#the entire time barry is CHILLING PLAYING HAVING FUN

[wyvernity]

been thinking about the sinnohtrio lately......plus misc other stuff

also, casual ko-fi drop!! get something in this sketchy style starting at $10 woop woop

[in-this-crystal-kingdom]

Ranking the Arcs of TAZ Balance in order from worst to best in my own personal opinion with reasons!

(Respective Interludes joined together with the arcs-- This is for fun please don't kill me)

8. Petals to the Metal

I'm sorry I just don't like this one very much and I don't know why

The stuff with Sloan and Hurley is really good, I'm just not a fan of much else

Ironically one of my favorite lines in the whole campaign comes from this arc ("I am a fully realized creation! Fuck!")

It's not a bad arc, I don't HATE it, I just never remember much of it after it's over

The festival where Magnus dresses like Taako is funny as shit tho I will give it that

Also everything with the "Merle Fucks Plants" jokes are iconic

On the other hand the relic of this arc also isn't my favorite, sorry Merle

7. Here There Be Gerblins

This one is before PTTM for a few reasons but I also have issues with this one

It feels very different from the rest of the series which makes sense since it was originally supposed to kinda be a one off thing before everyone was like MORE NOW PLEASE YES

This is another that I don't really remember much of after it's over, but again-- it's not BAD, just not my favorite

Barry Bluejeans does a die in this one, rip sir jeans, he is one of the most character ever

Taako's Taco quest is so funny and is rarely mentioned throughout the series (which I get but still kinda wish it had been more relevant before the end)

I do like the Voidfish reveal and the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet though, so it pushes this arc just above PTTM (slightly, they are the only 2 I don't love)

6. Murder on the Rockport Limited

We are officially in the territory of having a hard time ranking these because I LOVE THE REST OF THEM SO MUCH

It kind of hurts my soul this one is at six but like... it has to be...

ANGUS MY BELOVED I care him so much

Jerkins Jenkins is such a good character and I love him

Him being the only one who is just immediately sick of their shit is iconic

The entire gag if Magnus being absolutely fucked up and trying to talk to Avi is so funny

TOM BODET

Leinen Kessler (I mean Justin) not fooling anyone is hilarious

Trashy wizard! Miss him dearly.

Have I mentioned how much I love Angus yet

5. Story and Song

Listen this arc is iconic, it is where everything comes together, and I'm not kidding that I spent like 10 minutes trying not to put it at 5 but FUCK I CAN'T RANK IT ABOVE THE OTHERS I'M SORRY

I love it so much and I'm litterally so mad I decided to make this list because I can't believe the arc that made me sob during my lunch break the first time I was listening to it is number 5

But I also need to speak my truth and this one is under some of the ones that came before it simply because of how wonderful the others are and how dearly I hold them in my heart

Taako breaking the Umbra Staff will always kill me, I cry every time.

Speaking of the Umbra Staff, Taako pointing it at Lucretia and counting down gives me chills every time.

"There is magic in a Bard's song" FUCKING KILLS ME EVERY TIME I CRY SO HARD

Small mention for all the members of the Taakitz and Blupjeans nations, come get your dinner-- I know that’s not even close to the only important things going on here, but this arc did so much for us.

The endings for each character make me so happy and I cry every time hearing them all

Merle and his kids. Merle saying he loves Mavis and Clint confirming later that he was talking to Justin, Travis, and Griffin as well as the audience when he said that always gets me.

Taako getting to be a part of a family he never knew he had. Taako and Lup getting to be together again, Taako teasing her and Barry, Kravitz's hand being warm. Taako getting to return to the lives he loved with the people he loves. Perfect.

Magnus and Julia reunion is one of the main reasons I was debating this rank because on one hand I love the other arcs dearly for personal reasons but on the other hand I can't deny it is one of the most poetic and romantic scenes in any media I have ever consumed. Griffin and Travis play off of each other so well, and this scene genuinely remains such a gut punch for me. "She smiles-" will happen and every time I immediately start crying without fail. This moment is so raw and emotional and I hold it dear in my heart.

Fisher and Jr. being free will always get me so hard. Such a beautiful end to a beautiful story that I will never hear anything like again. What I wouldn't give to hear it for the first time again.

4. 11th Hour

This arc was the arc that made me bolt up in bed several times for several different reasons.

God I just love this arc so much I'm so excited for the novel I just- AHHH

This arc was probably the first inkling I had that something big was coming, I felt it a little in Crystal Kingdom but this arc made me realize "Oh shit, Griffin has something PLANNED and it is going to be BIG" because even though I am several years late to this party I somehow encountered no spoilers for my first listen (sort of, will explain later in this post)

But back to my point

The reason I rank this above Story and Song is not because I think it's better story wise (although it is really fucking good story wise) it's because of how excited I am to listen to it

The first moment I realized they were stuck in a loop- God I was screaming in the car on my way home from work

Everything with Junebug and the Chalice was so well done and I love how Griffin decided to do that so much

Taako learning that it wasn't his fault all those people died, I could feel the weight being lifted off my own shoulders that was so evidently huge for him in that moment.

Magnus crying as soon as he sees Julia in his memory and not even being ashamed of it, just so emotionally raw and powerful.

The fact that Taako and Merle understood why Magnus might want to take it and they didn't stop him

Magnus not taking the chalice because "it's not what Julia would want" is so good, I cry every time.

Taako making a joke about them needing to make his dick bigger on the statues they made will always send me becahse I almost always forget the joke when it happens.

Barry The Red Robe trying to protect Magnus from the scroll, Magnus realizing that he himself is a Red Robe and he just can't remember it is another moment that really got me

I love this arc so much

3. Stolen Century

Man this arc has so much to it and it is so wonderful

I feel bad not ranking it higher but as much as I love it I have two I love more

Underrated moment people never mention, Magnus being a children's team coach for a cycle and them winning it all is so wholesome

Merle in the congregations he helped and taught through the cycles

Davenport being a great leader and such a complex character despite what we used to know him as

Lucretia learning and growing so much and making the most difficult decisions whether they worked out or not

Taako being similar but all at once nothing like the Taako we know. Taako being one of the smartest people in the IPRE. Taako loving the culture and unique qualities of each cycle.

Barry being so kind and brave even though he's a nervous wreck. I have never seen a character with anxiety be portrayed as someone who can put themselves before others without a second thought and be so brave in the face of danger that he faces death and laughs in its face.

Lup. I can't express all the things I feel about Lup. Courageous, firey, kind, compassionate, so torn apart by her decision to create the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet that she risked her life to seal it away for good. Lup, who was smart enough to create the very item that would be her prison for so long. Lup who can never forgive Greg Gramauldous to save her life. Lup.

Magnus having several reoccurring themes of learning to accept help, learning to ask for help, learning to work with others, learning to share the glory, learning to he humble. Magnus learning his strength can be his weakness and that weakness doesn't mean he's not strong enough.

Lup and Barry's duet. The undeniable love they have for each other is so beautiful.

Everything with Merle and John. Merle being kind to him, always leaving the door open for him to admit he was wrong. I love it.

This arc is so... yes. All of it. I hear people saying the format was bad but I loved it.

2. The Suffering Game

God so much shit got real in this arc

Lucretia revealing she lost a lot of her life in Wonderland

Magnus' secret break in to the brig to see Pringles

Magnus accidentally leading to the death of two guards

Wonderland has such a cool description and I can not WAIT to see this shit in book form you don't even KNOW

EDWARD AND LYDIA MY BELOVED

Taako being absolutely delighted by Wonderland at first and knowing what comes next always makes me weirdly sad

The wheel. That fucking wheel.

I will not be covering every little thing in this arc that I want to talk about because this post is already a novel but the wheel you guys. Fuck.

Trust or Forsake

SPELL SLOTS

Magnus and the Red Robe working together

GOD EDWARD STEALING MAGNUS' BODY. CHILLS EVERY DAMN TIME.

Taako using the spell to go get Magnus and Merle using the last of his magic to help. God. I am in tears just thinking about it.

"I'll be having my body back, you undead fuck."

BARRY REVEAL BARRY REVEAL BARRY REVEAL BARR

DAVENPORT SPEAKS IN THIS ONE Y'ALL

THE FIRST TIME I LISTENED TO THIS AND GRIFFEN PULLED THE "Of course, Lup, how could you forget your sister?" I WAS SCREAMING SO MUCH.

1. The Crystal Kingdom

If you saw my username and didn't see this coming I don't know what to say to you.

I know this isn't the most significant arc but it means a lot to me for one big reason-- it was the first one I went in completely blind on. At the time the Crystal Kingdom book hadn't come out yet, and the books were how I got introduced to the podcast.

That and because this arc fucking rocks (no pun intended... sort of.)

This post is honestly long enough already I'm gonna go more in depth on this with a separate post soon because I have a LOT to say about this arc

But seriously-- this arc is the fucking best and I will boy be judged by my choice

[project1939]

Day 91- Film: The Bad and the Beautiful 

Release date: December 25th, 1952. 

Studio: MGM 

Genre: Drama 

Director: Vincente Minnelli 

Producer: John Houseman 

Actors: Lana Turner, Kurt Douglas, Walter Pidgeon, Dick Powell, Barry Sullivan, Gloria Grahame 

Plot Summary: Johnathan Shields is a notorious Hollywood film producer known for making award winning pictures and betraying almost everyone he works with. After going bankrupt when he shelves an expensive epic, he reaches out to a famous director, actor, and writer, hoping to lure them into working with him on a new project. But they all hate his guts. 

My Rating (out of five stars): ****

If you like the Classical Hollywood era, and if you have a lot of knowledge of its history, especially, you’ll really enjoy this film. Even if you don’t know that much about the era, the film stands on its own as a well-made drama and character study. 

The Good: 

Minelli’s visuals. Vincente Minnelli’s films always look beautiful, no matter how good or bad they ultimately are. He uses space and camera movement in eye-catching, interesting, and pleasing ways. He’s one of those directors where “every shot can be a painting.” That was definitely true here. 

The peek behind the curtain of Classical Hollywood. Of course, this is still a movie, so the peek we get is still a filtered one, but it certainly doesn’t glamourize filmmaking of the time. It’s not entirely cynical, but you do see some of the dark side of the industry. You also just get a cool sense of what a film set might have been like. 

The scene where characters are walking through a Hollywood party. I loved this- I even got a little chill thinking this is probably as close to a portrayal as you’ll get of one. Minnelli would have known well what the experience of going to one was like. 

 Guessing about all the inside references. David O. Selznick is the first one mentioned when people wonder who Johnathan Shields represented, but those involved with the production admit it was an amalgam of other producers too. People also like to guess about some of the directors and other behind the scenes people. Were certain characters based on certain people? It’s fun to consider. 

The way things weren’t overly romanticized. This wasn’t an entirely bleak film that excoriated Hollywood the way Sunset Boulevard did, but it also wasn’t the kind of movie where you walk away thinking, “Gee, Hollywood seems like such a nice beautiful place!” The large dose of reality was commendable for something made in 1952. 

The three main characters Shields is trying to woo back cannot stand him, thinking he ruined their lives. But it is brought up several times that all three have gone on to have huge success in spite of the betrayals. I liked the complexity of that. 

The writing was good. There was much witty or pithy quotable dialogue that I enjoyed. It wasn’t a perfectly written film, but it was often smart. 

I liked the structure. We get three basically separate stories that fall under the same over-arching plot and theme. 

Kirk Douglas. I thought he was really good in this, as he usually is. You can understand why people fell under Shields' charms, making the betrayals hurt more. Douglas plays the role fully understanding that Shields was not all bad or all evil. He was a complicated human being. Still one you’d probably call an a-hole, but complicated. 

Mrs. Cleaver! Barbara Billingsley, who played the mom on Leave it to Beaver, had a small role as a costume lady. I loved that her whole demeanor was different than the housewife she played on TV. 

All the MGM character actors! If you know and love MGM, you’ll recognize A LOT of their contract character actors. 

Walter Pidgeon. I always like him in things, especially as he got older. He’s perfect for the role of an elder-stateman. 

The film was never boring. It was 2 full hours, which wasn’t common back then, but the time flew by. 

The Bad: 

I still don’t love Lana Turner. Maybe it’s because I’m not a straight man, but I just don’t understand her appeal. She’s beautiful, but not outrageously so. She’s also just a barely competent actress, in my opinion. No disrespect meant. I think some of her appeal to men is similar to the Marilyn Monroe thing- she has lots of sexual energy but also a "lost little girl who needs saving” kind of vibe. 

I felt the writer’s story was the least compelling. I liked Dick Powell in this, so it wasn’t his fault. It was the script really, I think. 

I’m not sure how I feel about the very last scene. I generally enjoy ambiguity, but I kind of wanted them to all stick to their guns and say, “Fu-k off, Shields!” 

[chainofclovers]

Grace and Frankie 7x1 - 7x4 thoughts

Meh? Like...I love them so much, but...meh?

(I did enjoy this line about brunch.)

I really loved season 6 of Grace and Frankie. I thought it was well-paced, largely very well-acted, generally well-written, and it culminated in a massive moment of character development for the title characters, who, having spent years growing closer and being there for each other when others could not or would not be, finally articulate to each other that they are the primary person in each other’s lives. Platonic gal pal soulmate BFF emotional support witches 4 lyfe!

I know progress isn’t always linear, and in fact is very rarely linear, but after a moment that significant, you’d think the writers on this show would maybe come up with some more interesting things for these characters to do than spin in circles?

@bristler and I watched on Friday night, and just this morning over breakfast had a good conversation about the first four episodes of the new season now that they have settled in our brains a bit. We concluded that the writing (often noticeably clunky, like the dialogue is responsible for more narration than usual) and the tone (aggressively wacky) feel really off, especially compared to the prior season. I think we diagnosed the big issue, which is that Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda are by far the most talented actors on this show (if you disagree, fight me in the parking lot) and it feels surprisingly unfortunate that their characters have, to this point in the new season, pretty much figured out their perspectives on each other. No matter how people feel about Grace and Frankie’s sexualities, the whole show has been about them finding each other and getting in deeper and deeper, and it’s less interesting to watch other characters have realizations about that than it is to watch Grace and Frankie having realizations about themselves. If the title characters are now limited to reacting to other people’s actions, and the title characters are played by the best actors on the show, the whole show’s gonna suffer. And is suffering, very much so, at least for these first four episodes. I’m definitely still excited for the final twelve in 2022 (twelve! I cannot believe this season will have sixteen eps!), but I’m pretty disappointed so far.

Stuff I Loved:

The family brunch. These families have been entwined for so long, and the backstory for this particular brunch was so fun (even though I didn’t care for the effects they did to depict Grace and Robert 25 years ago; there was no need for a visual flashback in the scene). I love that Grace hit Frankie with a wiffle ball bat. I love that the two couples realized some of the emotional reasons behind their decisions to lie to each other about Bud’s Bunny and about M’Challah. I love the way Jane Fonda sounds uttering the phrase “Bud’s Bunny” with little to no irony. I love that Grace is able to recognize and articulate just how deep and miserable her anger issues were, albeit with the continued help of her omnipresent martini, and that Frankie told her she’d now make up a holiday in order to spend more time with Grace. I really, really hope Frankie does exactly this at some point in the remaining episodes of the season. I love that Grace is generally a pretty good person now, with aspirations of being a delightful person. I love that she and Frankie don’t have it in them to stay angry with each other, and I love all the evidence that they really, really talk to each other about everything now.

Frankie talking to the man at the office (I don’t remember who he was supposed to be? A toilet manufacturer? I didn’t mention this before, but I actually got pretty high while watching?!? Believe it or not, this was the first time I smoked pot and watched Grace and Frankie at the same time despite having enjoyed both activities on their own for quite some time. I would recommend the combo! And I think I still pretty much got what was happening) about paying for the toilet parts with candy. This whole subplot with the money laundering was absurd and not that interesting, but I loved this particular scene because it was finally evidence of some really thoughtful writing. The concepts aren’t enough! You have to write them into good dialogue! And the whole cash/candy thing was a moment of dialogue that only someone as hilarious as Lily Tomlin could pull off. Which she did, IMO.

In a show about super messy people, Coyote has stayed sober this entire time. He is sober, employed, in love, and preparing to buy a full-sized house with his partner. He hasn’t murdered anyone in his family. Hasn’t even attempted murder once.

In 2017 or whatever, Grace Hanson would have been furious about Frankie using obscure Beatles references like a treasure map when hiding the cash. But here in 2021, she cooperates and even gets in on the fun. The writing is very unsubtle this season, but that did feel like a reasonably subtle moment that shows how good of a partner she is for Frankie. (Platonic, of course! So platonic. Female friendship, amirite?)

Stuff I Did NOT Love and Felt Incredibly Negative About:

Brianna. I can only conclude that June Diane Raphael has decided she’s happy with playing a character whose primary role in life is to be hot and mean. She succeeds at being hot and mean, but I have reached my limit with this character. I realize we’re only a quarter of the way into the season, but I don’t think I can take another arc about her learning to compromise only to reveal to Barry that she never intended to compromise at all. At this point, it’s both abusive and boring. How?! The Grace/Brianna parallels aren’t interesting anymore, because one character has grown and the other is stagnant. I get that Brianna was raised in an emotionally stilted environment by two unhealthy people. But I think it would be very cool if she could learn something from her mother at this point. Grace has put a ton of effort into dealing with her “rabbit-killing, mad-at-the-world anger.” She’s put a ton of effort into figuring out what makes her happy, what she wants her life to look like. She’s even started accepting her age and abilities without shame. And that growth is believable; Grace is still short-tempered and she still slugs back way too many martinis and she struggles to articulate certain things, but she’s grown into a truly lovely human. And while, as a daughter with a mother, I can absolutely attest to the fact that it can be difficult and uncomfortable to learn lessons from one’s mother, Brianna really, really should. Grace spent decades letting anger and shame trap her in a small, miserable life. Brianna—and even Mallory, who just seems like a vapid idiot this season—are traveling that same path, but there’s someone right there who could really help, maybe even more than Frankie helped when the Hanson girls were first growing up.

The arraignment. The scene might’ve been salvageable if it was filmed from Grace’s perspective, and filmed to reflect how surreal and improbable it all was. But speaking of non-linear progress, this scene erased everything Nick Skolka has done to put himself in my good graces (LOL) over the past couple seasons. I mean, I tried, man. I even wrote fic about Nick, Grace, and Frankie making a genuine effort at polyamory. But the arraignment is so emotionally manipulative, such a slap in the face of everything Grace has worked for, and while we’re certainly “supposed” to feel the weight of the moment, I mean, it’s not like we’re supposed to be like, “Oh, cool, we’re in a rom com now! This is adorable!” it still felt bad and unearned and slapdash.

And I want Frankie to process these things with her! Frankie seems so happy to have all this information about Grace and how Grace feels, but I want to see scenes in which we can gain an understanding of how Frankie actually feels. Hearing Frankie talk to other people about how Grace feels is interesting, but it’s like there’s no room in these episodes for us to learn anything new about Frankie herself.

Grace’s transitional wig. Is so. Bad. It is. Such a. Bad wig. Oof. I mean, I like what they’re doing with Grace’s hair from a plot perspective, although (see one bullet up) I would really like to get more of an understanding of what’s happening in Grace’s head, not just on top of her head. And gosh, Frankie would be a really good person to talk to about this in a conversation that lasts longer than 30 seconds. But the wig! She’s in a wig in all four episodes, of course, since Jane Fonda went grey and cut her hair short before they started filming this season. The wig for episodes 1 and 2 is fine; it’s a good approximation of Grace’s typical hair, and of course we know that canonically Grace’s hair isn’t 100% her own hair anyway. But the wig with grey roots looks so weird. The part that’s growing out doesn’t look the same as the hair on the wig from 1 and 2. And the grey roots look like a yarmulke. I cannot wait to get to the point in the season when Grace goes all the way grey.

(One more thing about the hair. I can’t let it go. I paused the show while we were watching to rant, but I’m not done.) I had the great privilege of seeing Jane Fonda in person at a protest in 2019. She is an insanely beautiful human. She was growing her hair out and it was partially dyed blonde and partially grey. It looked really cool. I am not ashamed to say I spent that day learning many things about the climate crisis and about Jane Fonda’s hair. Having seen her in real life with her real hair looking that fucking great, I just have a an extra-large grudge against everyone involved in that horrible wig. The wig is necessary, but it didn’t have to be this bad.

What Do I Care About Now?

I am pretty intrigued by the way Grace threw out her real age in a conversation with Nick and Elena. She has nothing to fear anymore! She’s so chill about aging! What could go wrong? I assume that Nick and Elena maneuvering for Nick to be on house arrest in Grace's house specifically has to do with the fact that Grace is 82. She’s gonna find out that Nick is allowed to be with her because she’s ancient and helpless and the court took pity. Or something like that. She’s going to feel betrayed on top of feeling stifled and overwhelmed by Nick’s presence. I want to see where this goes for sure.

Other than that, and other than the fact that I really do continue to believe this show is moving in a direction in which Grace and Frankie will choose each other, I feel very whatever about this whole thing. I love this show and I will always appreciate this show for giving me some incredible characters to spend years of my life writing about, and for bringing me some pretty amazing friendships. Speaking of those friendships, yesterday @ellydash and @telanu and I were talking about some of the incredible TV we’ve watched recently, like Ted Lasso and Hacks and Fleabag and Killing Eve, and how great it feels to watch beautifully written TV crafted by writers who are profoundly—organically yet intentionally—attuned to even the most minor character’s rhythm. The disappointment of these first few episodes of the new G&F season feels like a mild disappointment rather than a sharp heartbreak, and that has a lot to do with being deeply invested in other shows that could also go in all kinds of different directions but with writing I fundamentally trust.

Also Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin are my forever faves and my appreciation for their performances and general awesomeness onscreen and in life is undiminished. So that’s pretty cool.

[blueskrugs]

Getting in the Christmas Spirit (Sorta) | Nathan MacKinnon

this is my last Nate request :( he’s so fun to write. this one is brought to you by my brother who thinks christmas eve is too early for christmas music. we’re getting into the homestretch of these requests too! i’m not entirely sure how everything is going to pan out yet, but expect some double updates or weekend updates so I can get everything done and move on to my next project. this one’s for yet another anon. i hope y’all like it and I will see you tomorrow for another request!

16. “If I hear one more Christmas song, I’m going to riot.”

length: 600 words

Nate slammed the door when he came home from practice. You jumped from where you were sitting on the couch; Cox growled half-heartedly from his spot near your feet. 

“They started playing Christmas music in the locker room today,” he grumbled, flopping down on the other end of the couch from you. “Who’s ‘they?’” you asked, but you had a feeling you already knew the answer. Tyson Barrie had once taken it upon himself to play Christmas music as soon as it was socially acceptable (and sometimes even sooner), and after he’d been traded, EJ had gleefully taken over the responsibility.

“It’s too fucking early for Christmas music,” Nate whined. “It’s not even December yet.”

While that was technically true, you had just gotten through American Thanksgiving, which meant December was literally only days away. You were already planning the best ways to get all your Christmas decorations up quickly.

You nudged Nate with a socked foot. “What do you have against Christmas music anyway?”

Nate shrugged. “I don’t hate it, it just gets annoying hearing the same five songs every day.”  He might have a point there. “Especially when some people start listening to it in fucking October.” Okay, so Nate might have come home from a road trip and caught you listening to Christmas music at the beginning of the season, but that was one time. At least, one time you did it without earbuds.

The problem was, once Nate complained about something, everyone else took it as a personal challenge to annoy him as much as possible. Which, in the case of the Avs, was quite a lot.

It started small. The radio stations in Denver had started playing Christmas music, and you made a point to always change the station when you got in the car. Nate would scowl and change the station quickly. So you swiped his phone and added a couple of your favorite songs to each of his Spotify playlists.

The other boys did the same, so there was a steady rotation of songs being played in the locker room before and after practices and games. Unfortunately, this meant that the first thing Nate said when he came home now was complain about his “annoying-ass teammates.” (It didn’t stop being funny, though.)

You listened to Christmas music frequently around the house, while cooking or cleaning, or just chilling on the couch with Cox and a book. Nate grumbled about it for a couple days, but you commented on his Fortnite habit, which shut him up pretty quickly.

The last straw came after a home game about a week before Christmas. You were waiting outside the locker room with the rest of the girls, listening to “All I Want for Christmas is You” filtering out through the half-open door. You were pretty sure it was the third time you’d heard it in the last twenty minutes. 

Nate finally made his way out of the locker room and made a beeline straight for you. He wrapped his arms around your waist and buried his face in your neck.

“If I hear one more Christmas song, I’m going to riot,” he mumbled. You laughed and ran your fingers through his hair. “And the first person I’m going to kill is EJ,” he called louder.

EJ stuck his tongue out at Nate and turned the music up louder. “Where’s your Christmas spirit, Dogg?” he yelled back over the music. 

“Fuck you,” Nate yelled, reaching back to flip EJ off for good measure. Someone changed the song again: “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch.” 

Nate groaned.

[berkmansimagines]

drivers license

A/N: I just wanted to write something short and sweet and fun!

Summary: Barry’s daughter gets her driver’s license and asks to borrow the car.

“Keep your eyes on the road!” 

You’re driving Barry’s car through downtown Los Angeles, while Barry sits beside you in the passenger’s seat. You’ve just passed your driving test and finally have your driver’s license! You’re so excited that you insisted that Barry let you drive home. Your father has tried to play it cool but he’s lowkey stressed. He’s been tensely clutching the passenger’s side door since you pulled out of the DMV.

“My eyes are on the road, dad! Can you please just chill out? Your anxiety is giving me anxiety,” you shrug.

Barry sighs and lets go of his tight grip on the door, “Sorry.”

“So, uh, can I borrow the car tonight?” you ask.

“Wh...what?” Barry stutters. 

“Can I borrow the car?” you repeat the question.

Barry’s eyes widen. He’s quiet for a moment. He was so focused on teaching you to drive that he didn’t even think about what would happen after you got your license. Of course you’d want to use his car. Barry hasn’t shared a car with anyone since he was a teenager himself. It was something he’d have to get used to.

“Where are you going?” Barry asks.

The light in front of you turns red. You put your foot on the break and stop the car.

“You’re gonna think it’s stupid,” you shyly look down at your lap.

“Tell me,” Barry tries.

“I’m… I’m not really going anywhere. I know it sounds lame but I’ve always wanted to drive down Sunset and Hollywood Blvd. at night listening to my favorite songs,” you explain.

“That’s not stupid,” Barry reassures you. 

Barry remembers when he first got his license. He drove all over the city listening to his favorite radio station. Cruising around Cleveland was definitely not as cool as LA.

You pick your head up and give your dad a small smile. 

“So can I borrow the car?” you ask once again.

Barry takes a deep breath and nods his head.

“Thanks dad!” your entire face lights up.

“But I’ll tell you now, it won’t be like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Traffic at night sucks just like in the daytime,” Barry warns you.

“I know. I don’t care though. I’ll have my music to get me by. I’m even going to listen to Bohemian Rhapsody and do that head banging thing just like in that really old movie you showed me,” you grin.

“You mean Wayne’s World?” Barry scrunches his forehead.

“Yeah!” you nod.

“It’s not that old,” Barry mutters to himself.

The light in front of you turns green. You keep your foot on the brakes, waiting for the cars in front of you to start moving.

“That movie isn’t even from this century, dad,” you tease.

Barry rolls his eyes, “Whatever. Just drive the car!”

[themosleyreview]

The Mosley Review: The Green Knight

Throughout the ages there have been countless stories or tales that focus on King Arthur and his Knights of the Roundtable. They're all great and fun, but I have always been a fan of the stories that surrounded his reign and the mythical nature of them. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was one of those stories I loved reading in high school and it has stuck with me for those exact themes. There have been many adaptations of the famous story and this has to be one of the best I've ever seen. The romanticism of going on a quest to meet a foe is a tried and true story mechanic, but this film paints a more intimate picture as you are with the main character the entire step of the way. The scope of this adventure was massive yet small and I loved that it took its time and let you live in the world. The benefit of a slower and melodic pace truly enriches the storytelling and drives home the finer details of visual storytelling. It may not be for everyone, but this was such a magnificent adventure that is led by a stellar cast and it shouldn’t missed.

Dev Patel plays Sir Gawain and his portrayal of the character was outstanding. He nailed the characters bravery and hesitation once the opportunity to show his worth comes. You spend the entire time with the him and you feel his heart become more weary the closer he gets to his appointment with the Green Knight. I love seeing a character truly being tested physically, emotionally, morally and psychologically and Patel brings all of that home. Sarita Choudhury plays his mother/ Morgan Le Fay and I did love her nurturing words and her belief that Gawain would succeed. She has a darker motive and it comes off as if this was her chance to get at the King or test her son's character. It kind of wasn't clear in my opinion. Sean Harris was excellent as I interpreted him to be King Arthur. I loved that he portrayed him as a much older man and you can see the man's bloody and noble past in his eyes. Kate Dickie plays his Queen and I interpreted her to be Guinevere. Like Harris, you get the sense that she has seen just as much if not more than Arthur and the two of them were perfect together. It was a more human portrayal of the icons and my down to earth. Alicia Vikander does double duty in this film as Lady/Esel and she was stellar as both. As Lady, I liked her as the whore with a heart of gold and the chemistry between her and Gawain was so great that you wanted to see that happily ever after for them. As Esel, she exudes the confidence and intrigue Alicia is known for. She is the test of seduction that was fun and enchanting. Joel Edgerton was awesome as Esel's husband, Lord. He has so many great questions, stories and he kind of lightens the mood once he's on screen. I loved his portrayal of the character it was one of my favorite chapters of the film.

Barry Keoghan was great and slimy as the Scavenger. He comes off as welcoming, but he represented the test of will for Gawain and it was a great moment of visual storytelling between the two of them. Erin Kellyman was creepy and haunting as Winifred. Her story was great and had a small bit of comedy in it that I liked even if her presence brings a spooky vibe. Aside from Dev Patel, there is one man that was perfectly cast as one of the most iconic literary characters and that was Ralph Ineson as the Green Knight. His presence alone sends chills down your spine. Ralph's voice is so powerful and somewhat demonic that once he speaks, you feel as if you are hearing the voice of a God. As the Green Knight, he was fun, intimidating and shockingly jovial. I loved that he doesn't say a word not worth speaking and how his game was the true test. Ralph really brought to life the character in a new and intriguing way.

The score by Daniel Hart is out of this world! It is majestic, haunting and yet so soothing in many ways. The choral chants and melodies accentuate the eerie and sometimes elusive tone of the film. The cinematography is beautiful as we gaze upon glorious forests and landscapes, but the one location I would love to visit is the Green Chapel. It has an ethereal, creepy and yet welcoming atmosphere to it. This was one of my most anticipated films of the year and it did not disappoint. Writer/Director David Lowery has made an epic masterpiece that is haunting and satisfying. This is definitely one of the best films of the year and I can't recommend it enough! Let me know what you thought of the film or of my review in the comments below. Thanks for reading!

[callmeelle22]

Blue Dream IV

Pairing: Iris West x Barry Alen

Rating: E

Chapter Word Count:

Summary: A series of sporadic dates between Iris and Barry turn into something more, a story in its own making.

Chapter I: Primetime

Chapter II: It's Cool

Chapter III: Anything

Chapter IV: Comfortable; It feels like butterflies fluttering or sparks flying or whatever other cliche Iris could think of. It’s like slow-dancing all alone after dinner in a half-cleaned kitchen, easy and intimate. It feels like warm honey on her tongue, slow and sweet and overwhelming. It’s pillowtalk, baby; lay your head on my pillow, say, "oh-ooh"; way you're touchin' my body, say, "ooh-ooh"; i ain't lovin' nobody but you; you, you, you make me, the kind that starts as whispers in the dark and becomes deep, lazy sex with only the moon there to light the way. (Read below or on AO3 linked on the chapter title.)

Chapter V: The Way

Chapter VI: Can't Take My Eyes Off of You

Chapter VII: I'm in Love with You

Chapter VIII: Blue Dream

Comfortable

Set the tone, when it's just me

And you alone, never lonely

In the room, breathin' slowly

Oh, you know me, yeah

At a quarter to one on the next Sunday afternoon, Iris finds herself sitting in her living room, waiting for Barry. Her week has been a relatively good one. She thinks they might be over the hurdle of a new semester—learning the personalities of each other—and Dr. Jamison had been on top of her own game, which meant Iris had been able to as well. She’d spent her Friday night watching Bridgerton, well, as much as the hazy cloud of blue diesel had allowed her to, and on Saturday, she’d spent several hours at Jitters typing up a new story for What a Life You’ve Lived. This story had featured an older woman who, years before Loving v. Virginia had made her marriage legal, had lived in relative obscurity with her white husband, dating and laughing and loving in secret.

Yeah, she’d shaken her head at that too.

She doesn’t know where they’re going today, so she’s dressed in a casual emerald green wrap dress, with a deep v-neck and long sleeves, that hems just at her knees. She opts for flat sandals just in case. His number is still unused, though she’s taken the steps to lock it into her phone. She can’t tell why she doesn’t call him, can’t make out why she’s, apparently, too afraid to just reach out to the man. She doesn’t know what they’re doing, outside of this date, or what his goal is. Linda would definitely describe her as being too chickenshit to find out. She obviously doesn’t disagree.

She’s decided that it’s casual, because aren’t most situations these days casual? And it makes more sense than the thought that lives in her head; the alternative doesn’t fit as neatly in her mind. The alternative is, is a little chaotic because that would add layers to the way he grins at her, and to the way he oscillates between awkward and bold when he talks to her, and to the way that she can never completely get the feel and taste of him out of her mouth. The sensation makes her think of runny ice cream, sweet and sticky and dripping, so much so that before she knows it, her hands and her face and her heart are all covered in it.

The doorbell rings.

Iris jumps up to answer the door and he’s standing there, in black jeans and a gray t-shirt, and she’s always struck by how good he looks in such casual outfits. His hands are stuffed down into his pockets and a grin is etched onto his face. He leans into the door when it opens, shoulder on the frame.

“Hi, beautiful.”

The compliment is unexpected and she turns away to grab her bag, to hide the blush that warms her cheeks, even if he wouldn’t be able to see it on her skin.

“You ready?” he asks.

She nods. “Yeah, let’s go.”

They are about fifteen minutes away from Lake Lanier when Iris realizes that’s where they’re going. The ride is pleasant. They don’t talk much outside of a few sentences regarding how their weeks were. Instead, they listen to some rock music Iris has never heard before and Iris alternates between staring at the road and staring at the intricate flowers tattooed on his arm. She recognizes some of them, roses and chrysanthemums and sunflowers, but there are far more that she doesn’t, especially when she remembers that the bouquet goes all the way up and over his shoulder. She decides she’ll ask him about it later.

The trail for the lake comes into view and Barry turns his Jeep onto a barely paved road, his pale fingers caressing the wheel as he expertly maneuvers the vehicle. He drives past where Iris and Linda and their classmates spent countless summer afternoons, past the trail that leads to where her dad had taken her and Wally camping when, at 12, Wally had realized that he was the only of his friends who’d never been.

They come to a stop, moments after Iris wonders if this might be where bodies get hidden, next to a towering oak tree. They’d lost the trail about a mile back and Barry’s four-wheel-drive was a match for whatever grass and rock and mud they rolled over.

Iris steps out of the Jeep and looks around, momentarily in awe. Out this far, the lake looks serene in a way she’s never seen before. It’s quiet, but it isn’t. Even in a midsize city like Central City, there is always something happening; there is always lights and noise and music. Here, the sound of nature takes the stage: the clicking buzz of cicadas and the chirping songs of birds and the gentle wave of the lake. The look of it is surreal, the pale blue of the water and the vibrant dark green of the trees, those slowly giving way to the oranges and reds of fall.

“Wow,” Iris murmurs.

“It’s great, right?” Barry says.

She turns and finds him with his trunk open. She walks around back to see him gathering picnic supplies, a woven picnic basket, a thick red gingham picnic blanket, and a cooler. There’s also another blanket to stem the feel of the wind so close to the lake. She grabs the picnic basket as he handles everything else and she follows him as they set up a few feet away from the bank, on a soft patch of grass to cushion them.

“I wasn’t expecting a picnic,” Iris tells Barry as she settles on the blanket, taking off her shoes and setting them on the edge.

“No?” He grins over at her before resuming his task. He’s unpacking the basket, pulling out saran-wrapped sandwiches, containers of fruit and vegetables with dip, and ziplock bags full of popcorn. A look in the cooler shows her some waters, several beers, and an equal number of mini wine bottles.

“Where’d you think I was taking you?” he wonders.

“I don’t know,” she says. “Like a movie or something.”

He grins, this time slower; and it shouldn’t, but it makes Iris think of the last time she’d seen him, slow and heated on her living room couch.

“That can be our next date,” he says.

“Who says you’re getting another date?”

He looks up at her and it’s the same one he’d given her when he asked her why she didn’t call, the expression a touch calculating. His head is tilted and his eyes are darting all over her face. She wants to turn her head, turn away from his gaze, but she can’t. Because she thinks that she’s hoping he does find what he’s looking for her, that he can help her to find it too.

“You didn’t say that we were going on another date” he says, finally. “But I have fun when we're together, Iris, and I, I think that you do too."

He goes back to pulling items out of the basket, this time a container full of cookies, and Iris starts grappling with whether or not she can take what he says at face value. It’s a flaw, she knows, the doubt that seems to come far too automatically. She wishes that she could blame it on something tangible—on parents who hadn’t been there or boyfriends who’d lied or friends who didn’t have her best interests at heart. That isn’t the case, though. Her mom had been there as much as she could and she had never had enough boyfriends for it to really make a dent. Linda has never even thought about doing her wrong, and her family might be the very best part of her.

But everything in her body catches at the thought of this man being someone she likes, someone she adds to the rotation of people in her life, people who’ve only become occasional brunches and too quick phone calls. What would it feel like for this man—and his smile and his touch and the way that she feels like she knows him when she doesn’t—to become a part of that rotation, until the discomfort of the entire situation makes him taper off altogether?

“Iris?”

She blinks out of her daze at the sound of Barry’s voice, looking down to see him holding out two bottles in front of her, one a lager from a local brewery, the other a chilled bottle of Chardonnay.

“Hey, are you alright?”

“Yes,” she answers him quickly. “Just thinking.”

“About me?” he asks, his grin wide, cheeks faintly pink, and the look of him is so adorable that Iris shakes her head as she grabs the wine from him, failing to curb the smile that lifts the corner of her mouth, failing to keep the thoughts, the whenever i get around you, i lose it; lose it, from seeping in.

“Let’s play twenty questions.”

Iris is halfway into her mini-wine bottle when Barry voices the suggestion. For the time being, they’ve been merely sitting, drinking, basking in the day. The weather is gorgeous and Iris likes that the only thing to distract her is the constant tweeting of the birds, or the soft splashes of the fish in the lake, or the steady sound of Barry’s breathing.

“Okay,” Iris agrees, “but twenty is a lot.”

“Ten, then?” he hurries to say. “Five each?”

He shifts on the blanket so that he’s lying down on his side facing her, head propped in his hand. Her own back is propped against the tree, her legs stretched out and crossed at the ankle.

“You first.”

“Alright.” He pauses, looks up towards the sky as if he’s thinking, and then asks, “What’s your favorite book?”

She is surprised by the question, though she isn’t sure what she thought he might ask.

“I’ve got a lot of favorites,” she says, because it’s true. Books, stories, became an escape early on, from a home that had been too fragile, that had felt like it’d come crumbling down with only a mere gust of wind. “But one that still sits with me is Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. I read it for the first time in high school.”

He smiles at her. “Tell me about it.”

“It’s about a woman named Janie, who was raised by her grandmother who’d been enslaved. Janie’s a romantic; she wants freedom and love. But her grandmother wants her to have security. She’s got a series of suitors: an old man who treats her like the help, essentially; a man who becomes mayor of this all-black town, who only props her up as this thing, this ornament that must look and act like he wants her to; and Tea Cake, a younger man who’s passionate and selfish and possessive. And in all of it, Janie is discovering herself, exploring what she does and doesn’t want. She steps up and she fights back and she learns to dismiss what others have to say about here.”

Barry hums. “She reminds me of you,” he says, “this Janie woman.”

He catches her gaze, holds it. Iris catches the way his eyes track the features of her face. She can never find it in her to shrink away, almost like she’s beholden to the force of him.

“Why?”

“She seems passionate; fanciful. Alluring.”

She’s never wanted to blush as much as she does around him and her face feels warm, tight. She swallows from her wine bottle, still looking at him.

“You are,” she starts, and then shakes her head.

“I am…?” he urges, mouth grinning, eyes wide with mirth. He reaches out and grabs at her ankle, fingers grazing her skin. Her skin tingles beneath his fingers, a slow rush of heat flooding through her. Apparently, Barry has discovered a new erogenous zone.

“Something else,” she answers, finally.

“Somehow I don’t think that’s what you meant.”

She looks out at the lake for a brief moment. “It’s not, but I haven’t figured out what I do mean yet.”

He’s silent for a beat. “Okay. Your turn,” he says and Iris is grateful for the reprieve.

“What’s a country you’ve never been to that you’d like to visit?”

A wistful smile curves his pretty mouth. “That’s easy. Ireland.”

“Yeah?” she asks softly.

“It’s where my mom's family is from,” he continues, touching at her ankle even as he looks away from her. She wonders if he realizes he’s even doing it, tracing along her ankle and then up the length of her calf and back down again.

“My mom was born here in Central City,” he explains, “but her parents were born and raised in Ireland, moving here when they were a couple of months pregnant with her.” She knows she doesn’t mistake the melancholy in his voice. “We’d been planning for a trip after I graduated high school. Since dad was gone, it wasn’t as easy to save up for a long summer trip like that, but we were working on it, before she was killed. I’m still working on it.”

He gives her another smile, this one tinged with hope, and the urge to comfort him is strong. But she knows that there is no real comfort for missing a mother, so instead, she moves from her spot against the tree. The movement confuses Barry, who has to move his hand away from her ankle, but his frown clears when she lies beside him, her head on his shoulder.

“I’ve always wanted to go to Italy,” she tells him. “My best friend Linda’s parents live in a large immigrant community. People from all over live there. It was like heaven for me when I really started getting into writing; so many stories. Obviously, not everyone wanted to tell their business to a 15-year-old, but Mrs. Bianco had no qualms about it.

“Mrs. Bianco has three sons, relatively the same age as me and Linda, one right after the other, but no daughters. So for much of high school, we were her surrogates. My dad worked a lot and so did Linda’s parents, getting their restaurant off the ground. So we’d go over to Mrs. Bianco’s after school to do homework and she’d feed us all these baked goods, cannolis and these things called bombolinis, which are like doughnuts but better. And she’d tell us all these stories about growing up in the Italian countryside and going to college and meeting her husband before they came here, the excitement of it all. She made it sound so beautiful.”

Barry reaches over and touches her, long fingers touching lightly at her arm before they wrap around her wrist. He rubs at the skin on the inside of her wrist. The move feels like a deliberate way for Barry to maintain contact, but also like more. Like the last time he’d come to her apartment, and she’d felt the touch to her ankles at the very core of her, she feels so now. It’s subtle, but it’s there, in the slight clench of her belly, in the low throb of her pussy. It’s been a long time since she’s been with anyone like this — cause I feel so comfortable with you; you make me comfortable with you—easily aroused and just as easily comforted. Her last relationship had been with a man named Eddie, a graduate student she had met early in her senior year of undergrad. He had been sweet, but they had both been so busy all the time that they had felt like work too. With Barry, there’s the newness that comes with a relationship, the giddiness at talking to him, being near him. But this seems like something else, something greater, something that tells of why she can’t stop thinking about this man.

“Why did you invite me over,” Barry asks, “that Friday night?”

She exhales shakily, a little unnerved by him. “Well, you asked me to dance?”

“You invited me over because I asked you to dance?” His tone is incredulous and she laughs.

“No, I mean. It’s the club. People just dance, right? And here you come, rocking those hips unlike any white boy I’ve seen, and then you walk up and ask me if you could dance with me. I thought it was polite.”

Barry rolls over so that he’s long against her side. He moves his hand from her wrist to press on her belly, rubbing his thumb lightly. He plants his mouth right next to her ear. “If you think I’m polite, I’m doing something wrong.”

She catches his eyes. “I don’t know,” she says, smirking at him. “Maybe you are. Maybe you need to work on that.”

She lets the taunt hang, for just a moment, and then she rolls over to kiss him. She licks at his mouth, turning the kiss more passionate in seconds. Their positions change, Barry rolling her onto her back.

“I think I can make you beg,” Barry whispers against her mouth. “I was always told that was impolite.”

Iris doesn’t get a chance to say much else because suddenly, Barry is between her legs, his head dipping down under her dress.

“Barry what?”

As is his annoying habit, he doesn’t respond to her right away. He pushes her dress higher, exposing her belly and the bright yellow lace of her panties. She inhales sharply at the feel of his breath on her belly before he plants a kiss there.

“Ask for it.”

She catches onto his game immediately and her eyes flash. “No.”

His answer is a grin and then, without much preamble, he dips his tongue into her belly button. The action makes her hips raise automatically, and he brings her back down by gripping her hips. He continues down, tongue laving at her skin, fingers running up her torso and down again until they hook in the top of her panties and he starts to pull them down.

Iris can’t describe what it is she’s feeling at the moment. He’s only just touched her, only just planted a few sloppy kisses on her stomach. But her skin is tight with anticipation, her breathing deeper as she waits to see what he’ll do. She wonders, rather absently, if they’re currently being watched by any of the animals she hears living out here by the lake; but then Barry widens her legs and opens her up with the tips of his index and middle finger and she stops thinking altogether.

He holds her open for a long moment, just looking, just breathing against her, and she tries to hold still until she can’t, wiggling her hips a little, hoping it makes a finger slip inside of her.

“Barry…”

“You’re ready to ask for it?”

He drags his gaze away from her sex in order to meet her eyes. They’re the glassy that lets her know that he isn’t as unaffected as he’s pretending to be. That momentarily strengthens her resolve, knowing that maybe he really does feel like this too, that she’s not the only one losing her head in this sexual haze that seems to be moving way too fast and way past normal.

She shakes her head at him.

“No?” he questions. “Not even if I do this?”

Fingers still holding her, he licks her, a long swipe of his tongue. She inhales again at the feel of his wet tongue, lets it go in a noisy exhale when he does it again. And then again and then again, and Iris starts to rock against him, trying to get more of his tongue or his fingers or something. She quivers above him, her thighs opening and closing, and she feels like a butterfly, fluttering and alight, hovering over a precipice.

“Shit, ” she moans.

And then, he stops. He fucking stops.

“Barry…”

“Or this?” he continues, and pushes his fingers in. It’s harder than she likes, more like a stab, and she jerks her hips.

“Softer,” she tells him, and he obliges, moving slower, caressing instead of fucking into her. “ Yes, like that.”

Barry hums around her. The vibration makes her hips rock up, and he circles her clit with the tip of his tongue, sucking on it. He looks up at her again. This is the face she wants to remember for the rest of her days: his dazed eyes, his flushed cheeks, his wet mouth.

“Ask me for what you want, Iris,” Barry licks his lips. “Beg me, baby, please.”

Her heart is pounding and she wonders how a game of question and answer got her here. But they are here, she’s here, quivering with the need to come, with the fact that Barry looking up at her like this, begging her like this, makes her feel more desirable than she’s ever known she could.

“Can you eat me, Barry? Please? ”

Iris has never seen a dirtier smile. “With pleasure.”

He really starts to eat her, then. He kisses at her lips, tongues her down in a sloppy, wet tongue kiss that makes her cream drip out of her, drip down her thighs. She rocks against him, closing her knees around his head when the touch of his tongue to her clit gets to be too much, opening herself wider when wants his tongue back in her, licking and tasting and fucking her. Needing something to do with her hands, she grabs at his hair, pulling at the strands, scratching at scalp, at the back of his neck. That is how she comes, she doesn’t know how much later. But it’s like that: with Barry holding on to her hips, face buried in her slick; with her knees opening and closing, with her hips bucking, with her begging him, “please, Barry, fuck, yes, please, Barry. ”

It takes her a while to come down and when she does, she says the first thing that she can think of. “God, you’re so goddamn annoying.”

Barry bursts out laughing into her stomach, arms wrapped around her.

“What is something that you want out of a relationship?”

They’re sitting up and eating now, Iris several feet away from him so she’s not tempted to wrap her thighs around his face again. She’s chosen the turkey sandwich on wheat bread and a handful of grapes. The sandwich is really good and Barry must think so of his own handiwork because he’s already done with one and unwrapping another. Although, Iris thinks, he likely did work up an appetite.

She can’t say what makes her throw out the question. The skepticism of starting something with him is still there, but laughing after sex like that, coming from sex like that, well. Iris can name that she might be a little whipped by this smooth-talking, world-class fucking white boy.

He chews a bite of his sandwich and swallows before he turns to her with an answer.

“I’m a simple guy, I think. I work a lot; crimes wait for no one so I would want someone who understands that. But in my time off, I like to do things like this, and festivals and running too, so someone who likes that too.” He wipes at his mouth with a crumpled napkin. “But out of a relationship in general, I guess I want companionship, laughing. Communication and patience. Fidelity.” He shoots her a grin. “Good sex.”

Iris rolls her eyes, but she returns the smile. “Did you have that in your last relationship?”

“Ah,” he interrupts, “it’s my turn for a question, Iris.”

She throws her own balled up napkin at him. “Fine. Shoot.”

“What do you look for in a relationship?”

She shoots him a glare.

“What?” he laughs. “It was a good question and I want to know.”

“Okay. Um,” she takes a swig from her newly opened wine. “Whew. I don’t know that I’ve thought about this in a while.” She bites at her bottom lip and lets out a long breath. “A lot of the same things you said, I think. I do love laughing, even if I can get lost in my own head angst sometimes and I’d like someone who realizes that. I’m pretty busy, between school and work and What a Life You’ve Lived, but I make time for the people I want to make time for and I would wish my partner would do the same. Fidelity is also important to me too; communication. I love music and dancing and movies so someone who’d want to do those things with me.”

Barry wriggles his eyebrows. “Good sex?”

“A plus, for sure,” she agrees.

That gets her to thinking about another question she has, one she’s more hesitant to voice. She could get an answer she likes, one that keeps the mood they’ve got going here. And the vibe right now is so good. She can’t remember a date like this, one so simple. Eddie had been courting careers in law and so much of their time together had been spent out at fancy dinners while he’d tried to smooze whoever he needed to that week. It’d been fun sometimes, to see what stories she could get out of the politicians and law officers, but that’s not a date, at least it wasn't to her. During undergrad, dates meant studying together in the corner of a library until one or both of them got the urge to make out behind a shelf of books. And high school shouldn’t even really count. But here, today, this feels like a date. It feels like butterflies fluttering or sparks flying or whatever other cliche Iris could think of. It’s like slow-dancing all alone after dinner in a half-cleaned kitchen, easy and intimate. It feels like warm honey on her tongue, slow and sweet and overwhelming. It’s pillow talk, baby; lay your head on my pillow, say, "oh-ooh"; way you're touchin' my body, say, "ooh-ooh"; i ain't lovin' nobody but you; you, you, you make me, the kind that starts as whispers in the dark and becomes deep, lazy sex with only the moon there to light the way.

But she steels herself and risks asking anyway. “Barry, do you, uh, have a lot of sex, then? A lot of one-night stands?”

Barry’s eyes are wide when he looks at her. He’d been cleaning up their trash, putting napkins and wrappers and empty bottles in a small grocery bag and the question makes him look up sharply. It makes her want to retreat, but she’s already put it out there and she’s extremely curious if she happens to just be one in a line of girls that this surprisingly suave man has beguiled with easy laughs and mind-blowing sex.

“I'm asking because you are, you’re good,” she mumbles, (but, understatement), “and of course, you don’t have to answer me but I just… I'm wondering if…”

She trails off when he stops what he’s doing and crawls over to her. He hovers, making her lean back a little in order to see all of his face. It’s a pretty face, the dark eyebrows over those eyes, the lips that she knows get even pinker when they’re dripping with her juices, the faint moles along his cheeks and jaw that doesn’t detract.

“There are no other girls, Iris,” he tells her, and he seems so sincere as he looks straight into her eyes, as he places a hand on the side of her so she’s clouded in the clean, citrusy smell of him. “I know that we’re just hanging out and obviously, you do what you want, but no, I… I’m a one woman kinda guy. Going home with you was an anomaly, one I certainly don’t regret. But it’s not a thing I do. I haven’t been with anyone else since my last relationship months ago.”

She stares at him, hoping that she can believe him. “Alright.”

“Okay?”

She nods again, this time with a little smile. “Yeah, okay.”

Neither of them asks their final two questions. Barry says that it’ll give them something to talk about when he sees her again. Iris just thinks that today’s been a whirlwind of a day and it’d be nice not to be on the spot anymore. The ride back to town is just as easy as the ride down. Easy listening plays from the radio—'cause I feel so comfortable with you; you make me comfortable with you; i feel so comfortable with you; you make me comfortable with you; you make me—and Iris settles into her seat for the half-hour drive, full and sated and comfortable. She must doze off because before she knows it, Barry is pulling into the parking space next to her Kia and he’s opening the door for her.

“Come on, sleepyhead,” he says, smiling down at her as he grabs her hand to pull her out of the seat.

“I’m sorry for falling asleep on you.” She stumbles a little as she follows him up the stairs and he grips her hand tighter.

“Don’t worry about it,” he tells her. “I take pride in the fact that I’ve put you to sleep every night we’ve been together.”

She doesn’t even pause as she yanks her hand away and slides past him to her door. “You’re such a dick.”

Barry chuckles, sidling up behind her as she sticks her key into the lock. He gives her a soft kiss on the skin between her neck and shoulder.

“I thought you said I was polite,” he breathes, before nipping at her skin. She closes her eyes at the feel of his mouth on her, the light nips of his teeth, the slick glide of his tongue behind it. He pulls up all the way behind her and wraps both of his arms around her waist.

“You are,” she moans when one of his hands glides down and settles hard over her crotch. “Even when you’re telling me to beg, you say please.”

He licks a longer stripe across her skin, pulls a larger patch into his mouth, cups her pussy in the palm of his hand.

“Barry…”

“But you called me a dick, Iris. Am I polite or a dick?”

She arches into him. “You’re a polite dick.”

He stills against her and it takes a moment for Iris to realize that he’s laughing again. He’s got such a nice laugh, deep and bright. “Damn, Iris.” He turns her around, still with a wide grin on his face. He leans down and kisses her, pecks her lips once, and then twice, and then a longer one that curls her fingers around his neck. He doesn’t immediately let go when he pulls back.

“I want to ask one of my last questions.”

She licks her lips, chasing the taste of him. “Okay.”

“Am I in the running?” He asks the question clearly, though in a voice just above a whisper. “Am I someone that you could want to be..”

She doesn’t need him to finish the sentence to say what she’s feeling, even if she’s terrified of what it might eventually mean for her. “I really think that you might be.”

“It’s a might I’ll take.” He nods at her door. “Good night, beautiful.”

She turns to go into the apartment. “Good night, Barry.”

The door is almost closed when he calls back. “Hey, Iris?”

“Yeah?”

“Call me this time.”

You make me

Baby

You make me

You make me

[dreamypeaches]

can’t look away | pope heyward x reader

request: @https-luna asked: can I have 8 and 18 from list one for angst pls 😌 and and uhm 24 and 30 from list one for angst pls ❤

“I’m not okay if you’re not okay.”

“Please talk to me.”

“Will you just hold me?”

“Who did this to you?”

summary: pope heyward can only watch as the one he loves tumbles towards destruction

warnings: angst, alcohol use, drug use, depression, self-destruction, death

word count: 1.8k

a/n: so, this is very sad. it’s for pope appreciation day 2: angst. that’s all i have to say. my messages and inbox are always open if you want to talk. take care of yourselves and know you are amazing. 

Have you ever seen a car crash? Not the aftermath where the cars have already completed their journey of destruction, but the actual event of a car crashing. Things seem to move in slow motion and all too fast at the same time. It’s terrifying and sad and violent, and there is nothing you can do about it except watch, helpless. She was a car crash, and Pope Heyward was the hopeless, desperate bystander watching her fly through the air.

It took time for Pope to realize she was driving towards her destruction. When he first met her she was new to the Outer Banks and ready for a fresh start. A ball of positivity and life that made the sun look like a black hole. Her laughter was contagious, spreading though Pope’s soul like a virus, forcing him to laugh along. She made him feel like a new man, dragging him on adventures, introducing him to new things, spoke to him like she could see into his soul and pick out all the bad parts and love them just as much as the good ones. For the first time, Pope felt confident, she made him confident. Confident to ask her out, to kiss her, to make love to her. He wished she made him confident enough to help her. Not that he could if he’d tried.

When the car makes it’s first move before a crash, swerves into that lane or isn’t paying attention to that light, you can think for a moment that it might be okay. Maybe they’ll recover, maybe it won’t be that bad, maybe it will be okay. Pope saw this move one night, knocking on her door after a day of unreturned texts and missed calls. She was curled up in the bed, comforter pulled up to her chin, a random cooking show playing on the tv. She stared at the screen without really watching, eyes glazed over and void of emotion.

“Hey, lovely, how’s it going? I haven’t heard from you all day, I got worried.” His voice was soft as he scooted in next to her. Her head instantly fell onto his shoulder and rubbed her nose into the shoulder of his sweatshirt, inhaling the the comforting scent that was uniquely Pope Heyward. He wrapped his arm around her now shaking shoulders as she began to cry. Tears soaked his hoodie, darkening the light fabric with spots of dampness. He went back through the previous days, trying to find anything that may have upset her. He came up empty.

“Please talk to me,” He said, lips brushing against her ear.

“Will you just hold me?” She responded between gasps for breath. Pope nodded, wrapping another arm around her front, pulling her in for a tight bear hug. He sometimes wished he could have squeezed the sadness from her body and soaked it into his own like depression sham-wow. Unfortunately life wasn’t that easy.

The next moment of a car crash is when you realize it is happening, this car is crashing and it might be really bad. But you’re still hoping, believing that it might not be too bad. Maybe fortune will be on their side. This moment for Pope comes when he held her hair back from her face for the 3rd time in two week as she vomits the contents of her stomach into the pristine toilet bowl.

She brought her hand to her forehead, pressing the heel of it into her eye. Pope sat back too, fingers threading through her hair and massaging her scalp as she wiped the remnants of her mistake from the corners of her mouth. She’d already been to two parties that week, getting drunk off her ass then cross faded on top of it. She skinny dipped in the ocean as a dare, tried to seduce her boyfriend into a quickie not twenty feet away from the kegger, attempted a front flip despite never even trying before. She was like a completely different person.

But that night was different. There had been no party, no kegger, not even a group of Pogues to get fucked up with. She’d been all alone, moving through her liquor shelf like it was popcorn. Pope found her jumping on her bed and listening to the Jonas Brothers, a wild, drunken grin on her face. It’d been fun the first hour, dancing half naked to bops from their childhood. But her energy soon faded and darkness washed over her features. She collapsed onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling. Pope laid beside her, fingers intertwining with her own. His head turned to take in her profile, admiring the color of her eyes and the curve of her nose. She felt his gaze, turning to give him a small smile.

“You’re so good, Popey,” she said, turning to caress his cheek with her palm.

“What do you mean?” He replied, face heating up as his hand falls over her, fingers tracing shapes on her back.

“You’re just so…good. You make me feel good. You’re going to do great things, I know you are. Best fucking forensic pathologist in the goddamn world.”

Pope laughed before kissing the tip of her nose.

“We’re going to do great things,” he corrected. Her smile faltered for a moment, returned with less sweetness than it had before.

“Yes we are.”

She’d moved quickly from the bed after that, retrieving the half finished bottle of vodka and downing it. It wasn’t long after that they found themselves in her bathroom, regret coursing through her veins.

She wiped a hand across her chin before she looked at Pope. Silent tears fell down his cheeks as he stared at her, fingers absentmindedly stroking through her messy locks.

“Pope, don’t cry, I’m okay,” her smile was obviously forced, never reaching her eyes. He sniffled, wiping his cheeks on the back of his sleeve.

“No, love, you’re not. And I’m not okay if you’re not okay. This is not okay, you are hurting yourself and I don’t know what to do!” He exclaimed, tossing his hands in the air. One of her hands ghosts over his cheek, wiping the newly fallen tears from his cheeks.

“You don’t have to do anything. Don’t worry, I’ll get better. It’s just a little hard right now.”

Pope just nodded, mulling over her words as he pulled her into his chest, kissing the top of her head.

“I love you,” he uttered.

“I love you too,” she replied.

Your heart pounds, your breathing shallows, your body stiffens. The moment of impact. The moment when you realize exactly how bad the situation really is, and it’s too late to stop it. Her moment of impact is quite literal, and she has the scars to prove it.

His leg bounced and fingers danced on the arm of the couch as Pope waited. She was an hour late for date night, no text or call as to why. Pope bursted to his feet when the front door opened, turning towards the girl with a frown.

“Where were you?” Is all he said before his heart stopped. Her eyes meet his, but they aren’t the same. One is dark and swollen, the other had a small cut above it, dripping blood down her face. A split lip graced her mouth, one entire cheek bruised. A definitely broken nose, another cut on her other cheek below a small but ghastly bruise. His feet carried him to her, drawn in like a moth to the flame. His hands hovered hesitantly beside her face, shaking as they moved millimeters above the broken skin.

“Who did this to you?” He said, voice broken and wavering. Her face was dead, her mouth a line and eyes far away. She pushed past him moving to the kitchen where a bottle of wine had been waiting for her, meant to be shared with the love of her life.

“Barry.” She said simply before chugging some of the red liquid. Pope thought he might die at the sound of the name. His jaw dropped, fists clenched and unclenched.

“Barry? What the hell were you doing with Barry?

“I was purchasing illegal narcotics from him,” She said as if this were an everyday occurrence, “but I guess I owe him money that I don’t have so he fucked me up. It’s chill.”

Static blared in Pope’s brain as he tried to comprehend the words coming from his loves mouth. His brain refused to process shocked by the overload of information coming at him.

“What the fuck?” Is all he was able to spit out, “What the fuck? What the fuck!” he continued, pacing through the small dining area. She grabbed his arm, stopping his movements pulling him close to her. Her arms wrapped around his neck, fingers toying with the hair at the base of his neck.

“Pope, don’t worry, it’s not so bad, really, I-”

“No! It is bad, love! It’s been bad but this…this is too much. Can’t you see how much you’re hurting me, hurting yourself? This isn’t good.” His hand grasped her own, pressing a kiss to her palm. “You need to get some help, love.”

Tears were streaming down her face now. She ignored the sting of her cuts and she nodded at Pope, fingers moving across his face as she took in the curves and edges of his features.

“You’re right. I need some help. I will, I promise.”

The kiss they shared was short and sweet, sealing the promise with an action. Pope pulled her to the bathroom and cleaned up her wounds, hope in his heart that the woman he loved would be happy again. Hope is a dangerous thing.

Have you ever seen the aftermath of a car crash? When the damage is done and it’s sad and intriguing and violent and all you can wonder is why did this happen? The car smashed up on the side of the road, the car overturned in a ditch, the three car pile up on the highway. Why did it happen?

Pope Heyward couldn’t tell you why it happened. Why the ball of love he had fallen for became a shell of who she used to be, trying to fill the empty space with drugs and alcohol, a hallucination of the girl she once was. He’d had hope that there was a possibility. The possibility of a future. Maybe there could have been. Maybe if he had said something, done something differently. Maybe if she had done something, heard something different. Maybe if he hadn’t left her alone that day. Maybe if she hadn’t saved that one bottle of tequila. Maybe if he hadn’t ran over that nail. Maybe if she had said she couldn’t drive, told him to call JJ. Maybe things would be okay. Maybe there would have been a future. Maybe there wouldn’t have been a moment where Pope was just a hopeless, desperate bystander on the side of the road, watching the girl he loved make one too many mistakes. But there’s no use dwelling in the past, asking yourself why, telling yourself maybe. Sometimes it just happens. A car crashes. And all you can do is watch.

taglist/moots: @jjmaybby @dontjinx-it @butgilinsky @rekrappeter @diverdcwn @rafecameron @prejudic3 @starlightstarkey @https-luna @sunnypogue @obxmxybxnk @jjmayybank @euphoricheyward @socialwriter @kindahavefeelingskindaheartless @peachydrews @outerbanksbro @poguestyleskye @softstarkey @bricksatanakinswindow @mdlyncline @poguemackin @downbytheouterbanks @rae131415 @ptersparkers @prkerspogue @moldisgoodforyou @outrbanks @girlsru1eboysdroo1 @tempestuousjj @stargazingstarkey @anxietyandtacos @uwubonebabie @joshy-obx @sortagaysortahigh @overly-b @highondrew @madelynsclines @cherryobx @royalmerchant @wtfkie @ilovejjmaybank @broken-jj @vindictive-hearts  @fttayla @rafej-cambanks

[cecilspeaks]

172 - Return of the Obelisk

“Nothing lasts forever” is a phrase with two meanings, and they’re both true. Welcome to Night Vale.

All of Night Vale is aglow. There is music in the air. You know what that means, listeners: the Obelisk has returned. It’s been nearly 8 years since the Obelisk last appeared, but it’s right back where it always shows up, in Mission Grove Park over on the east side, right next to the Wailing Pit. But a little bit south of the Memorial Debris Heap. The Obelisk returns every 5 to 10 years, sometimes as long as 50, and it brings with it joy, anticipation, and a deep fear. A terror so deep in the gut that it feels like you’ve eaten too much ice cream, but in all reality, your body is simply bracing itself for death. The Obelisk has always behaved benevolently, but so hast he sun, and we don’t trust that thing fully either, so I dunno. Past performance is not an indicator of future results. Unlike the sun, the Obelisk radiates a soft blue light, but like the sun, the Obelisk makes a lot of noise. In particular, music. The obelisk sounds like a Bach concerto played like a French horn and a theramine from inside a refrigerator. Everyone in town is gathering at Mission Grove Park to see the Obelisk in person, to pay homage to this rare visit, and to confront their fears head on. Hopefully everything works out fine, because there are some cool events I want to get to this weekend, and it would be terrible to have to cancel them over a rogue obelisk.

Let’s take a look at the community calendar, shall we? This Friday night is opening night of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Tony-winning musical “Sunset Boulevard” at the Night Vale Community Theatre. I’m very excited to finally see this show, it’s supposed to be a really lavish production, too. And it’s based on one my all time favorite Billy Wilder films about an aging silent movie star who finds an amulet that lets her travel in time, but whenever she moves through time, she enters someone else’s body and can’t leave until she saves her life. This staging of “Sunset Boulevard” is directed and produced by… oh my god, Susan Willman?? Really? Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrhooonestly, this has been a pretty long week and Iiii might need to just rest at home on Friday. I mean I’m not trying to be rude here, but Susan Willman is the worst! Did you know she once judged the chili cook-off, and I came in third? Third! Behind Joel Eisenberg, which is fine, Joel’s an OK cook, but also behind who else? Susan Willman! You can’t be a judge and win first place. I’m also pretty sure Susan used a prepackaged spice mix in that chili. [laughs oddly] I don’t have that verified through a secondary source, but I can confirm, it was oversalted, again. I’m not saying, I’m just saying. Anyway, go see “Sunset Boulevard” on Friday if you want to watch uninspired actors and muddled blocking.

Saturday afternoon is the PTA bake sale fundraiser to send our Academic Decathlon team to a tournament in our state’s capital. The PTA secretary… [sighs] Susan WiIlman, says this money will go toward hotel and bus travel for our brilliant and talented Ac-Dec squad. “Academic Decathlon is about intelligence and perseverance,” says Willman in this overwrought press release. “Ac-Dec is about freedom and fastidiousness. It is a celebration of hard work, and we want Night Vale to show the rest of the state that blah blah blah blah blah,” God she just runs on! I mean yes, Ac-Dec is very cool and I wish our kids well. But chill with the grandstanding! Anyway, go buy a cake to support those amazing students, even though I’m sure Susan will still manage to mess up a box mix.

Sunday is Youth Reprogramming Day at the Night Vale Museum of Forbidden Technologies. Does your child love learning about new gadgets and advancements in technology? Well, come on down to the Museum of Forbidden Technologies on Sunday for a day-long reprogramming event. Docents and curators will engage those curious kids through hands-on unlearning. They’ll take their patented mindwipe beam and point it right at each child’s forehead until all interest in forbidden technology has been removed. Kids love the mindwipe beam, because it smells like grapes, and they don’t feel any pain for weeks after. Youth Reprogramming Day is a family friendly day of discovering that you know too much, and knowledge is treason.

Today’s appearance by the Obelisk is the 19th in recorded history. Little is known about what the Obelisk is, who controls it, or what it wants. Most scientists and historians agree that it was created by subterranean gods millennia ago, and they think its purpose is a type of census for life at ground level. The Obelisk is about 25 feet tall, it is oily and soft like a fresh brick of parmesan cheese, and when it appears, everyone in town carves their name into one of its four sides. We do not know why or when this practice began, it’s simply how it’s always been done. And to question tradition is to admit weakness. When the Obelisk eventually disappears, perhaps today, perhaps several days from now, it will take our names with it. And when it returns, those names will be gone and we will begin the tradition anew. No one knows what happens to those names. Are they simply erased, or are they read and recorded? Is this data mining for some ancient technology startup, or does the Obelisk truly belong to the gods? We only know what happens to one of the names carved on the Obelisk, and for that person, we feel both envy and pity. For while the Obelisk has always behaved benevolently, past performance et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Let’s have a look now at traffic. Route 800 is shut down until 4 PM today, as it has turned into a river. No cars are on Route 800, it’s just water. Rough and choppy, spiking white rapid caps atop nearly black rushing death. Highway officials are investigating the sudden appearance of this river, perfectly overlaying our main thoroughfare in and out of town. Beneath the quickly moving rush of the river, a single fish, probably a bass of some sort. Highway officials are uncertain because they don’t think about fish. Why would they? Highway officials are annoyed that you think so little of their awareness of fish species. They can tell a salmon from a marlin from a mackerel. “See what you made us do?” one highway official said. “We could have been repairing route 800, but you started picking on us for not knowing if that’s a bass or a mackerel or a whatnot. In fact,” the official continued, “we just looked it up on Wikipedia and it’s a bass. And fun fact,” they added, “did you know that bass can grow up to 25 pounds, have four rows of human teeth, and speak Spanish at a first grade level?” The river is now branching out down sides of streets and into neighborhoods. Pavement everywhere is a network of fresh water capillaries through town. Expect delays of up to 10 or 20 minutes, as you try to get to Mission Grove Park. This has been traffic.

The whole town feels like a carnival now with the flashing lights of the Obelisk and it’s crescendo of lively music filling the cool twilight air. We dance, we sing, we revel in togetherness and share our  fears of what will happen next. What will the question be? And more importantly, what will be its answer? When every name has been placed upon the Obelisk, then the blue glow of the towering monolith will die away. The entire structure will turn black. All except one name. One name will remain lit on the Obelisk, and that person shall be sent forth to ask their question. They may ask any question they choose and the Obelisk will tell them and only them the answer. No one else will hear this communication. If the receiver wishes to share what they now know, they are allowed to do so.

Many years back, this ritual was more organized. Early Night Vale townships planned a democratic approach to this opportunity: a committee of the Obelisk was formed to decide on the single most important question to ask. This approach came about in response to the super blunder of 1932, when a 6-year-old boy named Bartholomew Thomason was chosen to deliver the question. He  asked the Obelisk if he was, quote, “gonna have corn for dinner”. The obelisk apparently said no, because little Bart started crying and the Obelisk quickly disappeared, not to return for almost 10 years. By that time, the committee of the Obelisk was established and they chose the question: “how do you cure cancer?” Ah, this is a good and noble question. But the citizen chosen by the Obelisk was a farmer named Barry McKenney, who tried his best to take careful notes, but a lot of the detailed medical jargon was just too complex for him. The committee tried this question again 6 years later, but the Obelisk refused to respond to any question it had already answered. So Sidney Laynord of Old Time Night Vale, not having a backup question from the committee, asked if his wife Jessica was cheating on him with Gerald Framingham, and the Obelisk said no, but it only said that because Gerald’s actual last name was Framington, so Sidney just messed up.

Over the decades, the committee of the Obelisk asked: “Is God real”? And the Obelisk said yes, but nothing more. After that, they tried to ask questions that would elicit more detailed response. Um, one year they asked: “who planned the assassination of JFK?” and were disappointed to learn that it was a CIA - Fidel Castro – Frank Sinatra triumvirate that conspired to murder our 35th president. This was the most boring answer, but at least it verified what everyone already knew.

By the 1990’s, though, the committee of the Obelisk had kind of fallen out of fashion after years of corporate funding and corruption. See, this controversy exploded in 1997, when the question put forth by the committee, which at the time was headed by the CEO of Pepsico, was: “what’s the best tasting carbonated soft drink on the market today?” The Obelisk’s answer, to the chairman’s great disappointment, was Surge. Today, whoever is called on by the Obelisk is given free reign to ask whatever they choose. However many news outlets regularly publish lists of recommended question, but there is always the risk that someone will ask something frivolous like “what’s Jason Mraz up to these days?” or “where is the body of my missing fahter?” Please, God please, just don’t call on Susan Willman. She will blow it.

And now a word from our sponsors. Are you tired of wrinkled shirts? Do your clothes get static cling? [increasingly angry tone] How many times do you show up to work with your shirt all rumpled and not smelling like seafoam mist? You’re not going to get a promotion looking like that, and while no one deserves anything, you certainly should appear to earn that promotion. You need crisp, clean, non-ionised clothing that smells like seafoam mist. Don’t you wanna smell like seafoam mist?! Try Tide pods. With our special formula of citrus extract, kelp and milk fat, Tide pods can be the all natural solution to all of your laundry problems. You deserve Tide pods, because you deserve that promotion over Michaela, who’s only like 22 years old. What has she ever done to deserve a promotion? What’s Michaela’s deal even? Tide pods. Remember when we seemed like a big problem?

Oooooooo listeners, the Obelisk has gone dark. The music has ceased. The whole town encircles the tower waiting for its declaration for who shall ask the question. In the quiet night, under few start peeking thru the purple sky, we can hear only the sounds of crickets. The Obelisk, so black as to appear cut out from reality, suddenly shines a small blue line. It is a name, it is on the south face and is it… Oh no! No no no, listeners, I don’t know if I can stop this but I will try. Uuuh, let’s go now to the weather.

[“Pros and Cons” by Sugar & the Mint https://www.sugarandthemint.com/]

Welllll it’s too late. She’s asked her question. I’m not sure how I could have stopped this disaster, even if I made it over there before she could ask it. OK, as you know by now, the Obelisk lit up with Susan Willman’s name, and she grinned smugly and did that fake like “who me? What, oh my god!” gesture and then walked on up to the Obelisk. The crowd was calling out questions to her like  game show audience trying to help a contestant, no single phrase discernible above the others, and Susan just looked around, her big goofy eyes scanning the people around her, as if she would actually lower herself to listen to their questions. [scoffs] She thinks she’s so high and mighty with her PT officer status and her hit Broadway musical. No no no, Susan’s above us all, just as important as she can be. She waved her arms like wings for quiet, and the audience obeyed, she’s so self-important, so attention seeking. And then she asked her question. The one question we as a town get only every decade or so, and Susan said: “Hey, so what’s your name?” What’s your name?!! God! What a waste! Did she forget we only get one question? The crowd began to boo, or at least I did. I started booing and I am part of the crowd.

The obelisk began to speak only into Susan’s mind and Susan listened closely. She giggled at first, like a little girl hearing a silly joke from a grandfather, and then her tear-filled laughs turned into tear-filled breaths, which eventually became tear-filled sobs. After about three minutes, the Obalisk vanished, and Susan stood alone on the small hill between the Wailing Pit and the Memorial Debris Heap, and she told us what she heard. Or [scoffs] she told us some of what she heard.

Susan said, in an unusually booming authoritative voice: “Whosoever speaks aloud the name of the Obelisk shall become the Obelisk. Whosoever becomes the Obelisk shall live forever. Whosoever lives forever shall know all things. Whosoever knows all things shall be damned. And whosoever hears the name of the Obelisk spoken aloud shall perish.” The crowd parted for Susan as she left the park. They mumbled their disappointment in both the question and its answer. Some spoke with pity, some with disdain, while some thought it was all pretty cool and now. “Much better than last time, when Dave asked who would win the 2013 NBA championships,” said one person. “Dave won a lot of money on that answer, though,” responded another. “He has a yacht now over at the Harbor and Waterfront Recreation Area.”

But most everyone whispered their fear for Susan’s power itself. I mean, Susan received a gif today, a cursed cursed gifts. You know what? I think I might go see that “Sunset Boulevard” after all and I love it. I don’t get to tell Susan very often what a visionary theatrical director she is, but I, I, [chuckles] I might even put some stacks down on her cakes Saturday too. Really support that academic Decathlon team. And the spirit of American ingenuity and perseverance, and all that.

Good question, Susan. I’d like to never learn the answer, but good question nonetheless. You’re one of, if not the, best person I know. Thumbs up.

Stay tuned next for our newest game show, “Nothing will ever be the same”.

Good night, Night Vale, Good night.

Today’s proverb: Bite your tongue. Fun, right?

[kravkalackin]

(In response to ur burn out post): You could try writing more fic for other characters? (Mind you I haven’t read all ur fics but) It seems like the majority of fic u write revolves around Taako, Kravitz, Angus, Barry, and Lup. Which is fine and I personally love those stories very much, but maybe writing a Magnus centric or Lucretia centric story (for example) might let you spice it up a bit while still writing in the same fandom. Like how would Taz have gone down if Julia lived or something? What’s Davenports deal? Idk.

Just seems like trying to write from a new perspective might help some with the burn out. I hope that helps. In anycase I love your writing, but please don’t push yourself too hard. Better to take a break and let yourself rest than to keep pushing until you crash and burn y’know? Especially with how stressful this year has been. I don’t think anyone would hold it against you if you decide not to do nanorimo this time around.

Best of Luck!

i might try that, Magnus is typically hard for me and not the funnest to write from his POV, but i’ve enjoyed the few times i’ve written Merle, and lucretia is very fun, i really don’t write her enough. i tend to write those five the most because plain and simple, they’re the funnest to play with for me. i am a very predictable person who just sorta hyperfocuses on a couple characters and can write literally a hundred stories about them before i get tired. but yeah maybe a change will be good 

and i appreciate the sentiment for not pushing myself! i’m definitely trying to hold back (in comparison to last year, i did over 100k for nano, i’m just going for the regular 50k this time). also don’t worry, absolutely none of the pressure I feel is from anyone else, i know people would be chill for me to just take a month long break and not post or do anything, the need to do nano is entirely intrinsically motivated 

[fangirl-imagines]

Silent Night//Barry Berkman x Reader

A/N: I wrote this as a Christmas gift for @starting-now. They are one of the sweetest, most amazing, people I have ever met and out of this world talented! I could not have asked for a better person to collaborate with and I have loved getting to work with them on stories this year. They have written a story for me as well on their blog which is full of amazing Barry and Sally content that you should all go check out! 

I hope you all have a safe and fun Christmas!

(Gif by @bensklaus​)

Prompt: An angst with a happy ending I love you confession with Barry and the reader. 

Outside it was snowing, inside you were pacing. Your bare feet sunk in the plush carpet of your childhood bedroom, wearing down as you wore a whole in the floor. You bit your nails, only breaking your pattern every few minutes to peak through the blinds. Your parents were asleep in their room as they should be at two in the morning but you couldn’t go back to sleep. 

Barry was gone. 

He’d been there when you’d gone to bed at midnight but by the time you woke up at one he was gone. You had no idea where. You were visiting your family for Christmas and as far as you knew he didn’t know anyone here. The rental car was gone from the driveway though and so was his cell phone which was going straight to voicemail. You didn’t know what to do. Call the police? Wake up your parents? Wait? For what? 

Headlights shown through the slats in the blinds making your heart stop. You rushed to the window and felt an overwhelming relief when it wasn’t a police car but yours and Barry’s rental car pulling back in your parents driveway and shutting off its lights. A tall, shadowy figure climbed out of the drivers side that you immediately recognized as Barry. The relief that you felt slowly melted with the heat of your anger coming over you. You shook your head and crossed your arms, stepping away from the window. 

Downstairs, you heard the front door open then softly shut followed by the sounds of his soft footsteps up the stairs and down the hall, getting louder as they got closer. Barry opened the door carefully, taking pains to keep quiet and not wake you. He shut it back behind him but paused when he saw you standing by the window, arms crossed and face hard. His entire body tensed. He’d been caught. 

“What the hell, Barry?” You whispered harshly trying to keep your voice restrained so you didn’t wake up the whole house. Your fear driven anger was clear though. 

Barry swallowed harshly, his adam’s apple bobbing up and down. A tight, restrained smile quickly covered his face though. “Y/N, what are you doing up?”

You blinked and looked at him like he was crazy. “What am I-? Where did you go at one in the morning on Christmas Eve?”

Barry swallowed harshly. His heart was pounding in his chest, he just needed you to let it go. He couldn’t tell you Fuches followed him here. He couldn’t tell you that even all the way out here he still couldn’t escape the life he was trying to bury. Not even all the way out here. Not even on Christmas. It always seemed to follow him. 

Barry took a deep breath and sighed, “I went for a drive.”

“A drive?” You repeated, crossing your arms. “In this snow?”

Barry laughed, “Yeah, I’m from Ohio, I’ve driven in snow before.” 

You gave him a look that said you weren’t in the mood for jokes. 

“I had another nightmare, I didn’t want to wake you, so I just went for a drive. I thought I’d be back before you woke up.” Barry walked forward and cupped your face softly in his rough, cold hands. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to worry you.”

You closed your eyes and leaned into his touch. Barry smiled gently and kissed your forehead. With a sigh you opened your eyes and tilted your head up to look at him. “Are you really gonna lie to me right now?”

Barry smile dropped, “What?”

“You can’t lie to me Barry. I know you better than anybody.”

Barry winced, his hands falling from your face. 

“I need you to be honest with Barry. For the love of God, just give me a straight answer!” You glanced at the door, “Where did you go tonight? Are you on drugs?”

“What?! No!” Barry took a step back from you, shaking his head like he couldn’t believe you would ever actually think that of him. “How could you even ask me that?”

“Then give me some answers here so I won’t have to. You disappear in the middle of the night and you won’t tell me where you go! And don’t act like this is the first time because we both know its not.” You brushed back your tears angrily.

Barry looked away guiltily, “It’s not drugs.”

“Okay,” You sighed, “Okay, then what is it? Please, Bar, I love you and I’m starting to feel like I’m losing my mind here. I can’t keep worrying about you every night!” You cupped his face in your hands, leaning up on your tiptoes to do so. 

There were still tears pooling in your eyes but they were quickly filling Barry’s now too. Barry paused, everything leaving his mind except for one thing. 

“You love me?” He repeated quietly as if he wasn’t sure you’d really said it. 

“Yes!” You almost laughed at how obvious it seemed, “I love you Barry Berkman which is why I can’t keep worrying about you all the time. Please, please, just talk to me.”

Barry was quiet as you grabbed his face between your hands, forcing him to look at you, because if he was going to lie again he would have to look in your eyes to do it. You could see the wheels turning in his brain. A million thoughts played through his head, too deep and too far for you to ever be able to read. You sighed, thinking he was shutting down on you, and slowly began to pull your hands from his face. Barry’s hands flew up and grabbed yours before you could move them though. He gripped your hands tightly in his, squeezing to keep you there in front of him. His blue eyes were glossy with tears that he tried to blink back in vain. 

“There’s this guy, this really bad guy that I use to know, when I was in the marines.” Barry swallowed harshly, trying to ease the lump in his throat but he didn’t break eye contact with you. He couldn’t or he would have lost his nerve completely. You stroked your thumb over his cheek to encourage him, hands still held to his face, covered by his own. “He’s just not a good guy, he does bad things and he drags people down with him and I don’t want to be a bad guy too Y/N. I don’t.” He closed his eyes, clutching your hands tighter. 

“You’re not a bad guy Barry.” You whispered, unsure of what else to say. 

Barry’s lips turned up in a small smile and he nodded. He opened his eyes back up and you tried to smile back at him. You took a deep breath, “What did he want from you Barry?”

“He wanted me to do a favor for him. I told him no but he came out here to try and convince me.”

Barry swallowed down his guilt as he watched you tense up, head immediately swiveling to look out the window where you could still see snow falling through the open blinds. It was all you could see through the pitch blackness outside. A cold chill ran down your spine. But Barry turned you back around to face him, shaking his head. 

“Hey, it’s okay. I took care of it, he’s not gonna bother us again.”

You looked between him and the window again, prompting Barry to walk across your small, childhood bedroom and pull the curtains closed. You crossed your arms nervously as you watched him. 

Barry turned back to you and nodded seriously, looking you in the eye when he promised, “I promise, we’re going to be okay alright? I’m not going to let anything bad happen.”

You swallowed but nodded, taking in the complete sincerity of his words. “Can we just go back to bed? Everyone’s going to be up in a few hours.”

Barry nodded, happy for the subject to be dropped and to climb back into bed with you. He kicked off his shoes and slipped out of his jacket and jeans while you climbed back under the covers and turned off the lamp by your bed. In the darkness, under the warm covers and huddled together in your small childhood bed, Barry let the tension release from his body and relaxed into the mattress. You rolled over onto your side and let your head rest on his chest, hearing his heartbeat through his tee shirt and smelling the lingering smell of laundry detergent, letting them both sooth you back toward sleep. With your eyes closed you didn’t see the soft smile on Barry’s face but you could feel his arm tighten around your back and his fingers running through your hair. His eyes caught the glowing numbers on the clock by your bed, 3:00 a.m. 

“Merry Christmas, Y/N.” He whispered in the dark. 

“Hmm, Merry Christmas Barry.” You whispered back. 

“Y/N?” His fingers stilled in your hair, rubbing small circles on your scalp. 

“Hmm?” You hummed in response. 

“I love you too.”

[frankchurchillsaysrelax]

I went into Netflix’s The Prom wary because having seen the Broadway show and knowing Ryan Murphy’s track record I knew how much of a trainwreck it could have been. I have some thoughts:

They certainly made some interesting character choices when it came to Emma. Please explain to me why she was SO smiley throughout everything. You don’t get to see the real anxiety and frustration she is going through at being at the center of this whole small town political movement. She smiles all the way through Just Breathe, she smiles at the news of the State Attorney getting involved, she smiles all the way through It’s Not About Me. Emma just wants to go to Prom and publicly dance with her girlfriend. Like the song says, that’s all she really wants. Being the center of attention causes her anxiety, being ambushed by the Broadway crowd overwhelms her. But none of that comes through in this adaptation because instead she is just smiling through everything (and at least until before the fake prom it’s an everything-will-be-fine smile not a don’t-let-them-see-you-cry smile). She even smiles during Alyssa Greene while she’s breaking up with her girlfriend. It’s weird.

Watching Keegan-Michael Key moon over Meryl Streep is possibly the most redeeming factor of this entire thing. I still say that Meryl is too big of a name for Dee Dee but the two of them have such wonderful chemistry that I almost can’t imagine anyone else in either role.

Cutting The Acceptance Song short was a crime. Whose decision was that?? Let those Godspell freaks fly their multicolor flags.

Emma’s grandmother is a joy and I’m so glad they included her. I wish we could have seen even more of her. 

James Cordon is horribly and distractingly miscast. I have many thoughts about James as an actor but I won’t get into that here. What I will say is that this is a story about giving gay people their chance and instead they cast a very straight man in the role and had him act like a borderline stereotype. It wasn’t as cringey as it could have been but it also wasn’t a believable performance either. I’m someone who strongly believes that you don’t necessarily have to be gay or out to play a gay character, (sexuality is fluid and personal and you should not have to define yourself just to prove you can play a part) but Barry is such a flamboyant character and his sexuality is such a defining part of the role that I just don’t think that James pulled that off. I will say though that the sequence between him and little Barry was the sweetest thing and made me tear up. On the other hand, the scene between him and his mom felt shoehorned in and rushed.

Nicole Kidman and her antelope legs can still get it.

Zazz was well done but it didn’t feel like the turning point that it is in the show because, as stated above, Emma’s anxiety and frustration and lack of interest in leading a movement isn’t portrayed properly in the first half. We don’t get to see that big moment when she decides that she is going to step out and tell her story and that she’s tired of being afraid. You miss her truly coming into her zazz.

Andrew Rannells deserved twice as much screen time as he got. Love Thy Neighbor had just as much energy as it did on stage and he and the kids brought so much fun to the movie when it was, frankly, starting to get a little slow. It almost felt like this song was also cut short but I think that’s just because I didn’t want it to end.

Unruly Heart was one of those quintessential Ryan Murphy moments that actually lands and makes him as successful as he is. Chills. Everywhere.

Overall I did enjoy the movie. The music and the story will always hold a special place in my heart and there were a lot of wonderful cinematic choices made that added to the fun and beauty of the story. 

[daisy--sorbet]

heyyy, hope you’re having a good night!! if you have the energy and feel okay answering, what’s up w taz graduation? i haven’t checked it out yet but i was thinking ab it. just asking bc you’re the first person i saw talk ab the show having serious issues, but also feel free to not answer this!! hope you have a good week!

i took a nice hot bath, had a strawberry kiwi capri-sun, and did a nice face mask and i’m feeling pretty good - so, y’know what anon? let’s talk about it. 

for anyone who likes taz grad who sees this post: it’ll be tagged with “taz grad hate” (although i feel hate is definitely a very strong word - it’s for the simplicity of tagging it) - so please block the tag if you don’t want to see this post (especially because i put a readmore on a post before and it didn’t show up on mobile and instead gave the full post). mobile tumblr has a tag blocking system, so please feel free to use it! i don’t mind haha

anyway, so this is... probably going to be a lost post, and i wanna go ahead and preface it: this absolutely isn’t any hate on the mcelroys themselves. i love the brothers and their dad a lot, and while i doubt any of them would ever see this (or have it sent to them, or shown to them, because im pretty sure they try to distance themselves from this sort of thing), i just want to make it clear that criticizing a product is different than bashing a person. which brings me to the point of if i do end up sounding as if im bashing someone - please call me out on it! it’s not my intention to target anyone.

with that said, let’s talk about this campaign.

so my problems are as thus: the railroading, the shipping (a fandom problem, but it’s present in the podcast), the NPCs, and some misc problems others have addressed better than i have.

which. i know. that’s basically the entire podcast. (i promise i’ll bring up some positive points to balance it all out). keep in mind i’ve only personally listened to... what, six episodes? and it was enough for me to drop it. some people dropped it first ep, some dropped it ep four, and others are still forcing themselves to listen.

the railroading

there was a time i could handle travis and his railroading [making sure the story goes exactly the way he has planned], because it was the very beginning of the podcast and that’s what you can kind of expect from a plot-heavy podcast. hell, i wouldn’t mind it if the interactions and goofs weren’t a huge part of why i listen to TAZ in particular (which, by the way, is why amnesty still stuck out to me - even if there was a direction griffin wanted to push them towards, the interactions between the players (or players and npcs) made up for any railroading). it’s kind of hard to not railroad a little when it’s story-heavy and you’re trying to built up a world that you’ve put a lot of thought into. however, a huge part of d&d is the spontaneity. 

it’s kind of why i think balance was so popular. while there was railroading towards the end, there was the presence of improv that made it all good. most mcelroy content is enjoyed because of the goofs. the magic brian moment is memorable. the jenkin’s fight still stands out because it was funny (albeit a result of some bad rolls). the boys teasing angus sticks out because the four would play well off of each other. even without that - griffin had talked about how he had to roll with things (the fact he had planned for a fight atop the train, but ditched the idea for what his family members came up with instead). even in amnesty, a couple moments that stick out to me still are ned with the jetpack taking out a pizza hut sign, and the scene with the water where jake was trapped inside. they aren’t as fun, but they still stand out as “things i didnt expect to really end the way they did.”

with grad, it’s just. one after another. the thundermen want to subpoena a xorn? cool, let’s run with that until actually the xorn gets fed rocks and goes home and who cares about the subpoena now. fitzroy wants to keep his cloak? lets talk about it for a while and you also get no rolls to even try to keep it. fitzroy goes to meet higglemas in his office? oh, why are you here fitzroy? im going to keep asking you until you answer fitzroy? you arent getting out of this scene until you answer me, fitzroy, so just tell me why you’re here already, alright, fitzroy? 

and even later in a episode i read a transcript of: hey argo, remember how you have this whole secret motivation? fuck you, im gonna talk about it here in your dream and reveal it to listeners and remove any tension you had building up, and you dont get a choice to talk about it because this all-knowing villain knows all about it :)

and even NOW in the latest episode, there’s a comment that “we should cap argo’s skills here” instead of just... making the checks higher. rogues are good at certain things and usually arent the best in battles. better hope argo never makes it to level 11, because who knows how people are gonna handle the fact that he gets a skill that’ll make it so certain skills can’t have a roll below 10 (reliable talent). 

(griffin, thankfully, calls travis out for that, but still - travis, why would you even imply that, considering you should be aware of how rogues work considering magnus multiclassed into rogue and you played one on tiny heist?)

and in the newest episode, their Big Bad chaos (which, god, i personally hate that name) straight-out says “dont do this” to the thundermen. travis tries to say, on twitter, “a character saying “dont do this” is different than me saying it” but i need to point out that it’s one thing if you’ve said “no” in character but worked with the PCs doing otherwise, but the railroading says differently.

the shipping

ill try to make this quick, because it’s nothing to do with the fandom (ship however you want, man) - but i really feel the need to draw attention to this.

fitzroy, as confirmed by griffin in a ttazz episode, is asexual. not aroace, but ace nonetheless. and i find it... troublesome that the idea of rainer and fitzroy having a relationship is still pushed nonetheless, despite the fact that fitzroy (to my knowledge) was never once shown to reciprocate any feelings. not to be that person, but i really hope that grad doesnt have any sort of romantic relationships in it (at least - not between NPCs and PCs unless they’re actually like... warranted?). 

i dont know, man. one of my closest friends is ace, and i know she wants a relationship, but i think it would reassure her a lot to see an ace character who isn’t pushed into one in case she ever changes her mind. someone once mentioned that they hope fi/tz/ra/in doesnt happen because theres relationships that have that “oh, you can just date” and it goes upwards there to “oh, you can have sex just to please them <3″  (which, to be honest, is kind of a gross mindset - if someone isnt interested, they arent interested).

also, uh, the TTAZZ where griffin states this, there’s kind of the mention tht the whole sexuality question was posed in relation to the episode “creative thinking” (the dream one i mentioned earlier) - which. uh. i don’t know if anyone caught this, but... rainer straight-up wrote fitzroy a letter in the dream like “are you going to accept my proposal? a girl doesn’t like to be left waiting” which. leaves me with some gross feelings because uh.

if... if the whole thing about fitzroys sexual orientation was addressed here, then why would you push your ship anyway? feels kinda iffy, man.

to which i want to say: fitzroy can date. he’s allowed to date. griffins allowed to do whatever he wants with his character. but when a lot of the flirting is met with nothing, i’m not gonna see the chemistry there. just because travis ships it doesn’t mean it’s canon.

the npcs

ah yes. lets talk about the npcs.

there’s... a lot. a lot a lot. i think travis trimmed down how many were present in a scene, but uh. there’s still a lot. and... uh... i kinda wish there wasn’t?

look, i know im going back to balance/amnesty, but just. hang in there for a moment. chill with me. vibe. 

balance didnt have too many NPCs present at all times in each mini-arc. gerblins had some big names like barry, klarg, gundren, killian, yeemick, and magic brian. rockport limited had angus, jess, graham the juicy wizard jenkins, and all of the tom bodetts mentioned. 

amnestys first arc had mama, barclay, jake, dani, pigeon, kirby, minerva, and that was about it for like. big names? and not all of them were present in each scene. 

in the first episode of grad alone: gary, hernandez, jimson, rolandus, zana, rhodes, buckminster eden, rainer, leon, tomas, hieronymous, higglemas, stuart, jackle, bartholomeus, mulligan, groundsy, germaine/victoria/rattles (the skeleton crew). and those are the ones i wrote down (minus groundsy, who i just. ignores. idk him).

like holy shit, my english prof got onto me for having too many characters in my first chapter and i didnt even have half the amount listed there! 

it’s just a huge cast. does this take place in a school? yes! theres bound to be a lot of students present - but you don’t have to name every single one of them, at least not in the first episode!

the miscellaneous

i don’t know if travis ever actually addressed it, but wheelchair users have actually like... said that rainer’s introduction bothered them, because she was like “please ask me abt my wheelchair :)” when travis saying she was in an ornate chair would have sufficed. 

uh. the colonization vibes people have discussed within the centaur arc. mentioned here, the replies here, and this post (and its replies) here as well.

the overall lack of d&d when the campaign was kind of advertised as a return to d&d if i remember correctly

also no one seems to be taking literally any criticism at all which like. ignoring the petty shit, sure, but people have stopped donating to taz and their listener-ship must have dropped some during this entire time - you’d think that maybe someone could say “we need to find out why people dont like the thing and fix the thing” consider this is. yknow. their livelihood.

anyway uhhh 

tl;dr: travis railroads way too much (even now), the shipping in-game has become pushy and gross (especially bc its shoving a relationship onto an asexual character), theres too many npcs that dont stand out well enough, and no ones taking any criticism about the major issues with grad. 

[frccdomfell]

So, this is only a little over 1600 words... I have a lot of people to thank.  I’ve had Stevie boy here for five months, but I’ve been around Tumblr rp for a long time and thought I’d take this opportunity to thank those of you that have been such lights this year. This year has been extremely hard for me for a number of reasons I won’t get into in this happy post! So, this is for those who were there for me this year:

My Main Peeps:

@liftingxrocks : firstly, i have to thank my incredible fiance. you were here every step of the way this year and it has made all the difference. i couldn’t have gotten through it without you and i’m so goddamn lucky i get to call you mine. proposing to you was easily the best thing i’ve ever done and when you said yes was the single best moment of my life. we met through rp and I love every character you try your hand at. thanks for being such a light in my life, babygirl. i love you.

@bytheanchor : b! you total fucking nerd. god, you’re the best! i’m so glad to call you my friend and you’re definitely one of my best online friends. you never fail to be positive and brighten my day. you’re so kind and encouraging. we talk practically every day. those two weeks you went away were SO BORING! i love all your characters so much, you know that. writing with you is easily one of my favourite past times. you are always just as excited and willing to write stuff as i am and i love it. thank you for being such an amazing friend.

@spitefulandspectacular : i mean you never check your tumblr notifications, but i don’t care. you were so important this year so you get a spot on the list. man, you were such a great roommate. we each had our things, but honestly i’m so happy my first real roommate was such a quality person. i miss ya like hell and can’t wait to see you real soon hopefully. thanks for being such a great friend and taking care of our boy. you’re a gem.

@mangohub : monroe, what can i even say? you’re such an incredible friend and i’m so thankful for you. anytime i’m dealing with anything you’re right there for me, ready to listen. i don’t think i’ve met a better writer in my entire life, no joke. i love your alec more than life itself and writing with you is always such a fulfilling experience. even jut plotting with you is so much goddamn fun. you’re such a bright and loving person. thanks for being one of the good things about my 2019.

@warricrsbcw : my mollee. hey hun. i just want to thank you for being such a stand up friend since we reconnected. you’ve been there for me every single time i’ve needed it and i hope i’ve been able to do the same. you’re such a sweet person and you deserve all the nice things. not to mention that i love your alec to hell and back! magnus would go to the ends of the earth for that boy.

@lcdgerbled : hayley, you are so awesome! I’m so lucky that when i left my magnus blog i was able to take you with me in a way. you’re such an insanely talented writer and an even better friend. you’ve been so great and always there if i need anyone to talk to about my ED. your natasha is perfect! steve adores her with his entire heart and wants to buy a place in a new york and have ten kids with her lol. thanks so much for making this year a little more bearable.

New Friends:

@divabarnes : so, you were actually the reason i remade my steve into a blog. he was just available on discord but you reignited my love for him. your bucky sparked my steve back to life and i can’t thank you enough. i love him so much. your writing is so in character and makes my jaw drop every time. i love writing with you (even though im slow and trash). thanks for everything you didn’t even know you did.

@ivorysatin : i know we haven’t known each other a super long time but i absolutely adore you! you’ve been so kind and friendly and you’re writing is PHENOMENAL! your magnus, anna and blair! i’m so in love with all your threads and verses. every time i see your blair i’m so tempted to remake my charles so you need to STOP! but, seriously, you’re such a friendly bean, thanks!

@semiistable : hello friend! so i know we literally just met like four days ago, but in that time i have totally fallen in love with your writing and you so freaking nice and chill. my steve is head over heels for your bucky, and writing with you never fails to make me smile. i hope we continue to be friends for a long time.

@mischieftomake : bonjour jas! so i’ve been dying to write a loki/steve pairing for so long but could never find anyone that clicked with my steve. and, i’m so lucky that the one who did also has such a phenomenal mun! you’re so much fun to plot with and to play around with what we want to do. i’m loving our soulmate verses so much! i hope we continue to become close in the new year!

@tcnystcrrk : thank you thank you thank you! i’m so happy we met and i feel so lucky to get to write with you. my steve just gravitates to your tony. you’re actually the only tony i’m properly active with. i just love plotting and writing with you. you’ve been so kind and excited and it’s made me so happy. i hope to write loads with you both ic and ooc in the new year. stay frosty.

@heyqxeens : beep boop. we don’t write a lot, and that’s mostly because i’ve been hella busy and whatnot. but, i love your peter. even without writing with you i’ve been heavily enjoying reading your other threads. honestly just the fact that you're on my dash makes a huge difference in my tumblr experience. also, we still need to do that thread where they both work at the bugle lol. hope your new year is full of fun.

@hcpefell : nyxie. again, i’ve been bad at keeping up bc life is super hectic right now but thank you so much for being part of the harder part of this year. the second half really took a lot out of me and meeting and writing with you really helped! i love how you write gwen and steve adores her. thank you so much!

Honorable Mentions: (a.k.a. those i stalk)

@stolenparticles : so hi! i’ve been following you since even before i had steve i believe. even when i never thought we’d write together (bc of the vastly different fandoms) i still needed to follow you. cassie is such an interesting and complex character and i love to see someone taking her and just running with it. i love to read all your threads on the dash, it’s always such a good time.

@stormweathered : we’ve chatted here and there, but i low key am IN LOVE with your characterization. your thor is so beautiful and on point! i read all of your answered memes when they show up because your writing is just so impressive. one day i’ll stop being a potato and actually get to work on saying a proper hello.

@kendolled : SOOOOO... i lowkey stalk your blog daily! you’re right up there with @ivorysatin making me want to remake charles. every single time i read your replies alli can see is mr. archibald. i swear, you encompass him so well. ive been rewatching gossip girl for the past seven months or so (bc im slow and easily distracted) and trust me when i say your nate is spot on! i read literally almost everything you post because it’s so perfect!

@spidaeyaunt : so i lowkey adore you. all the love and devotion you put into may is inspiring. i love reading your headcanons and i adore your threads with tonys and peters. but i think the big reason i follow you is your personality. i love seeing your ooc posts on the dash and your tags always make me laugh! keep it up, you cool cat.

@exposestruth & @smallvxlle : i grouped you together because i found you through each other. smallville was such a huge and important part of me growing up. it will forever be one of my top three shows. having both of you bring these characters to life has meant everything. makes me totally miss my ollie every time i read your individual threads. plus all the smallville gifsets on my dash make me SO HAPPY! 

@moqul : omg! your cat is FLAWLESS! i love reading your headcanons and your tags are always so freaking hilarious! i laugh so much whenever you’re on  the dash and it’s something i value so much. i love supergirl so much, i played kara for a while and i still play barry (since hes a cw super) and your cat is just perfect. i don’t think anyone else could do her the kind of justice you do.

@hakune : OH MY GOD!! your steve *holds chest* I just love him so much. you write so well and your passion for our boy comes through so clearly. i love reading your threads and just watching you interact on the dash is a blast. keep up the good work, fellow steve.

@madebythejungle : you are so fucking talented, wtf? to take such a cool and interesting character and just explode him into life is so impressive. i love reading your stuff whenever i come across it on the dash. one day i’ll get up the courage to actually come say hi, but until then have this little thank you. thank you for making my dash that much better.

[jade4813]

A Lie, Told Often Enough, Chapter 16

Author Notes: Inspired by @fallinginloveinaflash‘s AU prompt. All credit for the idea goes entirely to her.

Title: A Lie, Told Often Enough

Rating: NC-17

Synopsis: Iris just landed her dream job at a PR firm and her first assignment is reforming the bad boy image of celebrity artist Barry Allen. He’s overly cocky and well-known for being a playboy, but Iris has never met a challenge she couldn’t handle.

Chapters: 16/?

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

In the fuzzy, warm glow of that state between sleep and awake, Iris sighed and reached out for Barry, wanting to draw close to his warmth. Her brow furrowed with dismay when the back of her hand brushed found nothing but cold cotton where his body should be. The incongruous absence was enough to pull her out of her hazy dream, and she frowned slightly as she blinked into the morning light. She glanced at Barry’s side of the bed and sighed at the smooth, untouched blankets. Now that she was awake, she remembered that he was away on tour. He hadn’t slept next to her for over a month. It would be at least another month before he did so again.

Knowing there was no chance she would get back to sleep now, Iris arose and threw on a tattered old robe she’d found in Barry’s closet. It did little to ward off the morning chill, but she imagined it smelled like him, so wearing it made her feel better. She still wasn’t used to these long days spent without him, and she wondered if she would ever grow used to them again. Ignoring the tiny voice that reminded her she would have to do so once this charade was over, Iris headed into the kitchen for some coffee before grabbing her laptop and preparing to start the day.

As she had every day for the past month, Iris immediately searched for updates on Barry’s tour. Not long ago, she would have done so to see how her PR strategy was working. Now she did so because she missed him. She would never tell him that this online perusal felt like her only tether to his present life. Although they exchanged texts during the day when he had the free time to do so and he called her before taking the stage every night, she was careful to keep her tone upbeat, her questions general, letting him drive the conversation. She tried not to let him know how much she missed him, telling herself that she didn’t want to make him feel bad for being gone so long. But, of course, she was also scared that she would say too much and betray her feelings for him.

BARRY ALLEN DISHES ON MUSIC, LOVE, AND HIS BAD BOY IMAGE AFTER SOLD-OUT CONCERT IN CHICAGO

The headline was the first to pop up when Iris searched for Barry’s name, so she clicked on the link and started to scan the text. It wasn’t long before she saw her name.

“The star, notoriously reluctant to talk about his personal life, opened up about his recent engagement to fashion icon and burgeoning philanthropist, Iris West. When asked about the criticisms regarding the speed of his engagement, he admitted, “I suppose some people might think it was fast, but if you ever met Iris, you would understand. She’s the most amazing person I’ve ever met. I didn’t expect to fall in love with her, you know, when we first met, and now I realize I never thought I could love someone as much as I love her. I know it probably sounds cheesy, but she makes me want to be the best person I can be. She grounds me. Like a lightning rod. And from the day we met, I’ve carried her with me. She’s in every song I write and – okay, I’m embarrassing myself now, aren’t I? You can tell me if I am. I just miss her, you know?”

When asked what it’s like to be on the road for so long, he explained, “It’s exhausting, of course, but there’s no better way to get out and meet my fans. I always meet such incredible people on the road. This time, though, every stop on the tour is one step closer to getting home to [Iris].”

Iris smiled, lingering on the word “home.” She wanted to believe his words were true and not just pretense, all part of the charade. She wanted him there with her. With a sigh, she tore her attention from the article to look at her schedule for the day. She was supposed to attend an event for charity that evening, which would not only allow her to network for Mason but would help her bring attention to a worthy cause. But when she checked on the details, she saw in e-mail in her inbox informing her that, due to an extensive kitchen fire at the venue the evening before, the event was being postponed.

As soon as she read the words, she flipped back to her calendar again, her breath catching in her throat. When she saw her schedule was free until the following evening, she grinned and almost bounced up and down in her chair as she searched for airline flights. For a moment, she considered texting Barry to let him know she was coming but decided in the end that it would be more fun to surprise him.

Her flight booked, Iris raced to the bathroom to shower and pack for her upcoming trip. She couldn’t wait to see the look on Barry’s face – or to fall asleep in his arms once more.

The roar of the crowd washed over him, and Barry bounced his weight onto his toes, throwing open his arms as he threw a grin towards his sea of fans. There was so much about touring that he hated. But these moments on stage – when the cheers and roaring excitement seeped into his skin, making his heart pound and his blood race – made the bad food; antiseptic, impersonal hotel rooms; and the endless, grueling hours on the road almost made it all worth it. If only he didn’t miss Iris so much that his longing was a physical ache.

“How is everyone tonight?” he yelled into the microphone as he strummed the first note to kick off that evening’s set. The crowd roared again, and he bowed his head and began to play. The song ended, and he started to joke with the audience until his bass player caught his attention and nodded offstage with a smile. Confused, Barry followed his gaze, his heart skipping a beat when he saw Iris.

She was dressed in torn jeans and a t-shirt from one of his old shows, pilfered from his bottom drawer. When he caught her eye, she threw him a cheeky smile and a wave. Barry stopped his story mid-word, tempted to race to her side. Instead, he turned to the audience and said conspiratorially, “You’ll have to excuse me, but it looks like my fiancée has decided to surprise me.” The crowd cheered, and he threw them a smile and then looked back at her and tossed his head, silently inviting her to join him onstage. She narrowed her eyes and shook her head.

“I think she’s shy,” he murmured into the microphone, eliciting laughter from the crowd. “Maybe she needs a little encouragement?” The crowd roared, but Iris didn’t move. “If I play a song for her, do you think I can convince her to come out here to give me a kiss?” He glanced at Iris again and she laughed and stuck her tongue out at him. “But what should I play?” he asked, his eyes locked on hers.

Iris lifted her eyebrows and threw him a teasing grin, and he lifted one arm, encouraging the crowd to shout suggestions. But they only suggested his songs, and he was afraid that would somehow reveal too much, that she would realize how much of her was in his songs if he sang them to her. The audience quieted when he grabbed the stool nearby and perched on the edge. Throwing his band a slight shake of his head to let them know not to play along, he began to strum his guitar and turned so that he could watch Iris as he sang softly into the microphone.

“When the rain is blowing in your face, and the whole world is on your case, I could offer you a warm embrace. To make you feel my love.” He threw Iris sheepish look, hoping she liked the song, and saw that she was biting her lip, shifting her weight back and forth. He continued, “When the evening shadows and the stars appear, and there is no one there to dry your tears, I could hold you for a million years. To make you feel my love.”

Iris didn’t tear her eyes from his as she stepped forward. A slight murmur arose from the crowd when she appeared onstage, but it was muted quickly as though they were afraid of ruining the moment.

“I know you haven’t made your mind up yet, but I would never do you wrong. I’ve known it from the moment that we met. No doubt in my mind where we belong.”

Iris stopped a few feet away, and Barry stood. His band started to play softly as he lifted the guitar over his head and placed it aside. Then he stepped closer to her, his mind only on her as he continued to sing.

“I’d go hungry, I’d go black and blue. I’d go crawling down the avenue. There is nothing that I wouldn’t do. To make you feel my love.” He lifted a hand and brushed her hair back, stroking the soft skin of her cheek as he continued, “The storms are raging on a rollin’ sea and on the highway of regret. The winds of change are blowin’ wild and free. You ain’t seen nothin’ like me yet.” He drew her into his arms, pulling her tight against him, and she curled her arms around his neck and melted into him as he finished his song, his voice barely above a whisper.

He could have been singing to her alone, and it was only the presence of the microphone that spoiled the image and made his voice carry across the crowd. “I could make you happy, make your dreams come true. There is nothing that I wouldn’t do. Go to the ends of the earth for you. To make you feel my love.”

As the song ended, he bent, bracing her with his arms as he lowered her into a deep dip. His mouth crushed against hers, and the roar of the crowd pressed against them like a physical weight. The roar grew louder the longer they kissed, but Barry barely noticed. His heart lighter just having her in his arms, he finally put her back on her feet. Pressing his forehead against hers, he shrugged out of his trademark coat and slung it over her shoulders, whispering, “Baby, I missed you so much.”

Later, after returning home, to her loneliness and her responsibilities, Iris would close her eyes and relive the feeling of Barry’s arms around her. His lips against her skin. His song as it washed over her. She would remember how he sang the words like he meant them, and how he looked when he came to her after the show, his hair damp with sweat.

She was waiting for him in his dressing room backstage. In a moment of impulse, she’d stripped out of her clothes, dressing herself in nothing but one of the towels he so hated as she waited for him. It was barely enough to cover her chest, tantalizing glimpses of skin peeking through the folds. As the door slammed behind him and he reached behind his back to lock it, his gaze swept over her. Then, in two long slides, he was across the room, lifting her into his arms. He stepped forward and pressed her against the wall, sliding a thigh between her legs to hold her in place as she tore his shirt over his head.

“You’re right,” he growled, yanking the towel open until it fell on the floor at their feet. “I love these towels.” And then his mouth was on hers, his hands caressing her skin, his head bowing as he licked the soft swell of her breasts.

They made love there, against the wall, their hands and mouths desperate as they held each other. She moaned when he moved inside her, willfully losing herself in his touch. She tightened her legs around him, rolling her hips to meet his thrusts. Gasping his name into his ear in lieu of the words she didn’t dare say.

When she first returned home, she would think of those moments when she was alone in his bed, trailing her hands over her body and pretending that they were his. Later, she would try not to think of them, cursing her memory and her imagination, that she could no longer separate fantasy from recollection.

She would also try and fail not to think about the next morning. Their sleepy embrace when she awoke in his arms, never wanting the moment to end. Greedy for each other, they made love all morning, only reluctantly stopping when she realized she would miss her plane.

When she grabbed her bag and headed for the door, he stepped behind her and wrapped her in his arms, ducking to press a kiss against the side of her neck. As she lifted her hand to run her fingers through his hair, he murmured against her skin, “Listen. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and I think...when I get back, we should talk. About our future. There’s something I-I need to tell you.”

Alone in the dark, she would dwell on those words, mulling over the weight of them. Whispering them in the night to feel how they tasted in her mouth. She wondered at his tone, imagining pauses and emphasis where there had been none.

“I think we should talk,” she whispered into her pillow. Had he stressed that word, a dramatic portend of what was to come? Had she been so blind, so giddy to be in his arms that she’d missed it? Or was her mind playing tricks on her now that she realized what he had meant? “About our future? About our future?”

She groaned, pressing the pillow against her mouth the muffle the sound. She had mulled over those words, weighing them over and over in her mind, until she could no longer remember just how they had been spoken. But did it really matter?

It didn’t. Because the next time she saw him, he broke her heart.