#the most embarrassing part? I have. loads more art of them I’ve never posted

[lethality-of-dual-strike]

NO WAYYY PIXIE TRUTHER HIVE MIND we love to see it!!!

my twt alt is @/LatenightXavs (my main account is also linked) but be warned I’m unhinged there sometimes sahgdjsksn my recent HP stuff has him with Sanderson, AC, and Cupid. ALSO there’s another hp appreciator I’ve rt recently their art makes me go feral you’ll see what I mean

“ah…he’s so handsome 💜” *balding old cone-dome*

I drew pinups up the mf last night I need to be publicly executed

[mchalowitz]

the woman is the king

summary: a throughline of the matriarchal scullys; be they ethereal, sharp-witted, and ill-omened. 

this is a revamped version of my unfinished wip chain reaction. some of it will be familiar but don’t worry, there’s plenty that’s brand new. it’s been a minute and i wanted to give the idea what it deserved. i’m hoping to post a new part every friday for the month of october! so with that we have

part 1: melissa

----------

Her door is barely open enough for a hushed conversation.

“It’s Friday night, Mulder.”

Scully keeps attempting to have a separation between work and home. After the underwhelming experience with Rob, she is sure Mulder is aware of this; that she wants to have a semblance of a personal life, even if she is dedicated to their cases. He is making it prove difficult, with his work and his interests so intertwined. It never ends.

“I know, but these reports just came through,” he insists. “You need to see them before…”

A cacophony of flatware and curse words comes from the kitchen. Scully continues to stare up at him, unperturbed, but Mulder’s eyes flash upward over her head. Behind his eyes, he is creating a story; putting together puzzle pieces that do not exist. 

“Got a date in there, Scully?”

A female voice, its volume raising in comparison to the muttered expletives, calls, “Dana, is that the pizza?” 

“My sister,” she corrects. 

Scully has seen Mulder reserved in the face of criticism, but he seems sheepish, maybe even embarrassed, at the idea that his obsessive nature was exposed to this audience. She finds the bashfulness radiating from him to be endearing in a boyish sort of way.

He gives her the stack of papers held together with a binder clip. Not one of the small ones, no, one of the big ones meant for thick analysis that will take an entire weekend to sift through. “Just look them over when you get a chance,” he tells her.

She nods, and when the door is shut, Melissa appears behind her like a graceful apparition. “Working on a weekend,” she marvels. “Sounds like someone else I know.”

“Shut up.”

“Are you going to ask him out?”

Scully turns away, retrieving her wallet from her purse, and starts counting out bills for their soon-to-arrive dinner. “It isn’t like that with Mulder, our relationship is professional,” she babbles. “I already got caught up dating in the bureau before and people that really matter in the FBI are finally starting to see my value after two years of paying my dues at the Academy, I’m not going to jeopardize my future by consorting with my partner.”

"Consorting?” Melissa retorts. “Come on, Dana, be honest. If he were just a guy on the street, would you?”

She thinks. Mulder is ambitious, brilliant, and has an unrivaled sense of humanity. His dedication is frighteningly thrilling. It gives her an enthusiasm to strive for more.

Scully realizes the list could go on. Mulder’s positive qualities are more than can be said about most of the men she’s been involved with and in only a short amount of time knowing him.

Yes, she probably would. If he were just any guy.

The doorbell rings.

“No.”

--

Exiting the elevator, Mulder has anticipation in his step. His keys are already out and he hopes he’s beaten Scully to the door. It’s her first day back in the office.

And after interviews, and doctor’s approvals, and signatures, she’s been fully cleared to be back in the field. Fearing desk duty or reassignment, both of them are quietly ecstatic that they can pick up their work.

He nearly jumps when he sees a flash of copper in front of the door. Damn. But then he notices it’s attached to an unfamiliar head on a taller body. It’s Melissa.

“How did you get down here?” he asks, no introductions. Melissa steps aside so he can unlock the door. He invites her in with a wave of his hand.

“You would be surprised how far you can get with some kind words and a good explanation,” Melissa says. She runs his hand over the books on top of a filing cabinet. She looks over her shoulder at him. “Something to consider for the future, Mulder.”

He continues to stare.

“I told security I had an appointment with you. No one argued,” she smiles, almost amused with herself. “Dana tells me we��re very similar. With all of our ‘wild ideas.’ You know what wild ideas I have, Fox? The concept that my sister can go to work and no one has to worry that they’ll never see her again.”

Scully knows the risks of the job, Mulder wants to say. Do you really think I get a vote on the decisions she makes?

“I care about Dana.”

“Then you’ll go easy on her.”

He nods, even though it’s a lie. He wants it to be the truth. The question isn’t whether he’ll go easy on her or not. He already knows, and he believes Melissa does too, that Scully will only push harder if he tries to lighten her load.

When Melissa leaves with a warning glare, Mulder shuffles papers until Scully arrives with Dr. Pierce. He promises himself that he will not be compelled by whatever this guy presents to him. Above all else, they will not take this case.

Listening to the tale of something possibly wandering around in temperatures of 130 degrees, he repeats not interested to himself, even though he is really, really interested.

“I want to work.”

He reminds himself of his conversation less than an hour ago.

Lead investigator is not a title Mulder takes that seriously. He has never been able to successfully sway Scully in her beliefs and pulling the authority card doesn’t seem like a tactic that would go over well. And while it’s a fact he will keep to himself, in her absence, he sees how utterly incompetent he can be without her.

He’s got an angel and a devil on his shoulders, two dueling Scully sisters. He suggests time off anyway.

“I’ve already lost too much time,” she replies. Oh, that guts him. She knows how easily convinced he can be with some good poetic phrasing.

It won’t be a very intense case. Probably just watching that same footage, giving some opinions on the evidence. It’ll end up being something they can toss to another, more equipped agency. The explanation soothes him enough to not block the door when Scully leaves to pack a bag.

Lying in a month-long quarantine, he has a lot of time to wonder by what means Melissa Scully will kill him.

--

Mulder toes the line between agnosticism and fairweather judaism; a fact that Scully has always respected, and never pushed back against. 

He normalizes empty pews and suspicious clergymen. The sea of mourners for Melissa Scully is a foreign sight. 

Guilt feels like a target on his back and he hopes no one will shoot the proverbial arrow, hoping for a bullseye. Or maybe he does. 

He sits right behind the reserved row and his eyes follow Scully as she walks gracefully up the aisle. She once described her sister as ethereal to him, a gossamer darling, but in her sorrow, it is she, it is Dana, that is the diaphanous messenger of all that is holy and light in the dark.

Scully doesn’t acknowledge him as she sits. He averts his eyes when he briefly meets the eyes of Mrs. Scully. Behind her crow’s feet and unwaveringly maternal gaze, he sees Dana, he sees Melissa.

The priest tells the legend of Melissa Scully that Scully never divulged to him. She studied anthropology at Brown and spent two years on an archeological dig in Peru. In her thirty-three years, she lived in four different countries, but felt a special connection to her teenage years in California. It is possible she cared more for her community than for herself, she appreciated art in all of its forms, and she loved writing letters to her beloved sister, Dana, while she was away at medical school.

Almost imperceptibly, Mulder sees the sharp raise of her shoulders, the sudden intake of breath. Her hand covers her mouth. He reaches forward and places his hand on her shoulder. She lays her hand over his. 

“The dynamic presence of Melissa Scully is a gift to the Lord,” the priest finishes. “Let us bow our heads in silent prayer.” 

Mulder wonders how Scully even allows his presence in the same space as her, allows him to breath the same air when they both know he is the reason her sister is dead. This stupid, this idiotic pursuit of his, that ruins lives with no remorse, and yet he remains powerless to surrender. 

[imagineclaireandjamie]

Shielded. Chapter Four

Happy Sunday all, back to the usually scheduling this week. I hope you enjoy the next week of lockdown with Jamie and Claire <3 Mod MBD.

Anonymous said to imagineclaireandjamie: 

It does not matter what you bear, but how you bear it. [Seneca]

CHAPTER FOUR: WEEK TWO - Home and Away.

As Monday rolled around again, the weekend having passed by in a blur, Claire sat at the breakfast table with a fresh cup of coffee in her hands. Having ventured down during the day on both Saturday and Sunday, she had hoped to bump into Jamie and pass on her thanks to his generosity but he had been out before sunrise each day and she had been asleep before he’d returned home.

Resolute, however, she chose to spend her day downstairs and hopefully get something on for dinner before he came back so she could at least start the week off right.

Fate, however, wasn’t on her side. By 10pm, with the lasagne tucked away, wrapped in foil, in the fridge, she covered her mouth with a yawn and pulled herself up the stairs to bed.

The crash and smashing of a glass bought her out of her sleep as the clock beside her bed clicked over to 3am. Pulling herself from beneath the sheets, she crept downstairs, eager not to scare him as she approached the kitchen.

“Couldn’t sleep?” She asked, knowing full well he had only just returned home.

He was stood by the sink, cold lasagna on the countertop and his mucky boots still on his feet. With the fork held to his mouth, he smiled as he took another bite of the pasta, chewed and then shook his head. “I havena ever been the best sleeper but it’s lambing season, aye? One of them got into bother and I couldna leave her until I knew she was safe.”

“And she made it?”

“Aye. I was luckier tonight than I was at the weekend.”

“Oh, dear...that doesn’t sound good.”

“It’s the job, I’m afraid. If I didna lose at least a handful a year I’d be shocked.”

It was the first real (and longest) conversation they’d had since she’d arrived and she was suddenly grateful for the company. He was calm, grounded and relaxed in the way a lot of city dwellers weren’t. She could tell in the slump of his shoulders that it didn’t matter how long and awkward his day was, how messy or how little sleep he had gotten the night before, he was still weightless almost, free of the constraint modern living brought to most.

“I wanted to say thank you,” she broke in, remembering the reason she’d half-blindly stumbled down in the middle of the night, “you’ve been so amazing - to get me materials for a garden, that’s...above and beyond the call of duty.”

“Ach,” shaking his head, he finished the last of his supper, balled the tin foil up and placed it in the bin, “dinna fash yersel’ about that. It’s no’ a problem.”

He was embarrassed, she could tell. Abashed, his accent had become incredibly thick and almost impossible to understand. But it was quiet enough here that there was no background noise to blot out his sentence and luckily she didn’t have to ask him to repeat himself.

“Well, nonetheless,” ignoring the slight reddening of his cheeks she continued, “I am very grateful to you. For everything.”

With nothing more to say between them, she waved, smiled and backed off, feeling strangely pleased with herself for breaking the silence between them. Hopefully, she thought as she climbed the stairs back to her room, there would be some evenings in the future when they could eat together and she could show her appreciation by making him something warm and fresh.

-- --

By mid-week, she had yet to see Jamie again. His work was intense, and yet, despite that, he had still managed to begin construction of her tiny garden.

In her haste she had forgotten that she wasn’t allowed outside the house and, as she’d watched the greenhouse foundations being laid, she had become almost inconsolable about the fact that she probably wouldn’t get the chance to tend to any of the produce grown in it.

She knew, however, that safety was more important than new hobbies and she chose, instead, to make detailed lists of the daily needs of each of the seeds and plants Jamie had procured for her.

She started with the tomatoes and grapes, which needed to be contained within the glass walls in order to collect enough light and heat to survive. She noted water levels, soil PH and balance and daily rituals which would need to be abided by in order for the best crop to be formed. It filled most of her days and when the sun went down, she’d swap her notepad for the computer as she researched all the differences she might see in her fruit and veg determined all by the way they were treated as they grew.

Though she had never been an artist, she started to search for youtube videos on how botanical art could be created. Having no coloured pencil crayons or watercolours, she stuck to pencil sketches and began to leave more post-it’s, this time with future predictions on what the garden might produce for the household.

Once again Jamie enjoyed coming home. There had only been a few days lapse in her communications but when he didn’t see her for days, it was the one thing he could rely on to buoy his spirits.

They were different, in so many ways, but on a subconscious level, he pondered to himself at night as he held the drawing of some rare cabbage in his hands, Jamie felt as if they had very many similar quirks. He’d been pleased that his idea to leave her be for as long as she needed had been a success and was grateful she felt at home enough to reform her life around his. Her asking for the garden made him realise how easy it might be for someone else to fit into his own life without causing him much grief.

It was only a small thing, but to him it had made a huge difference. Having lived alone for so long, he had almost forgotten how malleable people could be. Though, he thought as he rifled around in the fridge for more pre-made meals, he had probably just gotten lucky with Claire.

The thought also occurred to him that she had been inadvertently raised more suited to this life than her old one, but he didn’t know enough about her to advance on the notion.

It wasn’t until late on Thursday when they came face to face together. After another heavy day and late night, Jamie finally toe-ed off his work boots at nearly midnight and made his way, quietly, through to the kitchen.

He had not expected to nearly bump straight into Claire has she dished up what looked like a very tasty stir fry.

“I thought you might be sick of reheating pasta dishes, so I thought I’d try and wait for you this time.”

“Ye didna have to, it’s very late.” He scratched the back of his neck bashfully, even she couldn;t find the truth in his words and she smiled as she placed a fresh bottle of soy sauce in the centre of the table. “But this does smell delicious.”

“It’s taken me a few attempts to hone it, but I’ve been practicing most evenings this week to try and get it perfect, flavour as well as how long I need to cook the veg for.”

“What’s the meat?” He asked, watching as his stomach rumbled audibly.”

“I used the duck, I hope you don’t mind. I used chicken earlier in the week but I couldn’t seem to get it as tender as I wanted it and a few forums online suggested that duck might be a better substitute if I wanted meat with a bit more moisture.”

“Perfect. Use any meat you want from the freeze, for anything. Honestly, I forget most of the time what I’ve got in there.”

Placing several bowls filled with various meats, vegetables and sides, she went back to the sink to wash the remaining stickiness of her hands before beckoning him to start without her. “I had hoped you weren’t saving anything for a special occasion.”

“Ach, I think the virus has put pay to anything like that for a while,” he began, filling his plate with noodles, duck and beansprouts, “my sister - she lives in Canada now - had planned a summer visit, but we’re no’ sure of anything at the moment.”

“Is she the one in the photo,” Claire enquired, taking a mouthful of her own concoction and swallowing back the relief when it tasted nice - a mixture of sweet and savory that wasn’t as overpowering or as dry as it had been earlier on in the day when she’d made the first of the final tests. “The one with brown hair?”

“Aye, she is. Her partner, Ian, got a job out there a few years ago and they emigrated. We talk as often as we can on Skype and FaceTime but it’s become sporadic recently wi’ my erratic work hours. She’s a nurse, ya see, and works odd shift patterns too. But we try and keep in touch at least once a month.”

“Do you miss her?”

“I didna really think about it, we were close....until we werena. Then they moved away and I fell into a new routine.”

He had begun to speak without thinking, filling up the silence with answers to her questions as they ate in between conversation. He had, though, had the forethought to stop before giving too much away. The thought hurt his heart and he had to inhale between a bite of his dinner to gather himself back up. He knew, given time, that he would be alright with sharing his past (as he hoped she would be with hers) but tonight wasn’t the night for revelations.

Sensing his reluctance to continue, she moved on, understanding that she herself wasn’t in a place to open up about her own family life.

“I can imagine Skype is about the only way most are communicating at the moment.” Sighing, she started to collect the empty dishes and load the dishwasher. “I’m quite grateful, actually, that I don’t have anyone to keep in touch with. It’s all...quite scary.”

It was the first time Jamie had consciously thought about the pandemic, being cut off from the outside world had its benefits and he felt relieved that he could separate himself from the constant barrage of news that he supposed others would be exposed to. He realised that both he and Claire were unique now, part of a smaller section of society where being remote was almost a blessing rather than a curse.

“If you ever need to talk, lass,” standing, he helped to clean up the remaining mess from dinner, his hand almost brushing against hers as he wiped the countertop down, breaking only to hover for a second before returning to his job, “ye know where I am. Please dinna think you have nobody...if yer concerned, aye?”

“Thank you Jamie.” Pulling her fleece cardigan across her chest she walked slowly to the kitchen door, pausing for a second in the doorway just to make sure she’d left nothing out to go cold and mouldy overnight. “The same to you. I’m a good listener, I promise, if you ever need to talk, or if you need any help.”

She’d been thinking about his life on the farm for a few days now, watching the rolling hills out of her window, seeing the sheep and cattle on the horizon and -very occasionally- seeing the silhouette of him roaming his land. There was little she could do from indoors, she knew, but there had been chores around the house that she could potentially complete. Putting herself to task, she had learned new basic kitchen skills but only this morning she’d noticed the beginnings of a hole on the seam of his trousers as they dried on the rail in the courtyard and she thought it might be something she could tend to...should he be alright with it.

Leaving with the quiet settling calmly between them, she noted the relaxing of the muscles in his face as he smiled and nodded as she turned and carried herself to bed.

Resting against the faux-marble worktop, Jamie closed his eyes as he waited for the soft slam of her bedroom door before he followed her up. She just might, he thought to himself as he undressed himself, taking a towel from his radiator and making his way to the shower, be better equipped for this life than I am.

[oftenderweapons]

The Calm After the Storm - maknae line

Pairing: maknae line member x reader

Wordcount: 1.1-1.2k words each 

Genre: smut, fluff

Rating: 18+

Hello jell-o to everyone again! I usually try to publish by Sunday night but it’s exam season so I’m a bit busy with uni. Also, Jin’s part was super difficult to start but then boom, it turned out to be the longest, so every delay is due to that and I refuse to postpone again so I’m publishing it unedited. Might reread in a couple days and actually edit the post. Every piece is about 1100-1200 words (they’re getting longer and longer!)

The original theme for the week was going to be aftercare, but me being a chaotic mess made me go a little bit wilder than just aftercare. I tried to adjust every scenario to how each boy would approach intimacy with his partner, and how each couple would recover from different types and degrees of interaction, It also depends a lot on the kind of ideal girlfriend I imagine for each of the boys.

TRIGGER WARNINGS: ahem. It’s very descriptive, some parts more than others. So, let’s get this started. Oral sex galore (highly recommended if you’re a fan of being eaten out yay!) crude language, unprotected sex within a safe and established relationship (please be careful guys, use condoms and dental dams I can’t recommend it enough), voyeurism, overstimulation, biting, spanking, some bold PDA, cockwarming (you know who that is), sex toys (more specifically ben-wa balls), slight angst/insecurity/trauma due to toxic masculinity

Member disclaimers: Jimin is a brat and we all know it, can actually dom but need aftercare afterwards, I love him loads, he’s my squishy and I’m gonna protect him for life. Taehyung is an art freak and an overall freak whoa yeah, let’s move on (also, Where, When and How pt.2, The Return of The Sex Toys). JK goes from soft boy to hard dom to soft boy again in 0.2 seconds and I still don’t know why or how. He’s young and wants some fun and loves his girlfriend because she’ll always embrace his softer side and have fun with his naughtier/playful side. Enjoy!

Here you can find the hyung line

And here you can find my masterlist 

Jimin

“Who’s been a good girl?” He teased, the tip of his sex resting on your entrance.

“I have.” You beamed, satisfaction filling your voice as he smiled down at you, his spare hand gently reaching for your cheek, caressing your face and slipping his thumb in your mouth. 

“You have, my princess, indeed.” He pushed the tip inside. It was the loveliest shade of pink, pillowy and thick where it attached to the shaft. You knew it very well since you love looking at it and you were just done having it in you mouth for almost forty minutes. You had provoked him endlessly, keeping him on your tongue without moving, just the tip laying there, your lips wrapped delicately around it. No suction, no friction, just there. In the meantime his hand had started toying with the hem of your panties, finally moving them aside, letting one of his fingers rub on your skin. 

“Please, Jimin. I’ve been so good.” You dragged your vowels as you breathed out, getting adjusted to the feeling of him inside you. His size was all you needed, not too much and not too little. His dick was the most beautiful you had ever seen, the colour, the texture and the dimensions making it look so pretty you didn’t feel the usual embarrassment or fear that you usually felt while approaching your previous partners. 

“It’s all yours, love.” He said with a small grunt. He got relatively more quiet and whiny as he kept pushing in and out of you, staying close to you, the position so intimate you felt like he was becoming your whole world, his hips working their magic on you. 

“Are you gonna cum for me, princess?” He asked, his hips keeping up the pace.

“Yeah, so close.” You gritted out of your closed teeth.

“Good.” He moved his mouth to your chest, your left nipple engorged in his pretty pout. 

“A little faster, please.” You asked.

“Such nice manners. You aren’t giving me any reason to punish you, princess. Such a good girl.” He praised you again. 

This kind of role reversal didn’t happen very often, but sometimes Jimin liked taking care of you, reminding you that he is both your boy and your man. That he can be whatever you want him to be. He needs to feel like you could never do without him. You addressed this sense of inadequateness of his, every now and then, reassuring him and helping him state his own self and his needs. 

“Do you like it? That I’m doing exactly what you want me to?” You asked, but you both knew you were asking whether he felt like being harsher and punish you. 

“You like obeying me, pet?” He asked, his voice dripping in sugar as he pronounced your nickname.

“I love you, Jimin.” You said softly.

He almost mewled at that, reassured by how that sentence, that feeling meant that he was at your own level, how much of a praise it was to be your equal, to be strong enough to match you, to own you. 

“Are you close?” He asked, his thrusts becoming more intense. “I want to take you from behind but if you’re close I can keep going.”

“From behind, please.” You squealed, already eager to change position. 

He grinned and slipped out of you, the shift happening so quickly you felt a bit dizzy when you realised your face was pressed on the pillow, your ass up in the air as he entered you again. He started slamming into you his hands pressing your ass against his hips, the sound warning you that the whole attitude had changed too. 

“You like it like this, princess? You like getting it all dirty and rowdy?” He groaned, his voice anything but his usually loving and obedient self.

You emitted a muffled ‘yes’ as your hand reached your clit. 

“You touching yourself, ____?” He said, using one hand to turn your face towards him. “You better come quick or else you’ll have to lick me till I’m hard again. You’re not gonna cum without my cock inside you, understood?”

“Yes, sir.” The title riled him up enough to get his pace a bit faster, sending you miles deep into pleasure.

His cry echoed yours, signaling his own orgasm. After taking a couple deep breaths he slipped out of you, removing the condom and getting rid of it quickly. He was in your arms again a couple seconds later, laying by your side, one leg entwined around yours, his arms hugging your middle, his head nuzzling in between your breasts. 

“You alright sweetie?” You asked. 

“I feel so good when I see you that happy. Fills me with joy.” He kissed your breastbone, then, as you lifted his chin with your forefinger, he pressed his lips to yours.

“Do you need anything? Some water? A snack? Shall we get in the shower?” You caressed his hair back, looking at how sweaty he was.

“A shower would be amazing. But I want you close.”

“Would you prefer a bath?” You kissed his forehead. He was all small smiles and fidgeting with your fingers. 

“Yes, please.”

“Such manners, always so perfect.” You almost snickered at the contrast between him right now and the man he’d been a few minutes ago. 

“Let’s go.” You said, sitting up before he got too tired to get out of bed. “You look amazing, babe.” You couldn’t help but comment, looking at him sprawled on the covers. 

He smiled, his pupils disappearing behind his crinkled lids, then he stood up, thinking whether he should wear something or not and feeling insecure for a second, but then following your cue he decided to stay naked. 

As you slipped into the tub you let him slide in with his back against your chest, hugging him to you, your nose nuzzling the top of his head. “Is it to your taste?” 

“Yes, thank you babe.” He replied. “I really like your bath soap.” He yawned, smiling some more as you caught him. He looked ten times lovelier right now. You felt that fuzzy feeling in your stomach intensifying, and you began rubbing the tense muscles on his back out of fondness and gratitude. “That's truly amazing.”

“You are truly amazing.” You kissed his nape and continued with your caregiving, washing his hair, rinsing him, helping him out of the shower, drying him and applying some lotion over his skin, smiling at him with your eyes through the reflection on the mirror as you brushed your teeth while sharing the sink. 

“I love you,” you whispered in his ear as you hugged him under the sheets. 

“I love you, too.” That’s bliss. 

Taehyung

“Don’t you dare move, you little demon.” 

With a forceful hammering of his hips against your bottom, Taehyung slammed into you at an impossible pace, finally snapping forward as he lost his regular rhythm and bent down, his head propped on the back of your neck, his breath fanning out along your spine before he grunted the manliest sound you had ever heard. 

You were shocked: laying there, ass up, your boyfriend collapsed on top of you with his exceedingly long dick planted inside you, its girth becoming slightly less bearable as the high of your climax ebbed away. 

“Tae, it’s so good.” You moaned. “Too much.”

“Stay put, love.” He helped you lay down, without any intention of parting from you. 

“We can’t stay like this forever.”

“Watch me.” He replied cockily. 

The whole night had been wildly unusual. It had all started in the afternoon. You had been to an art gallery where the whole exhibition verted on photographs of naked bodies painted into art. He had held you tight, his hand gripping your waist, his thumb fooling around the hem of your jeans, tentatively trying to slither under the fabric. He had asked you about your favourite, pointing out pieces he was very enthusiastic about. You had looked at him baffled as he pointed out the picture of a woman with two big breasts and a Virgin Mary painted on her belly, the model’s pubic hair painted a strange rainbow mesh of colours as if simulating a cloud from which the painting was emerging. 

You had been slightly uncomfortable standing before it, but the rest of it hadn’t been that extreme. Well, except for another couple pictures.

One had also attracted your attention. In the back of the gallery one very explicit picture had sparked something between the two of you. As you walked in you thought it was just an empty room but as you turned around you saw a giant poster of a vagina, every detail so precise that you asked yourself what kind of lens and camera could take a picture with such impressive high quality. On the women's thighs seven lines of paint mimicked two branches of a rainbow leading to the model’s inner labia, while a sun — or a halo — surrounded the clit. The poster occupied the whole wall, at least three metres tall and five metres wide. 

You were standing in the middle of the room, taking in every detail, seriously impressed by the piece. You were as tall as her slit, for God's sake… 

"It looks like you really like this one." Taehyung said, hugging you from behind, his nose toying with your earlobe. His voice made your insides tremble. 

"I really get it." Taehyung said. "I would do that too." Silence stretched as he got caught in his thoughts and fantasies. "Your pussy's so good I would take an absurdly high quality picture of it and have it printed as if it were wallpaper and installed in a private room in my apartment and simply sneak in sometimes and stand in front of it and just admire it." 

You kept looking ahead, too caught by the luscious way his hips pressed against the small of your back. "Your cunt is art, babe." He whispered and pressed some more into you. "Literally paradise. I'd lick it for days and fuck it till I can't even get hard anymore." 

You tried to get your mouth to salivate again. He was playing it dirty. And the fact that you had to go back home and get ready for a nice dinner together and a night at the club with Jimin and his girlfriend made you even more tense. You knew you would have to wait for some relief. 

As you reached your apartment Taehyung decided to pick your clothes and have you get ready right in front on him. He settled on the bed, sitting, as you rolled on your stockings and wore a suspender belt that matched your underwear. Slowly you let your deep green silk slip-on dress roll down your body, and you felt his hands stretch towards you, grabbing you by the waist. You stood at the edge of the bed, his chin propped on your belly. "My dove, I have a question for you."

"Yes," you replied, your hands pushing his hair back. 

He showed you a blue velvet pouch and you smirked. "Do you want to?" 

"You wanna help me wear them?" He nodded. 

And that's how you found yourself grinding on him desperately in the club after he had fed you chocolate-covered strawberries for dessert. Not that you complained about that. But the Ben-Wa balls heavily rolling and rubbing against your g-spot were making it difficult for you to fully enjoy your night out. Especially since every time you closed your eyes you saw Taehyung's lips wrapping around them and lubricating them before he helped you insert them. 

It didn't take long for the two of you to get too desperate to care about decency, but since you needed to think about Taehyung's reputation you decided to call it a night and feign tiredness in front of Jimin's eyes — who called both of you out on your state of arousal and blessed your intentions for the rest of the night, letting you go home without making too much of a fuss. 

When you arrived at the apartment you were both too impatient to reach the bedroom and used the sofa to dull the edges of your needs, Taehyung staring at you wide eyed, kneeling on the floor between your legs while you rubbed yourself passionately. As you reached your first high he dove in between your thighs, his mouth landing on your clit, sucking on it devotedly, eyes fixed on yours. Overstimulation hit you hard, the geisha balls still moving inside you. He made you cum again with his tongue lapping and lashing at your wetness. 

He carried you to the bedroom in silence, his gaze dark and desperate, completely oblivious to the way his long and heavy sex strained against his linen slacks. Laying back, you let him tower over you, teasing the underside of his erection as he took off your dress definitively. "You're so beautiful." You whispered religiously. 

"Are you talking to me or my cock?" 

You chuckled lightly. "Mostly to you." 

"Mostly…" He mused. 

He pressed his hand to your belly, removing the silver spheres from inside you. 

"Mostly, uh?" With that he entered you violently, thrusting in with one smooth, powerful stroke. 

"Tae—" You whined. He kept doing you like that, with evenly paced, blunt thrusts. However, since you kept teasing him with the firm squeezing of your inner walls encouraged by your own fingers brushing your clit, he pulled out of you, flipping you around and pushing your backside up, entering you once more. It didn't take long for him to get lost in his own rhythm, for his hand to come up to your tender spot and rub you until your legs gave out. 

And now heavy with the sleepiness of bliss, you questioned whether your boyfriend was intending to get out of you. "Tae, baby, we should get cleaned."

"Let me stay inside, love. Please. I feel like I'll want to go at it again in a while, just let me stay in." He muttered, his hands pressing against your hips to keep you close. 

"You sure you don't need anything?" You asked again, knowing how needy he could get when he gets sleepy. 

"Just you pressed up and around me. This is heaven." 

A small laugh. How could you deny him? 

Jungkook

You had loved every second of it. The gentle way he had kissed you on the sofa, and how he had carried you to bed. How delicately he had touched you and held you, how he had made love to you. It had all been amazing. Until the initial feelings of fondness and devotion gave way to a hunger deeper and more desperate. Then he had pushed you around, sitting himself up on the balls of his feet, dragging you up with him in the process. You could still feel the echo of the beastly groan he had emitted against your ear as he let your back slide down his chest, his sex entering you and reaching so deep inside you. Your head had rolled back against his shoulder as one of his hands grabbed your breast and played with your nipple. 

“You like it, don’t you? You like me so deep inside you.” He had stated, his tone so arrogant. “No wonder you can never get enough of me.” He picked you up by the waist, using you as if you were nothing but a cocksleeve, dragging you up and down his dick. “That’s it. That’s what you like. Being a lazy princess and making me do all the work. You love it when I force you a little, don’t you.” He dropped you down with exceptional violence, moving one hand to squeeze your breast, the other angling your face towards him. “Answer me.”

“Yes.” You replied, almost unconsciously. You were willing to do whatever could please him, make him start again. 

“Yes what?” He grabbed your other breast, his hand heavy and possessive. 

“Yes, I adore when you use me.”

“That’s my little toy. So mature and composed, but so dirty. You love that I get all those naughty things you like.” The way he propped his hands behind his back and leaned on them shifted the angle once more, his hips snapping back and forth with a mind shattering intensity. 

“Come on. Get it how you like it.” He freed one of his hands to slap your ass. It didn’t take that long for the both of you to orgasm, especially after he moved the hand on your chest upwards, his fingers merely resting around your neck, without even needing to hold it, while his other hand worked your clit matching the rhythm of the contractions of your insides. 

He clinged to you almost desperately when his high subsided, his hold almost too tight. You were trying to compensate for the lack of contact during the latest round, your hands struggling to find any part of him that you could hold, until your fingers intertwined with his over your left breast. 

“I thought I would lose you during the last month. I was never home.” You understood his insecurities. You also thought he would find someone more suitable to his career, someone who could understand what it means to belong to that world. 

“I thought anyone could make you see how much of a shitty boyfriend I am.”

You let him continue. 

“I thought you would meet a smart university kid at campus, or that cute barista at the coffee shop at the end of the street. I thought of how they would court you, all the attentions, the pretty dates, the small gifts. I thought of them taking you out for dinner, of them taking you home. Trying to kiss you. Sometimes, late at night, I asked myself if you would invite them upstairs. It always got me so fucking mad. Once I almost hit my personal trainer because I was thinking of that. He got mad, told me to keep my head in the game.” He was still inside you, you could feel his shaft throbbing softly, as if it was his heartbeat. Maybe it was just an impression. His head fell to your shoulder. 

“I would never, and you know it.”

“I know, but some part of me can’t help but go there. If you could only see the way men look at you when you’re not watching. And our relationship being private only means that they don't know that you’re taken. Makes them think that they’re allowed to look at you like that. I feel so hopeless whenever they act all bold. I can’t be like that. I can’t give you the time and attentions they can give you. Because of who I am, because of me being so fucking shy...”

“I love you.” You said, as if it were a magic spell that could fix all his insecurities. You turned your head to look at him. “And right now you’re inside me. You’ve made me cum twice tonight, with nothing but your body, the way you moved on top of me, behind me, inside me.” He blushed a bit at that. 

You loved talking with him after sex. It was so common for the two of you. Sex was like a key to open a secret place of vulnerability and intimacy. All the confessions Jungkook had offered you in bed, laying close to you, protected by you, had very often come in the aftermath of bliss. “I am with you,” you continued, leading him to lay on your side. 

“I wanna stay inside you, but I also want to face you, look you in the eye.”

“Same here.” You needed to see his face. 

“And I also need a snack.” He considered. He took a long pause. You waited for him to formulate his thought. “If you ever realised you’re no longer happy with me, you would tell me, right?”

“Of course I would tell you. However, I think you should know I don’t think that could happen in this life or in any on the next ones.”

He giggled. “I can’t wait to get you away from anyone. We should do like Namjoon hyung and his girlfriend: get on a private island for vacation. Wear nothing all day. Stay in bed for how long we want. Swim when we want. Make love under the stars. God, that’s heaven.”

“You would miss the guys, you know it.” You smiled knowingly.

“Just a week or so. A quick getaway.” Some part of his mind was already plotting. 

“I’ll see what I can do. But would you resist without working out?”

“We could workout together,” he mused naively. 

“Yeah, yeah...” you conceded, voice dripping in irony. 

“Can I carry you to the kitchen to grab a snack?”

“Maybe if you turned me around and I held on you like a koala bear?” You chuckled

“Do you think that if I lay on my back and you sit up and turn around I can get you to climb me like a koala-bear without me having to get out of you?” He asked, the honesty in his voice getting you to fully laugh out loud. 

“I think that’s called corkscrew — it’s a corkscrew if you turn around me… whatever” You thought out loud.

“Let’s try! Ready? Three, two, one, Go!” You both laughed at your attempt, joy filling your hearts.

—————the following morning —————

“So, uhm...”

“No.”

“But—”

“No.”

“Please.”

“Guk, listen, I love you, but you’re not dragging me to the gym at eight a.m. on a Sunday morning after what we did last night.”

“But I love you. Like, a lot.”

“No amount of love will ever fix the organs you so thoroughly rearranged last night.”

“I’m sorry.” He looked like a scolded puppy. “But it’s not like you didn’t like it. You actually begged for it at some point.”

“So rude of you to remind me of that.”

“Sorry. I love you.” He kissed the tip of your nose. 

“I love you too. Now go back to sleep.”

“Okay.” He palmed your chest lovingly and closed his eyes again. 

[kehwry]

I had to get in on the Cow Tipping Story

After seeing a screenshot of Phoenix talking about his cow tipping days - I had to write how it could have happened!

This gave me the idea to write a series of small ‘crimes’ that the Ace Attorney characters could possibly commit 🙃

I’ll cross post to AO3 but for now - we’ve got cow tipping under the cut! :D

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Come on, dude! It’s supposed to be a lot of fun!”

“Ugh. I don’t know – doesn’t it smell kind of weird on that part of town?”

“Be a bro, dude!”

Larry and Phoenix were walking home after a long day. Larry was working at a local coffee shop near the university that Phoenix was attending and had made a habit out of following him home. Phoenix had just recently changed his major from Art to Law. While he didn’t have the time to get up to his friend’s adventures on Friday nights anymore, he still appreciated the company on the walk home.

“Come on, man! You’ll have a great time! It’s supposed to be hilarious and exhilarating! Plus, it’s not illegal – since I know you care about that sort of thing now!” Larry nudged his friend in the ribs.

Phoenix sighed, but his friend was relentless.

“Please Nicky! You’ve gotta get out and do something or you’re gonna go crazy! You can’t just mope and study all the time.” Larry pressed.

Phoenix furrowed his brow. “I don’t just mope and study.”

Larry scoffed. “Yeah, okay. Prove it. Come cow-tipping with me tonight.”

Phoenix mentally weighed his options. He had planned on cramming for Monday’s test on Statute Laws and then finally putting all his newspaper clippings into a proper scrapbook. Not exactly a crazy college night, he supposed.

“Alright, fine. Where are we meeting?” he asked, reluctantly.

Larry instantly lit up and pumped his fist in the air. “Yeah! Now that’s what I’m talking about! We’re meeting at the old farm just outside the city. Be there around ten, okay?”

They had finally reached Phoenix’s apartment and Larry usually just continued ahead. Phoenix paused before nodding in agreement. Larry clapped him on the back and ran off.  

“Remember! Ten o’clock!” he shouted from up the road.

Phoenix rolled his eyes and waved his friend off. “Yeah, yeah.”

 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dare E Farm and Ranch

Friday Night

10:05 pm

 Phoenix walked up the road towards the edge of town. Asphalt eventually turned into a coarse dirt road as he approached the hill near the farm. He stood around looking at the dense trees and scrub bushes that ran the perimeter of the ranch. He had to admit, the stars were much easier to see once away from the city lights. However, the overpowering smell of grass and livestock overwhelmed any positive emotions he could have had about the place. He covered his nose and made a mental note to not breathe too deeply.

Phoenix glanced around in the dark and didn’t see any sign of his friend. Starting to feel out of place, he turned to walk back towards the city.

“Dude! Over here!”

Larry called out to him, frantically waving. He was standing under a large oak tree and had evidently brought a girl with him. Phoenix rolled his eyes and jogged over to his friend.

“Man, I am so glad you actually came! This is gonna be so good!” Larry exclaimed.

Phoenix raised an eyebrow at him and glanced at the girl that was standing next to him. She didn’t seem like the type of girl Larry would typically chase after. She had wild, poofy red hair, a green sweater and tan boots. She was standing with her hands on her hips and a huge grin.

“Well don’t just stand there and gawk! I’m Lotta!” she stuck her hand out. She had a Southern drawl and seemed to almost shout everything she said. Phoenix felt drained just listening to her.

Phoenix shook it, hesitantly. “Nice to meet you, I suppose.”

She scoffed and crossed her arms. “Huh. Well you’re awful charming.” She turned towards Larry. “Alright Harry Butz! He’s here now! You ready to do this thing?”

Larry whined and slumped. “It’s Larry. Larry Butz – but yeah! Ready, Nicky?” He clapped his friend on the back. Phoenix nodded, slightly annoyed, and brushed his friends’ hand away.

Larry was radiating excitement. “Lotta here says she used to do this all the time back home! It’s supposed to be insanely funny!”

Lotta snorted. “Yeah! I’ve never actually gotten to do it myself. But I’ve heard some pretty good stories about it!” Then she turned and started off into the woods.

Phoenix glanced at Larry, who shrugged in response as they followed her up the hill overlooking the farm. They could see a crowd of cows scattered across the grass. Some were laying down and others were standing, eating grass. They seemed oblivious to the utter chaos that was about to ensue.

“Okay,” Lotta lowered her voice “So apparently, we’re supposed to get ‘em while they’re sleepin’. When they sleep standing up, they’re supposed to be super easy to knock over. It’s gonna be a hoot – promise!”

Phoenix seemed unsure and glanced at his friend. Larry had his chin in his hand and was nodding along with Lotta’s instructions.

“So, we just…push them over?” Phoenix asked, uncertain. “Aren’t they, you know, kind of heavy?”

“Yeah, stupid! That’s why there’s three of us!” Lotta chided.

“Isn’t this going to hurt the cows…?” Phoenix hesitated, clearly worried.

“Will you stop yammering and come on?” Lotta hissed.

“Yeah! No time like the present! Let’s do this!” Larry cheered and ran down the hill. Lotta chased after him, leaving Phoenix behind.

He got up and dusted himself off. He had to admit, this seemed like a ridiculous idea, but he was already here.

‘Might as well see where it goes.’ he thought has he joined them at the bottom of the hill.

The three of them climbed over the metal fence gate with ease. Once they were in the pasture, few cows paid them any mind. Larry crept up to one and waved a hand in front of the cows’ face. The cow seemed unphased.

“Yo! Guys! This one’s half baked! He doesn’t even care!” Larry shouted.

“Yeah buddy!” Lotta cheered back “Come on!”

Lotta ran up to Larry and placed both of her hands on the side of the cow. Larry and Phoenix lined themselves up next to her and mirrored her hand placement.

“One…” Larry and Lotta began to count down in unison.

“Two…”

“THREE!” they all shouted and pushed the cow.

…

“Moo?”

The cow loudly mooed but nothing happened.

In fact, the cow didn’t seem to budge at all.

They dropped their hands from the cow and sighed exasperatedly.

“Well what the heck? He didn’t even move!” Lotta exclaimed.

“I know! Maybe he’s too awake?” Larry pondered.

Phoenix didn’t say a word. He hadn’t known what to expect tonight, but he really thought the cow would have moved back a little at least. Or be more annoyed. Secretly, he was silently thankful – a cow related accident would be pretty embarrassing to explain.

The cow continued to chew grass and walked a few feet forward, completely unbothered by the trio.

“Okay, okay. This time, I’ll pick the cow.” Lotta declared as she strut off towards another cow several yards away.

Phoenix and Larry followed behind her, checking to see if any other cows were awake or bothered by the strangers in their pasture.

“Aha!” Lotta shouted “Over here!”

The cow she was stood next to wasn’t chewing anything. It was staring off towards the woods that surrounded the property. It didn’t flinch or even move when Lotta had cried out.

Larry crept closer to the cow and resumed the same position as before.

“Okay guys – this time, let’s put our backs into it, yeah?” Larry whispered.

Lotta and Phoenix nodded in agreement and took up their places next to Larry.

“One…”

“Two…”

“Three!”

“Moooooo”

Again, they all pushed, and the cow didn’t budge.

“Come on…. you stupid…Cow!!” Larry grunted as he pressed his shoulder and most of his body into the cow. Lotta and Phoenix dug their heels into the ground and pushed with all they had.

“MOOOOOOOOORRRRRRR”

Without further warning, the cow trotted off angrily, sending the trio onto the ground with a thud.

After standing and dusting themselves off, they regrouped in shared frustration.

“Fellas, I’m starting to think that cow tipping’s a load of bull” Lotta huffed, annoyed.

Phoenix and Larry looked at each other and instantly burst into laughter.

“Ha! A load of bull!! ‘Cause they’re cows!” Larry wheezed, doubling over in laughter.

Lotta cracked a wide smile and chuckled. “Well, I reckon we’ve probably woken up any remaining sleeping cows. Wanna head out of here?”

Both guys nodded and followed Lotta back to the gate. Once they climbed over it again, they started back up the hill and started their trek back to the city.

“Hey – y’all don’t mind if we embellish this story a little bit, right?” Lotta asked, breaking the silence.

“Embellish how?” Phoenix asked. “We should probably get our story straight.”

“Why don’t we just tell people that it was super fun and that the cows mooed when we pushed them over, then we got chased out by the farmer and ran home?” Larry offered.

“Sounds good to me!” Lotta shrugged in agreement.

Phoenix sighed. It wasn’t any worse than what had actually happened. In fact, it was probably better that his Friday night story would be more entertaining this way.

Just then, a car pulled up behind them and shined bright headlights onto the trio. A brief ‘whoooop’ of a siren stopped the three in their tracks.

The dirt road crumbled underneath the sound of the car stopping. The trio stood, frozen and terrified. They watched as a sheriff in a tan uniform shirt and green slacks got out of the car and walked up to them.

“Evening, kiddos.” He said gruffly. His voice was deep and booming.

“E-evening, sir” they all clamored nervously.

“Y’all wanna tell me why I got a call about a couple of teenagers playing in a field that don’t belong to ‘em?” he said, crossing his arms, clearly sizing the group up.

Phoenix felt the color drain out of his face and his heart raced. He could see all the charges now and his mind reeled.

Trespassing

Damage or attempted murder of privately owned livestock

Misdemeanor animal abuse – or was it a felony? How much did a cow cost anyway?

Phoenix swallowed thickly. He couldn’t go to jail now! He had so many things he needed to accomplish as a lawyer!

Lotta was the first to speak.

“Sorry, sir” she said quietly. Her head was lowered, and she was staring at her shoes. This was the most respectful she had been all night, much to Phoenix’s surprise. Then she continued talking.

“We just hadta find out for ourselves!” She shouted, causing Phoenix and Larry to jump at her sudden outburst.

The sheriff grunted. “Don’t tell me you city slickers were trying your hand at cow tipping?” he pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Sure as the stars at night sir! Don’t believe a word that anyone tells ya! It ain’t real! Those cows don’t go nowhere!” The fire in Lotta’s eyes had been ignited as she shook a fist at the sheriff.  

The sheriff sighed again and rubbed his face. It was a long moment before he spoke again. Larry and Phoenix shot each other worried glances and stayed completely silent and still.

“Alright. Alright look.” The sheriff said after a long while. “It’s been a long day and I just don’t feel like messing around here. Stay out of fields that don’t belong to you, don’t go messing with cows that aren’t yours and go straight home, you got it?”

“YES SIR!” The trio exclaimed in unison.

“Alright. Now get outta here.” The sheriff returned to his car, leaving the three attempted cow tippers in the dust.

As they watched the taillights on his cruiser disappear down the road, relief washed over them.

“Holy crap!! Can you believe that!! We could have gone to jail! Nicky!! You couldn’t think of any law stuff to get us out of that?!” Larry babbled loudly.

“Dude, you know I’m not a lawyer yet! And he let us off the hook! Let’s just go home like he said to.” Phoenix said, bitterly. He shoved his hands into his pockets and focused on the ground. His heart was just beginning to slow down and the knot in his stomach was dissipating.

“Yeah, let’s maybe leave this part out when we tell people about this.” Lotta said quietly.

“Agreed.”

The trio walked back to the city without further incident and vowed to not mention their failed exploits that night in great detail when they parted.

Once home, Phoenix sighed loudly. This time – when something smelled, it was cows and the Butz.

[gagosiangallery]

Richard Prince at Gagosian Beverly Hills

January 15, 2020

RICHARD PRINCE New Portraits Opening reception: Thursday, February 6, 6–8pm February 6–March 21, 2020 456 North Camden Drive, Beverly Hills __________ In 1984 I took some portraits. The way I did it was different. The way had nothing to do with the tradition of portraiture. If you wanted me to do your portrait, you would give me at least five photographs that had already been taken of yourself, that were in your possession (you owned them, they were yours), and more importantly . . . that you were already happy with. You would give me the five you liked and I would pick the one I liked. I would rephotograph the one I liked and that would be your portrait. Simple. Direct. To the point . . . Foolproof. I started off doing friends. Peter Nadin. Anne Kennedy. Jeff Koons. Cookie Mueller. Gary Indiana. Colin de Land.

They didn’t have to sit for their portraits. They didn’t have to make an appointment and come over and sit in front of some cyclone or in front of a neutral background or on an artist’s stool. They didn’t have to show up at all. And they wouldn’t be disappointed with the result. How could they? It wasn’t like they were giving me photos of themselves that were embarrassing.

Social Science Fiction.

Another advantage was the “time line.” If you were in your sixties and you gave me a photograph that had been taken thirty years earlier, and that’s the one I chose, your portrait ended up in a kind of time machine. I couldn’t go forward, but I could go backward. Vanity. Most of the people I did liked the younger version of themselves. So the future didn’t really matter. Half of H. G. Wells was better than no half at all.

Who knew?

After friends, I did people I didn’t know.

I had access to Warner Bros. Records and their publicity files. The files were filled with 8 × 10 glossies of recording stars that they had under contract. How I had access is beside the point. It was a long time ago. Let’s just say an A&R guy gave me access, “permission.”

I spent time in their LA headquarters, in Burbank, and went thru the metal cabinets and took the “publicities” I wanted, took them home, put them in front of my camera, and made a new photograph. The first one I did was Dee Dee Ramone.

I did Tina Weymouth, Tom Verlaine, Jonathan Richman, Laurie Anderson. I did the two girls from the B-52s.

Not knowing these people, having never met them, or talked to them, but still being able to do their portraits, excited me. Satisfaction. I spent weeks in the basement of Warner Bros. I thought I had an advantage. My method, if you could call it that, was far more flexible than the regular way portraits were taken. I didn’t need a studio. A darkroom. A receptionist. A calendar. Makeup. Stylists. I didn’t have to deal with agents or the “personality,” good or bad, of the sitter. My overhead was minimal and I could do the portrait all by myself.

By myself. That was the best.

Why I Go To The Movies Alone.

At first I thought this could be a business.

Up till then none of the art that I was making sold . . . or sold enough to make a living. I had just quit my job at Time Life the year before and was trying to make a go of it living near Venice Beach in LA . . . sharing a house with three roommates and living off the occasional sales that Hudson, my friend from Chicago, would make selling my “cartoon” drawings.

This idea of a “portrait business” made sense to me. Who wouldn’t want their portrait done this way?

I continued to do friends. Paula Greif. Dike Blair. Meyer Vaisman. I did everybody’s portraits for Wild History, a book that I put together for Tanam Press of downtown writing. The author’s portrait accompanied their contribution. Wharton Tiers. Spalding Gray. Tina L’Hotsky.

By the end of ’84 it was over.

I’m not sure if it was the lack of interest in me, or in others. (My energy evaporated.) Maybe it was the inability to convince people to commit to a commission. It was a good idea, but after doing about forty of them, I put them in a drawer and moved on. Bored? Restless? I don’t know. Let’s just say it didn’t take off.

Leave it at that.

My cartoon drawings turned into jokes and the jokes started taking up everything. In the end, I think most people would rather have their portrait done by Robert Mapplethorpe.

Thirty years. Time passes.

The social network.

I looked over my daughter’s shoulder and saw that she was scrolling thru pictures on her phone. I asked her what she was looking at. “It’s my Tumblr.” “What’s a tumbler?” I asked.

That was . . . four years ago?

About three years ago I bought an iPhone. Someone had shown me the photographs you could take with the phone. I had given up taking pictures after they got rid of color slide film. I tried digital, but couldn’t make the adjustment. I never liked carrying a camera and was pretty much inkjetting and painting anyway . . . so the idea of using a big boxy camera with all its new whistles and bows wasn’t for me.

Enter the sandman.

The iPhone was just what I needed. I couldn’t believe how easy it was to point and shoot. You didn’t have to focus. You didn’t have to load film. You didn’t have to ASA. You didn’t have to set a speed. The clarity . . .

I could see for miles.

The photos you took were stored in the phone. And when you wanted to see them, they appeared on a grid. The best part: you could send a photo immediately to a friend, to an e-mail, to a printer . . . or, you could organize your photos, like my daughter had, and post them publicly or privately.

When worlds collide.

I asked my daughter more about Tumblr. Are those your photos? Where did you get that one? Did you need permission? How did you get that kind of crop? You can delete them? Really? What about these “followers?” Who are they? Are they people you know? What if you don’t want to share? How many of your friends have Tumblrs?

What’s yours is mine.

My daughter’s “grid” on Tumblr reminded me of my Gangs I did back in ’85 . . . where I organized a set of nine images on a single piece of photo paper and blew the paper up to 86 × 48. The gangs were a way to deal with marginal or subsets of lifestyles that I needed to see on a wall but not a whole wall. Each gang was its own exhibition. Girlfriends, Heavy Metal Bands, Giant Waves, Bigfoot Trucks, Sex, War, Cartoons, Lyrics . . . were all rephotographed with slide film, and when the slides returned, they were “deejayed” and moved around on a custom-made light box until the best nine made the cut. The “cut” was then taped together (the edges of the slide mounts were pushed up against each other and Scotch-taped), the nine taped slides were sent to a lab where an 8 × 10 internegative was made, and from the internegative the final photo was blown up. I’ve probably lost you. Technical stuff . . . application and technique. Sometimes it’s better to leave the “background” out of it. Better to “take it for granted.” Why should I care how a photograph is made?

Only sometimes.

How was it called back then? Sampling?

Primitive now, but back then . . . 50-inch photo drums were few and far between. The paper was 50 inches wide and came in a huge roll. If you wanted to, you could take a roll and roll it down the street, roll it down the sidewalk, roll it all the way down the West Side Highway.

Shakespeare’s in the alley?

No. Philip Roth is in the alley.

Joan Didion is in the alley.

Don DeLillo is in the alley.

What’s up, pussycat?

There’s a lot of cats on Instagram. Food too.

And there’s tons of photos of people who take photographs of themselves. (Yes, I know the word.)

On the gram. I was just asked why I like Instagram. I said, “Because there’s rules. And if you break the rules, you get kicked off.”

I got to Instagram thru Twitter.

Twitter first.

I’m not sure when I first started tweeting, but I liked trying to fit a whole story into 140 characters.

I call it Birdtalk.

I used to bird in the early ’90s for Purple magazine and birded in my first catalogue for Barbara Gladstone in ’87.

Short sentences that were funny, sweet, dumb, profound, absurd, stupid, jokey, Finnegans Wake meets MAD magazine meets ad copy for Calvin Klein. Think Dylan’s Tarantula. Then think some more and think Kathy Acker’s Tarantula.

Or, don’t think at all. I know I don’t.

Sometimes.

Sometimes I write down the first sentence that starts off my favorite novel.

Relative. I’m not much of a theory guy. But sometimes I think there was a reason why Einstein was a technical assistant in the Swiss patent office.

Let me fill your cup.

Twitter accepts photos, but is mainly text-based. I like to combine the two and tweet both photo and text.

I called the photo/text tweets I was posting . . . “The Family.”

I posted photos of my extended family . . . mother, brother, sister, nieces, cousins, uncles, aunts, in-laws, stepchildren, boy- and girlfriends. I would caption the photos with a short description of who, what, why . . . measuring my words so that they fit into the guidelines of the platform.

After posting the photo/text, I sent the information to my printer and inkjetted an 11 × 14 print of the marriage. I made thirty-eight “Family” tweets.

Distribution.

I placed each “Family” tweet in a plastic sleeve and pushpinned the sleeve to the wall. The wall was at Karma. I put all thirty-eight up. Salon style. It was Saturday. The doors opened at 12 pm. By 12:15 pm all thirty-seven were gone. One to a customer. I kept the one that had my father, mother, and sister in it. (My father and mother were naked, and my sister was sitting in between. My family wasn’t like yours. Hobnob doesn’t begin to describe them.) I sold the “Family Tweets” for $12 each. First come, first served.

Well, well, well . . .

In ma ma ma my wheeeeeeeel house.

I used to stutter. By the ninth grade, the sparkle was in my eye. It got so bad, the impediment turned me into a clam. I slept all day, every day. I wouldn’t get up until Sunday. I waited for Bonanza to come on the TV. I loved the cowboy father and his three sons.

Two summers ago, my niece was working for me out on Long Island and she showed me how to screen save. I didn’t know about the option. What other options don’t I know about?

Screen Save.

This might be one of the best applications in an apparatus that I’ve ever encountered. All-time. Hall of fame. First place. Just what I need. MORE photographs.

Hey kids . . . what time is it?

Now I have a theory.

I was beside myself.

Congratulations.

This past spring, and half the summer, the iPhone became my studio. I signed up for Instagram. I pushed things aside. I made room. It was easy. I ignored Tumblr, and Facebook had never interested me. But Instagram . . .

I started off being RichardPrince4.

I quickly recognized the device was a way to get the lead out. If Twitter was editorial . . . then Instagram was advertising.

A gazillion people.

Besides cats, dogs, and food, people put out photos of themselves and their friends all the time, every day, and, yes, some people put themselves out twice on Mondays. I started “following” people I knew, people I didn’t know, and people who knew each other. It was innocent. I was on the phone talking to Jessica Hart and had just looked at her “gram” feed before picking up the phone. I asked about a picture she posted of herself standing in front of a fireplace wearing what looked to be ski clothes and big fur boots. The post was in black and white, head to toe, full figure, and behind her, above the mantel, there was a portrait of Brigitte Bardot. I told her someone should make a portrait out of this photo. She said, “Why don’t you?”

Come to think of it.

I’m not sure if she knew about my Family Tweets. She might have. I think we even talked about them after she came to my studio for a visit. After I got off the phone, I thought about her suggestion: “Why don’t you?”

I went back to her feed and screen saved her “winter” photo. I sent the save to my computer, pressed “empty subject,” pressed “actual size,” and waited for it to appear in a doc, checked the margins and crop, clicked on the doc, and sent it to my printer. My inkjet printer printed out an 11 × 14-inch photo on paper . . . I took the photo out of the tray and put it on my desk.

Looking at Jessica’s feed reminded me of 1984. Except this time I had more than five photos to choose from. I went back to her feed a second time. I scrolled thru maybe a hundred photos she had posted and looked at all the ones that included her. The one in front of the fireplace was still the best.

Walk on.

Jessica had tons of followers. Thousands. And a lot of them had “commented” on what she posted. I read all the comments that had been posted under her fireplace photo. There was one comment I wish I could have gotten in my original screen save. When you screen save an Instagram image, you can get maybe three, four comments in the save if you include the person’s “profile” icon that appears on the upper left of the page. I decided early on I wanted the person’s icon to be part of the save. But what else could I save?

I went back to my desk and kept staring at the printout of Jessica. What do I do now?

I didn’t want to paint it.

I didn’t want to mark it.

I didn’t want to add a sticker.

Whatever I did, I wanted it to happen INSIDE and before the save. I wanted my contribution to be part of the “gram.” I didn’t want to do anything physical to the photograph after it was printed.

Five cents.

I went back to the comment.

I commented on Jessica’s photo in front of the fireplace, but my comment was one of hundreds and showed up outside, way down at the bottom . . . out of the frame.

If I wanted my comment to show up near her picture . . . how?

I got lucky.

I’m terrible when it comes to the tech side of technology. But somehow I figured out how to hack into Jessica’s feed and swipe away all her comments and add my own so that it would appear under her post. The hack is pretty simple and anyone can do it. You hit the gray comment bar and pick a comment you don’t want and swipe with your finger to the left, and a red exclamation mark appears. You press on the exclamation mark and four things come onto the bottom of your screen.

1. Why are you reporting this comment?

2. Spam or Scam

3. Abusive Content

4. Cancel

To get rid of the comment, you click on Spam or Scam. It’s gone. Just like that I could control other people’s comments and Jessica’s own comments. And the comment that I added could now be near enough to Jessica’s photo that when I screen saved it, my comment would “show up.” Make sense? It’s about as good as I can do. What can I say? Einstein and cuckoo . . .

So now . . .

So now I was in.

Waiting to follow.

Richardprince4 would appear at the bottom of Jessica’s final portrait. My comment, whatever it would be, would always be the last comment. The last say so. Say so. That’s good. That could work. My “in” was what I ended up saying. And what I would say would be everything I ever knew . . . what I knew now and what I would know in the future.

Tell Me Everything.

Finnegans Wake meets MAD magazine.

Zoot Horn Rollo. You seem to be where I belong (emoji).

The first three portraits I did were of women I knew. Or almost knew. Jessica, I knew. Pam Anderson, I knew. Sky Ferreira? I didn’t know, but was following her and had been reading about her new album and seeing posters of her album broadsided on sheets of ply on the Bowery and on Lafayette near Bond. I wasn’t sure what I was doing or why I chose these three. I just had lunch with Pam and had seen Jessica in LA. Sky, I was following because she seemed interesting. There was nothing more. No attraction. No fan. No desire. No date. No wanting anything from her. And the pictures she posted were candid, boozy, and seemed to be letting the viewer in on some kind of backstage diary. She also had thousands of people following her, and I could tap into her followers and follow them. I can do that? I didn’t even know I could follow the followers. Like I said, the hardware was all new . . . and I was just getting started.

The shoreline is never the same. (Like it should be.)

When I first started getting rid of comments, I thought the person whose comments I was getting rid of might get pissed. “What happened to all my comments?” I found out quickly that “the getting rid of” only affected my feed. The deleted comments didn’t affect the followers’ feeds. Their comments were still there even though they were gone from mine. All that happened is that MY comment showed up below their photo. Was I allowed? Yes. I guess so. It’s hard to explain. But the process is open, and at the moment, it’s the way it works and anyone and everyone can do it.

The language I started using to make “comments” was based on Birdtalk. Non sequitur. Gobbledygook. Jokes. Oxymorons. “Psychic Jujitsu.”

Some of the language came directly from TV. If I’m selecting a photo of someone and adding a comment to their gram and an advertisement comes on . . . I use the language that I hear in the ad. Inferior language. It works. It sounds like it means something. What’s it mean? I don’t know. Does it have to mean anything at all? I think about James Joyce confessing to Nora Barnacle. I think about opening up to page 323 of Finnegans Wake. Then I think about notes and lyricism. Policy. Whisper. Murmurs. Mantra. Quotation. Advice.

Chamber Music.

Didn’t Duke Ellington say, “If it sounds good, it is good”? He did say that, didn’t he?

Who are these people?

Larry Clark, Diane Arbus, Robert Mapplethorpe take great portraits. I’ve watched Larry take photos and I don’t know how he does it. I wouldn’t know where to begin. I could never go up to a stranger and ask them if I could take their picture. I’ve done it maybe two or three times and didn’t enjoy it. That part of art is in Larry. It isn’t in me. I feel more comfortable in my bedroom looking thru Easyriders and poring over pictures of “girlfriends” that are right there on the page. Page after page. Looking. Wondering. Anticipating. Hoping. What will be on the next page? Will I find a girlfriend that I really like? That’s my relationship with what’s out there. It’s as close as I want to get. That’s what’s in me.

IG is a bedroom magazine.

I can start out with someone I know and then check out who they follow or who’s following them, and the rabbit hole takes on an out-of-body experience where you suddenly look at the clock and it’s three in the morning. I end up on people’s grids that are so far removed from where I began, it feels psychedelic. Further. I’m on the bus. I feel like I’m part of Kesey’s merry tribe. I’m reminded of Timothy Leary’s journals, which I purchased years ago from John McWhinnie, and the concentration that came over me when I discovered his hand-drawn map of his escape from jail. How he literally shimmied on a wire that had been strung up from an outer utility building to the perimeter prison wall . . . and how I would trace with my finger his overland express to Tangier, where he hooked up with Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver and spent the next year seeking asylum in different parts of North Africa, ultimately ending up in Switzerland where his ex-wife ratted him out, and how fighting extradition took up the rest of his life. Wow, now it’s four in the morning.

Tune In, Turn On, Come Out.

“Trolling.”

If you say so.

I never thought about it that way. The word has been used to describe part of the process of making my new portraits. I guess so. It’s not like I’m on the back of a boat throwing out chum.

“We’re going to need a bigger boat.”

Included.

Everyone is fair.

Game.

An even playing field.

“Outside my cabin door. Said the girl from the red river shore.”

Men. Women. Men and women. Men and men. Women and women. Blacks Whites Latinos Asian Arabs Jews Straights Gays Transgender. Tattoos and scars. Hairy.

I don’t really know the score.

The ones I adore.

I just know where I belong.

“Oh, there I go. From a man to a memory.”

How do I tell you who or why I pick? I can’t. It would be like telling you why I pick that joke. WHY THAT ONE? There’s thousands of jokes. I read them all. It takes days to read just one joke book. 101 of the World’s Funniest Jokes. Days. If I get one, find one, like one, out of the 101, it’s a good day.

People on IG lead me to other people. I spend hours surfing, saving, and deleting. Sometimes I look for photos that are straightforward portraits (or at least look straightforward). Other times I look for photos that would only appear, or better still . . . exist on IG. Photos that look the way they do because they’re on the gram. Selfies? Not really. Self-portraits. I’m not interested in abbreviation. I look for portraits that are upside down, sideways, at arm’s length, taken within the space that a body can hold a camera phone. What did de Kooning say? “When I spread my arms out, it’s all the space I need.”

At first I wasn’t sure how to print the portrait. I tried different surfaces, different papers. Presentation? Frame? Matt? Shadowbox? I tried them all. Finally this past spring my lab introduced me to a new canvas, one that was tightly wound, a surface with hardly any tooth. Smooth to the touch. Almost as if the canvas were photo paper. It was also brilliantly white. I don’t think it could be any whiter. And . . . the way the ink jetted into the canvas was a surprise. It fused in a way that made the image slightly out of focus. Just enough. The ink was IN and ON the canvas at the same time. When I first saw the final result, I didn’t really know what I was looking at. A photographic work or a work on canvas? The surprise was perfect. Perfect doesn’t come along very often. The color that had been transferred from the file of the computer to the jet, from jet to canvas, was intense, saturated, rich. If someone I followed had blue hair, their hair looked like it had been dyed directly onto the canvas. Dye job. Rinsed. Beauty salon. It was brilliant, great color. You might call it “vibrant.” The vibe between the image and the process was “sent away for,” seamless, effortless . . . all descriptions I used to use when I tried describing my early “pens, watches, and cowboys.” (Has it really been forty years?) The ingredients, the recipe, “the manufacture,” whatever you want to call it . . . was familiar but had changed into something I had never seen before. I wasn’t sure it even looked like art. And that was the best part. Not looking like art. The new portraits were in that gray area. Undefined. In-between. They had no history, no past, no name. A life of their own. They’ll learn. They’ll find their own way. I have no responsibility. They do. Friendly monsters.

Speak for yourself.

To fit in the world takes time.

For now, all I can say is . . . they’re the only thing I’ve ever done that has made me happy.

http://www.richardprince.com/writings/bird-talk

Close

[ahumansvoid]

Misc WIP Folder

So I’m going through my WIPs folder’s subfolders. 

One is labelled Misc, so that’s the one I’m going through now. Everything will be below the cut because this will probably be a long post, there are sixteen files in this folder. 

Most of them are from different fandoms, so I’ll put what fandom it’s in + what title I have for it in my folder in bold before I talk about it. I’ll be going from oldest to newest. Technically not because I can’t sort Google docs like that, but rather “last modified by me” so, longest abandoned to newly abandoned I guess?

 Also Spoilers for any of the fandoms, maybe? Probably. 

If you have any questions about any of the fandoms, message me or send me an ask. I’m open to talking about any and all of them. 

Fandoms Involved (Ordered by appearance):

Murdered: Soul Suspect (Video Game)

Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia (TV Show)

Gravity Falls (TV Show)

Until Dawn (Video Game)

Avatar: The Last Airbender (TV Show)

The Mummy (2017) & (1999) (Movies)

Assassination Classroom (TV Show/Anime)

Red vs. Blue (Online Show- Rooster Teeth)

Camp Camp (Online Show - Rooster Teeth)

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (TV Show)

Devil May Cry (Video Game + Anime)

Aladdin (2019) (Movie)

Castlevania (TV Show)

Murdered: Soul Suspect - MSS

So there isn’t much in this one, just a bullet pointed outline. Murdered Soul Suspect is a video game, if you don’t know it and are curious you can google it or message me. 

Anywho. This is just a little part I thought was funny.

It’s essentially a Ronan survives AU of the game, pretty standard and I thought it would be fun. Honestly this part about Ronan and his cracked spine just reminded me of Obi-wan and how I write him in ignoring his injuries (and how most people write him) so it made me laugh a bit. 

There’s really not much here, I didn’t even finish the outline.

Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia - trollhunters au

I am very creative with my titles. Clearly. This is another bullet point outline. but this one is longer and irrc I actually started writing this, and that file would also be in this folder so if I did write it’ll also be featured on this post.

This is an au where Claire is the trollhunter rather than Jim.

The top bit is literally just for context on the next star point. Anywho Writing AAARRRGGGHH/ seeing it spelled out is funny to me. Also I’m pretty sure I rewatched bits with AAARRRGGGHH with subtitles on to see how it was spelt and then replicated that.

The second star point is funny to me because I describe annoyance/anger (rightful, both of them) as pissy. And that’s funny.

There’s more but if I’m write and I wrote it out, then that’ll be featured later. 

Gravity Falls - Gravity Falls

... Okay I’m not creative with titles until I have to be. Once more, bullet point outline. So this is an after-canon AU where Bill left a remanent of himself in Dipper and it’s become apparent when they’re in Piedmont.

I just like the rules I had Dipper give Bill. I thought they were neat. Also, I like Mabel convincing Dipper to let Bill live because he’s pathetic. This is a demon who has tormented them for an entire summer, but nows he’s pathetic so lets help him. 

Not much of interest in this. I probably didn’t write it because it’d be a long and day-in-the-life type fic. It’d just be Dipper and Bill coexisting and going through life and IDK how well I’d of written that. So I didn’t write it.

Until Dawn- Until DAwn AU

FYI I’m keeping the titles case-sensitive. Another bullet outline. So this is a Josh survives/exorcised AU, also an Everybody Live AU. I’m pretty sure I wrote this when I was heavily invested in Until Dawn and Josh (because I like him.) And I was reading Until Dawn fanfic in which Josh is blamed for what happened on the mountain. And I think I was getting pissy which lead to this:

So in this AU the Until Dawn Group splintered into Sam, Josh & Chris, and Mike, Emily, Jess, Matt & Ashley. So this conversation/fight is between Chris and the second group. So Chris is the 1st,3rd and 5th talking bullet point. I don’t know who’s talking in the 2nd &4th bullet point but it’s one of the second group. Probably Emily, Mike or Jess maybe. Not Ashley.

Im 90% sure that I wrote out this entire outline just for this little interaction. 

It just tickles my id. I still kind of like it, but I honestly don’t know what else I’d write for this AU.

Avatar: The Last Airbender - Zuko is the avatar

Title is self-explanatory. Also, I really like bullet outlines. So. Anywho. 

Aang is still a 12 year old in this, he used up all his “avatar energy” (that’s literally what I wrote) to keep himself alive so he’s just an airbender now.

I just love Iroh. And this is just funny to me.

If I ever wrote this, it’d be a lot of hijinks of Katara and Aaang (and eventually Toph) covering for Zuko whenever he bends anything other than fire. More cracky than serious.

“The Mummy (2017)” and “The Mummy (1999)” - Mummy x Mummy

I watched the 2017 version of the mummy (got it from the library for 2 bucks) and since there are some throwbacks to the 1999 movie I decided to try to combine them. This also became an AU where Evie and Rick save Imhotep in Mummy 2, and due to Evie being revived meant she was functionally immortal (doesn’t age, but can still be killed). And due to everything, by the Mummy 2017 rolls around it’s just her and Imhotep hanging around, investigating ancient egypt and whatnot.

Honestly this is just part of the outline. None of this is really amusing to me, just, if I ever tried to write it, a lot of work. Although, the fact that I can’t remember the blonde lady friend from the Mummy 2017 is kind of amusing and I literally call her ‘BLF’ throughout this entire outline. I think her name was Lisa. Or Sara.

i’ll google it.

Assassination Classroom - AC AU

At this point, I might as well tell you when it isn’t a bullet outline than saying when it is.

This was really just a Reaper/Koro-sensei raises Nagisa rather than his mom.

People panicking around children is amusing to me. Again, long AU. And this was probably an excuse to write some baby assassin Nagisa and whatnot. Honestly whenever I read this I do remember more details on this, that I have never written down. 

Murdered: Soul Suspect - Murdered: Soul Suspect

...

Okay I think this is just a repeat of the one I posted earlier???

I- I don’t know what this was? Like this is newer than the other one? 

?????

Uh, brain weirdness?

Let’s move on.

Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia - TRollhunters

Ok! So this is the written out of the bullet point earlier. I did not write out much. But I’ll talk about it a bit more? So this AU is also a Bular survives and Jim finds him and helps AU.

This is literally all I have written. So, right after this, Jim would find an injured Bular and helps him. There isn’t much to add, but I will add what I had written as Barbara’s reaction from the outline:

Large AU, but it would be fun to write. I would most likely end up writing Claire’s journey of Trollhunting along with Jim’s adventures with Bular.

Red vs Blue - Meta, no, that wasn’t, he wasn’t

Okay, that’s not the full title but also the full title is literally the first sentence. Which is a long one so you get part of it. This is actually a written au, it’s about Agent Maine/ The Meta surviving and meeting up with Siris. This is just the first couple paragraphs:

Nothing I read was particularly funny to me, so just the first two paragraphs. Essentially what would’ve happened is Siris would help Maine find Washington (on Chorus) go to Chorus. Find Felix and Locus. Drama Ensues.

I might actually write this. Maybe. There’s potential, if the drive hits me.

I havent watched RvB in a couple of years, but I did like the series. It was interesting.

Camp Camp- Camp Camp

Y’know since this is ‘misc’ I get just having fandom names. Lot easier to identifiy.

So, this file is currently loading still, but I remember this. It wasn’t that long ago. This wasn’t so much a fic as a comic I would of like to have done. I definitely would’ve needed to brush up on my art skills (I am mediocre at best) but it’s just a small little comic I would’ve done on Camp Camp.

First little bit. I actually wrote out most of this rather than just bullet pointing it. 

There is a little bit I’d have to polish up, but I could probably post this entire thing. But I kind of want to actually do the comic first. But boy that’s a lot of work.

I love how most of the reason I’m not writing these is that they’re a lot of work.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (TV Show) - Project Cheron

This is an AU where Priest is one of the projects of Blackwing. Specifically Cheron and I think my reasoning is that he makes people go where they need to be. IDK. I actually wrote a couple of these. But this one is essentially Priest getting a bunch of projects together to help something. Idk.

This entire thing is weird and would probably be labelled crack if I ever finished it.

Okay. This entire scene is funny to me. Just, this girl rushing out in front of the car waving happily with a decapitated head in her hand. I like it. So, Aine and Herodias are OCs. Both are projects Priest is collecting. 

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (TV Show) - “Dirk

Another Priest is a Blackwing Project AU but that’s not really the focus of this story. This story is about a project (Project Carman- OC) who can trap people in their certain significant memories of her choosing. Carman gets annoyed at Bart, Dirk and the Rowdy 3 so she traps them in memories signifcant to their stay in Blackwing and Priest.

I’ve only written 2 of the six memories, so that’d be fun to complete. These are also just sad. They’re not happy memories. So, random moment that’s somewhat amusing:

Also, title is the first sentence in the fic.

Devil May Cry - “Should I

I- why did I decide to do this from oldest to newest? Part of me is embarrassed, the other part is reminding me I have no reason to be? It’s a video game fic. But also this is a game of my childhood. It’s about Nero looking for his dad and finding Dante instead. Canonically Dante’s twin brother, Vergil, is Nero’s dad.

Just a random moment because I didn’t write that much of it. Also I thought it was kind of cute. Patty shows up in the Devil May Cry anime. Which I watched before I played the games. 

Aladdin (2019) - Aladdin AU

A mix of bullet outline and written. I don’t actually have much of this AU, but essentially before Aladdin wishes to become a prince, he notices some mercenaries kidnapping a little girl and decides to rescue her. 

This girl is the princess of Shiroba, Aladdin takes her back to Shiroba. The Queen/ Sultana appreciates Aladdin going out of his way to help her so she invites him to stay in the palace. 

Eventually word gets to Shiroba that Agrabah is planning to attack so Aladdin and the two twin princes of Shiroba (that I made up, OCs) make a plan to infiltrate and see what they’re planning. They’re not planing espionage, but as Shiroba is a peaceful nation, they want to see if they should start evacuating people and whatnot.

So you get the Prince Ali stuff with the Genie and yada yada. 

I have none of that written. I just know that’s what I intended to do with it.

So, first little bit. Long AU that would take a lot of work. Also, I know this isn’t super popular but I liked the 2019 version of Aladdin. I really like the changes they made. 

Castlevania (TV Show) - Waking up in Jail wasn’t a new experience

Again, title is first sentence. Not writing that out. Anywho, this is a kind of complete canon AU to Castlevania. Essentially we haven’t reached Lisa getting burnt at the stake yet. So, loving Dracula fam. Trevor and Sypha meet earlier due to circumstance. Alucard gets attacked by something and gets rescued by Trevor and Sypha. They travel together for a while. And then Sypha and Trevor get to meet Alucard’s parents. 

That’s where this AU will go if I ever write it. To be fair, last time I wrote in this file was March, so I guess that’s technically possible. Don’t hold out hope.

First couple of paragraphs. 

Also, that’s it! Misc WIP folder done!

Oh, if you’ve made it this far, a)thank you and b) if you want to continue/write any of these, go ahead, but tag me or send me a link. I will be very happy to see/read what you create if you like any of this in an inspo way.

Also. This is long, so, IDK if Imma go through the other folders rn. Maybe tomorrow. 

[artificialqueens]

Show me the Stars, Chapter One (Trixya) - Kite

A/N: It’s been a long ass time since I’ve posted to AQ, but here I am with a Trixya fic. Hope you guys enjoy it! Feel free to check out my concept art over on my tumblr @youre-a-kite. And if you’re feeling the space themed lesbian au vibe, check out my fic Artemis on Ao3, which features Branjie, Trixya and Scyvie in space.

Summary: Trixie is a tour guide in a planetarium who makes up the facts as she goes along, and Katya is an astrophysicist who takes the tour with the intention of calling her out, but doesn’t.

Trixie sighs as the gaggle of elementary kids start to screech when she dims the lights, plunging them into darkness. She waits for the teachers to regain control of the room, and nods politely whilst they apologise, but she knows it’s going to be a few minutes before the kids settle.

It’s the same story every day.

But on the plus side, it usually means she can shave five minutes off the end of her presentation. Ten minutes, if one of them needs the bathroom half way through.

“Good morning kids,” Trixie says, with as much enthusiasm as her slightly hungover self will allow. “My name is Trixie Mattel and I’ll be your tour guide today. Please remember that there is no eating or drinking in the planetarium. Now, raise your hand if you’ve ever seen a star.”

-x-

The door to the break room slams shut behind her.

“I swear to god, I’m quitting tomorrow,” she groans.

Pearl scoffs. “Bitch, you say that every day.”

“I know, but this time I mean it.”

This isn’t how Trixie pictured her life would work out when she moved to LA the moment she graduated college. Like every other hopeful out there, she was going to be a star. She thought she’d at least have a recurring role on a sitcom by now. But gradually, as her savings account has drained, acting classes had been switched for shifts at the makeup counter in the mall. The agent that she’d hired became a luxury that she was no longer able to afford. She’d taken a job at the planetarium because she figured it was the closest thing to acting that she could find, but, God, she fucking hates kids.

Her colleagues are the only thing about the job that she actually enjoys. She’d gotten the job through her roommate Kim and became friendly with the other pretty quickly. She’s never been one to shy away from social situations, especially not at work.

In the break room, anything goes.

Last week, their boss, Brooke, had pulled Trixie into the office to give her a lecture on ‘why we leave our personal lives at home’ when she realised that half of the tours started late one morning because her guides had been too busy grilling Trixie about the hickey on her neck from her Tinder date to keep an eye on the time. Honestly, that talk had gone in one ear and straight out of the other. She figured that it was pretty hypocritical, coming from the woman who’s almost definitely banging the chick who works in the gift shop.

“Trix’, you’ll like this,” Pearl tells her, beckoning her over. “When Violet was working the public telescopes last night, some old couple asked her to point them towards Ursa Major.”

Violet laughs loudly, “like I know where that fucker is.”

“What did you do?” Trixie smirks.

When their job amounts to little more than following a script and flicking the lights on and off at the right time, they all know how stressful it can be when they get asked a specific question.

Violet shrugs, “I just pointed upwards. What else was I supposed to do?”

-x-

After lunch, Trixie is leading the ‘Moons of the Solar System’ tour that is open to the public. On the one hand, the ratio of children to adults on these tours is always much lower, so that’s a positive, but on the other hand, members of the public come with their own set of problems.

There’s the entitled moms, who think that their kids should get to climb up on the displays. There’s the know it all dads, who like to jump in with a ‘well, actually’ every once in a while. There’s always a group of tourists who never listen to the ‘no flash photography’ instruction at the beginning. But every once in a while, there’s someone interesting or quirky or different, that makes her shifts just about bearable.

Pearl is collecting ticket stubs at the entrance to the planetarium dome, and gives Trixie a nod when the last members of the audience have filtered in. As she leaves, she closes the doors behind her and sets the lights so that they begin to dim.

“Good afternoon, ladies and gents. I’m Trixie Mattel and I’ll be your tour guide today. Please remember that there is no eating or drinking in the auditorium. Now, raise your hand if you’ve ever seen the moon.”

She rattles through the opening section about Earth’s moons fairly quickly. It’s the most boring part of the script by far, since even young kids will already know this by now. With feigned enthusiasm, she asks her audience participation questions about solar and lunar eclipses. Once she’s finished, someone raises their hand to ask a question. She prays it’s something she knows the answer to.

“When’s the next lunar eclipse?”

Trixie shifts uncomfortably. The woman’s blue eyes are piercing, waiting for her to answer.

“Um, some time next month. You’ll have to check out our website for further details.”

The woman nods, seemingly satisfied. But she’s barely into her segment on Jupiter’s four largest moons when the woman speaks up again.

“Which space probe has travelled the furthest?”

She has to use all of her willpower to force herself not to roll her eyes. The Lord really is trying to test her today. Quickly, in her head, she rattles through all of the names of the space probes that she knows, trying to pick the one that sounds right.

“Um, Galileo,” Trixie guesses.

The woman smiles, but says nothing.

“And how far away is-“

Trixie has to cut her off.

“I’m sorry ma’am, but I’m going to have to ask you to leave all questions until the end.”

The woman apologises, but it doesn’t make Trixie feel any less on edge.

The thing is, Trixie knows that he answers are wrong. She knows that she’s making up the majority of her script on the spot. And she knows that the parents here are lapping it up, planning to go home and brag to their book club friends about how their kids enjoy educational pastimes, because they’re just so damn gifted.

But this woman. Who’s teetering in skyscraper heels and watching her like a hawk. Who’s nodding along with the presentation, smirking softly to herself, like she knows something that everybody else doesn’t. Trixie is sure that this woman knows that everything she’s saying is bullshit.

Trixie sets up the projectors to play a short clip showing the names and sizes of some of the solar system’s biggest moons, then positions herself in the back corner of the room. Then, as if this woman isn’t odd enough already, she starts to look up at the dome. But she doesn’t look up like all the rest of the parents, with a semi-interested expression and frequent glances to her watch. She looks up in awe, like this is the greatest thing she’s ever seen in her life. Like nothing could bring her to look away, not even for a moment.

And it’s funny, because Trixie is as captivated by the woman as the woman is by the moons.

At the end of the presentation, Trixie is dreading the asking the audience for questions, because she knows whose hand is going to be the first in the air. So, she drags out the end of the show for as long as possible, praying that she overruns. When Pearl pokes her head through the door to give her the two minute warning for the start of Kim’s next group, she’s so relieved, she could kiss her.

“And that’s all we have time for today folks. Please exit via the gift shop on your right. Have a lovely day!”

She makes a beeline for the door, but of course, the woman follows her.

“Hold on, I didn’t get to ask my questions,” she smirks coyly.

Trixie sighs and gestures to the edge of the corridor so they can stand out of the way of the crowds.

“Look, I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing but-“

The woman holds up her hands in defence. “I’m not playing any games, I just wanted to know-“

“Save it,” Trixie cuts her off, and she really hopes she’s right because if not she’s just been very, very rude to a curious audience member. But then the woman grins and she knows she isn’t wrong. Trixie sighs. “Are you going to tell my boss?”

The woman shrugs and Trixie’s eyes widen.

“Look, I’m sorry if your kid didn’t enjoy the show or whatever. I’ll get you tickets to the next-“

“Ew, gross” the woman cuts her off by shaking her head, “I don’t have a kid.”

“Oh. Then why are you at a kids planetarium show?”

The woman laughs. Her teeth are perfectly straight and perfectly white, not that Trixie cares.

“My niece watched a show here last week, but the new facts that she learned turned out to be the biggest load of garbage I’ve ever heard.”

Trixie ought to be embarrassed, but really, she’s just annoyed. Why can’t this woman just leave a bad review on trip advisor like a normal person?

“Are you some kind of space expert or something?”

The woman takes a business card out of her purse and hands it over.

Prof. Yekaterina P Zamolodchikova. Astrophysics Department - UCLA.

“Jesus,” Trixie mumbles.

“No, Katya,” the woman replies, holding out her hand for Trixie to shake.

Trixie doesn’t shake her hand.

“Please don’t tell my boss, I really need this job.”

“Maybe if you really needed it, you’d be less terrible at it.”

Trixie shrugs. “That’s fair.”

Katya’s gaze sharpens. “What you’re doing isn’t right. Kids come here to learn and you’re just making shit up as you please.”

Trixie shifts on the balls of her feet. It would be easier to just let Brooke tear her a new asshole than have to put up with this. Maybe if she tells her before Katya has the chance, she’ll get to keep her job.

Trixie looks at her watch and sighs. “Okay, if you’re going to tell her will you at least tell her tomorrow, so that I get paid for the rest of the day.”

Katya looks Trixie up and down, then grins devilishly. “I’m not going to tell her.”

“You aren’t?”

“No.”

Trixie blinks rapidly, then stares at her, unaware of what they’re supposed to do now. Then, Katya gestures to the business card in her hand.

“See the address? I want you to meet me there at eight. I’m going to teach you what you need to know.”

Trixie narrows her eyes. “You’re a college professor and you want to teach third grade physics to a terrible planetarium tour guide…”

Katya shrugs. “Or I could tell your boss that you can’t do your job properly.”

“Fine. God damn it. Whatever. I’ll be there.”

Trixie had been warned of the unsavoury side of life before she moved to LA, but had never thought she would be blackmailed into being educated.

She looks down at the card in her hand, but when she looks back up, Katya is already walking away.

“How will I know where to find you?”

“You’ll know,” she calls back over her shoulder.

“This had better not be a trap so that you can kidnap and murder me,” Trixie shouts after her, earning her a few uncomfortable glances from nearby parents.

“No promises,” Katya tells her, then leaves the building.

[faveficarchive]

The Hitch Hiker

By Bongo Bear

Pairing: AU Xena/Gabrielle

Rating: Mature

Synopsis: AU Xena/Gabrielle meet after an airport an airport snafu, and their past selves are dredged up. CW: dub!con

Personal Note: This right here is the OG Uber-fic for the Xenaverse. Bongo Bear LITERALLY COINED THE TERM UBER for Xena fic, and fanfic in general, so bless her for her contributions. Bongo and Bat Morda paved the way for you to enjoy every Mel/Janice, Xena/Gabrielle uber fic you’ve ever read. You ain’t got nothing on this woman. I don’t usually post ubers that don’t contain 99% pure X/G or M/J in their named glory, but this one has to be preserved, as it was the first. I’ll also be posting a few more of her stories as I can find them.  

I was in a real snit, to put it mildly. I was tired and hungry and still had a long way to go. I had just lost my boarding pass after the bags were already checked in and loaded on the plane. Time was running out and I was desperate enough to call upon a higher power.

So, I supplicated myself to a priestess of air travel at the altar of Customer Service. I begged her to let me join my luggage on the flight that was about to leave in five minutes from the gate a hundred yards away from where I prostrated myself before her. I made offerings of Mastercard, Visa, and American Express to no avail. She looked at me with sympathetic eyes, but no way was she going to violate security protocols and let me on board without the missing pass. I sighed deeply and started to look at the flight schedule to other cities when I heard a voice call out to me.

I turned at the sound and saw a woman sitting in the waiting lounge nearby. She smiled and waved at me. I pointed to my chest, who me? She nodded vigorously, yes you! I walked over to this woman whom I had never set eyes upon before and asked, "Ahh, did you want to say something to me?"

"Yes, I couldn't help but overhear your conversation over there," she pointed to the counter. "I'm going to Vancouver as well and missed the same flight, but for different reasons. Now, I'm on a flight to Bellingham; it's just an hour drive to Vancouver from there. If you get a seat on the Bellingham flight, I'll drive you over. The plane leaves in thirty minutes."

I'm not accustomed to the unexpected generosity of strangers, so I looked her over. Even though she was seated, I could tell that she was tall, taller than me. Her dark hair was gathered in a long ponytail that curled over her shoulder. What really caught my attention were her incredible, deep blue eyes. They matched the indigo denim shirt she wore under her black leather parka. I thought for sure that Mother Nature didn't make eyes like that and that she was wearing contacts. I looked for the tell-tale rings in the corneas, but I couldn't find them.

"Well, are you interested in my offer or not?"

I mentally slapped myself when I realized that I was falling into her eyes. What was she offering me? Oh, yes, a ride. "Yeah, sure. Why not? You don't look like an axe murderer." I grinned at my lame attempt to break the ice.

"That's a relief! I hate to think that people find me threatening. My name is Alexandria, but you can call me Alex," she said as she stood up and extended her hand to me.

"I'm Gwen, short for Guinevere," I said, shaking her hand. A strong grip. I liked that. Some women, when they shake hands, only grasp the fingers and give them a weak wiggle. That always made me feel like they were hiding something because they weren't willing to give all of their hand to me. What else would a person like that hold back? Alex's hand was large enough to encompass all of mine. She shook my hand firmly, yet gently. I could trust her. Completely. What the hell am I thinking, I thought.

"Guinevere is a very old, very auspicious name," Alex observed.

"My mom was a big fan of Le Morte d'Arthur. Now, Alex is an unusual nickname for Alexandria."

"I throw people for a loop whenever they meet me. You know, they're expecting some guy instead of me. Besides, I'm more memorable that way," she said matter-of-factly.

No kidding, I thought. "Hmm, I need to buy my ticket. Will you watch my backpack for me?" I set my heavy pack in the empty seat next to Alex and walked over to the ticket counter. When I returned, she was studying the blueprint tube sticking out of the top of the pack.

"It's a practice sword called a bokuto," I said as I pulled the tube out of the pack and sat down. I removed the protective tube and handed her the wooden sword. "I'm a student of Iaido..."

"The Japanese martial art of drawing a sword and striking down your opponent in a single stroke," she finished. "By the way, where's your live blade?"

I looked at her quizzically, "My sword's at home. Security would get antsy if I carried on three feet of razor sharp steel. How did you know about Iaido?"

"I'm a professor of military history. Actually, my specialty is Greek warfare, but I keep up with other cultures as well," she said as her hand caressed the smooth wood of the sword's blade.

This time, I stopped myself from staring at her graceful hand and said, "I'm an architect. I've just finished a guest lecture on design here in Denver."

"So are you going to Vancouver for another lecture?"

"No, Vancouver's a working vacation; Denver was just work. You promise not to laugh too hard?" Alex nodded. "I like to write on the side. So I'm attending a writers' workshop in Vancouver. When I was in college, I had to decide whenever to major in literature or architecture. I've always had a bent for the written word as well as drafting and design. I chose architecture for the money, but I never gave up writing for the pleasure."

"I understand. It's good to cultivate many talents: public speaking, word smithing, and sword play," she said as she handed my sword back to me. "Boarding call....let's get in line." She put her hand around my upper arm. I let her guide me out of my seat and into the queue.

"'Word smithing' to describe scribbling stories is a bit overly dramatic, isn't it?" I said, a little embarrassed by the flourish she gave that part of my life.

She shrugged her shoulders. "It's part of what you are. That's nothing to be ashamed of. The attendant wants your pass," she said as she directed my gaze to the waiting attendant.

We boarded the plane. It was a lot smaller than I had expected for such a long trip from Denver to near the Canadian border. The plane, being as tiny as it was, transmitted every swoop, turn, and sudden updraft directly to my stomach. I held my head between my knees. I knew I was going to hurl into the barf bag I held to my mouth. Alex, seated next to me, rubbed my neck and my back to try to soothe me. She had me sit up, then she grasped my wrist tightly. Suddenly, my motion sickness faded from the full-blown tempest to a slight churning in my gut.

"What did you do?" I asked Alex. She said, "I've activated a pressure point on your wrist. Like this." She demonstrated again. It was like a toggle switch. Hit the point once the nausea goes away. Hit again and it comes right back at you. "Oh god, I'm gonna be sick." She quickly switched off my stomach. "Thanks, I can relax now," I said.

Feeling a bit conversational, I decided to find out more about my unusual traveling companion. "So, what brought you to Denver?" I asked.

"I did some hiking in the Rocky Mountain National Park. Ever been there, Gwen?" 

I nodded. "It's one of the most beautiful places on Earth. Not too many places have skies as blue, snow caps as white, or lakes as clear." I watched her face intently as she spoke. I could almost see the stormy blue skies over the Rockies reflected in her eyes.

"I assume that you hiked by yourself. Do you like communing with Nature all alone?" I asked.

"I've traveled with a friend in the past, but now I travel alone. I would prefer a companion," she said almost shyly. She looked at me expectantly. I wasn't sure how to respond.

"Please go on. I want to hear about your trip," I said relaxing into my seat. I felt her fingers burning into my hand as she touched me to emphasize a point. Her voice fell into a sing-song that slowly dropped octaves and the volume softened to a low whisper. I stopped hearing any more of her words, as I fell into a light snooze that quickly deepened into REM sleep. I dreamt about Alex, but not Alex.

******

A tall, dark beauty looking amazingly like Alex walks tentatively towards me. She's wearing what looks like a one-piece leather bathing suit with a matching set of breast armor, gauntlets, and arm bands. She smiles brilliantly at me. I approach her, but she won't let me touch her. I can't hear what she's saying. She leans in to kiss me on the lips. I close my eyes and purse my lips in anticipation...

******

"Gwen!" Alex tried to shake me out of the dream. "Wake up!" She shook me hard enough to throw my upper body into the aisle.

"Uuhh, what? Oh, it's you," I said. She said that I was talking some nonsense aloud and she didn't want me to embarrass myself. "What did I say?" I asked warily.

"Nothing intelligible, but the other passengers started to look at you funny," she said.

"Great, thanks for waking me. My ears are killing me. We must be landing." I looked out of the window and saw white. Not just the white of flying through cloud cover, but the white of the ground covered with snow and the white of the sky whose horizon was increasingly indistinguishable as the day came to a close. "Are you sure we can drive through this mess? It looked like it snowed ten feet down there!"

Alex patted my hand, "No, problem. I grew up here and know the area well. Besides, we can rent a four-by-four SUV when we land."

******

We pulled out of the rental car lot and were on the road to Vancouver in no time flat. Alex drove while I rode shotgun. She tuned the radio to a local NPR station that was playing classical music. Soon she was humming softly to the strains of Mozart's Magic Flute. I leaned back against the head rest and squinted my eyes at the setting sun as it outlined Alex's features.

She concentrated all of her attention on the road because of the driving snow. I took the opportunity to look at her, to really see this intriguing woman. The fading sun illuminated the profile of her face. The planes of her high cheek bones complemented her long, straight nose. Her countenance had a classic beauty that the typical Barbie doll beauty queen lacks. Her face projected strength, confidence, and something else that I bet scared the holy shit out of her students when the mood struck her.

She must have felt my stare, for she said, "What are you looking at, Gwen?" She kept her eyes on the road.

"You," I said brazenly, almost wishing I hadn't said anything at all. "I know I've met you before..." She just smiled enigmatically at the windshield.

Alex turned on the headlights. The falling snow sparkled as it fell through the beams. It would have been a lovely sight if the snowfall weren't so heavy. The visibility was reduced to mere feet once the sun went down. "We'll have to pull over. It's too dangerous to drive in these conditions. I'll park away from the road so that we don't have to worry about a car hitting us in the night."

"Where can we stay? I'm not too thrilled about camping out in the SUV tonight," I whined.

"We'll be just fine in the back. I have camping equipment in my luggage."

I looked out at the heavy falling snow. It was wet and stuck to everything. The wind whipped around what didn't stick and obscured everything else but the small space directly in front of the SUV. I blew out a sigh between my lips. The window immediately fogged. "Damn, we're snowbound."

******

Alex put down the back seats of the SUV to form a flat surface and laid her sleeping bag across it. "There's only one bag," I said, pointing out the obvious. "I know. We'll have to share. My bag's big enough," Alex said.

How convenient for you, I thought. "I'm not comfortable with that. Why don't you sleep back there and I'll just curl up in the front seat?"

"Don't be ridiculous. Besides, it's much warmer if we sleep together." She shrugged herself into the bag, looked at me, then patted the empty space next to her. I shook my head no. "Suit yourself."

Thirty minutes later, I was freezing and not getting a wink of sleep. Cold moonlight poured through the windshield, dimly lighting the interior. I looked back and saw her shivering a little in her sleep as well. I crawled back there and gently woke up Alex. She said sleepily, "Changed your mind? Come here and lie down."

I took off my heavy parka and snuggled up inside. I laid the parka over the bag for extra warmth. Alex had done the same with hers. I laid flat on my back and peered straight ahead so I wouldn't have to look at her. Like I could actually ignore her. I felt her body heat radiating into my side.

"Gwen, why were you staring at me earlier?" She propped herself up to face me.

"Umm, no particular reason. You're just interesting to look at." I still stared at the ceiling.

"Uh huh. You said you knew me from somewhere else? Do you remember where?" She caught a lock of my hair and began to twirl it in her fingers.

"Stop that," I said, grabbing her hand. "You just look very familiar; that's all! Is there a point to the twenty questions?" I said impatiently, releasing her hand.

"Maybe..." She put her hand on my stomach and began to rub it in slow circles through the sleeping bag.

"Like you're trying to seduce me?"

"Who me?" she asked as innocently as possible for her.

"I don't see anyone else here." I rolled over and pretended to search around the cramped loading area of the SUV. She caught my hand and placed a fingertip in her mouth. Then she kissed the palm of my hand before nibbling the sensitive spot on the inside of my wrist. Don't...do...that..." I objected weakly.

"Why not?" she said. 

Why not, indeed. I couldn't think of a good reason to refuse her attentions. She was beautiful, aroused, and getting me there, too. I was wondering if her suggestion to travel with her back at the airport was a mere coincidence or if it was somehow fated. Why here, why now, why me?

"I can see the indecision on your face, Gwen. A lot of questions going through that hard head of yours." She quickly closed the distance between our lips. "Have you made up your mind, yet?" I responded by rolling her on top of me. "I'll take that as a 'yes'," she said, looking down at my wide open eyes. Her long hair tickled my neck and my nose. She deliberately moved her head so that the soft strands brushed against my skin, making me laugh.

"You're all flushed. Let's get you out of those clothes." She picked herself up, then pulled me to a sitting position. As she kissed me, she slowly unbuttoned my flannel shirt. She bent down and placed her soft lips on my exposed skin as each unbutton came undone. The wet kisses left a trail of goose bumps. By the time the trail led to my navel, I was ready tear the rest off myself. I kicked away the top of the sleeping bag, then leaned back so I could unzip my jeans. Her hands beat me to the zipper. She pulled the jeans and underwear off in a single motion and was tugging at my socks. "Leave them be," I said panting slightly. She looked at me with a questioning eyebrow. "I don't want to get cold feet."

She smirked at the unexpected humor. "All right. The socks stay put." Her voice grew husky, "Is your foreplay as good as your wordplay?" Before I could answer, she pushed me back into the bag and straddled my hips. Since she was facing the front, the moonlight struck her full in the face. The effect left me breathless. Her brilliant blue eyes, glittering with an internal fire, were set in her pale face like sapphires lying on white satin. She held my gaze and began to murmur softly in a foreign language. Ancient Greek? My lids grew heavy as the rhythm of her voice swept me into delicious unconsciousness. The last thing I remembered were those dazzling eyes.

******

A tall, dark beauty named Xena walks tentatively towards me. She's wearing her usual one-piece leather battle tunic with a matching set of breast armor, gauntlets, and arm bands. She smiles brilliantly at me. I approach her, but she won't let me touch her. I can just barely hear what she's saying. She leans in to kiss me on the lips. I close my eyes and purse my lips in anticipation.....

"Gabrielle, please look at me," Xena said. Gabrielle opened her eyes and saw her lover for the first time in a century. She hugged the warrior tightly and sighed 'Xena' into her shoulder.

"Little one, I'm glad to see you, too! I'm sorry it took so long to make contact, but your host is a little too reserved; repressed even." Xena caressed her bard's hair as she spoke.

"You mean she actually resisted your charms?" Gabrielle asked with a touch of surprise.

"Yeah, can you believe it? I had to seduce then hypnotize her before I could bring you out."

"Are you sure she's a descendant of mine? She seems so different. She doesn't even look that much like me. Her hair is a darker blonde - almost a mousy brown. And she's taller..." Xena stopped her bard before she could tick off any more points.

"Gabrielle, she has your most endearing qualities: propensities for speaking, writing, and whining," Xena said with a very big grin.

"Very funny. But really, she seems a little like you, too. Especially the affinity for swords and a stubborn streak. Could it be that she's a descendant from both of us?"

"Possibly. That could explain why the Fates practically dumped her in my lap. I had almost given up since it had been so long, yet there she was. Just standing there at the airport."

"Hmmm, if she is descended from you as well as me, be careful not to piss her off."

"I don't piss people off any more," Xena said defensively. Gabrielle dropped her chin and cocked her eyes skeptically. "Okay..not as much as I used to."

"Just teasing. Seriously, how do you plan to explain our situation to her? I can take over her body now that she's asleep. But will she share when she's fully awake?"

"Don't know. But for now, let's take full advantage of the situation," Xena said as she bent her head to finish the kiss.

******

The rays of the morning sun reflected off the snow drifts and directly into my face. I tried to pull the sleeping bag over my eyes to block out the light, but there wasn't enough slack. I cracked one bleary eye open, then coaxed the other one awake. Stretching out above my head, I felt the soreness of my arms and legs. I sat up in sleeping bag and looked down at my still sleeping companion. Alex's lips were slightly parted in relaxation. Impulsively, I reached down to caress the side of her face and brush my fingers lightly across her moist lips. She involuntarily closed them on my fingertips. I quickly withdrew them, not wanting to wake her.

I looked around and noted that the snow drifts covered half of the SUV. The doors of only one side could be opened. Fortunately, it was on my side. I fished out my discarded clothing from the corner, dressed, and went outside. Sunlight sparkled on the snow, rendering the landscape an almost blinding white. The pine trees were softly outlined with only a few green branches poking out of the white blanket. I breathed in the cold, sharp air and bent down to wash my face with the clean snow. This isn't so bad, I thought. What am I, nuts? I'm in the middle of the frigging woods! With a very strange, but fascinating woman. Well, I can't do anything about it now.

On a whim, I went back to the SUV and pulled out my sword and a sweatshirt. A few drills would loosen up those sore muscles. I stepped out into a clearing a few yards from the SUV and changed into the sweatshirt. I finished the first seven kata and was meditating about the past day's events when I heard the car door slam shut. I heard Alex's feet crunch through the snow toward me. I felt her arms around my waist as she whispered in my ear, "Good morning, I slept like a rock. How about you?"

As I turned around in her arms, she met me with a brief kiss. I pulled her arms away from me and stepped back a little. She seemed alarmed by my cool reception. "I may as well have slept on a rock; I hurt all over. On top of that, I'm missing out on the workshop, which is already paid for. I'm sleeping in the woods like a goddamned bear. And from the looks of the SUV," pointing to the half-buried vehicle with my chin, "and of the road," pointing in the opposite direction to the non-existent paved surface, "I'm going to have to go through this again!"

"You're certainly acting like a bear. Come on....was last night really so bad?" she asked as she caressed my face. I started to brush her hand aside, but decided to just hold it between us instead.

"Actually, I don't remember very much about it. I just felt unusually sore this morning." I rubbed my lower back to ease a knot.

"At least you can't see the teeth marks on your..." Alex clamped a hand over her mouth to shut herself up.

It was my turn to raise eyebrows. I twisted to glance down at my hip pocket. "On my butt? No, you didn't!" Alex just stood there with a huge toothy grin on her face. "Aah, you did!" I threw up my hands in exasperation.

"Hey, I've been vaccinated!" Alex said defensively, though still smiling. I cocked a skeptical eye at her.

At this point, I was very unhappy camper. I pushed my index finger into Alex's chest, slowly backing her into a tree.

"Whatever possessed you," Poke.

"To bite me," Poke.

"Anywhere?" Poke.

When she couldn't move any further, I looked up into her eyes, "Much less my butt!" Poke.

Looking down at me, she gently pulled my irate finger from her bosom and kissed it. Then she said, "For someone who's not much of a morning person, you're asking very astute questions."

"Huh?" I retrieved my hand to rub the back of my neck, "Things are going on that I don't understand. What exactly happened last night? I feel like I've been through a marathon."

"I'm not surprised considering that Gabrielle and I did give your body quite a workout last night," Alex said carefully, watching my reaction. It was simply, "Who the hell is Gabrielle?"

She sat me down and told me the long sordid tale of her illustrious ancestor, Xena the Warrior Princess and the love of her life, Gabrielle, the famous bard of Potedeia. I never heard of either of them. She explained how their souls were forever intertwined and therefore fated to be together. Throughout the centuries since their deaths, their souls have inhabited the bodies of a select few of their descendants. I'm supposed to be a descendant of Gabrielle for sure and possibly even Xena. Once inhabited, their descendants lived together much as their progenitors did in life. Alex finished her story with a beatific smile. "We're so relieved to have found you, Gwen. You're just perfect. Just perfect."

"Great, I'm perfect for what? Look, I don't share your enthusiasm. I'm not even sure you're completely sane. You're Xena's descendant and she's supposed to be you now? Let's say for the sake of argument, that what you've told me is completely true - "

"It is," Alex interjected.

"And I'm supposed to let Gabrielle take over my body, so you two can live in bliss the rest of my life?"

"That's how it usually works," Alex nodded her head. "You understand now?"

"I understand that neither of you two have considered the rights of the people you inhabited." Alex looked stunned at my words. "When Gabrielle took over, where was I? Where was my soul?"

"Your soul was still there. You were just unconscious for the whole time."

"Do I have to be unconscious for her to take over completely?"

"Yes. But she can keep you conscious. In that case, you would experience everything as if it were happening to someone else," Alex answered.

"Then I might as well be dead! If I let her take me over forever, she'd be living my life. I like my life. She can't just take it over! Both of you lived full lives, fuller than most, centuries ago. I have the right to live my own life."

"But we're destined to be together forever! The gods have ordained it. You can't refuse to let Gabrielle live again through you."

"Oh, yes, I can. Even if she lets me remain conscious, I won't have my own will. She'd still control everything. I'd just be aware of being trapped in my own body."

"Gabrielle should be the one talking to you. She's much more persuasive than I am," Alex said worriedly. "Gwen, I love you. You've got to understand!"

"Alex, Xena, whoever you are... we just met yesterday. You can't possibly love me. You love Gabrielle. You made love to Gabrielle last night, not to me. You've used me for your own selfish pleasure." Alex winced at that comment, but continued to listen.

"You easily seduced me and I probably even let you. I might even come to love you someday," I said as I stroked her hand. "But Gabrielle will always have your heart. Not me, not the person I really am. Remember how you hated how the gods meddled in your life. You're doing the exact same thing to me. You and Gabrielle will just have to work something else out." I turned, grabbed my coat, shirt, and sword, and stomped back to the SUV to get warm again. The look on Alex's face was like I had just killed her best friend. Maybe I just did.

******

Alex followed me back to the SUV. She grabbed my shoulder and spun me around to face her. "I need Gabrielle by my side. I can't go on living alone like this." Alex was practically pleading with me. A tear welled up in her eye and threatened to roll down a perfect cheek. I automatically reached out and brushed away her tears. She caught my hand and held it to her cheek. Oh god, I groaned inwardly. I snatched my hand away before she took anymore liberties.

"All right, don't get all mushy on me. I thought you were the tough one, Alex."

"Actually, that part of my personality has mellowed a lot. Before Xena merged with me, I was a real wuss. You know, a sentimental, simpering romantic. Her darker personality gave me some balance."

"So it is possible to 'merge' the souls in a body rather than have one dominate the other?"

"No, not really. The dominant soul still controls the body. But sharing the body is more like a merger if both souls want it. I wanted and needed it. It's only a problem if the original owner fights the process. Then it becomes possession," Alex's eyes narrowed slightly.

"Are you threatening me?" Rising up to the challenge, "I got news for you, kiddo. If I've inherited bits of both Xena's and Gabrielle's personalities, I'm stronger than either of you individually. Don't misunderstand; I'm sympathetic to your loneliness."

"As I am to yours," Alex said catching me by off-guard. Holding me by my upper arms, she asked gently, "Gwen, you have your life, your career. But who do you have? How do you wake up in the mornings? All cold and alone? Just like your nights?" I opened my mouth to wordlessly respond, how could you know? Her blue eyes shined into mine. "Who is your soulmate?"

I stood there dazed like a deer in headlights. How did she know what I've needed - wanted - all my adult life? Somehow, she knew about the one-night-stands where I sought temporary relief, only to wake up alone in the morning. She knew that sometimes I cried myself to sleep hugging a pillow, wishing it were a lover. I looked down into my heart and found the answer.

I told her the truth in a quiet voice, "No one."

"That's where you're wrong. I'm right here," lifting my chin so she could see my eyes. Alex reached out to touch my chest. The warmth of her fingers seeped through. "I can help fill that emptiness. We're not being selfish at all. What Gabrielle and I had when we were alive is a gift we bestow on our descendants: the gift of eternal love. You'll never be alone again."

Long minutes passed while I considered what she said. Taking a deep breath, I began slowly, "I suppose....we could come.... to a mutual agreement. There are some things about Gabrielle that could bring balance to my life."

"Yeah, like you could use some lightening up," Alex quipped, a smile turning up a corner of her mouth.

"Hmmph," I sniffed. "She could help me with my writing. Yeah, that's it. Make me more empathic. Who knows? Gabrielle may learn a few things from me." This could work, I thought. "Just because she's dead doesn't mean she can't learn new tricks. But I don't want her messing with my swords. Let's make a deal."

"I'm listening."

******

Alex and I dug the SUV out of the snow drift. The highway plows eventually came through and we were able to get back on the road again. Alex dropped me off in Vancouver. When we parted, she gave me a deep kiss that lingered for hours later. I told her that I wanted to see her again, very soon.

I think this compromise will work out just fine. I'll spend time with Alex because I want to. After all, she is hard to resist. Alex will have to learn to love me for who I am, not who she wants me to be.

Gabrielle will live vicariously through me, but without direct control. Her influence will be subtle and only with my approval. Gabrielle will just have to deal with the fact that I'm driving and she's riding shotgun. Good gods, was that noise my stomach? I wonder what passes for nutbread around here.....

Finis

[thestarwrites]

City of God part II (Finan x OC)

Fic Summary: Finan the Agile meets a Celt-Saxon woman, and for once he can’t think of anything else. Now that the two are increasingly interested, will Finan finally ask her to supper?

Part Two

Rating: PG-13

Please don’t plagiarize! And I s2g if I have to post this part for a fourth time I’m gonna cry.

Also I wanted to share this with some other Finan fans I’ve noticed!

@nxrdist @joyofbebbanburg @medievalfangirl @bookworm925 @buckysskye @jcalpha1

word count: 2,995

Most all of Finans interactions with Urlworth’s daughter for a few weeks were innocuous glances, small conversations, he intended to ask her to supper, however every time he couldn’t find the words. They were only brief acquaintances, until one very early spring day while she was in the courtyard of her father’s forge, sharpening her sword.

The Irishman grinned, watching the girl for a while, she knew what she was doing. It was as Thyra had been told, she knew and practiced sword-art. To a West Saxon like her father, or the King, or any other man for that manner, this would be strange. Why would a young girl be practicing with a sword instead of marrying and being a house wife. But Finan understood. The blood of the Celts. Irish women were strong, independent, had a knowledge of medicine and were often strange.

Once he had watched her fondly for a good while, he finally spoke, his tone low and warm as the early spring sun, “D’ya know how ta use dat t’ing, my Angel? Or are ye jus’ strokin’ it fer want of a man?”

Her eyes darted upward, seeing the dark Irishman. The man she fancied, and whom Thyra said was mad for her, though she didn’t believe her. Standing, holding the sword up, she smirked, “Care to find out, Irishman?” Finan grinned, drawing his own sword, “Ye’ve always been a lass with spirit, I like tha’.” Her cheeks flushed as she took a sword-fighting stance, their blades clanging against one another in sparing readiness, “Do not underestimate me.” “Nor should you, me.” He grinned wider, “And wha’ do I get for winnin’ this little duel, my Lady?” “And how do you know you’ll win?” He just grinned. “What would you like?” Finan couldn’t stand the playful banter, “How ‘bout a kiss?” He threatened to burst into flame right there from how he felt, how he longed for this woman before him, this beautiful wild thing. He had a mission, finally ask her to supper. Then, ask her for the chance to court her— “Oi! What’s going on out here!” Urlworth called out as he came lumbering from his forge, “Kelly— who is this? What is the meaning of this?” She sighed and smiled, setting her sword to the ground with a look of exasperation, “This is Lord Uhtred’s man, a friend of mine, Finan the Agile. We were just messing about, papa.” “A fierce and brave young lass ye have here, Lord Urlworth! Tis true- I am Finan.” He bowed low, “And I have come fer those swords tha my Lord Uhtred asked the King for.” “Of course.” He grunted and went back into the forge to retrieve them. Finan grinned and chuckled, “Yer brave girl, I’ll give ye that. Yer stance needs some work, and ye need more trainin’ holdin’ up yer blade.” He cleared his throat, “And on top a’ tha’ yer all covered in soot, I can barely see if yer beauty still remains.” Gasping she huffed and went to move toward him with her sword, swinging it clumsily- he laughed and jumped back- and suddenly Urlworth was in view again, “Here you are, Finan. Didn’t expect to have someone collect these til next week, but they’re done all the same. Give my regards to Lord Uhtred and his new wife Lady Gisela.” He smiled. “Yes, Lord. I surely will.” “Papa?” He turned his head at the sound of his daughter’s voice, “May I accompany Finan to Lord Uhtred’s town estate? I have been meaning to visit Abbess Hild. I have heard she is with him.” He shrugged, “Sure, I don’t see why not— just try and stay out of trouble, hear?” “Yes Papa.” She smiled and turned to Finan, “Shall we go?” Finan smirked, “Yes, Lady.” Another chance. “I will be back probably after dark, papa.” He nodded again, “Aye, make sure ye don’t walk back alone.” “Oh she won’t, sir. I will make sure personally tha she gets home safe an sound.” The man smiled a bit and nodded, “Thank you, Finan.” He turned and headed back to the forge, “Have fun, child!” Kelly turned to set her sword in its scabbard, setting it in the shed. “Come on, girl.” Finan called with a grin. As the two walked down the road, Finan’s horse was carrying the load of parcels, they walked in silence for a while before the Irishman spoke again with a grin, “Why pick now ta visit Hild?” “I just wish to see my friend. And I want to know what possessed you suddenly to ask me such a disgusting question.” She smirked. He smirked in return, “T’wasn’t t’at disgustin’ — I mean, I was right wasn’ I? Yer in want of a man?” He bounced his eyebrows. Scoffing she rolled her eyes, “I am in want of nothing, Irishman.” “Oh sure. Cooped up in tha’ King’s own palace all the time, sayin’ prayers, readin’ books, I heard tale of a wild Celtic lass, who rode horses fast as tha’ wind- sword at her side, boltin’ through tha’ countryside, hair full of grass, layin’ around daydreamin and pickin’ flowers… Stop me at any time girl.” He smirked. Kelly had stopped in the street, mouth agape, and Finan kept walking, “Yer fallin’ behind, lass!” Jogging, holding her dress up, she fell back into step, “How do you—“ “Tyra has told Uhtred all about her new best friend.” He shrugged, “Many a man in Coccham would love ta bed a lady like tha’. How old are ye anyhow?” Her cheeks were red, “I’m twenty.” She huffed, “And I suppose Lord Uhtred delights in spreading his sister’s business around?” “When he’s go’ a score a’ women-hungry men… and he finds a wild, high spirited woman out in his travels? A woman who could keep up with his men? Yeah. And I’m twenty five.” He smiled, “I like an accomplished girl.” “Keep dreaming.” She huffed, crossing her arms as she walked with him. He stopped, stooping low to her ear, “I’ll keep dreamin’ every night of your soft skin on mine… just as you dream of freedom, an’ wind in yer hair, and a man inside ye.” Pulling back, there was a big smirk on his face. She slapped him, cheeks bright red, storming ahead of him down the street toward Uhtred’s home. She was mostly embarrassed because he was right. And then man she dreamt of was whispering in her ear. “What spirit.” He grinned dazed, touching his cheek, looking up at the sky, he touched his cross, “Let her fall fer me, Lord.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hild stroked Kelly’s hair and laughed, “What did he say to you! You all fired up!” She tried to soothe the Celtic-Saxon as best she could. She had walked into the home minutes before Finan who had to stable his horse, “Its Finan, he’s harmless. Come on now.” She looked up at the Abbess, with big frightened blue eyes, “He stooped to whisper in my ear,” Looking away she covered her face, “He said he would dream of my soft skin against his.” Hild raised her brows, “What else did he say?!” “He said… that I dream of freedom, and wind in my hair—“ Kelly took a deep breath, “And a man inside of me.” “He said what!” She hissed. Shaking her head she looked up, “I’ve never felt this way.” The Abbess raised her eyebrows, “Oh my. This IS serious.” “It was so WILDLY inappropriate but…” “For the record,” Hild interrupted, “Finan is one of the most honorable men I have ever known. He has seen horrible things, experienced four years of torture at the oar— and more that he won’t tell. He uses his humor as a shield, I think, but he is a wonderful, Godly man.” “Don’t talk about him as if he is to be my husband!” Kelly huffed. Hild smirked, “I think you’ve already thought of being his wife.” “He said lewd things!” “He has been pressing Uhtred and I for details about you night and day. He has been fawning over you! He was SUPPOSED to ask you to dinner tonight, actually- but I assume, he did not.” The girl blinked, “He WHAT!” All Hild could do was laugh, “He— He’s been—“ She covered her face once more, “He doesn’t even know me!” “And you don’t know him- but I have seen the glances across halls and across streets for months.” The Abbess nodded, “So what happened next?” “I slapped the Irishman.” She bit her lip. Hild laughed hard, holding out her hand and standing, “Come. We must inform Uhtred of this at once! Kelly the Celt! Slapping Finan the Agile! Warrior of Ireland!” She continued to laugh as Kelly blushed harder and took her hand, walking into the bigger hall, “Lord!” Uhtred looked up from where he was talking to his wife and he smiled, “Abbess- Miss Kelly, hello! When did you arrive!” “She just arrived with your fool of a man, Finan!” Uhtred looked over, and Finan kept his eyes down at the sword he was sharpening, ears darkening slightly, “I see.” He smirked, “Please- come and sit down- it is wonderful to see you again.” “And you, Lord.” She smiled bashfully, turning to Gisela, “And you, Lady Gisela.” Gisela smiled and chuckled to herself, “So- Am I right to assume Finan finally asked—” “— ABOUT THE SWORDS HER FATHER WAS WORKING ON, YES.” Finan shouted far too loudly. Everyone stared at him a moment. Shitric was overcome with fits of laughter, “Shut it! Shitric I swear I will cut out yer tongue!” “Honestly, Irishman.” Kelly chuckled, “Calm down.” The Irishman looked up at her for the first time since she’d slapped him. His soulful brown eyes betrayed him. He looked lost, helpless, vulnerable. He snapped to her obediently, as if he was already her beloved. After a few moments lost in each other, Finan sighed and looked back down. He stood and walked over to an alcove fire pit, feeling sorry for himself. He thought he would never court the beautiful woman. He was too afraid of hurting her, of being hurt. Kelly watched him. Her hands clasped to her chest. Gisela smiled and placed her hand on Kelly’s arm, “Dear, would you bring this plate of food to Finan? There is enough for you both.” She took the platter with bread, meat and cheese, still frozen in place. Hild nudged her, “Go on.” Once she spurred Kelly to movement, the nun went and sat with Uhtred, recanting the story to him; “He mentioned how she must be in want of a man… in so many words— and she SLAPPED him!” Hild laughed, Gisela held her husband’s hand tight as she also laughed. The thought of his oath-man being slapped by a woman was hysterical. Just the kind of woman Finan needed, “But- she also has said she has never felt this way about a man.” “I knew it.” Uhtred spoke lowly to her and Gisela, “I knew she fancied him— she always looks for him when I arrive in the palace, or on the street. I catch them sharing a soul gaze often. Connected.” “But we shouldn’t push it, darling.” Gisela warned. “No. no.” Hild urged, “Let them come to it.” Uhtred put up a hand, “Relax, ladies. Finan is my brother. He deserves to be as happy as I am. I won’t ruin this chance for him— besides— he can ruin it himself.” He laughed.

Nestled down in an alcove, lit only by a fire pit, Finan sat in silence, feeling sorry for himself, feeling he looked less a man in front of the girl. “Finan?” Her voice was like angels singing, “I’ve brought something for us to eat.” Looking up at her he smiled half-heartedly and motioned for her to sit, “Hey— I am sorry what I said to ye, it was rude.” She smiled bashfully, shrugging, “You were sort of right.” “I was?” He looked up at her in earnest. Nodding, Kelly sighed, “I do long for freedom, for wind in my hair, along with other things. I long for passion, for kinship. For intimacy.” He swallowed, “Intimacy.” Looking up at him she took a deep breath, trying to change the subject, “Finan? Were you ever married? You’re too handsome to have never been married.” “Ye t’ink I’m handsome?” He grinned, pushing his hand over his newly cropped hair, “As rough around tha edges as I am?” “I’ve heard you looked rougher…” Kelly laughed softly, “You didn’t answer my question.” Finan smirked and sighed, “Yes. Once upon a time, lass, I was.” “What happened?” She moved a bit closer to him, putting her hand on his. The irishman took her hand and moved his fingers over her soft skin, lost in thought for a long while before he spoke, “It’s no’ important, girl, it's in the past.” “Finan.” Kelly said softly, her fingers meeting and running over his. Finan shrugged, “Maybe someday I’ll wan’ ta talk about it.” He pulled her hand to his lips and pressed a soft kiss on her inner-wrist, “But no’ today.” He smiled sadly, “All I want anyone ta know is I was sold ta slavery.  Where two years into my world ‘a torment, I met Uhtred.” The girl just watched him as he continued to pepper kisses on her hand and wrist, “My wife was a miserable thing anyway- beautiful, bu’ no joy.” He took her other hand, kissing it, “You, my lady, are like a faery queen. Full o’ charm and laughter and spirit.” The woman flushed harder, finally taking her hands from his,  to touch his face- raising his head so he looked at her, “I feel like I’ve known you, in another life.” He smiled, “Maybe ye have,” Leaning against her touch, he smiled, closing his eyes, “I want to know if ye’ll have dinner wit’ me sometime? Jus you an me?” She nodded gently, “I’d like that.” He grinned, “Jus’ like tha? I’ve been tryin ta ask ye for weeks,” turning his face to look at her again, “Yer beautiful, did ye know tha’?” Her cheeks flushed bright red, “Thank you.” She laughed. Moving his hands to her face and thigh he smiled, running a thumb over her lips, “I can’t describe how ye make me feel.” “Nor I.” She whispered, heart pounding. Finan leaned in— “Getting late don’t you think?” Gisela interrupted, jolting Kelly and Finan from their trance, “Uhtred and I are getting ready to go to bed. The abbess and the others have already gone to bed,” she chuckled. “O-oh! I’m so sorry Lady!" Kelly stammered. She smiled, “Oh no no… not at all, Gods forbid I interrupt something so beautiful as this.” Gisela motioned between them, “But I don’t want your parents to worry.” Kelly nodded with a small smile, “Thank you for your hospitality, Lady Gisela.” She held out her hands and the women embraced, “Come any time.” Finan cleared his throat, “Shall I walk ye home, Lady?” Turning she blushed and smiled, “Kelly.” She insisted. He grinned again, “Shall I walk ye home, Kelly.” “Yes, Finan, you may.”

~~~~~~~

She’d bid farewell to her friends, hugging Uhtred and then Gisela once more, waving to the others who were still awake outside, wanting to get to know these cheerful Saxons and Danes more thoroughly. Finan led her out into the street, and offered his arm. Kelly took it. Finan grinned like the proudest man in the world, laying his hand over her own. Once at the gate to her family’s section adjoining the palace she smiled, “Thank you for walking me home.” She said softly. “My pleasure, my girl.” He said with a wink. “Oh now I’m your girl?” She raised an eyebrow. Finan just shrugged and pushed a strand of her hair back, “I very much would like ta kiss ye now, if I may?” She blushed and looked up at him, it was the same intense stare they’d shared in many an occasion they had the opportunity to be so close. A small nod was all it took, and just like that, he claimed her lips. The two of them kissed with slow, burning passion, his hands pulling her close, sinking in her hair, and cupping her face. Her own clutching the front of his tunic. She felt things she’d never indulged herself to feel before, blood pumping through her veins. The only thing she knew in that moment was her Irishman, the rock upon which the waves of her longing crashed. The kisses were semi-open mouthed, but Finan kept them relatively chaste. He didn’t dare try and take more than he should someone so innocent. Pulling back for some needed air, Finan was giving a lopsided grin, “Wow.” Kelly flushed and she pushed her face into his shoulder, feeling slightly overwhelmed, “Ye ever kissed anyone before, girl?” Looking up she shook her head, looking slightly afraid, “Was it bad?” He laughed quietly and kissed her lips once more, “No, Lady, yer a natural.” She smiled a little, “I hope it will suffice to show you… how I feel.” Finan smiled and leaned down, pressing a kiss to her forehead softly, his beard tickling her fair skin, “More than you know,” He said softly into her ear, pulling back, “Goodnight, my angel. I’ll call on ye again tomorrow, yeah?” Nodding she smiled, “Until tomorrow.” She said softly and watched until he slipped back into the darkness.

She smiled brightly and put a hand on her lips- not knowing it would be the last time she would see him, Uhtred, Sihtric, or Gisela for a few years.

[oldladydatin]

Second Chances...

I’m going to share this because well this is a pretty anonymous blog for one so I feel comfortable and two every year at this time it’s something I think a lot about, it’s a part of who I am. I realize this is going to be some hokey shit. If someone shared this story with me I would think it was some hokey shit they made up to justify their beliefs. It doesn’t really matter to me, even if I hallucinated it, it made a huge impact in my life. Eight years ago today I was laying in a hospital bed, all alone, with Sepsis, not responding to antibiotics, and I was worried I was about to die..... 

A lot of things led up to this day. I had been struggling with depression and anxiety since middle school. I mostly self medicated, I’d been on antidepressants, I’d been to therapists, none of that helped. When I met my ex husband I was a drunk, honestly. I drank a fifth of gin in front of him and then we went driving on trails in the woods and I was barely buzzed, he kept asking if I was okay to drive and I was because I drank like that a lot. On top of struggling with depression and anxiety, I was raped when I was 17 by a friend I trusted and I just sort went off the deep end. I took drugs at parties and didn’t even ask what they were, I was okay with dying. I was angry at the whole fucking world. I never talked about being raped, I told my husband about it later in our marriage, but that was it until I was in my 30′s. I was embarrassed more than anything, I worried I brought it on, like how messed up is that? I worried it was somehow my fault that when I said no 12+ times he didn’t understand it, I didn’t want people to see me like that. All my bad behaviors escalated after that, I went from sort of caring to not caring at all. I used to cut myself and hide them with the like three dozen bracelets I wore all the time, that got worse and I didn’t even necessarily try to hide it. I went from partying once a week to whenever I could. I drank more, I did more drugs, I drank and drove all the time. I got in more trouble. I tried to drop out of school, I wasn’t necessarily struggling academically, I was smart, but I barely went because I’d have panic attacks and I had migraines all the time. I just quit caring. I wasn’t sexually active, I sort of hated being touched after that. I started seeing someone and I never had sex with him, I was too messed up and it was hard being intimate. My ex husband and I were intimate because I felt safe with him, I trusted him. However I wasn’t ever very affectionate towards him, I really struggled with that. My family wasn’t very affectionate, so I didn’t grow up with a lot of touching to begin with, it’s something I’ve struggled with as an adult and oddly being a nurse has helped me get past this, I hug patients all the time, and hold their hands. I was very affectionate with the Mark’s and I loved that feeling, they always made me feel safe and I trusted them, I think those things are important to me in a relationship. 

One day I got a speech from someone I really didn’t even realized cared about me, but he cornered me and lectured me at a party and he meant it, like it was heart felt and I listened. So at some point I was trying to fix myself, I wasn’t doing a great job but I was trying. I had just quit smoking and doing drugs when I met my husband, I was very slowly working on myself. By the time I met my husband our friends were getting into meth. I didn’t have a lot of sense but I had enough to know I didn’t want to do meth. We made the decision to move about an hour away from our friends to a town with more work, where I was already in school studying art. We got engaged and moved into together, yes in that order, I’m old fashioned. I struggled with depression more after we moved, I was very clingy and dependent. I struggled with being sober all the time. I was a mess. I tried different medications, I tried therapy, I tried being a workaholic, I tried any and everything. I never talked about being raped in therapy, I just tried pretend it didn’t happen and it wasn’t apart of me. I graduated with my art degree and we decided to start a family. It took years to get pregnant but I got pregnant. I was the worst pregnant woman on the face of the planet. I had hyperemesis gravida, it’s a real thing. I threw up so much I was chronically dehydrated, the people in the emergency room knew me by first name. I continually visited them for dehydration, migraines, UTI’s and for episodes of vomitting that didn’t stop for hours. By the third trimester I had quit school and I just laid on the couch and cried all day, I was so depressed it was unreal. We talked to the OB doctors about it and they started me on antidepressants that were safe during pregnancy. They tried to schedule a c-section because of my anatomy they already knew I wouldn’t be able to have her naturally. I insistent on a natural birth, I went 24 hours in labor after my water broke, no drugs, trying every damn thing I could and still ended up with a c-section. I felt like a disappointment as a woman, c-sections are viewed by some women as the “easy” way out. It was a major abdominal surgery, that took weeks to recover from and the experience emotionally damaging and I was already struggling. 

I had severe post-pardum depression, possibly psychosis, also a thing. I had panic attacks, I had a hard time even grocery shopping because I’d walk in the store and it would almost warp and seem so endless that I thought I wasn’t getting out. I was trying to load a trailer at one point to move things to our storage unit and I started hallucinating that bugs were crawling all over me. I never slept, when I did I had nightmares. Everything people said to me was blown out of proportion. If someone nitpicked the way I was holding her I felt like they were criticizing me as mother. I decided to kill myself. I picked a date, wrote a letter, it wasn’t me thinking about it, I had a very well thought out plan. My husband found out and we went to the ER and I spent 3 weeks in a half way house for psych patients, doing group and seeing doctors, the whole thing. After that it was psychiatrists and more pills and more diagnosis. My ex husband got laid off from his job and decided it would be best to try to live in another state. I was excited to go one an adventure, but for my health it was probably the worst thing we did. I needed what little support I had at home. In other states this just got worse until I was in another hospital, 3 more weeks I had gained almost 100 lbs between the side effects of the medications and stress eating, At times I barely got out of bed. I was actually in the process of trying to get disability because the panic attacks were so bad I was barely able to hold down a part time job. I was so desperate to feel better I even went to a therapist about the rape but talking about it was so overwhelming I only went to three sessions and quit. I was addicted to drugs that I was prescribed. They prescribed me ambien and ativan. I would pop ativan all day. I would get in an argument with my husband and just pop some ativan during the argument. I started out taking 5 mg of ambien and eventually I was taking 30 mg, I’d run out of pills and barter for more at the job I had. I would take them and black out and go do stuff. It was all very scary. 

I got what I thought was the stomach flu, I was throwing up all week. My ex husband brought home a pregnancy test and asked me to take it. At this point this man never touched me. I didn’t even remember having sex with him in the year before that. Partially that was my fault, because we had sex and I was on ambien and ativan and I didn’t remember it and that made him feel like he took advantage of me so he wouldn’t touch me. As it turned out I was pregnant, We had, had sex when we went home for Christmas, I was drunk and on drugs and I didn’t remember it. This pregnancy was worse, it started with detox. I called my psychiatrist multiple times to try to find out what to do about the medications because they weren’t safe to take during pregnancy. They never returned my calls, so I just quit taking them. I was so sick, I couldn’t sleep, I was sweating so much I was repeatedly changing my clothes, when I did sleep I was having nightmares. I was throwing up all the time. It lasted a few weeks. When I had my first OB appointment I was honest with them about this and they told me I was very lucky that I hadn’t miscarried because of withdrawals. I had the hyperemesis crap again. Migraines, anxiety, I struggled to breath because of my weight, UTI’s, I’m just not good at being pregnant. 

We made the decision for me to go home because I was too sick to take care of my daughter and my ex husband worked. My ex again decided we were moving to another state and I was already so stressed out and I just wanted to go home. But my Dad is extremely critical of me, especially about the weight. I had lost about 45 lbs during the pregnancy at that point and when I told him that he said good for you, you’re not supposed to lose a bunch of weight during pregnancy. We met my family half way because I was too sick to sit in a car for 12 hours, so we stayed the night and drove the rest the next day. I wore jeans that were too tight for this trip because I didn’t want my Dad to make fun of me for wearing sweat pants. They dug into my stomach and I was uncomfortable, I was sweating a lot during the trip. Within the next few weeks the area around the button where they dug in the most became red and started to hurt, and hurt a lot. It just kept spreading and swelling and I was too uncomfortable to sleep. It felt really hot so I’d put ice packs on it at night trying to get comfortable. At my first OB appointment there she diagnosed me with cellulitis and started me on antibiotics. It continued to spread. My parents kept down playing it they didn’t really think I was sick or that it was anything serious. My Dad made comments about how I was just fat and needed to get up and move more. They even took me to a mall because I needed to walk around and then they were going to take me to Apple Bees for my birthday, even though I didn’t like Apple Bees, because they had a lower fat menu. I could barely move I was so uncomfortable, I told them I didn’t want to go and after the mall we just went home. The next day I went to the ER with my daughter, I borrowed a car and lied about where I was going. Within 3 minutes they admitted me, they had medical students in and out of my room to see this infection. Within two weeks I had my son 5 weeks early, he was immediately put on bipap and shipped off to the nearest NICU. I didn’t see him for 4 days and then they transferred me to the same hospital because I had gained 70 lbs from swelling and the infection continued to spread. What started out as a nickel sized red area now wrapped around my entire abdomen to my back. They tried not to do a c-section because it was close to the infection by then but I ended up with an emergency c-section anyways and they were afraid of it spreading to the incision, so they transferred me. I continued to not improve at the other hospital. It wasn’t until I was transferred that I ever heard the term sepsis. I freaked out, I didn’t know anything about it but I knew it could kill you. I had sepsis and I was not responding to antibiotics and they would discuss this in the hallway outside my room. I still insisted on getting up to shower everyday but I couldn���t do it by myself. My ex husband would help me shower and I would stand there and cry. I couldn’t wipe when I went to the bathroom. The entire thing was embarrassing. Eventually I was on oxygen and they were discussing survival odds outside my room, I had no idea what any of it meant. 

One night I was awake in my room alone in the dark, I was worrying because it had been like 4 weeks and I was just getting worse. This light came on in my room and I was able to relax. I felt better, even the burning, throbbing feeling in my stomach felt better. I felt like I was being comforted. I don’t know how to explain it but I felt like I could just go in that moment. I felt like all the pain and suffering could be gone if I wanted it to be. I considered it. I considered leaving the world behind for a split second, just letting everything go. Then I started to imagine this whole life, where I was happy, where I was a good mom, where I didn’t hurt and not just the hurt from the infection, but the hurt in my heart that I had been struggling with my whole life. I thought about my daughter and my baby who I was so in love with already. He was let out of the NICU after only 7 days and he was doing great. He would smile and laugh everytime he heard my voice, nobody in the NICU had ever heard a baby that little laugh. We had a really strong bond from day one. I missed my daughter, I missed cuddling with her on the couch and listening to her stories. I felt like I had so much to live for and I wasn’t ready to die. I made a promise that if I lived I was going to live. I wasn’t going to run from life anymore. I was going to make better choices and work towards being happy. I made a promise to change. The light faded and I was alone in my room again. But I felt hopeful, I wasn’t worried I was going to die anymore. Within 2 days with no explanation at all the swelling improved, the infection was going away and I was responding to antibiotics and they didn’t change them. My labs were coming back better. They started me on lasiks and the weight was coming off and I wasn’t on oxygen. Within four days I was going home after a month long nightmare, I was taking my baby home. I just continued to improve. 

I wake up everyday and chose to be happy. I make better choices, I started working on myself. My ex husband hated that, I think he actually liked me being codependent. and suddenly I wasn’t, suddenly I was going out and doing things alone, or with the kids. I was painting and drawing, when we got settled I started taking art classes. The instructor wasn’t sure why I was taking her class and convinced me to help teach painting at this community center. We moved again and we ended up homeless. I had such a good attitude about this I was like well we’ll just camp until we figure it out. My kids and I lived in a tent for an entire summer, and it was fun. My ex worked and they provided him with hotel rooms. The kids and I hiked, swam, rode bikes, made art, we did all kinds of cool things. To this day my kids think we were on vacation. I changed my whole attitude and when we got settled I went back to school for nursing. I wanted to help people the way people helped me. I wanted to make a difference and I am. I still struggle sometimes but I think about that one moment and the promises I made and I shake myself out of it and get moving. I don’t take drugs, I’ve been offered Vicodin, or ativan by doctors but I’d rather struggle. I drink socially maybe once a month and never when I’m struggling. I’ve been struggling the past month and went to three metal shows and only had water. Every year around this time I think about where I was at 8 years ago and I count my blessings. I think about my life and the promises I made that day and take a look back and try to decided if I’m living up to them. If I’m not I try to decide how I can do better the next year. Some of the best things can come out of the worse days, and that’s what happened 8 years ago. 8 years ago today, I got a second chance. 

[onetenthoddity]

A Big Personal Post

So word of warning, this is gonna be a very long tl;dr post about my struggles with my sexuality and I’m gonna get into some real TMI stuff. Also, while it is Pride Month (Happy Pride Month to any LGBT people reading this by the way!!), this is completely unrelated to that and has nothing to do with my sexual orientation or gender identity or anything similar. I’m just a boring cis straight guy. Sorry men, you just don’t do it for me.

This might seem like a weird and unexpected post coming from me, but I constantly keep all this locked away tight and it’s been eating at me for years and years and years and it’s gotten really bad recently, to the point of real emotional distress and depression, so I think I need to just let it out already. So that’s what I’m gonna do.

I’m just gonna jump right into it; I have a very high sex drive. I like sexual stuff; fanservice, big titty anime girls, lots of nsfw art and artists, the dreaded sexualized depictions of women, you know. The usual suspects. And it’s not like any of that is bad. Humans are sexual creatures, it’s biologically wired into us to have a sex drive and experience sexual attraction and desire. Pretending that’s not the case/telling people it’s wrong to feel that way is honestly absurd and really harmful. The real problem is I feel really bad about all of it; I have a huge amount of shame and guilt and embarrassment towards my sexuality. I never really talk about sex or sexual things with anyone, and I get uncomfortable whenever it gets brought up. Like I said, I bottle it all up, and that only makes me feel worse about it all. I’m not even religious at all by the way, I’ve been to church for religious purposes a grand total of once in my entire existence. But unfortunately the US is still a sexually repressive society whether you’re religious or not thanks to those good ol’ puritan roots that still fuck everyone over to this very day, so it was still hammered into me that sex is bad and something to be ashamed of. It’s so ridiculous; I live in an extremely liberal town right outside Boston, my family is full of accepting people, I actually got a good sexual education from school, and yet here we are. Even though I logically know it’s a load of shit, I just can’t seem to get rid of the idea that sex and sexual desire is inherently harmful or wrong. 

But that’s not the only reason I feel so negative about my sexuality; as one of my exes once put it, I perhaps drank TOO much respect women juice. And while I lean very left/am a very progressive person in general, it’s not like I’m one of those male feminists that seem like they’re just trying to get brownie points or moral superiority, nor am I a “nice guy”. No; for most of my life I’ve just been around women. When I was little me and my older sister spent all our time together; she’s even the one taught me how to read. From middle school and beyond basically all of my closest friends were all girls. And since I was an art boy, I took a lot of art classes and went to art club, which were demographically mostly female. Hell, I was the only boy in my AP Portfolio class, and like one of three total in art club. And after that I went to an art college with a 30/70 male to female ratio. No exaggeration, for the past decade I have not had any close male friends, and for the past four or five years I haven’t had any at all. I feel much more comfortable around women than men; I actually have trouble talking to guys, especially guys who are more stereotypically masculine (which I am not at all nor care to ever be). I don’t just like girls from an attraction standpoint, I genuinely like and care about women as people. But because I have such a high sex drive and I like women in a sexual manner too, it kinda makes me feel like a hypocrite; like I’m betraying that fact. There’s always so much talk about how sexualizing women is wrong and harmful, and women face so much sexual abuse from men, that I feel like I’m a bad person for liking things like fanservice or porn or whatever. It makes me feel like I’m contributing to the problem. But of course, this too is absurd; sexualization and sexual objectification aren’t the same thing. You can both depict and view someone in a sexual manner without dehumanizing them, and to think just by making someone sexual you also objectify them is honestly kinda crazy. Once again, a lot of this thinking also stems from repressive religious ideologies. Men being shitty to women is much more a problem of gender and cultural norms. But even more importantly; I am absolutely not a bad person. I don’t harass women and I’ve never sexually mistreated anyone, and I have no desire to in the first place. I don’t try and make friends or relationships or do favors just for sex. I’m not a “nice guy;” I’m a genuinely good person. And I know I’m a good person because I can never admit to myself that I’m a good person despite literally overwhelming evidence.

The final problem is that I have built up an extreme amount of sexual frustration. I am a super introverted person with a lot of social anxiety and self esteem issues, or, as a therapist might put it, a very lonely person. I don’t have a huge desire to be social and I spend most of my time at home, and my anxiety tends to prevent me from being social when I actually want to. So, shockingly, I’ve never had sex. I’ve had a grand total of two relationships, both recent. One lasted four years and another four months, and while both had a sexual component to them neither went all the way. The four year one was especially frustrating, and in the last year of that relationship we basically stopped doing anything sexual, which really piled on the stress/guilt/shame for me (it turns out she was actually a lesbian; we had an amicable break and we’re still friends to this day). I’m also not interested in casual sex at all; I’m one of those truly disgusting people that needs an emotional connection and genuine feeling and such, which really doesn’t help matters. It feels like my sexual frustration is completely out of my control, and a lot of the time I feel like I’ll just never have sex. Like it’s something for me to admire from afar and never get to participate in myself, no matter how much I want to. I also feel like I’m just not very sexually attractive; the idea that someone would want to have sex with me doesn’t seem believable to me (if you knew what I looked like you would probably smack me upside the head for saying that, by the way). I do my best to try and manage my frustration on my own, but in the end I can only do so much. All of this frustration just ends up making me resent my sexuality, which just makes me feel more shame. It also makes me feel lonelier than I already am, especially in a romantic sense.

I made a deviantArt where I post NSFW art (along with my usual stuff) as an attempt to channel my frustrations and to try and accept and express my sexuality, but I don’t know if it’s helped that much, and honestly I’m terrified of someone close to me finding out. The link was on my tumblr before, but I tried to not draw attention to it because, you know, the shame and embarrassment and stuff. You can find it here: https://www.deviantart.com/asaragi

I think that’s everything I wanted to get off my chest. As I said my negativity towards my sexuality has been growing and gnawing at me from inside for a very long time, and combined with my sexual frustration it has really impacted my mental health recently. I’ve made a lot of positive changes in my life recently, and by all accounts I should be feeling a lot better yet I keep falling back in a depressive low, and I keep having trouble sleeping. I knew this was a problem but I was hoping I could just ignore it, that I could work on the other areas of my life that were causing stress and that would fix my depression. I was really hoping that the other stressors were just exaggerating my sex issues. I didn’t wanna face my shame or talk about it with anyone; I can’t even talk about it to my therapist. But no more; it’s time that I accept myself. I’m never gonna get past this if I don’t, and besides, it’s not healthy to hate yourself. If there’s one thing I’ve really come to understand recently, it’s to be kind to yourself and embrace yourself. My sexuality is an important part of who I am. It’s not something for me to be ashamed of, and it doesn’t make me a bad person. It’s simply part of being human.

This was really hard for me to write, so if you read it all, thank you. I hope you have a wonderful day, and remember to be kind to yourself <3

[godtier-rose]

healing is hard

I’ve recently went through something so unreal to me that I’m still honestly pretty emotional and still working through it.  I kept a little measly journal while I was in a psych ward, and I have now been home for almost a week and have typed up all six days I had spent there. This is going to be such a LONG post, but if you are struggling, or just curious about what a psych ward was like from my point of view, go on and read this. 

I want others to know that they aren't alone with their suicidal thoughts. I feel shy and a little embarrassed talking about mine, and my depression, but thats what landed me in there. I didn't ask for help. 

My sister gave me “It’s Kind of a Funny Story” while I was in there, and it just felt nice to read something that someone else went through that I was then going through. Thats why I wrote every day in my little booklet while I was in there.

I was given a second chance that others do not get. People have already denied my experience. I don’t care. People who try to tell you that what happened to you wasn’t real, literally don’t matter. I didn’t try to kill myself to prove anything to anyone. I didn’t plan on surviving. But I lived. 

Here are my days, as best recalled and sloppily written as I can manage, not being the best writer: 

day 0 - last day

the walk to publix is simple. after spending an hour or so browsing the web for lethal doses of drugs, I settle on tylenol pm. 8 is dangerous. I can do that, I tell myself. I buy a bottle and a lunchable ( I have beer at home right? I think so), last meal goals? I almost run home, i’m grossly excited to die. sickening. but I was told one that I would never be remembered. I feel at peace. I won’t have to think about living after i’m gone, not about my depression, not about my feelings, money, stress, no consequences. living is so hard and dying is so easy.

no one else is home, I planned this perfectly. one handful, one beer. repeat. repeat. feel dizzy. fall around the room. knock shit over. people come home. I babble nonsense and say i’m going to bed. my note has been written. I tell no one what i’m doing, I don’t want to be stopped. I don’t want to survive this. no texts and no tweets, people will find out eventually. who cares, not my problem anymore.

drink. swallow more pills. drink. swallow. I stopped counting at 9 beers and 20 something tylenol. I hadn’t eaten all day, my lunchable is long forgotten. i’m a 5’1”, 98 pounds, this should do it. I don’t remember how much I ingest after that.

I black out, finally. i’m ready to die.

day 0 part 2 - not yet

and then???????

I wake up. mouth dry. vision so blurry I panic. I can barely stand. I think i’m going to be sick but nothing comes out. breathing hurts. everything hurts, everything is heavy, wavy,confusing.

i didn’t die. I was given another chance. panic, my body is shutting down, I text my sister, I call poison control, i’m too scared to dial 911. i’m not important or worth it.

I decide to get a fucking uber.(someone told me an ambulance ride is $1,000, fuck that) he pulls up and goes “...hospital???” and i’m standing there, swaying. Yes. please. he freaks out and seems confused, but drives fast and rushes me in. a man has me fill out paperwork and then he asks what’s wrong. I tell him I swallowed more than 20 tylenol to kill myself. I don’t remember how many I  swallowed after 20, I don’t know how much I drank after that. he calls out a stretcher and i’m rushed away. all of my things are taken from me. i’m changed into a hospital gown (butt cheeks OUT, hospital gowns are embarrassing ) they take my blood, they put an IV into me (I almost pass out when I feel the cold go inside my vein, what the fuck) I don’t know what they pump into me but it feels weird and i’m freaked out. tabs are placed all over my body, i’m hooked up to an EKG machine. charcoal tablets( I think ? something for my stomach or liver they say? I'm not a doctor I don't know ) are taken. the nurse asks “honey why would you do this? why are you sad? what is there to be sad about?” a lot. she says i’m lucky that i’m still alive, the amount of alcohol and acetaminophen I consumed and still had in my body should have killed me or shut down my liver. I wanted to say “that was the goal” but I shut up as she took my vitals.

hours pass, I ask for my phone and they say I can look at it once...only once, and make it just a few minutes. then they put it in a bag with my clothes and purse. nurses and doctors walk past my room and peek in and whisper. one finally goes “is this her? the suicide ?” a woman from another room yells back “Yeah that’s the baker act”. i’m embarrassed. nurses and doctors keep stopping by my room to look in and I keep trying to avoid their eyes. I ask to use the restroom and I have to pee with the door open in the middle of the hospital, i’m not allowed to close it (suicide means 24 hour watch).I hate this. I ask my nurse if i’m going home tonight, she says “no baby, we can’t let you go home” I start crying. I call my sister from the nurses flip phone and tell her i’m not coming home.

it’s almost midnight now, hospital food is awful and i’m watching chopped on the tv above my bed. another nurse told me god saved my life. another tells me i’m “too young to be sad”.

“the baker act is being transferred” that’s what i’m called, i’m the suicide. the baker act. another stretcher comes, i’m loaded on. another hospital. I get to ride in an ambulance for the first time, the paramedics think it’s funny when I tell them that I took an uber to the hospital. “I bet it was cheaper, that’s for sure.”

they take me 10 minutes away, to a place that has a mental health unit. I have to sit downstairs in a room to wait for a bed. I go to the bathroom and a nurse yells at me and he slams the door open, saying “you can’t close this, you have to go with the door open!” i’m given a turkey sandwich and a little fruit cup, sitting in a reclining chair, it’s 2 am when they say I can go upstairs now. a screaming man was brought in when I was leaving, the nurses yelling at him saying he’s here because he was found naked in the bushes waving a samurai sword. I laugh and a nurse asks me what’s so funny.

I meet someone up on the 6th floor, the psych ward floor. She takes me to a room and I have to strip down. she marks a body chart with my tattoos, my burns, my cuts. i’m asked for the millionth time why i’m there. she gives me a new gown and brings me to my room. it’s a plain as it gets, and my roommate is asleep. it’s 2:30am.

I lay down in the most basic bed with this pillow that’s literally filled with something paper like. I sleep like shit.

day 1 in the psych ward

i am woken up again at 6am for vitals. I fall back to sleep until my roommate and I wake up to an announcement at 8:30. we stay in bed and talk a little. she’s here for swallowing 50 xanax, I say “shit, you beat me, I blacked out at 20 something tylenol” she’s impressed. she’s a 46 year old mother. kara. a doctor comes to see us and talks about the severity of what we both have done, tells us what meds they will be putting us on. we leave our room and look around, a nurse tells us we missed breakfast, but she gets us some cereal and juice. this place is full of interesting people, I watch in awe. a woman (marlene)keeps saying she’s frank sinatras daughter and that someone keeps burning her with cigarettes (no smoking allowed and she just yelled that it was happening just then, when no one was around her) another woman (isabelle) claims she works for the phone company, and takes one of the hospitals phones and takes it apart (breaks it) and says she got the bug out. a man (joe) won’t stop yelling for nurses. another woman (mary) keeps petting everyone’s hair. me and kara stick close to each other that morning. I speak with a case manager, who tells me i’ll be here a few days because of how severe my case is. whatever. I call my sister on the cord phone they have on the wall, ask her to bring me some books and clothes. I feel embarrassed to be walking around in the hospital gown. I tell her “it says we have arts and crafts today at 1:45”, she can’t stop laughing, “are you fucking serious???” it literally says Arts and Crafts on the daily events whiteboard.

I ask a nurse if I can shower, she gives me a towel and unlocks the shower door, where an open shower with no cover or curtain is, but I can lock the door.a broken soap dispenser holds a shampoo/bodywash combo (LAME), and there’s a few bandaids on the shower floor. I have to stand on my tiptoes to get close to the water. this sucks. after my shower it’s “process group” time, where kara and i get to meet some of the others, talk about our feelings, the works. kristie, sherri, carl, natalie, andrew, and myself and kara are the most sane and coherent. we all sit near each other at lunch. kristie is here for cutting herself, sherri for OD’ing, carl for suicidal thoughts, andrew for trying to slit his throat on drugs. I️ get mystery meatloaf for lunch. kara asks the nurse where to get a toothbrush after lunch, the nurse goes “maybe if you left your room and ask, you’d get one earlier.” I get defensive of my roomie and say “well ma’am i’m sorry we didn’t exactly pack for this, the plan wasn’t to make it here alive” kara, kristie, carrie, and andrew lose it, they can’t stop laughing. the nurse walks away.

someone tells me that after lunch a woman comes around with a menu, and you can order your lunch for the next day. I order chicken parm and mac n cheese and breakfast for others and cereal for myself. I order dinner for kara because she’s napping and I don’t want her to be cursed with the mystery meatloaf again.

after lunch is arts and crafts, where I make my sister a bracelet and then help a man from the other wing make a bracelet for his daughter.

after arts and crafts is a bit of free time, me and kara sit together and talk with a few of the others. the days feel so long here. my sister brings me clothes, makeup, toiletries and books, but i’m not allowed to see her. she gave me “Its kind of a funny story” and said that I️ had to read it because the kid gets baker acted. she brought me the extra clothes and stuff I asked for, I wander around and give clothes to some of my friends who aren’t able to have someone bring them any. I get conditioner, face wash, shampoo, body wash, and lotion, and become the toiletry mom who hands out and shares it with everyone who wants to use it in the shower.

eventually it’s dinner, and since we only got to order for the next day, kara and I are stuck with meatloaf again. I call elspeth after dinner and tell her about my day, tell her not to tell anybody i’m here, not even my parents, tell her to tell them my phone is dead and i’m at a friends, I don’t want anyone to know yet. i’ll y’all when i’m out and ready. she says she got mad and told some people what I did, but they didn’t believe her. that’s fine, I tell her they can never contact me ever again because they don’t care. I have nothing to prove. I lived and am now locked in a god damn mental ward. I have more important things in my life besides caring about people acting like they know what I did and why I did it. my goal was to be dead and not have to deal with this, but I got another shot so let me fucking be. i tell her there is visitation tomorrow from 6pm-8pm. I tell her that one of my friends was going to hang out with me, and that I can’t make it. also that I was messaging another friend and that she can tell him what happened, he will be understanding and caring. (shoutout to my sister for holding everything together while I could only contact the outside world through her via a phone with a cord)

after that I lie in bed and read my toradora manga elspeth also brought me. vitals are checked. a doctor ask me how i’m feeling, etc.

eventually we get snack time? which is juice, popcorn, bananas, and bread with PB&J.

finally it’s bedtime, my first day is complete. this all feels surreal. I write everything in the back of a booklet I was given earlier. I sleep like shit again.

day two, the days are still so long

6 am, vitals again. back to sleep. an announcement at 8 am gets me and Kara awake, it says there’s “grooming” taking place, where you’re allowed to shave your facial hair or armpits in front of the nurses, in a sink, and also they have mouth wash. great.

8:30, breakfast. the board says that there’s pet therapy today, and visitation tonight!!!!

process group again. I shower. lunch. my food isn’t as awful as the meatloaf but it’s still hospital food. carl tells me I have to go to the meds window to ask for my meds, but warns me they will have me sign a paper. they don’t tell you, but the paper is a voluntary admission form that once you sign, your baker act is no longer valid and you can only leave if a doctor says you can. I say that’s BS because I wanna go home after my 72 hours. he says if I don’t sign, they just re-baker act you. no way. I go to the window and ask for my meds, and the nurse gives me a paper and says “sign this to get your medication”. it’s the voluntary admission form. I ask her if I sign this, what happens. she said it’s the “first step towards getting better”. I said “if I sign this my baker act is removed and i’m becoming a voluntary patient right?” she says “well....yes, but it’s the first step towards getting better.” I ask her what happens if I don’t sign it. she goes “....well then you will probably be here a longer time :(“ I end up signing the papers, i’m fucked either way. I didn’t even want to take prozac or be i’m this place.

pet therapy gives us a golden retriever named JR who is so cute and licks my face. I love him. it brightened a lot of people’s days. after dinner we get visitation, everyone eats fast and me and kara stay behind to help the nurses clean up.

i’m so excited for visitation. i️ told my sister she can bring someone with her. kara’s family and daughter are coming too, I get to meet them. elspeth comes and brings an old friend, I hug her and him for so long, it feels so good. you find out who is really there for you. I tell them all about my crazy day and how there was a bra left on the floor in the public room and how people keep acting out. I give elspeth the bracelet I made her in arts and crafts, I meet kara’s family. it made my day. after visitation is snacks, a young girl comes in and I feel instantly protective of her. I ask her if she has clothes and she says no, so after I sneak extra snacks for her, I run to my room and gather up a shirt and pants, lotion, and some of the graham crackers packs i snuck from snack time, I run back and give them all to her, tell her that i’m in room 604 and she can ask me for anything. I tell her how this place runs, as if i’m a pro even though i’ve been here for 2 days. she’s so thankful, her name is Destinee.

eventually, it’s bedtime again. I journal and fall into another shitty sleep.

day threeeeee...get me out of here

once again, 6 am vitals. back to sleep until 8 am announcements. I decide to get my butt up and shave my armpits in a sink during grooming time. we aren’t allowed to shave our legs, but whatever i’ll take what I can get.

my day follows a constant schedule. always breakfast at 8:30, process group, I shower, the board tells me today is more arts and crafts and bingo tonight. kara, kristie and I sit in our room and talk about cam girls and people who buy feet pictures. kara is fascinated that kristie and I know so much about the dirty web.

I start reading “It’s Kind of a Funny Story” and it’s so similar to my situation. Craig is baker acted and he’s taken to the 6th floor (i’m on the 6th floor, are all psych wards there??). he talks about the food, the people, even the shape of the ward (shaped like an H), which is what my psych ward is shaped like ! it’s a good book, I feel like the author right now, as I type up my experiences. being here is honestly so crazy I just had to write about it.

there’s another group and this time it’s a mix of all the wings, (I am in the East Wing, the west wing is the violent or dangerous patients.) one guy from the west wing tries to start a fight with Cheryl, the rec therapist. he leaves angry.

in arts and crafts I become notorious for being able to find any letter bead asked of me, maria from the west wing says any letter and I dig through the bead box and find it for her. I help another guy make a ring. I make a bracelet for someone who cares about me.

lunch is late because the guy who got mad during group, started a fight in the dining hall and all of us from the east wing watched from the window. he threw his tray and food was everywhere. we see him on the floor and find out he was probably sedated.

we eat, continue our day. I read my book and hang in my bed. kara’s family brought magazines for us, so we share those and read about the outside world. I miss my phone and the internet. I talk to a doctor who says I won’t be going home this weekend. (it’s friday today, so she says maybe monday because of how severe my case is.) kara gets the same news. the doctors all say “well imagine how bad it would look if we release you now and you kill yourself, you were in our care, that would be on our hands.” what a lame excuse.

later is dinner, our table always consists of the same group of people, a nurse says “why do you all sit together always???” we love it. we laugh and all share what we have witch each other.  

bingo is next, where carl says you can win prizes, and he’s gonna try to win some deodorant because the nurses keep refusing to give anyone any. that’s so sad. I win a game and give carl the deodorant, he says I didn’t have to do that.

snacks. then bed.

day four!!!!!

same basic schedule, except today it says game day for our activity.  

we get to the dining hall and it’s decked out with a wii, basket ball hoops, a ping pong table, and a bunch of other board games. andrew and I play wii bowling, and then I play jenga with kara.

kristie and carl have gone home, I miss them already but I hope they are doing okay. a new guy named paul joins us all, we tell him what’s up. me, destinee, sherri, and paul all sit on the hallway floor and talk about crazy shit. a new woman named virgina walks around and spills her tea everywhere, talking about being american and carrying a stack of 8 books that she occasionally reads out loud to nobody in particular.

we have a different night nurse, his name is richard and he’s literally the best. he tells us at snack time that he’s opened the “patio” (a gated in balcony connected to the dining hall that none of the nurses ever feel like opening because they don’t want to watch us) I literally run and andrew makes fun of the faces i’m making because i’m so excited to breathe outside air.

after that, richard pulls out a box full of movies and say we can all have a movie night in the community tv living room. everyone decides on jeepers creepers 2. it was a great night.

I continue to sleep like shit, and I have a dream about my ex.

day 5! when can I leave???

it’s sunday and kara has to miss her mothers surprise party. we want to go home! there aren’t even any case managers here today, so we can’t even talk to anyone. we MIGHT go home tomorrow, we are told. not for sure. sherri goes home tomorrow!!! I give her one of my sweaters to keep and we exchange numbers for when we are on the outside.

football is on the community tv and I call my friend and say “watch this, your team is gonna win and this other team is gonna lose.” his team wins and I can’t stop laughing, I was just kidding but it somehow worked.

my day still follows the basic schedule.

day 6: FALSE HOPE

i’m not going home today! lame!!!!! a doctor tells me there’s no discharge order for me today, but there’s one for tomorrow! i’ll take it.

the board says today is music and drum therapy. also there will be games tonight in the dining hall.

the loud guy who yells constantly, joe, is leaving today. we all secretly cheer when he leaves, because he just yelled at people to make his bed and to come to his room. now i can read without having to here someone yelling “NURSEEEEEEE” down the hall every 3 minutes.

drum therapy is fun, we all get to sit and bang in drums to describe how we are feeling.

music therapy is just “pick one song on youtube and toni the rec therapist will play it on the TV” I pick human by the killers.

kara and I play jenga for games night, it’s our thing now. richard is here again and we are so happy, that means patio and movie night. my last night is spent surrounded by my support group as we laugh on the patio, sharing a blanket with kara as we watch Disturbia, and drawing pictures for destinee until it’s time for bed. I make sure I have everyone’s numbers written in the back of my booklet. I ask the meds window for something to help me sleep, i’m too anxious and know I won’t fall asleep tonight. they give me ativan ? and I go to bed. I finally don’t sleep like shit.

Day 7: Freedom

IM GOINNNG HOMEEEE!!!!! 

I wake up excited and make sure I get together my belongings. I’m visited by doctors and case managers, nurses give me plastic bags to put stuff in. I make sure I give nurse millie a big hug. kara isnt leaving until tomorrow, so i give her a big hug too. the community board says tonight is karaoke night, and I feel bad that I have to miss it, but I leave before lunch. the hospital drives me home in a van, and i’m so excited when I step outside. I start crying and the driver brings me home. I cry again. I take the worlds longest shower and I go get some chick fil a. I sit outside for hours. I hold baby kitty and start crying. I check all my social media. I reply to texts. I sit my mom down and tell her what happened. I do not tell my dad or my brother. my stepdad is in germany and I will tell him when he’s home. ———- afterthoughts:

    the mental health system is fucked. not one doctor or therapist or psychiatrist really helped anyone in that psych ward. if you asked for underwear or deodorant the nurses wouldn’t want to give you any, they said “well you have one pair of underwear already.” some nurses and doctors were kind, but not one of them had any type of sensitivity or empathy. my first three days there, half the nurses assumed I was one of the drug addicts and kept trying to give me nicotine patches and tried having me go to AA meetings. in group “therapy” we were asked how we felt and that was it. the doctors asked us from 1-10 our depression and anxiety, and then gave us meds. we were told if we tried to leave after our 72 hour baker act, that we would just be re-baker acted and be there longer. asking questions was like a game of “which nurse do we ask so that they don’t say no or ignore us” I was not given any type of one on one sessions with a therapist. I was just repeatedly asked “why would you do this? what do you have to be sad about?” they made an appointment for 7 days after I left, never contacted my sister, and let me leave. I swore every night when I prayed (I feel cheesy but I also feel like I owe god my life at this point) that when i’m out, I will put together a box of clothes and books and stuff for arts and crafts and game nights. they have six books and hardly any crafts, and almost no clothes for people who come in with nothing and have to wear the hospital robes. people deserve better. everyone in there survived something that others don’t get to, people need help. this felt like the hospital just wanted our money for keeping us there longer. it’s not fair. I felt like a prisoner. everyone did. a man raped his roommate in our wing and all they did was move him to the west wing. kara and I had to ask to have our room locked from the outside so that we didn’t have to keep going to bed scared.

it felt surreal, but now i’m home and want to help in any way I can. i’m blessed to have met my roommate, we just went to church together and had a fake thanksgiving with my family and her daughter. we call each other every day. i’ve only been home 6 days, but every day I remind myself that i’m alive for a reason. I take my meds. I text my friends. I do my makeup and eat every day. i’m finally 102 pounds and not 94 pounds. I have grand openings for work lined up. i’m going to puerto rico with my church for a missions trip in a few months, to help with hurricane relief. i’m going to help as many people as I can.

I hope that writing all of this just kinda helps. I don’t want people to think they are alone. I did not plan to live, I planned to die. I didn’t die. there are people who literally said i’m faking it. but those people don’t matter. I didn’t get drunk and swallow over 20 tylenol pm and survive, and spend 6 days in the hell that was that psych ward, to have anyone tell me my experience didn’t happen or was for attention. I don’t care if you are trying to die or if you commit and survive, you’re important and deserve care, attention, and help. I deserved every hug and kiss and call and text from people when I was out of there. I have such an amazing support system. I have friends who aren’t judging me, who say “i’m so happy you’re alive emily, let’s hang out. i’m so glad you failed, I love having you in my life.”

I have only told hardly a few people, this is my public account of as much as I can remember. I don’t want any pity. I lived.

 I’m going to keep living. I’m going to work hard, I’m going to buy nice clothes and makeup, i’m going to travel and open new stores for my job, I’m going to pour myself out and connect and train my teams, I’m going to stay up late watching anime and cartoons, and eat junk food and party with my friends, i’m going to get tattoos, pet every cat, make art and finish school, i’m going to hang with my sister and my family, and i’m going to heal and find love and care for myself and for another person again. i’m gonna give as much as I can and love and be kind. I’m not perfect but neither are you. We all have flaws so just damn love and embrace and smile at each other. Help each other.

Thank you to everyone who has been so patient and caring and supportive. I love you all so much and I can’t wait to continue my life with a new passion and outlook. 💘

[deancasbigbang]

Title: Finger Painted Grace Author: Jupiter James Artist: labluekatt1721 Rating: Explicit Pairings: Dean/Cas Warnings/Tags: art school AU, tattoo artist Dean, art student Castiel, asexual Castiel, nude art, body art Posting Date: 11/22/2017

Summary:  Art student Castiel Novak is struggling to solidify an idea for his BFA senior project incorporating painting and photography. Enter Dean Winchester, current MFA student, tattoo artist apprentice, and now, nude model for the figure drawing class. Suddenly, Castiel's vision for the perfect project springs to life in his mind. Full of wings, souls, and visible grace. Something he sees shining out of the outgoing tattoo artist like never before. All he needs to do now is convince Dean to let him paint on his body, and also somehow figure out what to do about the fledgling feelings he has for Dean that he didn't even think he was capable of before now.

- - -

He doesn't so much as glance up or slow down his sketching. "Hello, Dean Winchester, BFA, MFA." Dean grins. "Easy there, tiger. I haven't graduated yet." "You will," he says in a flat, serious monotone. "Your art is awe-inspiring." Dean chuckles. "Don't sound so excited about it." Castiel finally looks up, staring at Dean. "It is, though. It's why..." he breaks off, scratching his nose, embarrassed, leaving another streak of graphite behind. "It's why I'm painting you like I am." "Huh." Dean slides into the empty chair and loads a bunch of salsa and guacamole on top of his tacos. "What do you see in my art, Cas?" Castiel squints at him. "Do you have any tattoos I'm not aware of?" "Are you gonna answer my question?" "You gonna answer mine?" "Eventually." "I see your soul," Castiel says. "Or the manifestation of it." "No tattoos" Dean says. "Not yet. I'm planning one, though." Carefully, Castiel closes his sketchbook and pushes it to the side, placing his pencil on top of it. "Dean... for my final project, I'd like to paint on you." Dean arches an eyebrow. "You are painting me. In class." "On you," Castiel stresses. Dean leans forward. "What do you mean by that?" He figures that a normal person would be embarrassed by what Castiel is saying, however the guy looks anything but. It's too intriguing for Dean to brush off. Hell, most art students are weird in some way or another. And he's digging the weird. Castiel's eyebrows tip up and he stares without blinking like he's seeing Dean for the first time. "Are you serious?" Dean leans back in his chair, grinning. "What?" He drags out a hum. "You actually want to know?" Dean swipes a fry from Castiel's plate. They've gone long cold and oily. He eats them anyway. "I asked you, didn't I?" "You're not going to call me a freak?" He shrugs. "Never said I wouldn't. But not right now. Art's weird, right? Most of us are freaks in one way or another. I'm just curious why I've become a part of your vision." Castiel considers this, nodding several times. "How honest am I allowed to be here?" "Hundred percent," Dean assures him, holding up his hand like Scout's honor. "I can go first if it makes you feel better." A genuine smile spreads over Castiel's face, deepening his dimples and making him look boyish. Something clenches in Dean's chest and he really wants to see that smile about a million more times. "You're pretty weird, too."

[kenrik]

ereani fanfic

With a Little Help From my Friends. (College modern AU)

When the news reached her, the young blonde recluse could only raise her eyebrows in confusion. She's heard of him, the noisy brunette from Darwin College who was always organizing student mobilizations for, what seemed to be, every conceivable issue under the sun. To her, his yelling in the common areas, his angry, passionate posts on social media about this and that were all too stupid. These were nothing more but noise and fruitless efforts. 

This was the most she's thought of her schoolmate, Eren Jaeger, the rash, perpetually angry student from the Department of History. Which was why, when Armin Arlert from Intro to Biology asked her whether she'd be interested in going out with the infamous student activist, she was caught off guard to say the least.

"Why?" was the first word that slipped off her lips.

Armin's brows twisted. And his lips frowned thoughfully.

"Because," The young man pursed his lips and placed a curled, contemplating finger over his chin. "He likes you."

Annie was not amused. Her eyes narrowed and flickered to her ticking watch. This Eren, apparently, didn't settle with wasting merely his time - but that of others as well.

"I'm not interested." She finally says and was about to turn on her heel when Armin raised his hands, pleading all the sudden.

"Wha--why?"

"He's the one who likes me yet it's you here."

"Oh." Armin suddenly loses his train of thought. Admittedly, her's was a valid comeback. "So, if he were to ask you himself-"

"I already said no."

"You don't even want to meet him?" 

Annie turns to give Armin a dangerous look. In turn, the young man pauses and lowers his raised hands in caution.

"I've seen him around. And I've already told you, I'm not interested."

This is when the young man with the boyish features took offense. “How can you say that when you don’t even know him?” His face grows a flush. And Annie’s expression keeps steady, unmoved and undaunted by his flaming cheeks. “Eren deserves more than simply being brushed off.” 

Throughout the semester they shared, Annie couldn’t fault Armin as easily and as typically as she did almost everyone else. He was someone dependable and quick witted. In their university, almost everyone prides themselves intelligent. Armin was part of the few who was more than meets the eye. For this, he will always have her respect. At least, that was what she thought before this incident. 

“So,” The young man’s voice calms. And, bracing himself, tries yet again. “Will you meet him?” 

Annie’s sapphire eyes shone as she tilted her head up to the taller student. 

“No.” She says in finality. And with that, she turned to leave; taking with her the respect she had unwittingly bestowed upon the well-versed student who sat two seats in front of her in Biology. 

.

"Go out with him." The white hand that slams over her desk orders her.

Unshaken and unamused, Annie's sapphire eyes look up, knowing exactly whose gaze she'd be meeting - the ever daunting Mikasa Ackerman.

When Annie simply replied with a dead, disinterested stare, the ebony-haired beauty clicked her tongue in annoyance and said, "You're going out with Eren Jaeger. Give me your digits."

“Class is about to start.” 

“Does it look like I care.” 

“What is wrong with all of you?” Annie whispers in genuine befuddlement. First Armin, now Mikasa. How many more minions did this Eren have under his employ?

Mikasa instantly takes offense. “There’s nothing wrong with me.” She grits in a heated, dangerous tone. Then, realizing - quickly added, “Especially Eren. Eren’s perfect.” 

“Then, you go out with him.” 

The taller and fierce young woman instantly flushed in embarrassment. “I--I-- We’re family.” 

Annie wasn’t having any of it.

“It’s none of your business but his parents adopted me.” 

Annie’s aloof and nonchalant gaze merely looked back at Mikasa’s flustered one. 

“Besides - it’s you he likes--”

“OI.” 

Mikasa’s heart nearly jumps out of her chest. She whirls around and finds a relatively short man by the professor’s desk. Confusion riddles her face because she knew that man wasn’t their professor. 

“Take your fucking seats.” 

Annie could only fight back a smirk at the sight of Mikasa rushing down the lecture hall to her seat. 

.

With the semester ended, Annie starts bringing out from her dorm boxes of books and personal items. Soon enough, her schoolmates from the same town, Bert and Reiner, would be picking her up. They drive home together every end of semester and make a fun roadtrip of it. 

There were only a number of people she could tolerate. And it took years before she warmed up to the two best friends. 

Annie was seated on a random box outside her door room, reading a small pocketbook, when Reiner and Bert found her. Reiner was raising his hands, gesturing with excitement the loads of fun he had in store for them. The tall, lanky young man beside him only smiled good-naturedly. He had no intention to contribute to Reiner’s enthusiasm; the bulky man had more than enough for the two of them after all. 

The girl only smiles and shakes her head as she stands. She proceeds to grab one of her boxes when she notices a newcomer approaching them. 

Her eyes start to widen. And an uneasy feeling starts filling her gut. 

“How can I help?” The brightest smile she’s seen greets her. And for a second, for longer than a second, she loses all thought. She doesn’t hear Reiner as he excitedly introduced her to the new addition to their small group. She doesn’t hear Bert as he explained how the three bonded over this tedious extra credit assignment their terror of a professor made them accomplish before the end of the semester. All that registered was the stunning large grin the new comer wore. 

Later, when they were in Reiner’s pick-up, with Eren seated at the back seat with Annie, the blonde-haired young woman slowly managed to regain her wits about her. And as they bonded on the road, she would come to learn that Eren had no idea that his friends approached her in his stead. To this, she would wonder whether Armin and Mikasa’s claims had any truth to them; if Eren liked her at all. 

Her blue eyes drift to the young man laughing beside her. 

To her musings, she thought in the negative. If she barely knew this huge name in campus, what more he about her; a quiet loner from the Faculty of Psychology. 

Without warning, Eren’s glittering green orbs meet hers. And if even possible, his grin widens, so much so that Annie’s lips slowly get infected. A warmth fills her chest. And she decides - to hell with it. 

If not his affection, even if for just this moment, even if for just now, she was more than content with his smile. 

A/N: I don’t really like putting the background story after the fic. But, then here it is: - Eren is head over heels in love with Annie. At the start of the school year, while handing out fliers, he happens upon a martial arts club and sees a tiny girl (Annie) on the mat with a much larger, bulky guy (Reiner). After watching their match, he was utterly captivated. He thought she was incredible. That’s where his attraction started; it only grew the more he knew about this smart and talented girl who had a long history of volunteer work in her hometown. Plus, she’s written papers on issues he’s covered in his mobilizations before. Also, they’ve run into each other quite a couple of times, in events, parties, but never speaking as they ran in different circles. Nonetheless, Eren always had an eye looking out for the young woman.  - The reason why Mikasa and Armin were asking Annie out for Eren was for Eren. The two never discussed this with Eren nor with each other. They just; simply did it out of their own volition. All throughout the year, as every passing day went by, nothing was clearer than Eren’s crush on Annie. He’s never done anything because he’s busy with extra-curricular activities; also, he doesn’t really think about those things. So, both Mikasa and Armin thought it was left to them to make this great thing happen for Eren. Mikasa never tells Armin about her plans because she thinks Armin would think it too tedious. They were all single. They’ve never thought of dating; so, she thought, bringing it up with Armin would be weird. Armin thinks the same of Mikasa; plus, that he thinks Mikasa will not approve.  - This story is about how things just work out in the end. Also, about how things are never really as they seem; that you never really are who you think you are. Who you think you are does not necessarily dictate what you do. Annie keeps saying she doesn’t like Eren, that she isn’t interested. But the moment she gets close to him, she gets a stupid little crush because he has a nice smile. 

[28allthelove28]

Essay on Fandom and Obsession (One Direction & Fionn Whitehead mainly)

I think it is vital to not make people feel guilty for the things that they enjoy. It is also important to realise that everyone gets obsessed with stuff, and it’s not a bad thing.

Fandom can often be seen as being predominantly young girls screaming and crying over young boys, and apparently that is not cool. At least a lot of people seem to think it is not cool, but that attitude is wrong. Yes, teenage girls have been freaking out over young men since before Beatlemania, but intense fandom and excessive love for your idol is by no means exclusive to young girls. Think of Morrissey. Grown men devote their lives to worshiping him. I’ve witnessed hard, tough, old men in tears, covered in Smiths tattoos, shouting every lyric out at a Morrissey gig, and no one batted an eye. It’s great! David Bowie inspired generations of working class lads to dye their hair bright orange and go out wearing glittery make up. Loads of men really idolise Oasis. Everybody loves Radiohead. I’m one of the proud and devoted thousands who flock in their Goth uniform to see The Cure perform every couple of years, and hopefully I always will be. The best moment of my life was my last Cure gig, and I’m very happy about that. Of course, fan girls don’t just like male musicians, a lot of girls like Beyoncé, Taylor Swift and Little Mix, so do a lot of boys. Lads also like Justin Bieber as well as girls. Maybe it is naïve, unnecessary and problematic to even consider fandom in terms of gender, especially in terms of only two genders.

To mention fan fiction, I bought a book from Rough Trade Records which was part of a series of works inspired by different musicians. It was a short story which the author imagined after listening to the album Dry by PJ Harvey. It may not be classed as conventional fan fiction per say, due to Polly Harvey not being directly featured in the story, but each chapter began with the first lyric of Polly’s song, in order of the album tracklist. Something creative and imaginative was born from an enjoyment of music, it was wonderful. And fandom is obviously not just music orientated, thousands of people are obsessed and devoted to football. I couldn’t even count the amount of Newcastle United Football Club tattoos I’ve seen. Game Of Thrones, Star Wars and Harry Potter have enormous fan bases too. The Great British Bake Off is huge, so are specific YouTubers, make-up brands, celebrities like the Kardashians, fashion brands, games, and phone apps. There are so many areas of fandom and obsession, when you begin to think about it. I may have glossed over and simplified some things but these serve as only a few brief examples, out of many, of how diverse and wonderful fandom can be.

Being a fan is clearly by absolutely no means just young females liking young male singers, and it probably is problematic to think so. Perhaps why it can initially seem that way, to me anyway, may be because a girl obsessing over a boy has been my personal experience, and in contemporary culture today, the media really does like to mock girls like me. To focus on One Direction in particular, because that is my biggest obsession, and is most relevant to this discussion, many journalists enjoy frequently claiming that all One Direction fans are hysterical, naive 12 year old girls, who want to sleep with the band, and only like them because they’re pretty. When in fact, not only is that disrespectful to any 12 year old 1D fans, but many fans have grown up with One Direction and are around the same age as them, if not much older. Many One Direction fans don’t fancy the band whatsoever, many 1D fans are boys, many fans are gender fluid, and all the fans that I’ve interacted with genuinely love 1D’s music and respect the band members. Yes, there are some people who sexualise, worship, and disrespect One Direction, but tabloid journalists can often only focus on that side of things.

I think it is important to highlight more so, that a vast portion of the One Direction fandom are part of the LGBTQ+ community, and through 1D and their fans, feel loved, supported, understood, welcomed, included and inspired to be strong and proud. A lot of One Direction concerts are full of rainbow flags, which then get shown on the big screen, signed by Louis, and worn by Harry. Harry has ‘liked’ Instagram posts encouraging people to “Support feminine boys” and Louis has even corrected Harry when he accidentally misgendered a fan. A vast portion of the 1D fandom, myself included, genuinely believe that Harry and Louis are in love, and have been in a secret relationship for years, and we completely support them. (I have a separate essay on this.) I talked about this recently with a lecturer in queer art history, who also believes in Larry, and is in awe at the level of visual analysis ‘Larries’ have undertaken to examine Harry and Louis’ complimentary couple tattoos.

Harry has inspired young boys to wear nail polish because, until seeing him do it, they “Didn’t know boys were allowed.” Again, I don’t want to skim over important issues, but I am quickly mentioning the importance of One Direction’s queer community, and Harry challenging gender norms, to disprove the media idea that all 1D fans are just there to sexualise the band. Yes, I and many others do find One Direction very beautiful and sexy, but I don’t want to be their girlfriend or their lover, at most I just want to be their best friend. I want to continue enjoying their music and supporting them as individuals. And so do the majority of fans that I interact with.

The way in which mainstream media represents One Direction fans can make them expect everyone to mock them. However Mark Radcliffe, a radio presenter on 6Music, an alternative station you would never expect to mention One Direction, recently spoke very kindly of Harry Styles and his fans. He saw people queuing to meet Harry, and explained on his show that they were very excited, and “Why wouldn’t they be?” Mark discussed that Harry was doing solo work and even made a feature out of fandom, asking listeners to text in their own experiences of queueing for their idols. Mark kept chatting to Harry’s fans, checking they were ok and he even brought them breakfast. The entire time Mark mentioned Harry and the fans, he spoke sweetly and respectfully and completely normally. This shouldn’t have been refreshing to hear, but it really was. I tweeted to thank Mark for his kindness, to which he ‘liked’ and replied. I simply found this a lovely and heart-warming example of respectable music news outlets treating young pop fans nicely.

Harry Styles himself was even asked about his fan-base being mainly composed of young girls, as if he were supposed to feel embarrassed about that, and he brilliantly commented “Who’s to say that young girls who like pop music – short for popular right? – have worse musical taste than a 30-year-old hipster guy? That’s not up to you to say. Music is something that’s changing… Young girls like the Beatles. You gonna tell me they’re not serious? How can you say young girls don’t get it? They’re our future – our future doctors, lawyers, mothers, presidents, they kind of keep the world going. Teenage-girl fans – they don’t lie. If they like you, they’re there. They don’t act ‘too cool’. They like you, and they tell you.” I really don’t think there is a better way to say it. One Direction fans defend them against the media, but they also correct them if they make mistakes. We are honest.

Louis Tomlinson has also talked about how impressive and “Remarkable” his own fans devotion is, and how endlessly grateful he is for it. Louis has discussed how he’s built up a special relationship with his fans and often credits his success as being a constant “Teamwork” between him and the fans working together, even saying that they deserve managerial, promotion jobs. Niall Horan from One Direction constantly looks out for the safety of his fans as they queue to see him perform, and he even regularly shares photos of letters which he’s handwritten for fans, personally updating them on what he’s been up to. Liam Payne from 1D always remembers to acknowledge special band anniversaries that the fans get involved with, and Zayn Malik frequently shares examples of fan art that his fans have drawn of him. The members of the band which people idolise, equally love and appreciate their fans in return and form a family-like unit together, and it’s lovely.

People have picked up on this and even said that society should be built in a similar way as a fandom; supportive, passionate and communal. A lovely article was written by Aarabelle Sicardi, in which she describes fashion designer Rei Kawakubo as her own Harry Styles. She rightly notes that “Loving people makes you brave.” And that “Fandom is a pure version of this. It’s an ideal receptacle of feelings because you ask for nothing personal in return… fandom gave me bravery and friendship.” She admits that you can often find yourself needing to “Defend” your fandom love, and that people may dismiss the thing you love but the thing you love will never dismiss you. She discusses similar points which I have made that “Fandom lives in every industry if you know where to look…teen girls are always attacked for their fandom regardless: music fandom to outsiders looks uncool, unhinged or wasteful. You might see teen girls crying and holding signs or collecting memorabilia and think it’s too much for something so trivial. But it’s not.” Sicardi quotes Harry’s fans as they describe how he was a gateway to finding their queer community and affirming their own identity, saying that “His existence in the world made them more comfortable with their own…Teen girls are criticized for loving the wrong things and loving them in weird and unproductive ways. But the criticisms couldn’t be more off base. They love things with a brilliance and curiosity that makes them better for it…Teen girls push themselves to learn how to code so they can build beautiful fan-pages and online communities… It helps them build worlds out of their imaginings.” Through writing about One Direction, myself and many other fans have also learnt more about putting forward an argument, gathering information, formatting essays and questioning things. Sicardi ends her article by saying that loving things makes fans smarter and braver, and I agree.

These are all beautiful, empowering things, but for me, being so engaged in a fandom can also mean that I do live inside my head quite a lot, but it’s mostly very nice in there, and I think everyone does that. Everyone imagines things. Everyone enjoys the things they enjoy. Admittedly I probably think that obsessing over famous boys is worse than it actually is. In reality I’ve now learnt that it’s not that bad at all. Yes, loving One Direction, Larry Stylinson and Fionn Whitehead can cause some problems – what if no man in real life can live up to them? What if Larry or ‘Larries’ have set unrealistic expectations of relationships? What if I’m more invested in their wellbeing than my own, and those around me? What if I spend so much time on them that I am ignorant to real world problems? What if their rich and privileged lifestyles have made me greedy and selfish? What if their success being born from luck on a talent show has made me lazy and less ambitious? What if their enormous success at the same age as me has made me value my own progress less? What if their physical beauty and that of the people around them has made me doubt and criticise my own? However, perhaps me thinking that loving a boy band or an actor is damaging and could cause all these issues, is the actual problem. Perhaps the obsession itself is not the problem, but my attitude towards it, an attitude influenced by media shame. Maybe me thinking it’s a problem is the only problem.

In reality, it is fun, and educational, and cultural to discover an actor or a singer. To appreciate a person’s talent and hard work, to notice their good qualities, to learn things from them and from their art, to unashamedly be passionate about something, to meet new people through that shared interest and then learn more things from them. All of that is a positive, and rewarding, and beautiful thing. I just have to keep thinking that until I no longer need to remind myself.

Perhaps this whole essay is my way of justifying to myself that it is ok for me to be obsessed with Fionn Whitehead and One Direction. Of course it is. Life is too short and dramatic to worry about things that you don’t really need to worry about. Life is too short and dramatic to deny yourself what you enjoy. Life is too short and dramatic to be over influenced by other people and their opinions. Life is too short and dramatic to not be proud of who you are and what makes you happy.