have the self-esteem to think for myself. I don't want to get beaten kind of look. Austin does try to get her to think for herself but I'm not sure if he was sincere.

5. Kendra shows up and flirts a little with Joe. I'm glad she's a talker. She might bring some life into this show if Joe doesn't squash the spirit out of her. We meet her dad, the ignorant, gay hating, youthful looking preacher who will be sealing the deal with Austin and Joy. I wonder if being stupid is the fountain of youth. Pastor Paul Caldwell is who TLC is promoting now on their channel. They may need to start hiding him like they do with Josh. http://www.nwahomepage.com/…/church-pamphlet-offe…/148038088

6. Michelle shows up with her baby voice on to introduce the bride in her gown. Joy looks good and Austin did decide for her to wear the veil. Luckily the dress is long enough to hide the old brown sandals she decided to wear. The Godbobber then shows up to repeat the same lines in his phony blubbering way as he did for all the other daughters. He says Joy is the most beautiful bride ever. He has said that about every daughter before he walked her down the aisle. I've got to think it's not a compliment anymore but has turned into an insult. An insult because he can't put any effort into treating his daughters as individuals.

7. Photos are taken of the guys. A million cupcakes are baked and decorated. The girls' photos are taken. Joy finds her voice when she starts yelling for the bridal party to take their places. The wedding is about to begin and she seems to want to get this over with it. As the time approaches we finally see her nerves take over. She looks like she wants to run and I am cheering her on. Jim Bob fumbles and says, "You're a good daughter." A good daughter? Seriously? She replies with, "You're the greatest dad." I think she's better than good since she ended up being molested due to her dad's inaction concerning a molesting son of his. When the old man croaks all the girls who were molested need to fight for his inheritance. They deserve it. But of course, because they live in an ungodly patriarchy, only the boys will be given any inheritance money. Screwed again.

8. Pretty music is played as the wedding party walks the aisles. I search for Josh in the crowd but TLC has gotten smart and hidden that slug somewhere good. Jenni bawls as she realizes she's losing another sistermom. Austin must have tried to run because he's dragged down the aisle by his mom and Michelle and some old guy walking behind him. He's trapped! Then a trumpet blasts and the music gets all thunderous which causes Joy to walk the aisle to make it stop. Thank you, Joy! Austin weeps and looks around for the nearest exit. I can see a peak of Joy's brown sandals as she walks the hay covered aisle and hee haw comes to mind.

9. And so it begins. The pastor talks a bit and then introduces John to conduct a song. Seriously, John, who is the least musical Duggar is leading the song by swinging his arms around and acting all serious conductor like. This is the point where I peed myself and had to pause the program to change my pants. Do people really do this at weddings? The song is a simplistic hymn about God being your friend when you're sad. I think Joy will need to sing that a lot in her marriage. They start off right away talking about the marriage covenant and then quickly to the vows and the rings. Austin seems to panic for a second when he thinks Joy's ring doesn't fit but it does and then they sign the business contract, I mean the marriage certificate, which is done during the ceremony. Then the parents come up to pray in a football huddle. Then they are pronounced man and wife and the couple kiss but it barely looks like they touched lips. I'm pretty much convinced they didn't really kiss. Nice acting though. Song-peed pants-marriage covenant talk-short vows-rings-signing the papers-huddle prayer-pronouncement-missed kiss and that's it? That all took about eight minutes. Please tell me TLC cut some of the wedding out and it wasn't really an eight minute wedding ceremony. The young couple run down the aisle like the church is on fire and then Joy is scared shitless by a confetti cannon. Oh yeah, that's a hee haw wedding. Who cleaned up that confetti? This is why Duggars never get married in the same place twice.

10. John talks about the short and sweet ceremony and then pronounces himself a "Bachelor til the Rapture". Considering the Rapture is make believe I guess John will never marry and will continue to sleep in the boys' dorm forever. Laura, the IBLP cult party plannner, is still available. Maybe she can change his mind. The "reception" consisted of eating sugar in the church lobby. Jenni changes out of her bridesmaid dress as quickly as she can. Austin and Joy give thanks before cutting the cake and then kiss and this one looks like they didn't miss. Then they set up the bouquet throw where Joy just ends up handing it to Kendra and then Joe gets down on one knee and proposes after only courting for three months. She says yes and everyone cheers. Another handcuffed teenager prepared to be transferred from one authority to another. Another wedding to kick off the next season. The show will go on for as long as there are Duggar kids to sell off. If they keep taking in kids, like Tyler, that may be until the next century.

I needs some sugar!

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mst3kproject · 8 years ago

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The Creature Walks Among Us

The third installment in the Creature from the Black Lagoon series does not have John Agar in it, thank heavens, but it does have Jeff Morrow and Rex Reason from This Island Earth and Gregg Palmer from The Rebel Set. It continues the theme of the poor Gill-Man just wanting to be left alone in a nice, peaceful swamp where he can snap alligators in half to his heart's content – but western science just won't leave him alone. So what haven't we done to the poor bastard yet? Well, we haven't set him on fire... okay, awesome, let's do that!

As the movie begins, another bunch of assholes are setting out to hunt our scaly antihero, who apparently vanished into the Everglades instead of dying at the end of Revenge of the Creature. The biggest asshole of them all is Dr. Bill Barton, who thinks the Creature will be Perfect For His Experiments. Barton has this Doctor-Moreau-esque theory that he can speed up evolution through surgery, and he's also brought his wife Marsha along because he is convinced that if he turns his back for five minutes he'll find her in bed with three other men. The other assholes on the trip seem to consider this a challenge, and a couple of them try to put moves on Marsha as the creature hunt progresses. This is as dull and annoying as all such unnecessary romance plots.

When they finally catch up with the Gill-Man, they manage to capture him – but only after he’s been accidentally doused in gasoline and set on fire. The fire burns off the Creature's gills, giving Barton the opportunity to save him by making some surgical improvements to his vestigial lungs. Also burned were the scales, leaving behind bare skin. Barton takes this to mean he's succeeded in partially transforming the monster into a man, and decides to take him home in order to continue the process. This is definitely not a terrible fucking idea, is it?

For starters, I do have to say that this movie looks pretty nice. The everglades are beautifully dense and primordial, which is a relief after spending the previous movie mostly in the bleak, artificial landscape of Sea World. The night shots are especially good, with artful use of filters and reflection of lights in the water, and good matching of day-for-night to actual night shots. The Creature on fire is done very well. And the music isn't bad, either – the familiar Creature Theme is present, and there's a nice bit where music is used to suggest that Marsha is suffering from 'rapture of the deep'. Too bad the accompanying shots demonstrate that she's only a few feet from the surface.

If you'll remember, my main complaint about Revenge of the Creature, besides the existence of John Agar, was that the female lead was a sexy lamp. This is actually true of Creature from the Black Lagoon as well – both films end when the Creature kidnaps a woman in white and the men have to chase him down and shoot him until he lets her go. I'm not sure what the Creature's interest in women in white is... maybe female Creatures turn white as a signal to the males that they’re ready to mate? Regardless of the reason, The Creature Walks Among Us looks at first like it's going to continue the pattern. Marsha Barton goes diving while wearing a white bathing suit, and the Creature stalks her in the water as it had other heroines before her.

But Marsha herself soon starts to show signs that she, at least, has potential to defy our expectations. For starters, she evinces a surprising amount of actual personality. Her activities have been severely restricted by her controlling and paranoid husband, and she attempts to alleviate the resulting boredom by having a variety of hobbies and sometimes by taking reckless risks. An early scene establishes that she enjoys hunting, and seems to be a good shot. Could it be that she will save herself from the Creature, or even save one of the men?

To my amazement, the movie seemed to spend some time setting up the latter idea. After the swimming scene, the Creature actually takes very little interest in Marsha. His anger is instead saved for the men who are tormenting him with surgeries and experiments. When he comes charging out of the laboratory where the scientists have kept him sedated, he is drawn by Marsha's cries as one of the men, Grant, tries to rape her. But it is Grant he attacks, for it is Grant who had previously harmed him. I found myself daring to hope that the movie would end with the Creature killing Grant and Barton, then being shot and killed by Marsha when he goes after her love interest, Morgan.

Of course I was disappointed.

The movie does end with both Barton and Grant dead, and Morgan alive to move in on the widowed Marsha, but during the climax Marsha herself simply fades away. She was in the movie not long earlier, taking a swim while the Creature watched, but as the action begins she melts into the background. She puts in a brief appearance to scream and cry while the Creature goes on his rampage, then vanishes and does not reappear until the denoument. Time spent setting up that she could swim and shoot was apparently just misdirection. Instead of using the gun it placed on the mantlepiece, the movie decides that instead, we need to see the resolution to the confused romantic subplots involving Barton, Marsha, Grant, and Morgan.

Barton, as previously mentioned, believes that Marsha is a cheap little tramp (he actually calls her this at one point) and if he lets her out of his sight she'll be spreading her legs for every man and fish monster for miles around. Grant has apparently decided that a woman with an overprotective husband is twice as attractive – and what the woman herself thinks of his advances is irrelevant. Morgan seems honestly concerned about Barton's mental state and the effect it's having on Marsha, and is the only one of the lot who appears to consider Marsha a person with problems of her own.

Weirdly, the actors playing Grant and Morgan look and sound very much alike, to the point where it's possible to confuse the two. Jeff Morrow as Barton has a similar haircut and is much the same height, so he blends in with the crowd as well. I hate when movies do this. Were 50's standards for male beauty so exacting that they could not hire even one guy with a halfway distinctive face?

Grant and Morgan both get a taste of Barton's jealousy, but what eventually drives him over the edge is Grant's evident unwillingness to take 'no' for an answer from anybody. In a fit of rage, Barton murders him, and then attempts to frame the Creature by tossing the body into the pen. This gives the Creature the opportunity to break out and kill Barton. Marsha is nowhere to be found.

The interesting thing about this ending is that while it is a bit disappointing, it represents a complete reversal of previous Creature movies. In both Creature from the Black Lagoon and Revenge of the Creature, the Creature himself represented a sexual threat to the female lead. He became fascinated with her to the point where he carried her off, and the men had to save her from whatever horrible fate it was he had in mind (I like to think it would have involved a lot of frustrated waiting, wondering when she’s going to lay her eggs so he can swim over them). In The Creature Walks Among Us, it's exactly the opposite: the Creature, albeit unintenionally, saves Marsha from the sexual threat presented to her by Grant and Barton!

This reflects another reversal, as the script finally seems to understand what the audience has been thinking since early in the previous movie – the Creature himself is by far the most sympathetic character here. He spends most of the movie badly burned and with possible brain damage, and all he wants is to go back to the water where he belongs. He doesn't understand that the surgeries Barton has performed on him have left him susceptible to drowning like a land creature. We want to see him kick the shit out of these guys and while the ending, where he wades into the ocean not knowing he will drown, is tragic, it's also kind of a relief. The water is not an escape this time, and nobody can drag him back to civilization for another round of abuse.

When I think about it, I'm actually fairly sure that both these inversions are intentional. I suspect that at least the first writer, Arthur A. Ross, re-watched the first two movies and noticed the things Revenge repeated, and then set out to write something that would turn these specific two ideas on their heads. I wish he'd done a little more with Marsha, who is really not much more than a plot device to motivate the enmity between Barton and Grant, but it's nice to know somebody actually cared about this story rather than simply trying to wring a little more profit out of last year's success.

The movie has another point to make, too, but it's pretty muddled. In between tinkering with the Creature's internal organs, the scientists have philosophical discussions about mankind's capacity for animalistic behaviour and our ability to overcome it with science, describing us as 'caught between the jungle and the stars'. Much of what is said here is very poetic but doesn't come across as particularly meaningful, mostly because the actors themselves do not really seem to understand the points their characters are trying to make. It's all hopelessly undeveloped and serves mostly to confuse and frustrate the audience, who just want to see more of the Creature.

While there are Episodes that Never Were where I really don't know why they never got picked up for MST3K, in this case I think it was actually divine intervention. The Creature Walks Among Us is a boring, stupid movie that would have made a great episode, but that episode would have sorely lacked one thing. There is a sequence in which strange sounds bring everybody running to the Creature's lair, where they discover it has killed a mountain lion. While I'm sure Mike and the Bots could have come up with some great Puma-Man or Pyoooma-themed lines, the perfect callback for this scene came into existence only after MST3K on the Sci-Fi Channel was over and done. The Creature Walks Among Us simply could not be properly riffed in a time when “I hear a mountain lion!” was not yet funny.

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #the creature walks among us #tw: rape #it's beginning to look a lot like fishmen #50s

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aboysbestfriendishismum · 8 years ago

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Chapter 43 - Exes, camp fires and big mouths (Part One)

In the previous chapter:

Meg and Angie are at the diner, at the end of their night shift, together with Grace, who’s sipping a hot chocolate as she’s being given advice on what to do with Stone. Lupus in fabula, Stone and the Mookie guys minus Eddie come to Roxy’s to eat and say their singer has stayed alone at the Potatohead gallery to work on a few songs. Angie secretly pays a quick visit to Eddie, with the pretext of bringing him food and coffee, and he reacts in a weird way. The following day Angie’s dad shows up at the girls’, earlier than expected. Angie proudly shows him her apartment, Ray’s not that enthusiast about it because it’s rather small and in poor condition, but he appreciates the fact his daughter seems to be living a nice and independent life in Seattle. He misses her though. In Angie’s room he finds the little collage board Eddie gave to her as a present, he’s surprised because it has Angie’s polaroids on and she’s always despised having pictures taken. Ray has a photo session with the Seahawks to do and they agree to meet later in the evening at the RKCNDY club together with their friends. Shortly before the beginning of the concert, Jerry’s at the club too, even though he knows Angie’s gonna be there too. Well, that’s the reason he’s there anyway. A guy tries to make small talk with him at the bar, he’s not feeling talkative at the beginning, but he ends up telling him everything about himself and the mess he made with Angie, without actually mentioning her name, spicy details included. As Angie and her friends get to the venue, he finally finds out the terrible truth: the guy he’s been talking to at the bar is his ex girlfriend’s dad.

***

“Oh shit, finally!” Jeff jumps off the hood of Laura’s car as soon as he sees her getting out of her apartment and going down the short flight of stairs “Hurry up, we’re already late”

“Good evening to you too, my love! Listen, where did all that sweetness you brought out the other night for our anniversary go? Did you burn it all at once?” the girl complains as she walks up to Jeff and rather reluctantly pecks him on the lips.

“What? No, no my love, it’s just, well, fifteen minutes ago you said you were coming and…”

“And…?”

“And Eddie and I are here waiting in the cold and ice, you could at least have thrown us the car keys… darling!”

“Eddie’s not complaining” she remarks looking at me and taking the just mentioned keys from her bag, then clinking them right before her boyfriend’s nose, but keeping them tight.

“Actually’s not even been fifteen minutes, much less” I point out and Jeff gives me a nasty look.

“Yeah, sure… he says so because he doesn’t want to offend you”

“Anyway I had to finish getting ready, so what?” Laura opens the car and takes the driver’s seat.

“But baby, you’re already beautiful and amazing, you surely don’t need so much time to get ready, that’s why I was surprised” Jeff’s scene doesn’t convice Laura, who bursts out laughing at his face before closing the car door on her side.

“Come on, baby, stop being an asshole and get up! Weren’t you in a hurry?”

Jeff immediatly does as she commanded and takes the seat on the front, next to Laura, while I sit in the back.

“I speak for Eddie, not for me. He’s the one who can’t wait to get to RKCNDY, right?” Jeff winks at me, but I’ve learned to ignore him.

“I just wanna get there before the show begins” I shrug as Laura starts the car and leaves.

That’s not true for shit, of course. It’s unusual for me, I know, but this time I don’t give an actual fuck about the show. I respect the band and have been told the Inspector guys are good and also funny, that they interact a lot with the audience, and so on. But really, I don’t give a fuck. Basically I’m going because Angie’s there and by now I don’t even waste time inventing excuses to tell myself not to admit I wanna see her. See her, then what? What do I do? What do I tell her? I’m so confused right now and it’s not just my fault, after all she’s got something to do with this mess too, she keeps sending fucking ambiguous signals. I mean, after I tried to ask her out with disastrous results I had basically given up and resigned myself to being turned down, and decided I should stay away from her for a while, also considering that I’ve been following her around since we came back from Canada. Well, resigned is a big word, say I was trying to focus on music and erase all the waves, scents, oceans with her name, looks, mermaids and any other thing that could remind me of her from my writing. And right when I was actually managing to do that, what did Angie do? She appeared in front of me, out of nowhere, with her smile, her raspy and charming voice, her inquiring eyes on me, so sweetly sharp at times that I almost feel naked and have the impression that she, I don’t know, likes me? But then I hugged her and she didn’t turn a hair, while I was getting drunk with her scent, which is both different every time and always the same. I was holding her and I swear my knees were shaking because I felt overwhelmed by all that peace and warmth and it was like I couldn’t fully embrace her, like I wasn’t able to hold and keep in my arms all that she could give me, like it was too much all at once. And I thought that if I had told her something like that she would have thought I was crazy, or high, or both, or she would have used her usual fucking self deprecation saying something about being too big to be hugged or shit like that, but I’d have shut her up with a greedy and euphoric kiss. And she’d have reacted with one of her infamous slaps full on my face or she’d have clinged to me and reciprocated the kiss twice as intensely and we’d have ended up rolling on that poor excuse for a couch at the gallery without really understanding how we got there. Or maybe she’d have kept it cool and then given me a side look and, with her diagonal smile, she’d have argued that shutting a woman’s mouth with a kiss is the most sexist and stereotypical thing a man’s mind can come up with and at that point I’d have definitely waved white flag and given in, and declaring myself officially hers I’d have got completely naked on the spot and told her she could do anything she wanted to me. None of that happened though and the mere fact I’m daydreaming about this and all the possible scenarios, as ridiculous as plausible, is enough for me to realise I’m not losing my mind for Angie, nah, I already lost it and there’s nothing I can do about it.

We’ve already got to the club and I didn’t really notice, I must have been no great company during the car ride, but Jeff and Laura don’t seem to mind. The line outside is basically non existing and it takes us five minutes to get in. Inside the club our eyes are busy scanning the people around looking for our friends and our ears are busy listening to the end of a song by Primus. Laura walks away almost immediately to say hi to a couple of girls who are calling her and takes Jeff with her, whereas I gesture something along the line of see ya later and walk around the room, hoping to find what I’m looking for. And it doesn’t take long because as the song ends, as if it was a previously arranged scene, among the many unknown faces, there I spot it, the only one I’m really interested in: Angie, down on the left, standing beside a column, chatting and laughing with Meg, dressed in black, a tracksuit I guess, different make up on her eyes, black with something reddish, or purple, I can’t say it, her hand brushing a lock of hair away from her face and then indulging a little more in drowning the fingertips into the soft mane. Actually, I don’t know if she’s actually indulging in the movement or it’s just me seeing everything at half speed like in a boring romantic scene of a b movie about teenagers, when the main male character sees the girl of his dreams and goes in raptures and right then the ultimate love song starts like, I don’t know, True by Spandau Ballet, and she shakes her head and her hair move in slow motion and a single spotlight is on her and the rest of the world stops being important or maybe, as far as he knows, even stops existing. The problem is the scene goes on exactly like that, except for the song, which in my case it’s the cover version of Love me made by The Cramps and if possible it’s even more appropriate. Surely, Lux’s screams are more suited to my mood. Now Meg’s talking, while Angie listens and nods and has an interested expression on her face, then she looks in disbelief, then confused and then I lose count of the whole spectrum of emotions I see passing on that face, which must be relaxed and comfortable and doesn’t feel the need to hide anything from her friend, so it shows itself for what it is, naturally expressive. I like her like this, with no apparent protection shield, no masks, no filters. I wish she was like this with me too, and maybe she really is sometimes. No, the truth is I wish she was like this with me only, that’s a completely different thing. The former eventuality is discarded, it’s literally shattered in a few seconds thanks to a quick gesture by… by whom? Who the fuck is that? A guy with long hair and moustache who must be as old as Angie and Meg put together, he comes out from behind the column with two glasses in his hands, creeps behind the girls’s shoulders scaring them as a joke. Angela yells at him and laughs and takes one of the glasses from the stranger, who puts his arm around her shoulders and kisses her temple, just like that, as if it was nothing, as she lets him. SHE LETS HIM DO IT AND SMILES. Meg says something to them then walks away, leaving them alone. Are you kidding me? Slow motion and Tony Hadley’s voice stopped, now speed is back to normal, no, things just sped up considering I’m basically running towards Angie and the old pig. Has he just met her? Does he already know her? Maybe it’s one of her professors. I don’t have time to make other assumptions, I’m already a few feet from them, Angie sees me and as we make eye contact she calls my name and gestures for me to get closer, I smile and for a moment I forget what my previous intentions were. The face of the asshole who quickly turns around to acknowledge me soon takes me back to reality.

“You know, the first time I saw them they were opening for The Police, I’m talking about the Outlandos d'amour tour, so 1977 or ‘78. If I do remember right, I guess they were the first Cramps concerts ever, at least the first ones outside the US” I heard him say when I’m closer.

“Lucky you!”

“Oh well, they’re still around, you know? You can see them whenever you want”

“Yeah, but you saw them in the early days!” Angie says with admiration in her voice.

“Well, it’s easier when you’re elderly. Hi Angie!” I chime in like that, brutally and with no introduction whatsoever.

“Eddie!” she exclaims and looks at me as if I had just yelled some blasphemy in a church.

“Hehe that’s true, your friend’s right, being born in the 40s is the best thing ever happened to me, especially for my job. Anyway, as someone said, it’s all relative, each and every generation has its own hymns and myths: maybe the Zeppelin or the Sabbath of the future are performing in clubs like this one right now” the guy doesn’t bat an eyelid and goes on playing the part of the cool phylosophycal guy. For his job? Does he work in the music world? Or is it just what he tells girls to take them to bed?

“Can I have a sip? My mouth is super dry” I ask Angie and literally tear the glass away from her hand before getting an answer.

“Ok… but it’s just plain coke, nothing else” she explains even more perplexed.

“I really hope so,” I grumble to myself, but loud enough for the other two to hear, as I take the glass to my lips and smell the content in the meantime, before drinking some “you never know”

“Wow, I had no idea you had such scrupulous friends! They even check if you’re drinking alcohol” the moustache giggles and sips his beer.

“We always check anything, and anyone” I add as I drink some more coke. Seems ok.

“Since when?” Angie gives suspicious looks alternatively to me and the old man.

“By the way, we haven’t been introduced yet, I’m-” the guy takes the beer with his left hand and holds out his right one for me to shake and I can’t refuse.

“You’re someone who’s probably twice as old as her” I end his sentence with a broad smile on my face, as I vigorously shake his hand.

“EDDIE, WHAT THE FUCK?!” Angie’s face turns crimson all of a sudden and well, yeah, I know, I know she can defend herself and doesn’t particularly like this whole big brother attitude from Stone and Jeff, but I can’t just stand here not doing anything while this dirty jerk’s hitting on her.

“Well, actually more than twice, I told you I was born in the 40s, didn’t I? Maths is still indisputable, isn’t it?” I mean, the guy has the temper to joke? He has guts, I must admit it.

“I can count, you know, unlike someone who doesn’t understand he’s a little too old for an 18 year old girl” I drink some more coke, actually the glass is half empty when I give it back to Angie, who takes it without even looking at me. Is she embarrassed? Or mad? Well in that case she’s overreacting honestly.

“Oh god, well, too old, uhm, I wouldn’t say I’m too old. I think I’m the right age, I’ve always wanted a family, but not too soon”

“So you want to settle down with a young girl and have a family now that you’re aged?”

“Eddie, stop it, don’t you understand he’s-” Angie shakes her head and nervously laughs, but she’s interrupted by the guy.

“No, Angie, I think he doesn’t understand. I think I’m the right age, neither too young nor too old. A healthy age gap is very important, Eddie. If you’re young, girls won’t take you seriously and consider you just like one of their friends, whereas if you’re too old they’ll take advantage of you and have you pamper them, and most of all they’ll fool you right under your nose. You need balance” the man with moustache goes on, without hesitation. By the way, now that I look at him, he reminds me of someone… but who?

“This. This is… the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard in my life!” I retort folding my arms, probably as to prevent myself from punching him.

“Because you’re not a father yet, when and if you become a dad you’ll understand what it means, especially if you have daughters” he says and places one hand on my shoulder.

“What do you mean? It’s got nothing to do with-”

“It has because this is my dad, Eddie, MY DAD”

“Your… huh?” suddenly my hands are not itching to choke the life out of that man anymore, I’m suddenly hit by another wish: the desire to be immediately swallowed into the bowels of the earth and never come back.

“Ray Pacifico, nice to meet you!” the guy… well, ehm, Angie’s father holds out his hand towards me again and I give him mine, limp, as I watch him dazed.

“Mr… uhm, Mr Pacifico, I… I’m so sorry, I had no idea you-”

“Please, call me Ray, or you’re gonna make me feel old for real” Ray winks at me and I nod without saying one word, without even breathing I think, knowing that one minute ago I basically told the father of the girl I have a crush on that he was an old molester hitting on young girls.

“Nice to meet you Ray, I’m Jeff, a friend of Angie’s, one of the normal ones though” the bassist appears behind my back. How long has he been there?

“Hehe come on, poor Eddie, how could he know?” Ray tries to excuse me and I know deep inside he’s thinking I’m a loser.

“How could he? Angie wouldn’t stop talking about you and the fact you were coming to Seattle! Everybody knows, I think even the mayor knows” Laura jokes and Angie sticks her tongue out at her.

“Yeah, actually… well, yeah, I knew that, it’s just… I temporarily forgot it” I’m clutching at straws but in the end it’s just the simple truth: I knew Angie’s dad would have been her tonight, I just didn’t make the connection the moment I saw him with her.

“Say the protective instinct prevailed over reason. We’re used at being watchdogs, you know, with all the dirty people around and shit” Jeff gives me a heavy double pat on the back and as I yelp I forget my will for oblivion for a moment.

“Oh so you’re regularly being hit on by old men?” an amused Ray asks his daughter.

“Jeff meant in general” she sulks.

“Now I see why they were all so enthusiast about your volunteer job at the retirement home!”

“Ha-ha” Angie looks down embarrassed, then looks up again and her eyes are on me, eyes of pity.

“Sorry” I mouth to her, while Jeff and Ray keep not so subtly making fun of both Angie and I.

She shakes her head and half smiles, the usual small tooth briefly peeking out from the corner of her mouth then immediately disappearing behind her timid and soft to devour lips and that’s exactly where I’d run to hide right now, or simply to rest, if only I could.

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

“And right then I found out she was Meg’s new roommate” Chris cockily ends his story, the one I know by heart, the poor figure I could tell even if I hadn’t experience it first hand when I got to my new apartment.

“Hehe so you two are my daughter’s neighbors” my dad points at Cornell and Gossard and he does it so nonchalantly I’d almost swear he didn’t do it on purpose.

“No, he lives with Matt,” Stone explains pointing at the drummer “I live by myself”

“He’s still at home with his parents” Jeff remarks with a fake smile.

“I’m not with my parents, I have my own apartment”

“Which is also your parent’s attic”

“It’s an attic, but it’s a detached apartment”

“And your parents downstairs”

“But they’re two separated and independent apartments, Jeff, just stop it”

“Which happen to become a little less separated at lunch and dinner time”

“SEPARATED AND INDEPENDENT!”

My father enjoys the Stone and Jeff show, we’re maybe so used to that we don’t even notice. For a moment I try to detatch myself from the situation and observe it from the outside and I realise the guys are doing their best, or worst, it depends on how you look at it. I mean, Chris delighting us with slices of his life, Jeff and Stone picking on each other, sweet Mikey playing dumb and make the usual couple of ambiguous remarks about Meg, Kim who says a couple of words and ends up monopolizing the conversation, Eddie not opening his mouth, Dave drinking beer like there’s no tomorrow: each one of them is, or looks like, his own stereotype, everyone reproduces the topoi and the style elements that belong to them, just like the characters of a sitcom do in the first episode, to introduce themselves to the audience, to give the watchers the whole picture. In this case, my father can’t really complain, they’re all doing their best to give him an overall view of our existence.

“Oh well, personally I don’t even take such things into account, I’ve met school kids who’re still with their parents but already are perfectly self-reliant and grown up adults who live by themselves but have their moms or girlfriends come and clean their house, so I don’t really think it’s a matter of the physical place you live in, rather than the mental place you reach as you grow”

“Jeff has Eddie now, he doesn’t need his mom” Stone remarks after finishing his beer.

“What does it mean? That you’re good at doing the chores?” dad asks Eddie, figuring out it must be some kind of recurring joke.

“Err… well, yeah, I try… I mean… been living on my own for ten years” Eddie stutters something without even looking at Ray’s face and that doesn’t surprise me, considering the poor figure he made earlier. How the hell did he forget? How didn’t he understand it was my father? Everybody says we look alike, despite everything…

“Great! My girl here is a model of independence too, Janis and I tried hard to pamper her, but we failed miserably, didn’t we Angelina?” dad circles my shoulders with his arm and my blood istantly turns into ice.

“Aaaaaaw, Angelina, what a sweet nickname!” Laura cheers with her heart-shaped eyes, playing the part of her lovely self perfectly too. Too bad she’s the unknowing cause of a disaster.

“Oh but that’s not a-” dad starts answering and I even try to stop him.

“That’s not sweet, it’s just ugly, let’s just go with Angie, ok?” but it’s pointless.

“It’s her name by the way, not a nickname” and there blows the first bomb dropped by my father.

“Excuse me?” Stone and his arched eyebrow are the first to react and I had no doubt about it.

“Angelina, that’s her name”

“ANGELINA?!” Jeff, as loyal as the others to his character, yells and chokes on the peanuts he was crunching on at the bar.

“Angelina like 'Angelina… waitress at the pizzeria’?” Chris chuckles.

“I thought your name was Angela, Angie for friends” Mike is the most calm of them all, together with Eddie, who just sports a smile that’s half incredulous and sorry.

“Your such idiot! Don’t you understand he’s just kidding? He’s just making fun of her, aren’t you Ray?” Meg shakes her head and addresses my father, who’s about to disappoint her.

“No no, I’m not kidding! It’s her name, I know that because, well, I gave it to her” dad shrugs and I don’t need to look at Meg to know she’s drilling a hole into my skull with a homicidal look.

“WHAT?”

“Meg…”

“Six months. No, more… We’ve known each other for more than six months and you never told me your name?!”

“As you can imagine, it ain’t something I easily tell people, for obvious reasons”

“What do you mean? Angelina is a beautiful name, it’s my mother’s name, that is your grandma's” my dad looks at me pretending to be offended, but I can’t help feeling a little guilty, even though I know he’s just faking.

“Yeah, it’s a nice name, it’s just… a little old fashioned”

“That’s just better, it’s more rare, so more unique”

“And a little… you know, sounds very Italian”

“So what?” dad’s jaw contracts and he strikes me with his typical narrow and fake happy look he gives when he’s irritated.

“So… nothing, it’s very typical and-”

“What’s wrong with it being Italian? I’m Italian, you’re Italian, our family is half Italian, is there something wrong with that?”

“No! Not at a-”

“Do you have something against Italian people?” dad addresses the whole gang and they’re smart enough to understand the quickest is the answer the better.

“No!”

“For fuck’s sake, no!”

“Come on!”

“Not at all!”

It’s all a big chorus of denial, then Mike follows trying to deliver a more articulated speech, based on the premise that working at a pizzeria puts him surely on top of the chart of those in our group who love Italy.

“I can’t see why you’re suddenly ashamed of your origins…”

“I’m not! It’s just a kinda old fashioned name, an old lady name, regardless the geographical origin of the old lady”

“We’re not given names when we’re old though, Angie, old ladies called Angelina, like your grandma, were children too and quietly and happily lived with that name without complaining” daddy explains picking up a potato chip from another bowl on the bar counter and taking it close to my lips, not backing up until I give up and open my mouth to eat it.

“I’d happily live with it too, if only you didn’t tell everybody”

“Heheh oh shut up, come on, nothing changes for you, your friends will keep calling you Angie”

“Are you joking? Stone’ll be calling me Angelina for the rest of my life”

“You mean, for the rest of his life…” dad answers a second before Stone opens his mouth. The guitarist must be so irritated.

“Hahahaha that was funny!” Jeff high fives Ray, who obviously took only a few minutes to become my friends’ new best friend. Unlike me.

“Anyway, I thought you used other kinds of pet names for each other” he adds with one of his fucking winks.

“Shut up, dad! Well, now that you’re here you can hear it directly from him that he’s not my boyfriend, so you’ll just stop once and for all. Tell him Stone”

Gossard looks at me dumbfounded, than looks at my father, takes a deep breath and…

“Well, so… ok… wow… I mean, you could have come up with a more discreet way to break up with me, Angelina, don’t you think?” the dork replies.

“Stone” everybody laughs, dad included.

“And also, a better moment maybe?” he continues between fits of laughter.

“Fuck you, Stone” despite all this I think my dad finally realised that nothing’s going on between that idiot who’s holding his belly as he’s almost suffocating from laughter and I.

“I think it’s cute” on the end of a little laugh, Eddie says I think the first complete sentence since my dad shook his hand. This said, I have no clue what he wants to say.

“What?” Dave gives voice to my inner question.

“Angelina, it’s a cute name”

“What do you mean cute?! It’s a riot girl name” I sarcastically retort, raising my fist in the air.

“It’s a total babe’s name”

“Yeah sure…”

“Why? Can’t it be? A name is just a name, it becomes a badass name or a loser name depending on who has it”

“Exactly, consider that I have it”

“And culture and trends play a role too. A famous personality called in a certain way can change the perspective on any name” my roommate goes on ignoring my comment.

“Well, it depends”

“What about Banana? Stupid name in theory, I mean, it’s not even a name. But Yoshimoto turned it into a name, a badass name I add”

“Ok, but that’s not her actual name, it’s a pen name she chose because she thought it was easier to prononuce than her Japanese name, also because the words basically the same in every language. And she didn’t want readers to immediately understand if the writer was a man or a woman” I retort as I notice everybody’s listening to our dialogue in sacred silence.

“Fine. What about Dustin? Do you think Dustin is a hot name if you separate it from Hoffman’s image?”

“Well, it’s not bad per se”

“What about Wynona then? And Bo? Elton? Cool names from the beginning, right…”

“I’m pretty sure at least two of them are stage names, Meg”

“Well, fuck that, it’s the principle!”

“Meg’s right. You just have to wait until an actress or a model or any super hot girl called Angelina gets into the spotlight and grabs the public’s attention and you’ll immediately gain a few points” Chris chimes in, nodding at his own words.

“Pff very likely to happen”

“That wasn’t exactly what I meant, but…” Meg murmurs.

“And this is when I was supposed to say something like 'But no, why? Why should we wait for another? We already got you and you’re amazing blah blah’ but considering that you broke up with me five minutes ago…” Gossard shrugs and even my father can’t help laughing for his fucking sense of humor. Why doesn’t he take Stone as a boyfriend?

“And this is the first benefit I get from breaking up with you”

Luckily I stop being the subject of the conversation and at some point our group splits up and spreads all around the club: Susan arrives and she and Chris go away somewhere, Jeff goes backstage with Stone and Kim, my father wanders about taking pictures, Dave and Matt are deep into drummers conversation, but I don’t really know if it’s about drumming or not because I’m kinda far from them, still at the bar, with Laura, Eddie, Mike and Meg.

“Anyway, I agree with you about your name theory. For example, the name Meg didn’t mean anything before, but after I met you… bam, Meg is beauty par excellence” Mike comes up with this from out of nowhere, as we were talking about something else, leaving my friend quite perplexed, and not just her. And maybe that’s the reason why Laura walks away after a while, saying that she wanted to search for her boyfriend. At this point it’s just Eddie and I third wheeling.

“Hey, the concert’s about to start soon, why don’t we… start to… go that way, to see it?” I talk to Eddie and point towards the stage, he immediately accepts and follows me as I walk in that direction, and I don’t know if Mike notices we left, Meg surely does because she gives me a scolding look. The situation’s weird, but I know Meg and even though she’s trying to play it cool, she clearly doesn’t mind this kind of attention from him, I think she even likes it. But Melanie? Where’s she in this? I only hope nobody gets hurt, especially Meg of course because, well, she’s a friend of mine.

“Do you understand what’s going on between those two?” I ask Eddie when we’re far enough.

“Who? Mike and Meg? Honestly I have no clue” he answers, apparently surprised by the question.

“Neither do I”

“I only hope nobody gets hurt, not too much at least, you know” he goes on and it’s the very same thought I had a few moments ago and these pseudo-mindreading coincidences always make me smile.

“Yep” I rummage in my new bag looking for a kleenex since, guess what, I’ve got another cold. It must be the tenth cold since I moved here.

“Nice bag” Eddie points at my little camera-shaped bag.

“Hehe Ray discovered Pike Place Market today and bought it for me, as you can see my family’s quite monothematic”

“By the way, I’m sorry for what happened before, I’m such an idiot…” Eddie moves a rebel strand of hair away from his forehead and I honestly would have left that right there because it was just perfect in its being out of place.

“You don’t have to apologise to me, maybe with my dad, but you already did I think. And he took five seconds to forgive you anyway, so don’t worry”

“Ok, but I made you uncomfortable in front of him…”

“No problem, you weren’t the only one tonight anyway”

“Hehe do you think he realised Stone’s not your boyfriend?” he snickers and I’m not sure wether I should let him believe I was referring to Stone or tell him about Jerry befriending my father. I go with the first option, also because I don’t even wanna think about that jerk.

“I think he knows now. And Stone knows he knows. But they both love torturing me so much they won’t stop any soon”

“Well, I apologise all the same”

“I accept your apologies”

“And I apologise for last night too, sorry if I was… weird”

“I had already accepted those apologies last night”

“Yes, but when I apologised I was still in the middle of being weird to you, so that didn’t actually count, at least didn’t count 100%”

“You were weird? 'Cause now you think you’re normal?” I add sarcastically.

“Mmm nah, but a little more normal than last night”

“Ok ok, I accept these apologies too. Even though, it was me who invaded your privacy in the end and I think that any of us is free to be as weird as we fucking want when we’re by ourselves. And not just when we’re alone after all”

“You didn’t invade my privacy”

“Technically, I did”

“Well, maybe you did, but you can do it. I like it when you do. Do it more often”

“Haha something tells me the cake was good”

“The cake. Sure. It was delicious, thank you. And the coffee too”

“I only made the coffee so I can take credit just for that”

“No, not only for that… Anyway, you can also stay a little longer next time”

“I had to go back to work”

“I know, that’s why I said next time”

“Uhm ok”

“You never come over when we’re rehearsing”

“That’s not true, I do, from time to time”

“Apart from last night, I only saw you once since I know you”

“It’s just… I don’t know… it’s fun and everything, but in the end you’re there to work, it’s serious… I feel like I’d disturb or bother you”

“Are you kidding? That rehearsing space is like a motel, people are always coming and going”

“Ok, I’ll come over one of these days”

“I count on that”

“That’s if I find the time to prepare at least one cake or Mikey won’t let me in”

“Come on, just come see us… I swear I won’t do crazy things. And no weird hugs! Well, ehm, unless you don’t want them. I mean, normal hugs of course, 'cause I don’t think you… but also weird ones are ok if you… I mean, I don’t even know what I’m talking about. By the way, you know we’ve got new songs? If you came to see us, you could listen to them before anyone else…” why is he talking fast and nonsense like me when I’m embarrassed? Wait… why is he embarrassed?

“Oh well, in that case I can’t refuse, I must come to the gallery!”

“Ok, great. That’s if… if you’re not tired of seeing me”

“What? Why? What do you mean?”

“No, it’s just, you said it the other day… that we’ve been bumping into each other a lot lately”

“Ah! Well, yeah, it’s true, but I just said it like that”

“And I want to tell you again that there’s nothing behind that, I mean, it’s just happening by chance. Yet I, ehm, I like hanging out with you”

Oh oh, I know what’s happening and I know why Eddie’s strange: the poor guy’s looking for the best way to tell me he enjoys his time with me as a friend, a friend only. As if I needed him to tell me! What’s left to understand is if he’s somehow sensed something about my recent little fixation on him if it’s just a preventive move to avoid deluding me.

“I know, Eddie, don’t worry, I understand”

“I really like it”

“Look, I get what you’re trying to tell me, Eddie”

“Really?” he asks, suddenly looking taken aback.

“I feel comfortable with you too, also talking to you is nice”

“It’s not just a matter of feeling comfortable, Angie, I-”

Eddie’s clumsy attempt at telling me that yes, he really cares for me, so I’d better avoid ruining everything by letting strange ideas into my mind is interrupted by a choir of yells and wistles, which announces the band has just got on stage. That’s what I guess at least, because I can’t see shit as usual. The show starts a few seconds later, with a really funky song, who makes us move our heads and other things right from the start. I try and figure out the stage in my mind by putting together the small portions I spot between the heads, shoulders and arms of those who’re standing in front of me and when I turn towards Eddie I see him swaying around in rhythm. I don’t know why but this reminds me of his terrible dance moves at Crowe’s place on New Year’s Eve, I’ve never seen anyone move so ungracefully in my whole life. I start laughing the exact moment Eddie turns around and looks at me and gives me a broad smile and a thumbs up. Well, at least is in rhythm now, and he’s good at moving his hair around… and his hair is wonderful, so shiny and soft… FUCK SAKE, ANGIE, STOP IT!

I shift from left to right, from one foot to the other, trying to understand what the fuck’s happening on stage, and I spot a familiar figure: what I think is my dad, on the side of the stage, taking pictures. If I know him well, he must be at his second roll of film by now.

“Wanna go a little forward?” Eddie asks into my ear at the beginning of the third song. I bet he’s suffering here in the back, we’re honestly pretty far.

“I don’t really feel like going to the front, but you can go!” I shout back and as I do, getting close to his ear, his curls brush my cheek and it doesn’t help at all for my situation. Why the fuck must everything be so amplified? Do I really have to notice every little thing? And does every little thing necessarily have to affect me this way?

“I won’t take you to the front, just a little closer to the center”

“I don’t know…”

“Here, follow me.” he delicately takes my arm, that remains limp and falls back down as soon as he lets it go “Come on…” he holds my hand, smiles and here they are, those fucking dimples. He points at them himself after a while and if I had any doubts about him doing it on purpose well now I don’t anymore.

“I hate you”

“I don’t believe you” Eddie tries to drag me forward and this time I follow him, not without any difficulties, because I get pushed around each second and our joined hands are pulled apart by people jumping or moshing. After we lose touch because of the umpteenth group of guys running like crazy towards the middle of the room, Eddie stops and walks back to me, but it doesn’t take my hand this time.

“I think it’s better this way” Eddie is behind my back, he takes me by the wrists and folds my arms across my chest, doing the same with his over mine. He basically embraces me, creating some sort of protecting shield around me, and starts walking with me, making his way through the crowd. Moving now actually turns out to be easier and faster and less shaky. The fact it also feels nice to be held tight by such strong arms is obviously secondary.

“Is it ok here?” he asks once we get to a pretty quiet zone, on the left looking at the stage, from which I can even see something without standing on tiptoes or straining my neck.

“Yes, it’s perfect.” I reply turning my head to one side, but without turning to look at him completely, also and most of all because I don’t want him to see how much I’m blushing right now “Doesn’t this count as weird hug?” I add as a joke to relieve tension, mine of course.

“Oops, sorry!” Eddie lets me go and I almost feel like falling, as if I suddenly forgot how to stand on my feet.

“It was a functional weird hug”

“Yes and it worked”

“Exactly” I go on, every time turning just a little bit towards Eddie but without really seeing him or letting him see me.

The set goes on and Eddie’s behind my back the whole time, resting his hands on my shoulders from time to time. And for me prana, ki, meridians and chakra were, are and always will be nothing but a bit pile of shit, but the heat Eddie’s hands radiate is real, it goes through my spine, travels down across my legs down to my feet, then goes back up to my head, giving me really annoying goosebumps. Apart from that, my dad even managed to spot us in the crows and take a couple of pictures, all with a smart-ass smile on his face. Did Eddie notice?

“Anyway, I really like being with you” he says during a break between songs.

“At concerts for sure, I don’t block your view”

“Haha shut up!” he says grabbing my shoulders once again.

“And I’m comfortable to lean on when you’re tired” this time I turn around a little more, making eye contact with him, and at the same time pat him on his hand, which he immediately takes away.

“I’m sorry… see, I’ve been really all over you recently… I mean, literally”

“I can also be a small ladder when needed”

“Anyway… what I wanted to say before is that I’m not just at ease with you”

Ok, now comes the moment he tells me I’m such a good friend, that he’s comfortable talking to me, because I can listen and it comes natural to him to open up, that he feels better after we talk, that he feels understood and not judged, etc.

“Mm mh?”

“With you I…” Eddie stops because the band starts playing again, but then goes on, speaking at a little louder volume. Do we need to discuss this right now? Sure, he probably thinks it’s better to talk about something like this with the diversion of the concert, as if it was just chit chat between friends at a show, rather than sitting around the table and talk about the matter like it was some big deal. “ With you, I feel like home. And it’s not something to take for granted, because I’ve never felt completely at home, not even at my place. I don’t know if you understand…”

“Yes! More or less…” I go back to my previous pattern, quick answers and turning my head just a little, keeping my eyes on the stage.

“It’s like with certain songs, I don’t know if it’s like this for you too. Those songs you turn to whenever you need to feel safe, cuddled, soothed, backed up, understood. Like, I don’t know, Bruce Springsteen”

“So… I’m Bruce Springsteen?” I ask after being silent for while, not because he shocked me, but mostly because I liked the idea of putting a dramatic pause right there, I think it sounded good.

“Hahaha in a certain sense, yeah. I don’t know if it works the same for you with music”

“Yeah, but not with his music”

“You don’t like Bruce Springsteen?” Eddie grabs me from the shoulders more tightly than he did before and turns me around 180 degrees until I’m facing his inquisitive eyes.

“Sure I like him, of course I do, he’s the Boss, but…”

“But?”

“But I think I can’t appreciate him fully yet, I think it’s too soon”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a long talk and it’s also not easy to do it in the middle of a concert” I half yell, still with my back at the stage.

“I have a good hearing”

“Ok, well… I believe there are artists you can’t fully comprehend if you don’t have enough experience, if you haven’t lived enough”

“So I appreciate him 'cause I’m old?”

“Hahaha no! Well, yeah, but not exactly. It’s multilevel”

“It’s… what?”

“Oh let me think about it… it’s like… it’s like The Simpson’s”

“The Simpson’s?”

“The animated series on Fox”

“I know what The Simpson’s are, but… what’s the point?”

“The point is it’s great, a masterpiece, one of the few good things worth watching on tv. And literally anyone can watch an episode and appreciate it because it’s multilevel”

“That is…?”

“That is it has more levels of understanding. There’s the main story, then humor, then different parallel comedy stints and a list of quotes and references, more or less famous, more or less hidden. A few weeks ago I saw this episode where Mr Burns was running for governor and there was this scene which basically was identical to the speech scene in Citizen Kane, and of course you must have seen the movie to get the reference and if you get the reference the suggestion works. But what if I hadn’t seen that movie? Would that have prevented me from understanding the scene on the whole? Not at all, I’d have understand what was literally happening, I’d have got the literal meaning, but I’d have missed so much, I wouldn’t have enjoyed all of it. And that’s how it is for me with Springsteen, I feel I’m missing something, that there’s some emotional reference I can’t get yet and that prevents me from appreciating him completely. It’s the same with Bob Dylan, I lack some levels”

“YOU DON’T LIKE DYLAN?!” Eddie’s literally screaming now.

“Dylan is huge, but I think I’ll appreciate him more in a few years. And between you and me, I can’t wait” I state right when the song ends, then I turn around towards the stage and clap and cheer at the band.

“What you say is right, but isn’t that the case with any artist and any work of art?”

“Yeah, but it’s stronger for some. Some artists just bring the baggage of a whole iconography with them, they always carry that burden on their shoulders, and Springsteen and Dylan aren’t just themselves: they’re themselves plus what they represent, they’re lifestyles, they’re whole lives, and it takes time to take a life and make it completely yours”

“See, it’s things like this too. This kind of conversation. The fact we talk about these things, it’s just… I love all this”

“Screamed conversations throughout concerts?”

“Yeah. And tell me one band or artist that’s home to you” Eddie insists, still talking into my ear behind my back.

“The Cure. And The Smiths” I answer without hesitation.

“I’m pretty sure Robert Smith and Morrisey can’t stand each other”

“Nobody can’t stand Morrissey. Even Morrissey can’t stand Morrissey”

“And you don’t need more life experience to understand them, right?”

“Nah, their music floats around in the limbo of pure eternal teenage, it’s the beginning of life. No, it’s the wait, the wait for your life life, waiting for it to finally start, for real”

“Ok… so The Cure and The Smiths”

“If you add Patti Smith you’ve just verbalized my personal Holy Trinity”

“Robert Smith, Patti Smith, The Smiths… there’s a whole lot of Smith in your triad”

“If I ever hit my head, go into a coma, wake up and decide I want a child, I’ll call him Smith or Smitty”

“Or you should just get married with someone whose surname is Smith”

“Yeah, that’s just what I need, more selection criteria to make things more difficult for me in social interaction and life”

“I like you, Angie”

“I like you too” I distractedly answer, trying to understand what the singer from Inspector said that was so funny to make the crowd suddenly laugh.

“YOU ARE MY CURE” Eddie unexpectedly yells into my year as soon as the band starts to play again. I roll my eyes. You just need to find yourself a girlfriend.

“Nah, you should see a therapist for that, a good one”

The show ends soon after that and one by one we get together again around a table, in a kind of isolated corner of the club.

“Not bad, I had fun” dad states as he comes back from the bar, unsteadily balancing a number of beers between his hands, I can’t count from here, maybe three or four.

“How many rolls of film have you used?” I ask, folding my arms on the table.

“Just a couple, I didn’t want to exaggerate. Anyway, did you see the bass player?”

“Ehm yeah, I think I saw him a couple of times behind the sea of heads in front of me, why?”

“Don’t you think he sort of looked like Sean?”

“Sean?” Thayil asks brushing his beard, after drinking some of the beer my dad handed to him before.

“One of her friends in Boise, he’s in Florida now”

“Who? Your ex?” Jeff asks and he’s sitting right in front of me and his long legs allow me to kick him easily under the table. He then tries to make up for that “Your ex friend?”

“Ex friend? Did you fight?” dad promptly asks as he immediately smells bullshit. Not that it was hard to notice…

“No, not at all”

“So why ex… friend?” I hate his fucking dramatic pauses.

“I meant that he’s a friend of hers, an old one, from her old town, her old life. We’re the new friend, the ones in office…”

“Mmm ok” Ray nods after a while, pretending to believe him. Of course, I’ve never told my parents anything about the mini break in which Sean and I briefly crossed the line of plain friendship, although they’ve always joked about that, as if they always knew. And if there still was a little doubt, Jeff dispelled it with a single move.

“Forgive him, Ray. You must understand he comes from Montana, he express himself in an rudimental way”

“Fuck you, Stone”

“On the other hand, you don’t look like someone who’s got problems in expressing himself through words, right Stone?”

“Oh no, he expresses himself very good, even too good” Cornell laughs.

“Say he expresses himself too much, period” Ament points out and the guitarists flips him the bird.

“I bet you write the lyrics” my dad tries to guess.

“No, he expresses himself enough in everyday life”

“Eddie writes the lyrics” I reply, blocking the umpteenth beginning of quarrel between Jeff and Stone.

“Someone who doesn’t express himself in everyday life as much as he should” Stone remarks, elbowing the singer.

“Mmm I don’t think so, from what I saw he can express his feelings very well when needed, can’t you Eddie?” Ray pats Vedder on the shoulder a couple of times and he just nods shyly.

“Hey, wait a minute. Did you realise that Stone, who basically never keeps his mouth shut, is the one who writes the music, while Eddie, who’s quieter, writes… the words?” Mike shushes us quickly to communicate his incredible discovery to us.

“Really?! You don’t say? That’s unbelievable, that’s probably why we said the same fucking shit just one minute ago!” Jeff remarks amused.

“Oh really?” Mike seems confused, but not as confused as he is after being poured a whole glass of what looks and smells like gin lemon over his head by the angry girl standing right behind his back.

#pearl jam fanfiction #grunge fanfiction #pearl jam #eddie vedder #jeff ament #stone gossard #chris cornell #kim thayil #mike mccready #dave krusen #matt cameron #chapters

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