#there they are flooding the tags with their entitled demands

[thestalwartheart]

You’d think this would excite a writer but man, it’s so disheartening going through the tag for any piece of media (especially new media!) and seeing a bunch of posts saying some variation of: “fic writers hurry up! where are you?! why aren’t there more fics about x and y??”

It’s just so disrespectful to me. So entitled. I don’t know when we started thinking of fic authors as content farms, but I’m begging readers (at least the readers who don’t write) to realise writing is an extremely time-consuming labour of love and the process of getting it right doesn’t align with your schedule for binge-viewing or fleeting hyperfixation, sorry.

[mazikeenhyde]

Oh Baby, Pain is Pleasure FINALE - Part 1

I have had to split the Finale into two parts as it was just getting too long to post altogether, and I enjoy making you all wait…. 

POLY JUDGMENT DAY X READER (WRESTLER) 

Y/W/N – Your Wrestling Name 

Y/W/N/F – Your Wrestling Name Finisher

WARNING – THESE WARNINGS COVER ALL PARTS OF THIS FICTION/ IMAGINE STORY- THEY MAY NOT BE SPECIFIC TO THIS PARTICULAR PART! - 

SERIOUS SMUT,  GIRL X GIRL, MAN X MAN, POLY RELATIONSHIPS/SEXUAL, BDSM, BLOOD, PANIC ATTACKS, SPANKING, VIOLENT REFRENCES, INJURY, ABUSE (CONSENTUAL) CHEATING, STALKERS/ STALKING, SMOKING/ CIGARETTES 

Part 1 Word Count - 4.5k (Hence why its in 2 parts!)

Tag List - @babybatlover @p0is0nl0ve @babiidee28 @darlingnikkisixx @commandershepardofthedas gooses-pond  rhiamaymay  scaraskzzs  (SORRY IF I MISSED ANYONE, IF YOU WANT TO BE ADDED OR I MISSED YOU LET ME KNOW BELOW)

Oh Baby…Pain is Pleasure – Finale Part 1  

The stadium erupted into an overwhelming flood of cheering and chants from the many thousands of fans surrounding the ring. The barricades holding them back shook as they lept to their feet, signs which had been discarded in the air from excitement now lay on the floor amongst hundreds of sets of trainers, boots, high heels and the younger bare footed audience members. The once loved handmade card treasures, plastered with slogans and beloved wrestler’s names now trampled upon by wet footprints and washed out by the rain. 

The thunderstorm was now in full force, rain hammered down into the arena as thunder shook throughout, echoing inside that hellish cage. All hell had broken out inside the ring with every member from the opposing families in an absolute free for all brawl out with each other. 

Damian had Rowan up against the ring post as the two continued to trade blows with each other, their faces both semi blinded by the rain and fuelled with an anger which bestowed a look of utter discontent for any form of peace. These men were in it for pride, for love and for honour. Damian, who had now got one up and over a certain ramblin rabbit had climbed onto the second rope, pinning Erik against the post as he continued to hammer blow after blow to the head of the monstrous man. 

Finn and Dexter had somehow made their way out of the ring and into the gap between the steel framed cage as each of them were scrambling to pin the other one down long enough to secure any kind of balance. Dexter, who had made it back to his feet, grabbed Finn by the trouser cuff and launched him back into the ring whilst Dominik and Huskus were fighting tooth and nail across the mat, exchanging blows, kicks and punches. Again, neither one had quite managed to one up the other in such a well-balanced fight until I had run past in an effort to lock back up with Uncle Howdy, kneeing Huskus in the face and allowing Dominik to climb on top of him. 

Rhea and Abby meanwhile were tearing each other apart, feral and fearless as neither woman would let up or give in to their pain. 

With no referee inside and not one person willing to step back in line, it hadn’t taken long for management to act accordingly. Because if this war was ever going to settled, and they knew it needed to be, some form of control needed to be restored. 

The lighting colour scheme was quick to change, black and green lights flashed up across all the LED boards, glowing lettering plastered across each barricade…

‘ITS TIME TO PLAY THE GAME!!!’ 

Smoke bellowed through the doorways and down the entrance ramp as Triple H made his way into centre stage, shouting at the top of his lungs in an attempt to bring about some order of control. 

“ENOUGH!!!!” Paul’s voice was loud with a strong sense of authority, demanding his entitlement for respect. 

“CUT THE MUSIC! CUT THE LIGHTS! CUT THE GOD DAMN DRAMA FOR A MOMENT AND LISTENNN!!!!” 

The audience’s heads turned between the stage and then back to ring as not one person stopped fighting and not one person from either side of the battle was willing to listen or stand down. 

“STOP!!!!” He screamed out again before his voice shallowed out, trying to control the fury that was making his blood boil. His emphasis on specific words made his statements land in the dark parts of the soul that could recognise fear… and when someone meant every word they said. 

“The next PERSON to move from where they are standing! The next PERSON to throw a punch or lay their HANDS on another will be SUSPENDED!” 

We all froze, eyes deadlocked onto each other, with barley the ability or willingness to blink, body parts shaking in anger and fury as we all listened for the next ‘commandment’. Rhea’s hand was wrapped tightly around Abby the witch’s neck with her opposing fist raised in the air, while the witch’s knee was inches from being lodged into Ripley’s rib cage. 

Damian and Finn were being held against adjoining ropes by Dexter and Rowan as the two monsters had only just gotten the advantage before Triple H had come out to ruin our revenge. 

Dominik and Husk had managed to brawl and in turn fall out of the ring to the floor, they were now trapped in between the gap of the cage and the ring post like Finn had been before with Dex, exchanging blows to each other before the interruption. Dom’s hand now pushing Husk’s face further into the ground as he allowed his body weight to ease onto him, building pressure. That clever boy knew he had him pinned and that he wasn’t going to be able move anytime soon. He smirked down to the feeble weakling under his grasp, enjoying the dominance he rarely got to feel. 

Meanwhile I had already retrieved a beloved Kendo stick that had been secured above from the top of the cage and I had climbed my way back to the top of the ring post, gripping the top of the frame while howdy had been in pursuit. I was ready to use an aerial advantage and take this fucker out but after stopping my grip on the steel frame was starting to slip out from underneath me. My desire to drive the weapon straight across the back of Uncle Howdy felt like a dream come true. Shame I hadn’t been able to finish the job…yet. 

“Back. Away. From. Each. Other” Triple H’s words were blunt and begrudgingly we did as we were told, though admittedly I was relieved to finally let go of the cage that I had been slipping out from. Damian and Finn squared up to Rowan & Dexter as they were released from their grasp before making their way over to our side of the ring. 

Rhea had released Abby and tossed her to the side before reaching down to offer a hand to Dominik and help him back into the ring, though the boy wasn’t quite ready to allow Huskus back to his feet. But he did eventually do as he was told after Rhea gave him one of her stern looks and upon doing as he was told, a sultry wink after as a reward. She leaned into his ear, covering her lips and whispered…

“Enjoying being the dominant one I see Dom Dom, you make Mami very… very proud”  

Dominik grinned, licking his teeth and wiping the blood away from a busted lip before placing a hand over his crotch, jiggling around his package to try and calm down the ever-growing tension between his legs. 

I however, standing strong, stood face to face with the prick before me. Uncle Howdy looked down at me, his height towered mine to a degree and his demeanour was infuriating. It felt like he genuinely believed he was better than all those around him, as if he was far better than I could ever be.  He laughed as he stepped to the side and returned back to his family with open arms. Their celebrations glinted at the idea they had won the first battle, like they had gotten one over on us. It felt almost rude, it felt offensive to see him walk away from me, and it made my blood boil, my skin began to heat up, my heat raced, so I spun around on the spot to react the only way I knew how, with violence! But a strong set of arms wrapped around me before I could take another step forward and pulled me back, whispering in my ear. 

“Easy baby, easy” Rhea’s breath was warm, I could smell the sweat on her tattooed skin, the blood from scrapes and scratches from the pre-war fight. Her scent radiated throughout my senses, and it was addictive. Goosebumps took over my entire skin as she pulled me back in line with the others, still keeping her grip tight across my body as we now stood together. The Judgment Day vs The Wyatt Sicks. 

“I feel like there must be some… confusion in the air? There must be some misunderstanding between you all as to who is in charge around here? Some people clearly don’t understand their role in this company. Some people… seem to believe they have the… Authority? To do as they please…when in fact they don’t have any. You all have decided to start a war that, whether you like it or not, is NOT going to end the way YOU ALL want it to” Paul’s voice was clear and precise, but he sounded calm, and that was the most concerning part… Until he wasn’t. 

“Your roles within this company are clear, they are set out. You do as you are told; you go where I tell you to go. You behave like the good little puppets on a string you were designed for, and you DO NOT DISOBEY” 

Each of us turned for a moment to face Triple H, breaking the death glares we had locked on to our opponents. A sense of concern and confusion as to what Paul was going to do next hung in the air, all I wanted was to get my hands back on Howdy, claim my championship and go home to rather unwholesomely fuck my lovers into next week.

“This war will be fought, and this war will end here at WrestleMania…” Triple H turned to the crowd as they all began to cheer and chant. “But… Y/N, you will not be in this cage, you will not be a part of it” 

My Heart ran cold as I threw Rheas hands off me and raced toward the front of the cage in shock, gripping onto the steel frame. The rest of Judgment days reactions, very similar to my own followed behind me as the Wyatts laughed hysterically behind us. We all began shouting our frustrations towards Paul, questioning what possible reason he had to kick me out of this Championship match I had trained so long for, worked so hard to get to?! 

Triple H raised his hand up to silence us and the crowd as the entire arena chimed in with the deafening booing and shouts of discontent. 

“SILENCE!” Paul demanded, turning his attention back to my direction. 

“Because…y/n… “ Paul smirked before raising the Women’s World Championship up from behind him, having secured it from a security guard to his right. 

“As Dakota Kai has now retired injured… YOU, will instead be fighting for THIS, against Abby the Witch, in an adjoining cage. I am declaring RIGHT NOW, that this match, is a Ten Man-Grand Slam all in one, no disqualifications, no count out, no holds barred, all is fair in love and war double caged firefly street fight. Abby the Witch & Y/W/N will be locked inside one cage, whilst Rhea, Damian, Dominik and Finn will be locked in the other with Erik Rowan, Dexter Lumis, Joe Gacy and Uncle Howdy. This match will run for 1 hour and to secure victory Y/W/N, Abby, you must PIN your opponent. Your families in the opposing cage must also pin their opponents one by one to secure victory. Once pinned, you will be removed. Once the championship has been claimed, once one team comes out on top over the other, only then will this war end. Now, if the hour runs out and the championship has not been claimed, you forfeit your right to it. No arguments, no complaints, those are the rules. Suck it up and move on. I am the puppet master, I am the boss, I am THE AUTHORITY!” Triple H commanded to us all. 

“Now a referee will now come down and unlock the cage. You will all return backstage, the battle commences in 20 minutes… Good Luck.” With the rain now finally clearing, Triple H bowed his head and looked up to the heavens, in respect for the loss of Bray Wyatt before moving to exit the stage.

The lighting returned to normal, and the standard WrestleMania music played out as we began to exit the ring one by one, security keeping a lengthy distance between the Wyatts and the Judgment Day. Fans desperate to get their favourites attention were scrambling over the barricades, leaning their body weights over in an attempt for a high five, but we were all far too distracted. 

Suddenly, Uncle Howdy halted and turned on his heels grabbing a microphone and smirking down at us from the other end of the ramp. 

“Y/N, I do wish you the very best of luck, you know as well as I… I am just the ghost of the man who saved this world but, who are you? You cannot hide from it; you cannot hide from me? The truth will set you free y/n…did you tell them?” Howdy’s words were playful and taunting as he pointed to each of my lovers standing just behind me. 

“I told them! I told them everything!!!” I screamed back up at Howdy. 

He chuckled and turned his back on me, whispering into the microphone before disappearing backstage, “but did you tell, the world?” 

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

THE JUDGMENT DAY CLUBHOUSE 

Swinging the door open I rushed through and began pacing the centre of the room, nervous, anxious and fearful of what could happen if the world ever found out about my past. 

Social media had gone crazy, fans and viewers speculating and debating over whether this had become the greatest WrestleMania of all time, whether Abby the Witch or Y/W/N would become the new Women’s World Champion, how brilliant it was that Rhea would be fighting against a team of all men and that they knew she would beat their asses. But alongside all this there was also the debates over what my secrets were, how they could find out, and with these debates’ rumours had started to spread, like wildfire. Unbeknown to me, Liv Morgan was backstage hiding out, and she was fuelling that fire. 

I was in full panic mode as the others also piled in through the door, Finn entering last locked the door behind him and turned to face me. He took a brisk walk forward before grabbing me by my shoulders and slapping me straight across the face to break my panic. I stood in shock, as did the others, what the actual fuck was he playing at. 

Then, not more than a second later he pulled me in tight, wrapping his hands around my face, my neck, then one hand on my back as he locked his lips in against mine. A full make out session had my hormones come flooding in and my body temperature spiked. My inner core heating up as I felt an all too familiar tingle rise up between my legs. Finn pulled himself off me for a second and looked me dead in the eyes.

“We are going to win this war y/n. You will become champion. There will be absolutely no distractions in that ring, do you hear me!” His Irish accent purred across each syllable, even if he meant to be stern it just sounded beyond sexy to me. I nodded in response to his questions. 

“Good. Because no distractions works both ways and you being in this new gear well, it reminded me that I have been waiting to fuck you for far too long.” The other members of Judgment Day nodded in agreement, Rhea ran her tounge along her teeth, her tounge piercing clinking across each tooth. She turned to Damian who was smirking down at her. Dominik stood running his hand across a growing bulge in his tight black and white printed leggings and watched as Finn tugged at my black and pink leather strapped top, locking his lips back onto mine as he pushed me back onto the wall. His hand quick to prevent my head from hitting the wall before kneeling down and throwing my left leg over his shoulder, Finn began planting kisses up my inner thigh towards my panties, the heartbeat inside growing stronger with every inch he covered. 

I reached out and motioned a grabby hand towards Dominick who didn’t hesitate to race forward and takeover where Finns lips had been. Our tongue’s entwined in a deep desperation for each other as his hands began exploring over my chest, pulling down the front of my top to expose one of my breasts. Dom twisted and tugged at my nipple as Rhea came over to join, swiftly followed by Damian. 

She turned his hips, so his back was against the wall as Dom and I continued to kiss and Rhea pulled down on his pants, exposing his dick to the cold air. It bounced for a moment in its solid form but before it could react to the fresh air she began running her tounge along it and took it in its whole form to the back of her throat. Beginning to bob her head up and down Dominik’s knees became weak and Finn grabbed onto one of his thighs to support him, pressing him back against the wall. 

Finn tugged at my wrestling gear shorts, knowing full well time was not on our side to be able to fully undress. Instead, he tugged at the fabric pulling it to the side, exposing the mini black laced thong I had worn, hoping to finish off a championship winning night with a trip to our sex pit of a bedroom back home. 

Finns warm tounge moved its way up between my folds, the man clearly enjoying the fact I was already soaked down there as he began playing with my clit, his tounge reaching its peak before motioning backwards and repeating the movement over and over. My breath hitched in my throat as I broke the kiss off from Dominik, riding out the pleasure of my Irish lover between my thighs, desperate moans escaped my lips which only drove him to speed up. 

Damian reached out both his strong arms and positioned himself between me and Dominik, his strong legs fitting in the gap between Rhea & Finn who were both on their knees already, busy enjoying themselves. Lowering his black ripped jeans Damian took our hands and placed them on his dick as he leant back to the wall, exchanging make out sessions between myself and Dom as we both tugged, rubbed and fondled his cock together. Damian’s cock was something to behold, the sheer size and girth that man wielded made anyone’s insides turn to jelly. To this day I still say a prayer and thank the sex lords from above and below that I get to call him mine. 

It wasn’t long before the knot in between my stomach began to build, and my thighs began to shake as Finn bought me towards my climax. My grip on Damian loosening and Dom now taking over in full as Finn pinned both my wrists against the wall by my sides. His grip so tight on me small bruises had begun to form, but this only drove my inner sex goddess wild as she was dancing in the awash of my orgasm as Finn drove his fingers deep inside me, pounding three at a time with the inward curl that drove every inch of my body crazy, while his tounge punished my clit. 

“Oh shi..Oh sh..Finn, Finn, shh…shhii” My words were loud and broken as I took quick rapid deep breaths, riding out an all-time high that I had waited so long for it seemed like my body wasn’t quite ready for this flood of pure hormonal ecstasy. 

Rhea, Damian and Dominik all turned their heads to watch as I reached my orgasm, face fully flushed and legs trembling. Dominick followed quickly behind as my summit had driven Rhea to a desperation of her own and a few deep throated swallows later saw her lapping up the delicious cum shot Dom had gracefully given her. 

Finn was quick to drop my leg and rush to his feet, taking a fist full of my hair and dragging me over to the arm of the sofa. He threw me across and pulled at my hips raising my arse higher in the air for a better access point. He was quick to lower his wrestling gear leggings too as he didn’t hesitate to forcefully ram his rock-solid cock deep inside me, I was now wet enough he could easily bury himself. He began thrusting aggressively, pounding his cock deep inside of me as Damian ditched his hand job from Dominik, planting a final kiss on the boy’s lips and then moved to position himself in front of me, opening my mouth and easing in his cock to touch my tonsils. 

Surprisingly, something had clicked inside of Dom who had pulled Rhea up to her feet and had attempted to throw her over the foldup chair in the corner of the room, not far from where Finn and Damian were fucking me front to back. Rhea had smirked at his attempt and wagged her finger in his face before pulling him into a deep kiss and whispering in his ear, ��Aye Papi, look at you being the dominant one.” She smirked and winked before finishing her sentence; “Beg me baby boy”. 

Dom grinned and got down on one knee, peppering her thigh with sweet intensive kisses as he began his pleas. Taking a handful of his hair she pulled the boy up to his feet and walked them both over, kicking the stool over and having Dom take a seat. Then Rhea placed one hand on Damian’s shoulder and had him remove his cock from my mouth before Rhea climbed on the sofa cushion in front of me and pulled me into a deep sensual kiss. Damian didn’t hesitate to lower Rheas black leather gear shorts and bury his cock inside of her. 

Dominick sat watching his four partners in front of him, his two girls being fucked intensely by his two dominant daddies. His dick was quick to harden up again as he reached a hand inside his crotch and palmed at himself, ever so loving the view. 

Between the four of us our moans and groans were loud, desperate and full of passion. They echoed throughout our clubhouse, through the hallways and out of the locker room. It was obvious to passersby what was going on, but no one dared comment. It had become common knowledge regarding the relationship between us all, whether people agreed or not, they were instinctively too afraid of Rhea, Damian and Finn to dare comment. 

 Both men now thrusting in unison, groaned deeply and reached out mirroring each other, taking a handful of their girl’s hair to arch our backs as they reached their penultimate high. A warm sensation filling our cores before releasing their grip on our hair and letting us go. A hard slap on my ass from Finn gave me the go ahead to stand up, Damian knew better with Rhea and stepped back allowing Mami to return to her feet on her own accord. 

“Fuck...” I said, turning my head and stretching out my back as I looked in the mirror to see my now full after sex appearance before noticing the clock which stated we had less than 5 minutes until we needed to be at gorilla. 

“Oh Fuck! Shit, look at me!” I stated trying not to laugh, Rhea was quick to grab my hand and pull me over to the dressing table stationed in the corner where she was fast in fixing my make-up, followed by her own. 

The boys all took a seat on the couch, fist bumping each other for a ‘job well done’ while we girls just laughed. 

Once Rhea had given me the all clear I stood up and began stretching out my arms and neck, readjusting my gear and doing all the final checks. 

“Hermosa, I would have thought Finn had stretched you out enough already, no?” Damian chuckled as Finn looked up and winked in my direction, biting his tounge. 

“Very funny…” I said, looking over to them as we all began to make our way out of the clubhouse. 

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

We briskly raced our way to Gorilla, as each member of the judgment day walked behind me, psyching up for the match ahead. One way or another, I would be walking out of WrestleMania as the new women’s world champion! They all believed in me, heck I believed in me, and I knew I could do this. 

But it was short lived as when we reached the backstage section with the rest of production team, everyone seemed to be looking over in hushed voices or concerned looks. 

Pushing past them all I followed behind Rhea and Damian, holding on tight to Dominik’s hand as Finn closed in behind us. Security were quick to cut us off as they blocked the entrance to the ramp. 

“What the hell? What’s going on?!” Damian was furious at their actions as he came face to face with one of the security guards, Rhea in a stand-off with the other. 

“I’ll tell you what’s going on…” Hunters voice boomed out from behind us as we all turned, Finn now leading our group as my grip on Dom’s hands became tighter with anxiety and he pulled me in close to his side. Behind him, lurked Liv Morgan who was wearing a devilish grin. 

“You four…” Hunter pointed to Rhea, Damian, Dominik and Finn, “are late, get to the ring now! The match is starting in less than one minute! Liv Morgan will be joining you; she will go 1-1 against Abby the Witch for the Women’s world championship”. 

“The Fuck man?!” Rhea shouted, pushing Dom, Myself and Finn out of the way. She stood head on from Hunter, the fire in her eyes burnt with fury. 

“The Hell she will!” Damian’s voice was loud as his voice filled the room. Finn stood staring down the boss in front of him. Triple H held up a hand in Rhea’s face, his persona calm and collected as he turned to face me, smiling. 

“And you y/w/n ...........” 

His words were blunt, cold and full of the authority he loved to push in everyone’s faces. 

...

...

...

“You're fired.” 

[t00thpasteface]

really most of the things that bug me about posting art online is the way that so many people apparently just think art spawns out of a creator's head fully formed like athena or something, the way they call it "content" and tag it "shitpost" and ignore my big flashing No Requests sign to waltz into my inbox and demand custom art for free. i dislike the fact that this site has such a deep-rooted long-standing culture of just throwing art demands into a creator's inbox with no warning or thank-you... and that they think appending "thanks!" on the end of the ask works as payment. on my old blog that had anon enabled, i got twice as many request asks as simple "i like your work" asks. and i bet that number would be even more skewed if i had anon on permanently with this newer blog that has way more followers, because when i do enable anon i always get flooded with more requests. and one time i got blocked for saying i don't work for free! people feel so entitled :(

[eisforeidolon]

I feel fans should be able to interpret shows and characters any way they want but it really bothers me that shippers die on the hill of Dean is such a closeted bi sexual and Sam is the biggest heterosexual out there. I love these characters because they are extremely toxic and codependent on each other. The story would not be the same with out that. Why would anyone look to Supernatural to be their all time gay representation love story when it most obviously is not. it just blows my mind how out there Destiel shippers are and how much they truly hate this show and hate Dean without even realizing it. I need someone to figure out how we can get rid of them from this fandom...LOL

Yeah, IDGI either. Fandom is supposed to be about just having fun however you want with the building blocks from the canon + your imagination. It's not even the main point that they're hilariously bad at interpretation, project too hard onto the characters to even see them, can't understand context to save their lives, pointedly ignore a million things that directly contradict their agenda, and too much of their so-called proof is actually gross backwards stereotypes about sexuality and masculinity (neither of which they seem to understand very well at all). If they were just having fun with it, who the fuck cares? Sure, it's annoying, but a lot of fandom is annoying because it is so specifically tailored to things not everyone is gonna like. There are other canons with fans who are fine admitting they just like playing in the canon world but not the canon itself that much.

No, the problem is hellers are not content to just enjoy their non-canon interpretations in fandom. They feel entitled to flood any and every tag associated with the show, trying to demand their interpretations be considered indisputably canon fact because ... reasons ... and anyone who doesn't agree with them is A Bad Person because ... they say so. Their ship is the greatest love story (n)ever told, the best representation evar in media! It's the only important thing about SPN - and if they couldn't change the canon, they can change the fandom narrative! The fact there's actually no there there under their overblown thousands upon thousands of words of inept meta is why the very suggestion it's not canon, that someone doesn't see it as the greatest thing ever, that maybe Dean is actually just a heterosexual instead of putting on an elaborate performance of one or even that Sam might not be the straightest character ever written? Is taken as an attack upon their self-declared status as the real main audience. Which makes sense, because they never were. SPN was anything but subtle as to what its actual focal relationship was.

To some extent I get how they echo-chambered each other into believing their ship was/would be a thing in canon. If you just look at the size of the piles on piles of cherry-picked nonsense they accumulated over the years without actually engaging your brain to see how variously flimsy, out of context, or how many other more sensible interpretations there were for any of them? If you wanted to believe and surrounded yourself with others who did, too, and kept talking each other up, spending way more time doing that than watching the show? It's no wonder some of them ended up with really skewed expectations.

What I don't get is how they're still going this long after the show ended. SPN is over and there's no more 'Well, next season for sure!' to promise themselves. There are increasingly more stories out there now in a variety of media which are centering deliberately, openly LGBT+ characters and relationships they could invest in championing! Hell, just saying screw canon and burying themselves in writing their idea of "better" fanfic is a perfectly reasonable way to deal with disappointment, no matter how self-inflicted. Instead, they're still here making up elaborate conspiracies about how SPN was something other than what it blatantly obviously always was - because admitting they were wrong and the only thing they ever liked about it was their own OOC fanfic very, very loosely based off of it? Well, that's more than a bit embarrassing in light of how long they spent campaigning and how vehement they were about it totally being not just A Thing but The Most Important Thing Ever. So I don't know what would actually get them to move on, they clearly love being miserable and wrong and pretending to be martyrs over it far too much for me to comprehend.

[little-bloodied-angel]

First of all, the "thick skin" comment was only in regards to stuff like people hating on your ships and I did qualify "from what I've seen". I didn't intend to imply that you're not affected by things and I'm sorry if it came off that way.

And I never argued that people should not be entitled to their opinions and to expressing those opinions wherever they want. I just think using some tags because you don't know what will upset or even trigger someone isn't a stretch, it's being civil; and sometimes people aren't even able to avoid that content until after they've seen it precisely because of the tagging issue. Of course, the person in question should ask politely and not come in with demands, but I think "your feelings aren't my responsibility" applies more to "you were warned about this content so I'm not responsible if you choose to consume it" rather than "I don't care if you're upset and I shouldn't do anything to make a fandom space more comfortable or easy to navigate". Again: if you putting something in a tag on Tumblr only appeared on your blog, I wouldn't even think of having this discussion, because the tag could just be blocked in your blog with no other issue, but politely asking someone to add a word to a tag so they don't have to choose between blocking the whole tag, a whole blog they otherwise enjoy, or being upset or triggered without warning, isn't that much to ask. You can't curate your own experience, particularly in fandom spaces, if nobody cooperates with you. I've seen people argue that if you get triggered you should just not participate in fandom using the "your feelings are not my responsibility" argument, and that's just unfair. Again, people should ask politely, but Tumblr is not a podcast or a YouTube channel where you simply don't click on something that will make you feel like that. If people misuse tags then you see those things with no warning or you have to stay out of the tag entirely. If the intention isn't to provoke, upset or trigger people on purpose then it doesn't cost much to add a word or a tag to avoid exactly those things. Same with fanfic sites: the warnings should be on the tags, or at least tagged as "chose not to tag".

Like I said, if I worded a request like in the previous example, as calmly and politely as possible, and the person I'm asking essentially told me to fuck off because their feelings are not their problem, I don't think I'd be the one in the wrong. I just don't think someone should be sent crying or even having a panic attack to "deal with it themselves" if two extra seconds on someone else's part could avoid it. That's precisely why we tried to make the "anti (x)" and "(x) critical" tags commonplace, so that people could criticize, vent, or even rant or bash to their heart's content without the actual fan tag being flooded with negativity. That's not making someone responsible for your feelings; that's when you were warned, interacted with the content anyway, and then went rant at the person who made it about how dare they make the content in the first place.

I'm really not trying to antagonize you here. You've actually done that exact thing before, with me specifically, most likely because I asked politely. Most recent example: I told you certain wording in a possible Charmine fic came off as classist, which I was sure was not your intention, and maybe it would be better to change it because it was really uncomfortable to read, and you agreed and changed the wording without changing the sentiment. So I assume that if I asked you with the same level of politeness "hey could you please add this tag? You know your blog is one of my favorites, but I just can't stand to see (whatever), it's really upsetting to me", without criticizing you as a person, your opinion, or anything else, you'd do the same. The issue is not asking but demanding, imho, and it's also quite a different thing to ask someone to tag something than to say "you shouldn't be writing that", obviously. Again, the "there's a human being behind the screen" applies to both people. That's all I mean. And it doesn't hurt anybody to try and make online spaces a bit easier/safer to navigate; not by censoring things, I'll be the last to advocate for that, but simply by giving a heads up that that's what you're talking about.

Stuff kids on tumblr better relearn

1. You are responsible for your own media experience. 

2. There is such a thing as a healthy level of avoidance towards topics that make you feel unwell or even (in a real-life clinical definition of the term) trigger you - but you are the one to actively take care of what you view.

3. Avoiding does not mean policing others.

4. You have no right to tell artists to censor themselves - you may criticize what others do, you may dislike it, that’s fine - but actively asking for censorship when you could easily unfollow or block a person just makes you look incompetent in your use of the internet.

5. Do not give people on tumblr or /any/ website the responsibility for your emotional well-being. Because these people do not even know you so no, you have no right to ask them to take care of you.

[killian-whump]

Wha happened? Who harassed whom???

Colin woke up this morning and let loose on Twitter with a trio of succinct and spot-on tweets:

...and nobody had any clue what he was talking about.

Mind you, he's been harassed in the past (as have most celebrities these days) for not posting the correct performative BS that "twitter activists" demand in response to current events. From the sound of Colin's tweets, this is what's happened again.

Except none of us saw it this time. The usual suspects are all silent. Nobody's done it in replies on his tweets. There's nothing questionable tagged with his name.

So it either happened on another site (which would be weird to address it on Twitter and even mention Twitter in his response if so) or it happened in his DMs - which have been open for a bit. Most of us were assuming it was a mistake that he left them open and never dreamed he'd actually read any he got, and more importantly, didn't want to flood the poor man's message box - so we didn't send DMs. Well, it seems like teflon-covered assholes are lacking any such nuances of social etiquette and just went ahead and sent him bullshit DMs that he then went ahead and read.

His DMs are now closed, of course, most likely due to the abuse he apparently received through them.

Talk about trying to do the right thing and failing spectacularly. His most respectful, loving, kind, and polite fans didn't want to bother him... and as a result, he's sitting over there reading entitled performative BS from the weakest links on Twitter over his morning coffee.

So now we all wanna know who did it, so we can show our appreciation for their efforts with some flaming bags of dog poop on their proverbial doorsteps*.

* NOT THAT WE REALLY WOULD, OF COURSE. Daddy Colin raised us all to be good, kind people - not at all the sort of people who leave poop on people's doorsteps**

** probably

Incidentally, Colin's fans on Twitter are now adding a little "Colin ❤️" onto their usernames in the hopes of showing him that his fans love and support him and don't condone the kinds of messages he seems to have received.

'Cos that IS how we roll 😎

[sclfmastery]

I posted 2,442 times in 2022

458 posts created (19%)

1,984 posts reblogged (81%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@mostincrediblechange

@the-patrex

@themastergifs

@conduitandconjurer

@koscheioakdown

I tagged 1,750 of my posts in 2022

Only 28% of my posts had no tags

#ooc - 520 posts

#ic - 189 posts

#master of a nothing place (dhawan) - 171 posts

#dw spoilers - 158 posts

#i'm alive (simm) - 118 posts

#thoschei - 63 posts

#meta - 50 posts

#lol - 46 posts

#lmao - 45 posts

#ownership enough (ten) - 39 posts

Longest Tag: 133 characters

#for the longest time thirteen was my favorite doctor because her seeming optimism was an antidote to twelve's horribly depressing end

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

This is the most perfect encapsulation of what I do with every single piece of canon, LOL.

100 notes - Posted October 15, 2022

#4

There was nothing in sight But memories left abandoned There was nowhere to hide The ashes fell like snow And the ground caved in Between where we were standing And your voice was all I heard That I get what I deserve

So give me reason To prove me wrong To wash this memory clean Let the floods cross The distance in your eyes Give me reason To fill this hole Connect this space between Let it be enough to reach the truth that lies Across this new divide

(He’s baaaack...... )

108 notes - Posted April 20, 2022

#3

also is no one talking about how the Master’s new TARDIS is a reflection of an utterly deranged, past-all-hope mindset of hostile yet desperate mimicry? its interior is a complementary foil and ideological inverse of hers:

LITERALLY, the same exact structure, to “mock” her, yes, but come on. It’s more than that, and so are the outfits. I called this years ago and again one month ago. He is so preoccupied by the fact that they are no longer equals, because his identity is a REACTION to HERS.  to have no selfhood anymore because he can no longer claim to be her peer has BROKEN him.  LITERALLY THIS INTERIOR IS A PHYSICAL MANIFESTATION OF THE INSIDE OF HIS MIND. BRIGHT AND COLD AND BLUE AND PURPLE LIKE A BRUISE, WHEREAS HER TARDIS IS WARM YELLOWS AND GOLDS AND LIKE A BREATH OF LIFE.

i wish someone could capture and rehabilitate him. like i literally want him to go to a mental health facility. this is only going to get worse each time he reappears. i want to laugh about the gimmick of it but it’s actually DEEEPLY tragic??? 

121 notes - Posted October 24, 2022

#2

(Very) belated happy birthday, @mostincrediblechange, my creative partner in crime ;) 

I was housed by your warmth Thus transformed By your grounded and giving And darkening scorn Remember me, love When I'm reborn As a shrike to your sharp And glorious thorn --Hozier

144 notes - Posted February 26, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

So to jump off of a Tweet I made (I’m Ambs): 

No but really. Indulge me for a moment.

The Master thinks of Tecteun’s discovery of the Timeless Child as a despicable disgusting thing; he’s too angry and hurt at the Doctor to consciously recognize that his disgust isn’t just at “everything I am is somehow because of you”--it’s ALSO at the fact that his best friend was killed over and over and experimented on as a child AS THE FOUNDATION OF AN ENTIRE CIVILIZATION. 

The civilization to which HE belongs, which HE always thought entitled him to something akin to godhood ( “I’m a Time Lord, I have that right,” said Simm Master, during Ten’s era).  Which, after absorbing the entire Matrix and all its knowledge, he is now aware is a GENOCIDAL LIE (“everything you know is a lie,” Spyfall Part 1).  Including his identity. Far more importantly, including HER identity. “Call me by my name,” he demanded of her, on her knees (because, Doctor, you have always defined me and you always will, and I’m learning that’s inescapable. I have no autonomy, control, or mastery, over anything). 

But the Master is nothing if not obsessive. He can’t let it go. He can’t accept this: especially after having been Missy in the Vault for 70 years, trying to placate the Doctor by “turning good,” and ending up killing and being killed by herself as thanks for it. So he’s off to work. First the Spyfall plot, including the encoded message (”why should I make it easy for you? It wasn’t for me”): that falls through quickly, and gives him 77 years among the worst pockets of humanity and human history, more pain and resentment in which to marinate. 

 Next, he absorbs the Cyberium and creates the Cyber Masters (the corpses of the Time Council and Lords, who have KNOWINGLY reaped the benefits of genocide, mutilated into Cybermen with the Doctor’s DNA).  This is all mere ritual: he has no real desire to follow through with conquering the universe. He wants to die. He begs the Doctor to kill them both with the Death Particle. Then at last they’ll be equals again. She refuses, runs (because unlike him, she has other people to live for), and lets a human try to kill him instead. This won’t do.

So he escapes, and chooses to live a little longer. 

Now, in Power of the Doctor, he decides, okay, if I can’t just kill us all, this awful lie of a “great civilization” build on the predation of my childhood best friend, I’m going to make it so that this entire scenario never occurred to begin with. He drops the Doctor a hint--as one always does, in the best of cat and mouse games (though he has told us, now, in his deepest state of despair, “it isn’t a game”).  What’s the hint? 

“This is the end of your existence. You will be ERASED.”

It’s that word--erased--that draws ALL my attention. Someone on Twitter noticed that what the Doctor is standing inside, when we see her regeneration energy being activated, and hear her calling “YAZ,” looks an awful lot like a LOOM.

Why’s that important? Because looms synthesize Time Lord offspring using  genetic sequences. 

So logically, they can undo those genetic sequences too. 

What would happen if the Master robbed the Doctor of identity as completely as he has been robbed?  In his mind, what makes her special, deserving of adulation, is her capacity to be immortal.  He misses the idea that they are equals and foils.  If he can’t make them equal again with a simple double suicide,  then maybe he can extract the parts of her DNA that make her (in his mind) special.  

Maybe the scene that we THINK is Thirteen’s regeneration is just a loom the Master is using to remove her ability to regenerate, period.  And she’s screaming for Yaz because something has happened to Yaz, and if she can’t heal her with regeneration energy, Yaz will die.   

And maybe the Master is TAKING that ability from her, to BECOME, in his mind, a SUPERIOR DOCTOR. 

What if he’s found some way to prevent Tecteun from ever finding her--some causal chain of events that necessitates abducting earth seismologists and wiping certain famous earth artists from existence such that their paintings never existed (or maybe just the paintings, that’s not clear yet)? What if that’s why the Daleks were contacting the Doctor of all people for help--they are noticing parts of their history changing or going missing. 

What if the Master has been able to create a functional temporal paradox (this might explain the two earths and two TARDISes) so that he and his “children” the Cyber Masters can go on existing, but simultaneously, the Doctor and the other Time Lords never came into being? 

“You will be ERASED.”

269 notes - Posted October 9, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[sidespart]

The Fall of King Romulus Part 6

Summary: Twin Princes Remus and Romulus are cursed at birth with Honesty and Obedience. When Romulus, who cannot disobey any order, is told to kill his brother the next time he lays eyes on him, he changes his name to Roman and runs away. Roman joins up with a misfit group of adventures and plans to never return to his homeland. But the fae have other plans for him...

Warnings (for whole fic not necessarily individual chapters): Violence, mind whammying/memory altering, curse of obedience related consent issues, references to sex, references to war related injuries/PTSD, references to child abuse/neglect (YMMV on that one but just in case), antagonstic-but-not-exactly villian!Janus, Extremly-moraly-dubious-but-not-exacty-unsympathetic-Remus

EXTRA WARNINGS - this chapter is pretty much unrelenting whump and the violence and consent issues (past) tags strongly apply. I have put more detailed (spoiler heavy) warnings at the bottom so if you’re particularly sensitive to that stuff and want to scroll down to check before you read you can do so.

Feedback appreciated.

NOW ON AO3 :D

Prologue     Chapter 1   Chapter 2  Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5

In a tavern just outside of Leovan the crowd roars another! And Roman laughs and gamely starts to play another jig. He’s been playing for hours and he drinks in the attention happily, even as the cheers of the crowd become a ringing in his ears. The night is long and his throat is raw and his stomach empty and it’s harder and harder to keep his eyes focused, but his hands are steady on the strings. He sways in place, sweat dripping into his eyes, but it doesn’t matter- the crowd adore him. They sing and dance and laugh along, and after each set they call another, another, another until the room is spinning and his throat is bleeding and the audience’s laughter had turned cruel and high and lilting and-

Roman woke with a gasp and immediately regretted it.

The underground room was still pitch black, the humidity still cloying. At some point during his fitful sleep he had slumped to the floor, Lucius’ ill-attempt at binding having come loose enough to allow him to slide his arms down the length of the pipe. He was awkwardly sprawled at the base with his wrists still pinned above his head and his legs twisted underneath him. He tugged experimentally at his binding and got a sharp spike of pain down his shoulders and spine for his trouble. Whilst he had wasted time sleeping, the silk had become sodden from the moisture of the room and shrunk tight against his wrists, making even Lucius’ knotwork impossible to pull apart.

Not that it would have made much difference if he could get it loose.

Stay here until I come back with your transport.

Grunting with pain, he managed to untangle his legs out from under him and sit up. He pushed himself up on his knees as best he could, trying to relieve some of the pressure on his wrists, but gave it up quickly as the pain lacing down his shoulders intensified.

This was bad.

He chewed on his bottom lip, trying to think, but the heat was making it almost impossible. The black of the room kept swirling back in to crowded tavern, the rush of water into the jeers of a crowd…he could feel the raw burn on his throat and his mind scrambled desperately for another song-

Except it hadn’t happened like that. He shook his head furiously, his hair flicking sweat into the room, trying to banish the tavern from his mind.  He had already started traveling with the others by the time he sang in Leovan and if he’d tried to perform so late into the night Virgil would have come stomping down the stairs to tell him he was being ridiculous and to go and get some sleep.

Or Patton would have sat up listening, playing bodyguard, until he couldn’t keep his own eyes open and sweetly suggested that the crowd might want to be getting home to their own families.

Or Logan would appear, pocket watch in hand, demanding he finish within a set time frame in order to allow for optimal sleeping hours.

Roman could almost hear the lecture, relief at a chance to escape the crowd mingling with exasperation at the scholars ridged scheduling.

In the dark Roman glanced over to where he thought the door should be.

The only sound was the gentle hiss of water.

He tried pulling at the rope again.

***

“Hey! It’s you!”

The man blocking Roman’s path back to the ballroom was clearly drunk. He stumbled towards Roman, half leaning on the hallway wall for support, a big dopy smile on his face.  “I saw you- I saw you back there – wow!”

“Thank you friend.” Roman smiled brightly and took a step backwards, but not quickly enough to prevent the guy from grasping onto his sash.

“You’re so pretty.” The guy breathed, his eyes unfocused but his grip firm, “I saw you lookin’ at me when you were singin’.”

Roman squirmed. He was almost certainly better trained than his admirer, and he had had a lot less ale, but he was also shorter and skinnier. With the man pressed so close in the narrow hallway it was almost impossible to find the leverage he needed to push him off.

And. This was a nice place. And by the quality of the man’s clothing he was an honoured guest not a servant. Roman had been the one to convince his new companions to accompany him to the local lord’s house for the ball, he had wanted to give them to a chance to relax whilst he performed. He didn’t want to get himself, and them, kicked out by causing a scene- not when he was half hoping they would allow him to continue to travel with them even though the job he’d been hired for was done.

“I look at everyone-” he said, smile fixed and polite ”– engaging the audience is actually very important for-“

“Shush.” The man whispered.

Roman shushed. Grinding his teeth in frustration.

His assailant brought one hand up to paw at his face in a clumsy attempt at seduction, thick rings knocking against Romans jaw. His other hand released the bard’s sash to grip his wrist instead.

“Kiss me,” the man breathed, the stink of ale on his breath making Roman gag.

Face burning with mounting frustration and embarrassment, Roman attempted to plant a quick kiss on his cheek, but the man twisted his head at the last moment to meet his lips with his own.  Pressing Roman back against the wall with a slobbering assault as he attempted to pry Roman’s lips open with his tongue.

Panic flickered in Roman’s belly and then just as quickly dulled. It was generally easier to let these things run their course.

And then, suddenly, the pressure on his mouth – and wrist and chest - was gone.

Roman blinked open eyes he didn’t remember squeezing shut to see Patton with an expression so furious Roman had to fight the instinct to cower.

“What.” Patton snarled “Do you think you’re doing?”

“I di-didn’t mean to-“ Roman started.

“Well?!” Patton roared and Roman realised he wasn’t speaking to him – but rather the rich man who appeared to be rapidly sobering up in Patton’s grip.  The warrior held him by the scuff of his neck, his toes just scraping the floor. When Patton shook him, the plethora of chains around his neck clinked together musically.

“Roman,” Patton asked, his voice still shaking with an anger that made Roman draw his shoulders up instinctively “do you…know this man?”

“Well…no.” Roman glanced at the chains again, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand as his heart rate started to return to normal “I think he might be the mayor though Pat, put him down!”

“I don’t care if he’s the King of the elves! Did you want to kiss him?”

“Well no, but – but its fine! These things happen!”

“You call yourself a Prince and this is how you carry on?”

Wait. What?

Roman blinked, feeling strangely hot in the cool hallway.

Patton wasn’t supposed to say that. Patton was supposed to ask what he meant. And Roman would backtrack and feed him some lines about people often feeling entitled to performers time off stage – which was not untrue – and Patton would look at him wide eyed and tell him that would never happen again –

“You’ve been told over and over, to keep yourself to yourself.”

- that Patton would stand guard at every performance from now on if that’s what it took.-

“If you insist on putting yourself into these situations, don’t come crying to me when the inevitable happens.”

-And Roman would be so elated at the implication that they were to keep travelling together that he would almost forget to feel embarrassed at the situation.-

Patton’s lips narrowed into a thin disapproving line, “Don’t be naive. You are far better off alone, Romulus.”

“Dad?” Roman whispered.

“He doesn’t look much like the Prince.”

“Oh, like you’ve seen him.”

“Well he’s meant to be handsome right? This guy’s not winning any contests.”

Roman opened his eyes, squinting against the light. Three men stood around him, illuminated by the glow of an oil lamp. For one wild moment elation flooded through him - his friends had found him after all!

And then their conversation registered and he scowled. Disappointment robbing him of a witty comeback to their insults.

Still. Let them travel almost non-stop for three weeks, spend a night standing out in the middle of a field whilst an old woman sang at herbs, march for five days through a forest - including a detour through he thickets brambles known to man- and then follow that up with an entire day wandering around the city, have two panic attacks and be left to sleep tied up in caller. And then see if they looked their best.  

With the gag still in his mouth, Roman’s attempt to covey this sentiment were mercifully muffled.

“I don’t know.” The biggest of the three stepped forward, grabbing a handful of Roman’s hair and yanking his head back painfully, abruptly cutting off his complaints. “I can kinda see it.”

“Be careful Niki,” the one who had first spoken whispered, he was holding the lantern and keeping well back from Roman. “His nibs thinks he’s got devils with him.”

“In here?” Niki cast a glance around at the iron cage of pipework that covered the room. “If he does they’re not coming out.”

“Still.” Lantern-boy whined.

“Well let’s test it.” Niki grinned down and Roman spitefully and released his grip on his hair. In one quick movement he had produced an iron dagger, not unlike Roman’s own, and pressed the flat of it to Roman’s cheek.

Roman stared at him.

“There you see? If was possessed he’d be screaming.” Niki said smugly and pulled his knife back, twisting it slightly as he did so, leaving a shallow cut along Roman’s cheek, making him wince.

“Careful,” lantern-boy said meaningfully “he’s still the Prince’s brother.”

“Oops.” Niki smiled cheerfully down at Roman. “My bad.”

“He needs to drink.” The third man stood far enough back from the lantern that Roman couldn’t see his face, but he saw the way the other two responded to his soft voice, their posture automatically stiffening.

“Here,” lantern-boy stepped forward after a moment, holding out a water skin to Niki  who rolled his eyes but reached down to rip the gag from Roman’s mouth.

Roman coughed, swallowing air greedily. His throat was painfully dry, all moisture sucked out by the silk, but he still hesitated when Niki held the skin up to his mouth.

“Listen to me.” He croaked “you-“

“Just drink it.” Niki snapped and Roman surged forward despite himself, swallowing a few precious mouthfuls before the skin was yanked away again.  

“You’re from Notaleveale.”  he whispered. “Right?”

“Obviously.” Lantern-boy muttered, taking the water skin back from his companion.

“Well then,” he drew himself up as much as he could, ignoring the pain the movement caused “ – as true men of The North I must implore you to assist me. The Marquis has been embroiled in some- some conspiracy of untruths, is perhaps plotting against the very crown itself and-“

“The Marquis de Orenlla couldn’t plot his way out of a paper bag.” Niki snorted contemptuously.

Roman opened and closed his mouth a few times.

“Isn’t he your Lord?” he asked eventually feeling bizarrely offended on the Marquis’ behalf. Niki and lantern-boy were both wearing chest plates embossed with the three peaked mountain range that signified allegiance to Orenlla, the royal kraken of Notaleveale floating above. They were clearly guardsmen brought with Lucius on his journey south.

The third man, who hadn’t spoken since he mentioned Roman needing to drink, wore no identifying uniform.

“It’s not an insult.” Niki shrugged, “personally I prefer an employer too daft to organise a coupe.”  

Lantern-boy nodded in agreement, “It’s a, whatcha call it - a positive working environment, innt?”

“…alright.” Roman decided to change tactics. “I’ll double what he’s paying you.” This time both men laughed.

“With what?”

“Well, I. I’m still a Prince I’ll have you know -  I have many rich and influential friends who would gladly-“

“Oh really. Where are they then?”

There was an unpleasant pause whilst Roman desperately tried to get his brain to think. He was supposed to be more creative than this!

“You’re no Prince of ours anyhow.” Lantern-boy stepped a bit closer to glare into Roman’s eyes. “Traitor.”

Roman flinched back at the pure look of venom on the young man’s face.

Little fae touched traitor.

“Listen to me. Whatever you’ve heard – it’s not true. My father-“

“Don’t you dare speak his name!” Niki surged froward, pulling Roman up by the neck of his tunic. Their faces were close enough that Roman could feel the spittle from the man’s mouth land on his cheek as he shouted: “After your despicable actions you would dare to-“

“Nicolas. Don’t upset yourself.”

The third man was barely visible to Roman over Niki- Nicholas’- shoulder, but as soon as he spoke the large man stilled, lowering Roman slowly back to the ground.

“Marcus. Some more light if you will.”

Lantern-boy -presumably Marcus– quickly produced a box of long matchsticks, almost tripping over himself in his haste to light more lanterns around the room. By the time he was done the room was brightly lit, the glow from each lamp bouncing off the metal pipes until it filled every corner.

The third man did not look especially Notalevealean, with skin almost as white as Virgil’s and pale white blond hair.  He was dressed plainly, with pale grey robes and soft shoes, and carried only a thin walking stick. If he hadn’t spoken, he could have quite easily faded into the background - camouflaged against the dull back drop of pipes.

“Nicholas. Marcus. Go and guard the passages.”

“But we already have a dozen men out there-“

“And I’m sure they’re in need of leadership. Go now.”

The two men glanced at each other. Roman thought for a moment that they would stand their ground, but then Marcus snatched up his original lantern and headed for the door, Niki following after one last reluctant glance back.

“W-wait.” Roman called. “Is my Father alive?”

They disappeared into the gloom of the next room.

Left alone with only the quiet grey man, Roman found himself wishing they’d stayed.

The grey man smiled at him as he shuffled towards the kneeling prince. His smile was an awful thing that did not touch his eyes.

“The young Marquis de Orenlla is a rather silly boy.” He told Roman in his soft papery voice. “Much like yourself.”

Despite himself Roman let out an offended squeak, but the grey man continued unhindered. “He has very little idea how to survive alone, can barely function without his servants.”

Roman caught himself staring at the floor and snapped his gaze back to the grey man’s face. He didn’t want to miss any information he might let slip but looking at him was-

It was difficult.

When he tried to look at the details of his face they seemed to slip away. Was he young or old? What colour were his eyes?

The whole time he had been talking, had his mouth actually moved?

“What are you?” Roman whispered.

The grey man smiled again, Roman shuddered.

“But also like you, he is not wholly stupid. He has started asking some inconvenient questions.”

Within the blink of an eye, the grey man was next to him a knife in his hand. Before Roman had a chance to do more than flinch, he had cut the ties biding his hands, and was back across the room.

Dazed, Roman rubbed his wrists, trying not to wretch.

Up close, the grey man smelt of death.

“Now. Sit there, and listen to me until I finish.”

Romulus whimpered.

“Your father is dead.” The grey man told him bluntly. “You killed him.”

“No.” Romulus- Roman shook his head. Used his newly freed hands to cover his ears. “He was sick.”

“You poisoned him over many weeks.” the grey man whispered. “Disguised it as a common sickness. You tried the same on your brother but he was too strong to succumb.”

Roman lowered his hands. They were pointless anyway- the grey man’s voice seemed to be inside his head.

“That’s not how his strength works!”

“And so instead, you allied yourself with a traitor to the fae court and placed a curse of madness on the crown prince, rendering him unable to rule. You hoped to take over in his place, but luckily your father’s advisors found you out. You were forced to flea with your fae companion.”

Roman stared at him, eyes wide. “That’s insane!”

“That’s the truth.” The grey man insisted. “When The Marquis asks you for the truth, that’s what you’ll say.”

“No.” Roman shook his head. “No, no, no.”

The grey man reached forward, resting his hand gently against Roman’s cheek. Romulus stared up into his eyes.

“Julius?” he whispered.

“In a way.” The grey man’s face seemed to twist. For a single moment, it was Julius’ face that looked disdainful down at him, rendering Romulus mute with terror. And then with another twist to reality it was gone, back to the grey man’s blank visage.

“I’ve had eyes all over looking for you Romulus. I was so sure you must have died in the mountains and yet –“ His fingers tightened on Roman’s face, nails digging cruelly into his skin. “Here you are. Like a little cockroach.”

With a shove he released Roman’s face and walked swiftly to the centre of the room, where the largest pipes rose out of the floor. “Stay on your knees and come here.” he ordered. Face burning, Roman shuffled after him, knees bruising on the stone floor.

“Put your hands here.” He gestured to one of the larger pipes. Even before his hands touched the surface, Roman could feel the heat radiating from it. It was far hotter than the one he had been tied to and although he braced himself he couldn’t hold back a yelp of pain when his hands made contact.

He snatched them back quickly, his palms an alarming shade of red. And without pausing, sprang to his feet, aiming a punch directly at the grey man’s immobile face.

“Stop moving.”

Roman felt his muscles lock, momentum sending him crashing to the ground as the grey man easily sidestepped his swing.

“Don’t move until I tell you too.” The grey man added, leaving Roman frozen on the ground where he landed.

Slowey the grey man stepped around him, crouching down by his head. “Look at me, Romulus.” Roman did so, only moving his eyes to stare at the flickering mirage of the grey man’s face.

Up close, the smell was so bad Roman felt the remains of his pastry threatening to make a reappearance.

“I am going to ask you some questions. You are going to tell me the truth. Nod if you understand.”

Slowly, Roman nodded. The grey man – Julius – whatever it was, had already told him what it wanted him to consider the truth. But even so, ‘tell the truth’ was an easy enough order to get around. Truth being in the eye of the beholder and all.

“And if you don’t, I am going to tell you to hold onto that pipe again, and I am going to tell you to keep holding it until I am satisfied with your answers. Do you understand?”

Roman swallowed.  He nodded again.

“Did you kill your father? Tell the truth now.”

“No.” he said quickly and then bit his tongue, cursing. Franticly he looked up at the grey man  “You, you said that was a truth for The Marquis, not for everyone I can’t just –“

“Raise your left hand.” the grey man said mildly. “Bring it here.”

Romulus felt tears of frustration and fear spring to his eyes. He was stupid for thinking he had a chance at this. Julius’ tests were never designed for him to pass.

***

Roman wasn’t sure how many hours passed before the grey man seemed satisfied.

Fortunately, he had methods of persuasion beyond just the pipe. When Romans’ left palm had become completely coated in blisters the grey man had handed him walking stick and instructed him to bring it down hard on his own back instead. And then his shoulders. The side of his face. His left palm.

The grey man never touched him himself.

He didn’t have any need to.

Whenever there was a pause between punishments he ordered Roman to stillness. Time which Roman happily spent fantasising, first of smashing the stick down across the grey man’s head, then of pressing his own eyes to the hot pipe.

Even if they took him home – he could not allow himself to lay eyes on Remus. That was the one thing he could not fail on.

“Did you kill your father?” asked the grey man.

“Yes.”

The stress of raising Romulus, of hiding the curse; there was no doubt he’d contributed to his fathers early death. It was true, at least to him.

“Did you curse your brother?”

“Yes.”

When he was a little boy there had been a phase where he tried to put a curse on Remus daily, and Remus him. The kind of curses they dreamed up were for itchy feet and stinky farts, and none of them had worked, but it was still technically true.  

“Why?”

“I was jealous of my brother.”

If Roman had only been born a half hour earlier he could have avoided a lifetime of being second best. He could have avoided his curse. Grown up with his Father instead of Julius. Not that he would wish any of that on Remus but. It was natural, surely, to be a little jealous of his brothers freedom.

“Good.”

Julius’ face smiled down at him. He reached out with the grey mans hands to stroke Romulus’ hair, like he sometimes did when he was a child. “You see Romulus, there is always a way to work within the confines of your curse, so long as you are willing to look for it. I taught you that.”

“Where are you?” Romulus whispered.

“I am waiting for you.” he smiled. “I have no sons Romulus, no one to pass the Stewardship to. And we must think about the future of our kingdom. When you are back, we can write a new story.”

“You…you’re ruler?”

Romulus frowned. There was a missing piece here but he couldn’t find it. The heat and pain were making his brain slosh against the inside of his skull. He found himself leaning in to the hand in his hair, even as revulsion rippled through him. “If you’re ruler then where’s –“

“Where’s the serpent?”

Roman blinked. Looking up, he found that Julius was gone again, the grey mans expressionless face staring back at him.

“What?”

“The serpent. Where is he?”

“I don’t – I don’t know what you mean.” Romulus held his injured arm close to his chest, curling over it protectively.

He heard the disappointed sigh and flinched even before the grey man brought his other hand to Romans’ bruised shoulder, squeezing hard.

“Look at me.”

Romulus did, eyes bright.

“I know he has left his prison. I know he was with you at that inn. I sent that stupid boy to get him and he found you.”

“I don’t know what you mean!” Romulus wailed, hating the childish wobble in his voice. “There wasn’t anyone else at the inn.”

“No?”

Julius eyes were peering out of the grey man again, a cruel glint to them. ”You were alone?”

“Yes.” Roman told him. Voice steady.

He’d entered the inn alone. He’d sat in the room alone. Climbed out of the window alone. Anything else was none of Julius’ business.

Before the grey man could speak again, a clatter from the next room made them both jump.

“Hmph. He’s early.” the grey man murmured.  “Get back to your place.” He gestured to the pipe Roman had originally been tied to and, haltingly, Roman crawled towards it, sprawling at the base.

“If The Marquis asks, tell him nothing about your injuries.” the grey man added lazily, taking up his position in the centre of the room, fading back into the background.

Roman grunted. It wasn’t a bad plan: his most visible injuries – the burns on his hand which he couldn’t stand to look at – could be explained away as being caused by the very pipe Lucius had tied him to. As usual, nothing could ever be pinned on Julius.

They waited. But neither the Marquis or his men appeared.

The grey man stood across from him, gazing out into the darkness of the next room. Roman wasn’t even worth looking at.

He slumped further against the pipe and tried to focus on breathing. There wasn’t a single place on his body that didn’t hurt, though the worst by far was his hand. He shivered from cold, which, given the heat of the room, couldn’t be a good sign. He let his eyes slip closed. Exhaustion threatening to take him again.

And then he felt a soft pressure on his lap.

“Mrrp.”

Roman opened his eyes. Then he closed them again.

He opened one eye. It was still there.

“Mister Mittens?” he asked, slightly hysterically.

Romulus and Remus had grown up with dogs. He wasn’t sure if cats were supposed to be able to feel smugness, but this once clearly did. It butted it’s head against Roman’s chin with another self-satisfied “Mrrp.”

“What?“ The grey man was staring at the pair of them, looking as confused as his expressionless face could manage. “Where did that thing come from?”

Roman was saved from having to answer by a crossbow bolt. One that came through the open door, burying itself in the grey man’s skull.

Chapter 7

Extra warnings

Consent stuff – Roman relives a memory of being sexually assaulted (he doesn’t necessarily think of it in those terms). A drunk man kisses him and pushes him against a wall. The man tells Roman to ‘kiss me’ without knowing anything about Romans curse. They are interrupted before it goes beyond kissing. (whether anything else would have happened, or whether the man would have stopped if he had known about the curse, is not shown in the text). It is implied that this sort of situation has happened to Roman before, and that it has gone further, but this is not explicit.

Violence stuff – Roman is tortured in this chapter. This includes cutting, burning and beating with a stick. The majority of this is not described in explicit detail but it’s certainly going on. Due to the nature of his curse, most of this takes place due to another character ordering him to hurt himself. Roman briefly contemplates burning his own eyes (for ‘trying to get around my curse’ reasons rather than ‘self harm’ reasons) . Someone also gets shot in the head with a crossbow. Roman also spends most of this chapter dehydrated and suffering from heat stroke .

I’m not totally sure what this falls under but its grim stuff – a character from romans past spends a lot of this chapter tyring to gas light him/ manipulate him into believing a set of false memories. Roman retains his correct memories but gets hurt a lot in the process. Meeting said character causes Roman to dissociate (I think this is the correct term but please correct me if I’m wrong), he continuously switches between his name and his childhood name during the chapter and at some points reacts as if he was a child.

[hazbincalifornia]

Midnight Snack

Chapter 25: Blitzo gets peckish.

Warnings: As always, mpreg, and implied animal death. Also stuffing if that needs a tag I guess, and BABY VIOLENCE. (Violence committed by a baby, not against a baby.)

Likes, replies, and reblogs are all appreciated, both here and on ao3!

Ao3 link

Blitzo’s stomach gurgled, and his arms tightened around the pillow that he was hugging to his chest. A fussy, hungry stomach wouldn’t have necessarily been a problem, except for the fact that it had been doing it for the past hour, and he was just about ready to tear it right out of his skin and rip it in half. Acid sloshed around audibly in his empty gut- or maybe the freeloader wanted more room and was just squashing the organ down so much that it had resorted to griping as loudly as it could. Relatable fuckin’ content right there.

Dinner had been two burgers and fries smothered in hot sauce and mayo from the grease trap down the road, which was more than enough to coast through until breakfast. Besides, he’d be damned if the kid was going to make him deal with the grocery store any more than he had to in this condition. No, he was staying right where he was, especially considering he’d been denied any sleep last night. One day low on sleep was manageable with reduced caffeine, two would suck satan’s left tit.

“C’mon, that was enough and you know it, I don’t want you ruining my figure any more than you already have,” he grumbled as the muscles clenched around his stomach, wringing it out like a sponge and drawing a pitiful whine out of his throat. “I’m not gonna just- give in and give you whatever you want, daddy’s gotta do him sometimes and I’m not letting you empty out the fridge. I ate enough, siphon blood outta my system like a normal leech does. I’ve got plenty of that.”

The reply was another gurgling groan and a hard clench as Blitzo’s empty stomach demanded sustenance, this time loud enough to make his middle vibrate even through the pounds of baby. He stuffed the pillow over his mouth, drool leaking down the case and over his chin as he forced out a scream.

He had to take a few seconds to pant before setting a hand on the side of his stomach, fingers drumming. “This is a battle of wills, and I am not letting you win. Your baby-daddy already started all this shit, so I’m just going to treat you the same as him- by ignoring you as long as feasibly possible until you decide to pop up and make everything difficult. Sound good? Yeah, sounds perfect.” There was a nudge from inside and Blitzo nodded in satisfaction at the apparent agreement, settling back down on the bed. He’d gone to sleep hungry plenty of times before, the baby gut notwithstanding, he just had to muscle through this for the next few-

There was no time to muffle the next scream as a sudden pinching pain went from ‘noticeable’ to ‘holy shit who’s tearing up my guts with a chainsaw?’, and there was a thud and a shuffling of feet before Loona started pounding on the door.

“You having a heart attack in there or something?”

Blitzo clutched at his stomach, wheezing as he was clawed apart from the inside out. “N-no!”

“Look, if you die, I’m on the hook for the rent.” Still, there was a semi-worried vibrato to her voice, and he swallowed down the coppery taste flooding up with the saliva to his mouth.

“I’m- fINE-!” His voice pitched up at another pinch-turned-horrorshow and his claws dug all the way through the pillow, stuffing spilling out like viscera.

“What the fuck are you doing in there?” The doorknob jiggled. Where was a portable x-ray when you needed one? Or ultrasound, or whatever the fuck you used to look at a baby that was trying to kill him before it even got out yet. What kind of horrible mouth or claws must it have- oh, fucking hell, Stolas had said something about his kid having a razor-sharp beak from birth, hadn’t he?

“Okay, I’m coming in.” Loona eased the door open, already in her pajamas and clutching a package of opened peanut butter crackers tightly enough that crumbs were sticking to her fingers. “You look like shit.”

“I feel like shit, so good-” Sharp inhale for breath, let it out- “-To know that I’m all on the same page.”

She dropped down on the bed with a metallic creak. “What’d the kid do now?”

“It feels like they’re biting me again, but w-worse- fuck!” Another nip, this one dragging a line on the inside of the womb like they were drift racing in there. Wait, dragging? He swallowed down more coppery bile. “Okay, fine, fine, sheesh, I’ll fuckin’ eat something, happy you little shithead?”

Loona raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t say anything.”

Blitzo shoved himself up off the bed to wobbly knees. “Junior’s gotten real bold, and instead of just sucking up the meat I’m eating for them like a good little lump, they decided to put me on the menu- ow, fuck, I’m going, keep your baby-tits on!”

“Babies don’t have tits, Blitzo.”

“They do if I say they do, sweetie.” Blitzo ruffled Loona’s fur between her ears as he waddled across the room, pausing next to the TV to take a breath.

Loona raised an eyebrow. “Do you need me to bring you something? I don’t want you passing out in the middle of the apartment and tripping over you tomorrow morning.”  In response, Blitzo just waved a dismissive hand.

“I can handle walking across two rooms, Loonie.” The active chewing had paused for the moment, but whatever they’d shredded in there was still shredded, and he’d rather not make it any worse- he had work tomorrow, dammit.

The fridge bathed him in a sickly, hospital-like glow as he tugged it open, and drool immediately started leaking from his mouth as the smells of half-forgotten, time-ripened leftovers hit him. A small mouse with four red eyes leaped up from the floor when he opened the door, burrowing into a box of takeout on the bottom shelf that Loona must have gotten when he’d been at Stolas’s place. His tongue snapped out automatically, snatching its furry body up and slurping up the tail between his lips before swallowing, and it took a second for his brain to load enough to register- after it slid down his throat.

Holy shit, did he just…? It squirmed a little as it descended, little hairs stuck in his teeth, and his fingers tightened on the side of his stomach before he reached for the box it had been after to wash out the aftertaste.

Everything after that was a bit of a blur, although he did retain enough sense of mind to avoid the six-pack of cheap beer in the back that still had four cans on it. Better to not risk puking all of this up or ruining the kid any more than they already were. Carbs, meat, a few wilted veggies that Moxxie had pawned off on him, sweet, sour, cold chili and whole untoasted bagels- it didn’t really matter what it was as long as it was at least mostly edible (he was pretty sure he swallowed a wrapper at some point), he just needed it inside of him now. Smothering everything in hot sauce and salsa and mustard made it more palatable anyway, especially the ice cream. The kid didn’t start taking chunks out of him again, at least, so he must have been doing something right. More and more of the white fridge walls became visible as the floor around him littered with containers, and his stomach grew tighter before he finally slumped back against the nearby counter with a groan. His legs sprawled out on the cool tile, both hands now stained with a mixture of about five kinds of leftovers, and he cradled his stomach after muffling a burp.

“Are you happy now, you needy little shit?”

Blitzo didn’t really expect a reply and almost didn’t hear it over the churning gurgles of digestion, but a soft ‘eee’ of a hoot, more a whisper-screech than anything, murmured from his midsection. He stared down at it, the warmth of his full stomach counteracted by ice dripping down his back.

“Oh, of course you sound just like him.” His claws dragged along the sensitive, itchy-while-stretched skin before the protection spell sprung up and pushed the fingers away. It only let him touch his own stupid body when he laid his palm flat. “Sure, it’s cute now when it's all little and squeaky, but you’d better not be as entitled as he is, alright? Or as you are now, since I’ve gotta do everything for you until you’re born. Considering you just settled right down in there without even asking in the first place, I doubt it. Rude.”

There were no more noises other than his stomach grumbling about going from empty to full so quickly, and he stayed slumped against the cabinet for long enough to let some of it digest. He must have been more tired than he thought, because he swore that he already looked bigger than he’d been when he’d finished binging. Maybe it started swelling in a bad reaction from whatever fucked-up food cocktail he'd accidentally made.

When he didn’t feel quite so much like a boulder had gotten stuffed inside his guts, it took three tries to haul his ass off the tile and drag himself back to bed, huffing like a cop running for the last doughnut in the process.

The ice had crept from his spine to the rest of his bones and muscles as he tugged the blanket tight around himself, but at least the churning food kept his stomach warm, and he passed out as soon as his head hit the pillow.

[green-eyed-whumpster]

My OC Universe: Rowan 130

Chapter 130 Summary: Marie comes for William. And surprises Rowan, seeing her after so long. (Tags: @just-a-whumping-racoon-with-wifi, @much-ado-about-whumping, @abitefullofeverything, @whump-me-all-night-long, @sky-or-something-idfk and @tears-and-lilies)

Trigger Warnings: PTSD whumpee, reference to previous abuse, reference to character death, threat, man-handling, verbal abuse

Peter and Rowan managed to figure out a way for Rowan to completely avoid William’s company. Peter leashed him outside for a few hours so Rowan could wash in peace, Rowan would grasp brief walks outside to stay active and get some fresh air. He always felt awful for Peter, though, who insisted on sleeping in full view of their prisoner. Rowan gave him pillows and blankets from his bed which he refused, in case the comfort allowed him to sleep too deeply or for too long. William realised soon that his manipulation wouldn’t work on Peter, and Rowan was nowhere to be seen, so he spent the days in almost complete silence, waiting in agony for Marie to arrive and drag him kicking and screaming back to his prison.

One morning Peter was preparing a cup of tea when he heard sounds outside. Multiple sets of hooves churning up the melting snow as they drew closer to the house. His eyes lit up and he abandoned his tea to turn to William, who had also heard the sounds and was waiting for the inevitable, his pale grey eyes dull and filled with dread.

“I have a feeling you’re finally going to be out of Rowan’s life forever.” Peter grinned. “But I promise, if you escape and come back here, I won’t hesitate to kill you.” William nodded weakly and turned his head away.

“Don’t worry, I won’t. I’m sure Marie will have me kneecapped to prevent it happening again.” He paused uncomfortably and looked up, flinching as Peter narrowed his eyes. 

“If Rowan is going to stay here for the rest of his life,” He hesitated before continuing and shrugged. “Keep him happy –“ He jerked as Peter dragged him to his feet to glare at him easier. “I’m sure you will, but…he was a good creature, I am going to miss him.” He flinched as Peter struck him hard and attempted to blink through the pain.

“You’re so sick and twisted that you can’t even feel real emotions.” Peter hissed. “You never cared for him.”

“I may be cruel, but I still felt things.” William replied, grunting as he was shoved unceremoniously towards the door. “Most frequently pride. I never wanted to admit my fondness for him, and used his that remained to try and save myself. But still, his company was worth more than I told him. And I admit I took it for granted. You don’t have to tell him this if you don’t want to,”

“I won’t.” Peter snapped. “You’ve played with his head enough.”

The air was cold as he came outside, the horses bore the royal crest and the men dismounting them wore the formal royal armour, so Peter pulled William out as well. It was liberating to be able to drag William into the wet ground and push him forward, finally this creature would leave his property and his life.

A particularly impressive horse drew closer and as Peter looked it over he realised the creature mounted on it was a woman, and her dress was a thick crushed velvet embroidered with golden thread. He fell to his knees as he recognised the Queen’s face and lowered his head respectfully as she drew up to him.

“Are you the one who owns this land?” He had never heard the Queen’s voice before, and it was such a foreign concept that he struggled to process her words.

“Yes, your majesty,” His head jerked up as he heard the crunch of another approaching horse and immediately lowered it again as the Prince came beside his mother.

“Confiscate my husband.” She ordered and two of the soldiers moved to take William’s arms and drag him over to their company.

“Lovely to see you again, as well, my love,” He said, voice dripping with sarcasm.

“And speaking of your love, did he receive you as you predicted?” She taunted in reply and he flushed, with rage or shame it wasn’t clear. “Speaking of, where is the boy?” She wondered.

“He…he’s inside,” Peter said softly, reluctant to reveal Rowan’s hiding place.

“Fetch him.” He looked up as the soldiers nodded and threw himself to his feet.

“I –“ He hesitated nervously and swallowed the lump in his throat. “If you would permit me to go and get him?” He asked. “I’m afraid he may be hiding from your majesty,”

“Why would he be hiding?” Marie scoffed.

“Your majesty apparently made a promise to kill him if you ever saw him again.” Peter said cautiously.

“You did.” Alexander added and Marie let out a sigh.

“Fine,” She said flippantly. “Whatever will save the most time, I’ve already spent three days on horseback.” Peter nodded and took a step back.

“Thank you, your majesty,” He said. “I won’t be a moment.” He raced into the house and opened the door to his room. He could hear the soft squeak of fear and felt his chest tighten sadly.

“Hey, Rowan?” He checked the rest of the space before crouching down to look beneath the beds. “The Queen wants to speak to you,” Rowan’s eyes shone black with the little light available beneath the beds.

“Please, Peter!” He squeaked. “She’ll kill me!”

“I don’t care what it means, but she has assured me that it means I won’t need to think about him ever again.”

“No, no Rowan,” Peter soothed. “I won’t let her. I’ll be there the whole time,” He extended a hand beneath the bed and watched as Rowan considered the idea.

“All right,” He murmured, shimmying out from his cave and taking Peter’s hand.

“Good, I promise you’ll be safe,” Peter smiled.

“If I don’t she’ll just send in guards to drag me out,” Rowan reasoned and Peter sighed softly.

“Just take a deep breath, it’s almost over.” He said as he wrapped a blanket around Rowan’s slim shoulders.

As he left the house again he felt Rowan’s hand tightening in his. Marie was waiting impatiently, looking around the sparse clearing and glancing over to her enslaved husband who was antagonising her son. She looked up when Peter reappeared and he saw her piercing blue eyes searching past him for the one she was after. He knelt once again in front of her but Rowan stood stoically beside him.

“Your majesty.” The cold air swallowed up his soft and stern voice.

“Rowan,” Marie said in mild surprise. “You look much healthier, this man treats you well?” Rowan appeared to be startled by her question and hesitated.

“He-he does, thank you, your majesty.” He muttered. He was confused by her interest.

“Good, you look to be in good health.”

“And you, your majesty, considering,” The last word was barely a whisper, but both the royals heard it.

“The impertinence,” Alexander hissed, but Marie held a hand out to him.

“He was only enquiring.” She answered calmly. “Considering the damages that William’s presence certainly inspired, he is entitled to a level of respect not many others deserve.” Her voice was calm but firm, she wouldn’t punish him for mentioning such things, but she won’t allow her own power to be threatened.

“Thank you, your majesty,” Rowan whispered. “Your majesty always was far too kind to me,” She smiled slightly as his courage waned and he reverted to his more comfortable state.

The party all turned as another horse burst from the trees, the soldiers raising their spears in preparation to protect the Queen and guard against William’s release. Rowan and Peter were completely at a loss as to who the newcomer would be but as they pulled up their steed and leapt off they recognised her as Cordelia, and relief flooded in Rowan’s chest. She swept unflinchingly past the soldiers and the nobles to place a hand on Rowan’s cheek and the other press on Peter’s shoulder.

“You’re all right?” She asked breathlessly and he nodded gently. “Get up, you fool,” She directed to Peter, and he sheepishly rose to his feet, keeping his head bowed.

“Forgive my interruption, my lady,” She said, directing her attention to the Queen. “But I was held up in the city.” Marie only nodded in understanding and shrugged softly.

“Of course,” She said. “Who wouldn’t want to witness William’s recapture?”

“Look how powerful you are surrounded by armed guards,” The prisoner spat and grunted as a soldier struck the back of his head.

“You know, maybe this time I really will have your tongue ripped out.” She hissed to him. “Let’s go. I don’t want him to be in the open for any longer. Make sure he’s gagged.” Rowan fought to avoid staring as William’s mouth was wrapped tightly with cloth and he was thrown over the pommel of a saddle, much like how he had been transported when he was imprisoned.

“Here,” She said, tossing a heavy purse to the ground before them. “For your loyalty to the crown.” Rowan’s eyes turned to it and only dragged away from the reward when he felt her moving.

“Wait! Your majesty?”

She hesitated for a moment and allowed her horse to settle before indicating for him to continue.

“Would I be allowed to ask you something?”

She paused for a moment to consider the request as Alexander raised an eyebrow suspiciously.

“If you want more money then you won’t get it.” He said firmly and Rowan turned his head down shamefully.

“Oh, hush, Alex,” Marie sighed, climbing from the saddle to stand before them. It was far more intimidating having her stand at their level. “What is it?” She asked and stepped towards them.

“I-I…”

Rowan swallowed heavily and fell instinctively to his knees, followed by Peter, despite Cordelia’s previous demand. Now that she was close enough that he could smell her perfume he was swept up with the dreadful memories that came with her refined scent.

“I heard an order that William was dead,” He finally choked out. “I thought you were killing him along with…” He hesitated but they both knew what he was referring to. “Wh-why didn’t you kill him?” His voice trembled weakly as he finally spat out his question and he heard Marie’s gentle sigh.

“We intended to punish him,” She admitted. “We wanted to keep him alive until we broke him. But his arrogance is so strong that not even torture managed to blunt his tongue.” She shook her head gently and pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration. “Alexander and I’s own arrogance wouldn’t allow him to win by killing him while he still retained some of his dignity. He feigned an injury and while a guard was moving him to another cell he escaped. It is our own fault and I’m sincerely sorry that he managed to find his way back to you.”

Rowan’s breath caught as his head whipped up to look at her, the notion of the Queen apologising to him was so ridiculous that he couldn’t hide his surprise.

“No-no, your majesty, really there isn’t anything for you to apologise for!” He squeaked and watched in bemusement as Marie chuckled softly.

“I hope you are trying to teach him to stop apologising so much,” She said to Peter as she stepped forward and cupped Rowan’s cheek gently, her soft leather glove sliding across his skin.

“I-I’m trying, your majesty,” He replied, flushing at her direct acknowledgement.

“I must admit, when we first came to the castle I was quite cruel to you, I hope you can forgive me, I didn’t understand the part you were playing was for your own survival.” Rowan couldn’t breathe as he felt the Queen’s touch on his skin. “Any creature who could pretend to be so devoted to a monster like William deserves respect.” Part of him craved the superior affection that he hadn’t felt since being released, but still his stomach pooled with dread at the dominating touch.

“Thank you, your majesty,” He breathed nervously and she gently took her hand away.

“I promise on my crown that William will never disturb you again. Alexander and I owe much to your loyalty.” Rowan was still unperturbed by this level of kindness Marie was offering him and barely knew how to answer through grunting softly in reply.

“My lady, would I be permitted to remain here for a few days to ensure Rowan’s peace of mind?” Cordelia asked and Marie nodded.

“Of course. I don’t need your reports until the end of next week, take your time.” She said and turned, climbing gracefully back onto her horse. “I am glad you’ve found a safe place, Rowan. Please let Cordelia know if you need anything in the future and I will make sure it is provided.”

“Oh…that-that’s too kind, your majesty,” Rowan gasped and she shook her head.

“As someone most impacted by William’s cruelty it is justified.” She said and glanced down as Alexander helped steady her horse. “Oh, also,” Rowan looked up timidly as her voice paused and watched her study his face. “Cordelia told me you were close to your bodyguard. I am sorry he didn’t survive.” Rowan looked down sadly and managed to bob his head in agreement.

“Thank you, your majesty, your condolences mean a lot,” He muttered.

“I hope you understand that there was never anything personal Alexander and I held against you, you were purely collateral damage.”

Rowan didn’t have the strength to lift his head as he heard the party turn to go, he didn’t want to risk catching William’s eye as he finally disappeared.

Hopefully this time for good.

[yesloverboy]

She’s Thunderstorms (Billy Hargrove x Reader) Part 2

Part 1

SUMMARY: Despite the fact that you continue to reject his advances, Billy refuses to let you get away that easy. Halloween is approaching and, after a month of chasing after you, Billy decides it’s finally time to take matters into his own hands. 

word count: 4,242

[Warnings: swearing, smoking, mild kidnapping, smut in the future but none for now.]

NOTE: Wowee zowee, we’re back at it for the month y’all. I really wanted to finish the entirety of this series before Halloween but alas, life gets in the way. This series is a favorite of mine and, as always, let me know what you think!

tags: colsonbakersnoseringmain, @lululovesgwtw, @kingbouji3, @speedmetalqueen​, @billysgodcomplex​, @all-time-otaku​

 You stare down at the blank composition book in front of you, feeling as though you don’t recognize yourself. English is your favorite class of the day, but nothing could will the words out of your mind and onto the pulpy, white pages. You don’t dare even hold your pen for fear of writing Billy, Billy, Billy until it runs out of ink. 

 The last class of the day goes by in the blink of an eye. After your run-in with Billy, and about a thousand confused looks from Jonathan, you’re unable to focus on anything but the memory of Billy’s lips grazing your skin. Initially, you were infuriated by the way he touched you, but now your anger had twisted itself into something that felt a lot more like anxiety. That level of closeness stirred something inside of you toxic and volatile to the tough outer shell you’d spent all of your time cultivating. The threat of vulnerability leaves your skin burning red hot with irritation as a bitter taste settles onto your tongue. 

 The final bell lets out one last screech, and you reluctantly pull yourself from the safety of your desk, lagging behind the rush of sneakers and brightly colored backpacks that flood the halls. Your stomach churns uneasily with the knowledge that you inevitably have to pass by Billy’s steel blue Camaro before facing the walk home. As you trudge across the tiles and past the rows of lockers, your boots kick up piles of Carol’s neon orange flyers like dead autumn leaves.

 As you step out into the crispness of the afternoon, you fantasize about being able to waltz past Hargrove and go home to your trusty record collection. All you want is to be alone and return to your regularly scheduled programming of getting lost in your thoughts– yearning to focus on anything but the events of the afternoon. Unfortunately for you, Billy seems to have other plans. You feel his eyes burn into you as you walk in his general direction, trying to look as if you didn’t know he parked next to the school’s only exit every single day.

 “There’s my favorite girl!” Billy booms, ensuring that the entire parking lot can hear him, “Did you miss me?”

 Reluctantly, you stop and turn to face him, not wanting to give your peers a reason to stay behind and ogle at the two of you. “Well, distance makes the heart grow fonder and I assure you, Hargrove– it has not been long enough.”

 “Now baby,” he says, stepping in front of you with a patronizing stare, “don’t be like that.”

 “Is there any particular reason why you feel entitled to my attention, or were you just dropped on your head so many times that you can’t remember how much I don’t like you?” you snap, allowing the exhaustion of a long day get the better of you.

 In all honesty, you aren’t sure why you’re being so defensive. Typically, Hargrove’s antics were annoying at best, but something about the way his touch made you feel has put your smart mouth into overdrive.

 Billy winces a little and places the cigarette that was resting behind his ear in between his teeth. “Goddamn you’re mean,” he hisses, the flame of his lighter catching the end of the cigarette with a soft crackle.

 “Oh I’m mean?” a bitter laugh escapes your lips at the sheer ridiculousness of the concept, “I’ve literally seen your kid sister and her friends tremble at the sight of you– unless, of course, you expect me to believe you’re blind and stupid.”

 “Ouch, princess,” he tuts, clutching onto his muscular chest as if his heart were spilling onto the gravel at your feet, “All I want to do is take you to a movie or somethin’ and you’re still insisting on being a cold-hearted bitch.”

 “We’re dishing out compliments now, too, Hargrove? Please, don’t quit while you’re ahead.”

 Billy lets out a hearty laugh, shamelessly enamoured by your unrelenting wit and stubbornness. His sapphire eyes glisten in the afternoon light as he studies you, cigarette still dangling between his lips. Once the two of you had started bantering, most of the students decided waiting around to watch wasn’t worth the effort anymore. Now the lot is nearly empty, leaving only you, Billy, and the occasional after school club member passing through. 

 “Look,” Billy starts again, taking a wide step towards you, “what would it take to make you go out with me? Hmm?” 

 Refusing to be intimidated by Billy’s blatant disregard for personal space, you keep your feet firmly grounded to the spot. “Listen, Hargrove, I wouldn’t go to a movie with you even if you picked me up and dragged me there yourself.”

 Billy’s eyes flutter from your face to the ground, his thick eyebrows furrowed together in concentration. As he plucks the cigarette from his lips and tosses it to the ground, you think for a moment that maybe your words finally penetrated that thick skull of his.

 “Alright, princess,” he huffs, pausing momentarily to crack his knuckles, “have it your way.”

 Billy is crouched beneath you before you even get the chance to process his words, thick arms wrapping around your legs and tossing you over his shoulder as if you weighed nothing at all. The bookbag on your shoulders slides downward at the sudden motion, jamming the corner of your algebra textbook directly into the back of your skull.

 Squealing in aggravation, you begin to pound your fists into Billy’s back and thrash harshly against his grip. “Put me down you fucking psycho!”

 “What’s with all the whining, princess?” Billy tuts as he carries your squirming form around to the passenger side of his car, “I’m just doing what you said.”

 Billy tosses you in the passenger’s seat, smirk never faltering as he secures the child lock on the door. You hit the leather with a growl, tossing your bookbag somewhere in the backseat while frantically clamoring against the jammed door handle. Just as you feel the lock begin to give, Billy is already seated comfortably in the driver’s seat with his finger firmly pressed against the lock button by his window.

 You turn to Billy, blood boiling from the pit of your stomach as your face goes flush with a mixture of anger and disbelief. “This is kidnapping, Billy! You do know that, right?”

 “It’s not kidnapping if you told me to do it,” he states matter-of-factly. Billy turns the key in the ignition, the Camaro roaring to life with such ferocity that the engine’s rumble vibrates directly through the leather soles of your boots. As utterly insane as Billy is acting, you can’t stop the thrill of the moment from strangling your heart and chasing your pulse down to the tips of your fingers.

 Running a hand through your hair, you watch through the window as the last few stragglers of the day gape at the sight of you driving off with Billy Hargrove. “Well, at least there’s more than one person who saw me while I’m still alive,” you grumble, not caring whether or not Billy actually hears you.

 “Do you actually think that’s what this is?” Billy laughs, “That I’m going to kill you?”

 “It’s hard to say, Billy, considering I have no fucking clue why you even bother at all.”

 As Billy pulls out of the school’s parking lot and onto the main road, you can hear the faint sound of him chuckling under his breath.

 “Something funny?” you ask, the question leaving your lips in the form of a demand. Billy flexes his hand atop the steering wheel, shaking his head with an amused smirk tugging at his lips.

 “I was just thinking–”

“You? Thinking? Somebody alert the press,” you interject, unable to resist the opportunity of hassling Billy just a little bit more.

 “I was thinking,” he reiterates, raising his voice for emphasis, “that if I wanted to kill you, I most likely wouldn’t have literally dragged you into my car at the very last place that the both of us were last seen. Don’t you agree, princess?”

 It would appear that you have something of a brain after all. Congratulations!” you reply, taming your nervous energy by rifling through the cassette collection in Billy’s glove box. Your fingertips settle on Mötley Crüe’s, Shout at the Devil, tape and you feel the warmth of familiarity settling in your chest. The feelings you have for the boy next to you may be confusing, but your love for music still remains the same as it ever was.

Billy takes his gaze off the road for just a moment and bats his eyelashes at you knowingly. “Oh, but that’s not all I was thinking about.”

 You feed the tape inside of the stereo, quite literally tuning Billy out by cranking up the volume and rolling down your window. The biting chill of October floods the Camaro, ruddying your cheeks and moving in chills down the neck of your sweater. Houses become more sparse as rows of corn invade your view and, before you can ask Billy where the hell you’re headed, he’s already switching off the stereo.

 “Seriously, Hargrove? That was the only part of being kidnapped that I was actually enjoying.”

 “But that’s just it, baby,” he slaps your denim clad thigh playfully, “you didn’t call me Hargrove last time– you called me Billy.” 

 Despite the cold stream of air seeping in from the outside, your face flushes red hot at Billy’s observation. Billy has never been just Billy to you– no, he’s always Hargrove. First names are for friends and last names are for demands; however, Billy seems to exist somewhere in between. Although, that space in between seemed to be closing more and more with each passing second you spent with him– making you wonder what would’ve happened between the two of you if you hadn’t always been the one to walk away.

 “That, uh, is your name– isn’t it?” you flounder, awkwardly shifting in the passenger’s seat to fish a flattened carton of cigarettes from your back pocket.

 Billy passes his shiny silver lighter to you, and you find your hand instinctively accepting it without so much as a second thought. “I always knew you were the smartest girl in Hawkins,” Billy teases, his foot weighing down the gas pedal just a little more as the two of you speed even further into the countryside.

 “Where are we going in such a hurry, anyhow?” you huff, refusing to meet his arrogant smile with your cheeks still ablaze.

 “We’re going to see a movie, but we have to get there before it’s too dark.”

 “Why? The Starcourt Mall is back that way, and I’m pretty sure their theater doesn’t give a shit if it’s dark or not, doofus,” you retort, punctuating your insult with a few heavy puffs of your cigarette. You think that, if you’re lucky, you might be able to smoke your lungs into submission before you and Billy ever reach your destination.

 “Yeah well everyone in this garbage town knows that the drive-in is still way better than that commercial theater, doofus. Besides, they’re showing a movie I think you’ll really dig.”

 “How would you know if I’m gonna dig it or not?” ask, brow furrowing in confusion. 

 “Let’s just say our little birdy from earlier has an even bigger mouth than you thought, sweetheart.”

 You stare at Billy slack-jawed, unsure of what he’s talking about until your conversation with Carol suddenly comes into view. When she pulled you aside earlier that day you mentioned watching a bloody movie with Byers, but you have no idea how Billy could have possibly heard. As a matter of fact, when Carol pulled you aside, he hadn’t even stepped outside yet.  

 “But, Carol she didn’t–?” you utter, but are quickly stopped by the change in Billy’s demeanor.

 In an instant, the once confident Billy begins to squirm uncomfortably in the driver’s seat. His posture still radiates control, but the way that his eyes are suddenly trained on the road after fifteen minutes of glancing over at you tells a different story.

 Is Billy Hargrove embarrassed?

 “Wait,” you start, unable to contain the shit-eating grin that is now stretching across your face, “did you ask Carol about me?”

 “I, uh– may have run into her after free period, yeah,” Billy tugs at his golden curls, sharp jaw flexing in frustration as a touch of pink colors his cheeks.

 If there is one thing you know for sure about Billy Hargrove, it’s that he’s a smash and pass kind of guy. Every other girl he’d come into contact with since the dawn of puberty hadn’t meant a single, solitary thing to him. They were a notch on his bedpost– another babe for the body count.

 Billy didn’t ask about girl’s favorite movies or stalk them for weeks on end, but now he’s doing it for you. At first you thought he was bull-headed, blatantly refusing to be bested by the new girl on the block. But now– maybe, just maybe, Billy Hargrove is sweet on you after all.

 “So, you’re telling me that you, Billy Hargrove– the Billy Hargrove –asked Carol about what she thought would be a good date idea?” you giggle, the teasing tone in your voice almost sounding flattered.

 Billy grips the steering wheel with white knuckles, “Well who the fuck was I supposed to ask, princess? Byers? He isn’t exactly a talker.”

 “Oh sure, Hargrove, blame it on Jonathan,” you guffaw, unable to resist giving Billy’s free arm a gentle slap.

 With a cheshire grin, you move to prop your feet on the dashboard of the Camaro, eliciting a sharp swat on the ankles from Billy’s free hand. “You’re a handful, you know that?” he huffs, the butt of a burned out cigarette still trapped in his clenched teeth.

 “Don’t I know it,” you wink as you crank up this stereo once again, this time with no protest from your captor.

...

 During the remainder of your journey to the drive-in, you found out that you and Billy actually had far more in common than you were willing to give him credit for. A quick rifle through his tape collection showed that his taste in music was phenomenal. Mötley Crüe, Led Zeppelin, The Clash, Slayer, Metallica, Venom– he had it all. Granted, you were quick to inform him that he was missing out on the likes of The Runaways and Siouxsie and the Banshees, but there was always time to fix that. Assuming, that is, you actually wanted to see him after this.

 Shockingly, even the one book Billy could remember reading was one of your favorites. He was swift to credit his love for The Man in the Iron Mask on account of his mother reading it to him as a kid, but you could tell he was holding back. At the mention of his mother, your eyes couldn’t help but fixate on the way he gripped the gold pendant of Mary around his neck with white knuckles. You understand it’s probably best not to ask why.

 There’s a pain in your chest, knowing that his bravado is just a red-hot, candy coating for whatever he was hiding beneath. Much like a jawbreaker, Billy is sugary sweet and difficult to digest– but even hard candy has to melt. To your dismay, you realize you aren’t sure how many layers the kid’s got left.

 After a few moments of surprisingly comfortable silence, Billy makes a gentle left turn off of the main road and onto a side street that flanks the forest’s edge.  “Are we there yet?” you grumble, mostly to yourself.

 Billy huffs and attempts to light another cigarette, one hand on the wheel and the other clutching his boxy, silver lighter. “You’re real impatient, you know that?”

 “Tell me about it, stud,” you sneer, doing your best to mock Sandy’s sultry voice. “Remember what I said about dishing out compliments so early in the game, Billy.”

 “Yeah, yeah, yeah…” he mumbles, unable to conceal the impish smile that dances on his face the minute you utter his first name. While Billy is usually cocky and arrogant, there’s something about that smile he shares with you that almost makes him seem boyish– maybe even happy.

 For a moment, you think it might even be cute. The thought alone is enough to make you wrinkle your nose.

 Just as you’re about to make another quip about Billy secretly driving out into the middle of nowhere to murder you, the road turns to gravel and fans out into a clearing in the woods. The flattened landscape looks like it may have been a cornfield once, but had now become bulldozed and scorched to nothing long ago. There’s just enough space for several rows of cars to pack in tightly, with a sunny yellow concession stand tucked away in the corner. Overhead is a large projector screen, its white surface colored with an animation of personified movie snacks marching in a merry line. You had to give it to him, Billy found a hidden gem.

 “How did you even find this place?” you wonder, awestruck eyes dancing from the scene before you to Billy’s suntanned face.

 “Well, you know what they say sweetheart,” Billy smirks as he pulls up to the center of the second row, “all the best things on this planet are just outside of Hawkins.”

 “Duh,” you chide, immediately digging around Billy’s car for yet another cigarette to burn through. Finding Billy’s carton of Pall Malls in the cupholder you look up at him with pleading eyes, “May I?”

 “Anything for you princess,” he grins, “Speaking of, what kinda snacks does a girl like you get at the movies?”

 Lighting up one of Billy’s cigarettes, you take a pensive drag and kick your feet up on the dashboard. Giggling you watch Billy fight off the inevitable cringe that twists his smile at the sight of your dirty boots on his prized car. Surprisingly, he saves you the grief of delivering yet another dismissive smack to your legs.

 “Promise not to poison me?”

 Billy just rolls his eyes, “Promise not to be such a bitch?”

 You mouth falls open in mock surprise as you pretend to be offended, but Billy can see the smile that threatens to pull your face wide open. He just gives you a pointed look and throws a hand on his hip, making it more than apparent that he’s not backing down on this one. In his defense, you could kind of be a bitch sometimes.

 “Fine,” you concede, “I’ll take popcorn–Oh! And Twizzlers, if you can find them.”

 “Back in a flash,” Billy pulls himself out of the Camaro and dusts the nonexistent dust off of his jeans. Just as you think he’s about to leave you for the concession stand, he leans back in and places a firm peck on your cheek. The kiss is quick, but the impression of his lips burns a hole through your skin.

 With a noise of disgust, you push Billy away hard enough to make him smack his head against the interior roof of the Camaro. Feeling a blush betraying your face, you immediately began to rub your hands against where Billy made contact with your cheekbone.

 “Do you wanna get yourself killed, Hargrove?”

 “Worth it!” Billy laughs, a ring-clad hand rubbing the back of his head as he struts off to the concession booth.

 You stare at your boots on the dashboard, watching idly as the sun begins to lose its golden glow to the silvery dip of the horizon line. All the while you wonder about Billy and why it is exactly that he rubs you the wrong way so fiercely. Here you are, in a position that most girls at Hawkins High would only dream of, and yet you feel hesitant. It is almost as if you still don’t trust the fact that the most popular boy in this podunk town could actually like a girl like you. Or maybe, just maybe, you were afraid to let him.

 Billy returns shortly with a striped carton of popcorn and a plastic package of Twizzlers crinkling beneath the crook of his arm. “Well then, pretty girl” he sighs, bending down slightly to dip his head into the open drivers side window, “Why don’t we take this party to the hood of the car? I think I’ve got a blanket in the back.”

 After assessing the confused furrow in your brow, Billy continues, “Just think of it as my way of keeping good on my promise of ‘no funny stuff’.”

 “Oh he has thoughts and he’s considerate?” you feign a romantic sigh as you step out of the Camaro, pausing only to shove the glowing cherry of your cigarette into the decaying earth. “Remind my dad to write up the dowry, would ya?”

 Billy, all too accustomed to your jests, simply sets the snacks down on the hood and fishes a southwestern style quilt out of his backseat. The bright orange and yellow tones are in stark contrast with the gloomy midwestern sky, and you can’t help but wonder if this is another fragment of Billy’s old life. A life where there may have been far more to look forward to than a drive-in date with the only girl in town that can hardly stand the sight of him.

 After the blanket is spread out to Billy’s liking, he sits on the hood of his car and reclines backward so that he can better reach the popcorn as it rests against the windshield.  

 “Come on, now,” Billy smiles, pearly white teeth sinking into a handful of of bright yellow popcorn, “I don’t bite unless you want me to.”

 “Jesus Christ, Hargrove, give it a rest already. You’ve already got me here, there’s no reason to keep up the act.”

 Billy’s perfect brows knit together in mild aggravation at your accusatory tone, “Act? What fucking act?”

 “Please,” you insist, propping yourself up high enough on the car’s hood for your feet to dangle carelessly above the ground, “You’re human, Billy. I know you can’t be Casanova all the time.”

 Taking another fistful of popcorn from its carton, Billy points the candy striped box in your direction. It’s obvious that he doesn’t care to entertain your theory, but also doesn’t want to fight about it right now. You decide it’s enough and gladly oblige, taking a small pile of the buttery snack for yourself.

 “So,” you take a piece of popcorn between your fingers contemplatively, “what’s the flick called anyway?”

 “Fright Night,” Billy answers cooly. When he watches your eyes light up in unbridled excitement, Billy’s chest swells with a wave of pride.

 “You picked this out all on your own?” you scoff, knowing full well that, while Carol may have tipped him off, his informant would never have been able to make such a good film recommendation.

 Billy shrugs, “What can I say? You’re not the only one in Hawkins that likes heavy metal and horror, even if you try to be.”

 You launch the piece of popcorn you had been holding at Billy, watching triumphantly as it sticks to one of his sandy curls. “I guess that makes two of us, then.”

 Billy swats blindly at his hair and, for the first time, a genuine laugh bubbles up from his chest and hangs warmly in the chilled autumn. The flush of his cheeks is hot like an indian summer, and for a moment you swear that you’d never felt so warm. Biting your lip, you see something soft in the way that Billy averts his eyes from yours, fixating instead on the snacks in his lap and the vibrant colors of the blanket beneath your jean-clad thighs. For all the harassment you had endured since you moved to Hawkins, it’s nice to know him like this– for bits and pieces of the boy he is, not the man he’s pretending to be.

 It isn’t long before Billy’s gruff voice shakes you from your thoughts and brings you back to earth. “See something you like, space cadet?”

 “Oh please, if I ever–” you start, but are quickly interrupted by the sound of the film’s opening credits flashing blood red across the projector screen. Try as you may to shoot Billy an icy glare he melts right through it with a satisfied smirk, cocking a brow knowingly as if to say, I won this round.

 With an irritated huff, you scoot back towards the windshield to see the screen better, inevitably rubbing shoulders with King Billy in the process. Despite the fact that Billy could probably spare you some room on the car’s hood, he doesn’t move a muscle. Instead, his sapphire eyes remain trained on the screen in front of him, the flashing bursts of color glistening in his irises like an independence day sky. Your heart strangles out a nervous thump in your chest as a lump rises painfully to the back of your throat.

 Oh fuck, you think as your hands knit nervous circles through the sleeves of your sweater. You had your suspicions about the feelings you’d been experiencing around Billy lately, and chasing the movement of the film through Billy’s eyes rather than on screen told you everything you were afraid to hear– you like him.  

Masterlist

Part 3 (coming soon)

[spookyscullies]

Make Me

rating: NC-17

plot: Mulder kisses Scully out of frustration in the office which leads to much, much more :)

tagging: @xfpornbattle 

Scully huffed in irritation. Sometimes Mulder just ground on her every last nerve, refusing to ever look for the simple explanation.

"You've got to consider it, Scully. There's a possibility that it was a specter."

"Yeah, a possibility. It's possible that an ice cream truck could come barreling into the J. Edgar Hoover building right this instant, but the improbability of it happening is far too high. It outweighs the possibility, Mulder. The probability of this being anything out of the ordinary is little to none." Scully pushed her hair behind her ear. It was aggravating her. And so was Mulder.

Scully was not the only one who was heated.

"Sometimes, Scully, I think you're just determined to not agree with me." Mulder stood up from his chair indignantly. The files, trinkets, and the mugs filled to the brim with cold coffee quivered from the force of Mulder knocking against it.

"Oh, for God's sake." Scully scoffed, folding her arms across her chest.

"What? What, you can't stand the fact that maybe I'm right?" Mulder huffed, grabbing a file from his desk, shoving it unceremoniously into a file drawer, and slamming it closed.

Scully rolled her eyes, feeling the anger simmer in her stomach. "Like hell that's it! I'm just trying to find the the truth here, okay? And based on the evidence provided here, it's not a damn specter. You're looking for something that's not there, Mulder. If anything, you're the one who never entertains the thought that I might be right! It's never the obvious answer, is it? God forbid it ever be simpler than whatever your mind can concoct!"

She glared at her partner, who glared right back at her.

"Apparitions don't exactly leave a goddamn footprint, the last time I checked." Mulder's eyes flashed at her. His fingers bunched up into fists, hanging tensely at his sides.

"Oh, well gear up, Venkman, I guess your time has come." Scully sneered. The words had escaped her mouth before she could catch them. The remark was awfully biting.

She turned on her heel to leave.

"Where the hell do you think you're going?" Mulder stomped after her, reaching her as her hand angrily flung towards the door knob. Mulder grabbed her arm, stopping her in her tracks and whirling her around to face him.

"It's late. I'm going home, Mulder. I've had enough for today, thank you." She brusquely pushed his hand off her arm.

"You can't go, Scully, we're not done yet." Mulder gestured toward his desk and haphazard stack of files littering it.

The fury built up inside Scully reared its head as she jabbed a finger at him. "Mulder, you don't get to decide what I do or don't do. I realize you may feel entitled to tell me what to do and how to go about doing it because you're my partner, but I'll remind you right now that you have no authority over me." Her finger poked into his chest, backing him up against his desk, taking threatening steps toward him. Her eyes challenged him, dared him to disagree with her.

"I wish sometimes you'd just agree with me." Mulder's jaw clenched.

"You'll have to make me."

Scully's tongue darted out to wet her lips. She could feel herself heaving from deep-seated anger and frustration, pent up for all the times that Mulder had spurned her perfectly suitable, logical, and acceptable theories for his own hare-brained ones. He ended up being right a good portion of the time, but the fact that he just dismissed them so readily, so quickly, like he was just waiting for her to come up with the wrong explanation. It set her off.

Mulder watched her pink tongue swipe out against her lips. Did she always have to question him? It wasn't that he had a complex and that he didn't appreciate the intellectual insight, but she was always so skeptical. Sometimes he just wanted her rambling mouth to shut up. To trust him, trust his thoughts, his ideas. Not that he didn't love that mouth. He loved that mouth and the way it moved, the way that Scully pouted and pursed her lips when she was in deep thought. So maybe it was out of frustration or some kind of justification to himself that he roughly pulled her face to meet his, crashing his lips forcefully against hers.

"Unh!" Scully cried out in astonishment at the pressure of Mulder's lips against hers. She resisted his touch at first, her eyes blown wide in shock and her hands pressed against his chest in opposition. Suddenly, something switched inside her, something wanting, raging, and desperate. Scully let her teeth clash against Mulder's violently, fervently. His tongue slipped into her mouth, exploring, roving. She melded her body to his, compressing her breasts to his chest. Her nails dug into Mulder's bare forearms, her knuckles brushing against the rolled cuff of his white button down.

Without warning, he pulled back and aggressively spun her away from him, shoving her against the desk. Her upper half was splayed on top of the desk, her arms stretched out, as numerous objects spilled from the surface, crashing onto the cold, tiled floor. The edge of the desk dug into Scully's torso, and she knew there would be a dark bruise forming there.

Mulder's breath was ragged and wild as he hiked Scully's tight, grey skirt up her legs. He nearly passed out from the sight before him. Already, she had soaked through her lacy white underwear, and he tugged down and off her silky limbs. He spread her legs as far as possible none too gently, and situated himself in between them. His cock was hard against her ass, as her thrusted a few times, the friction between their clothing and Mulder's dick pressing on her forced a low moan to escape Scully's throat.

Mulder hastily unbuckled his belt and tossed it aside, unbuttoned his pants and let them fall to his knees, pushing his boxers down with them. He gripped the hard, long member in his hand then practically tore off Scully's jacket.

"Take your shirt off." Mulder husked, yanking off her underwear. Scully obliged without question, her fingers curling around the hem of her top. She pulled it off her body with ease, letting it fall to the floor. Her skin prickled as Mulder's warm hands hungrily slid up her back and under the cups of her bra. He harshly pinched her already stiffened nipples, effectively eliciting a crescendoing groan from his partner's lips that echoed loudly throughout the office.

"Jesus, Scully, you can't be that fucking loud, someone'll hear us."

Mulder punctuated his sentence by bringing his hand down quick and hard against Scully's exposed ass. She let out a yelp as the sting reverberated through her, causing a flood of hot, wet, arousal to rush to her core.

"One thing you should know is that I'm pretty verbal during sex, Mulder, so if you want me to be quiet, you'll have to make me." Scully panted out, craning her neck to catch Mulder's eyes.

"Well, then I have the perfect solution." He clamped his palm firmly around her mouth, shoving two fingers past her plump, pink lips as he pushed deeply into her. "Oh my God, you're so wet."

Her tongue laved over his fingers, circling and moistening them. Mulder pounded into her from behind, mercilessly pumping into the sticky, sloshing mess of her sex. She felt good, she felt so good. He felt his frustration ebb away with every thrust into her. With his unoccupied hand, he fondled her breast then let it snake up to her ass, slapping it again for good measure. Scully had begun whimpering rhythmically with every movement of his cock in her.

"Mmuh—"

He could feel her trying to form his name. He retracted his fingers from her mouth.

"Say it. Say my name." He demanded, driving even more forcefully in her, watching her shudder in pleasure.

"Mulder." Scully groaned out, her voice dripping in sensuality.

He loved it. He loved way she said his name.

"Mulder I'm gonna..." Her phrase tapered off into a whine, her inner muscles beginning to clench and unclench around him.

"Look at me when you come, Scully." Mulder commanded, both hands gripping onto her curved hips.

Her stunningly blue eyes locked with his hazel, fluttering as she let her orgasm overwhelm her.

Mulder pulled out, his dick still rigid, standing at attention. Scully breathed deeply, her body rising and falling with the inhaling and exhaling of her lungs, the aftereffects of her climax fading. She turned to face him, eyeing his cock, slicked with her wetness reflecting in the fluorescent light.

"You haven't come yet." Scully muttered, sinking to her knees.

She gripped him tightly in her small hand and stared at him with intensity as she stroked upward and back down. Mulder groaned softly as Scully's ministrations grew more rapid, his head tilting back in ecstasy. He began to thrust into Scully's touch, unable to help himself.

"Come for me, Mulder. I want you to come all over me." Her pace was unbelievably fast and it was all Mulder could do not to shove her head forward and have her take him in her mouth. He imagined those plump, soft lips enveloping his cock, her head bobbing up and down, his fingers wrapped tightly in her auburn locks. God. It was more than enough to send him careening over the edge.

"Oh fuck, Scully!"

She opened her mouth as he erupted onto her, coming all over her face and chest and into her mouth. Taking a few moments to recover while Scully cleaned herself up with the help of a nearby box of tissues, he pulled his pants back up. Scully stood, her hands cupping Mulder's face, and drew him in for a kiss.

"Maybe we should fight more often." She whispered against his lips, a wry smirk forming on her own.

"Maybe we should," Mulder concurred, a smile of his own taking shape.

"Well Agent Mulder, I'll be seeing you early tomorrow morning." Scully pulled her top over her head, ran her fingers through her mussed hair, then grabbed her jacket.

"Don't you want your underwear?" Mulder picked up the soaked undergarment, holding it out to her.

"Those you can keep." She tossed a wink at him and she was out the door.

[the-everlasting-dream]

Status: Captured - Damien [x MC]

Summary: Imprisoned by Eros, Damien Nazario witnesses firsthand the terrible purpose of inventions concocted by the madman that is Rowan West.  

A/N: I’ve had this fic sitting in my drafts since the day PM ended. Its my first time really getting into Damien’s head so forgive me if I haven’t grasped his character quite right. This fic is a bit different to my usual stuff. There will probably be a part 2 because I couldn’t fit everything in one fic. 

Submission for @choices-september-challenge Day 5 Fight hosted by @i-dream-so-i-write 

Word Count: 2200+

Warnings: Language, brief mentions of violence, brief mentions of sexual content. 

Permanent tags: @chantelle-x0x , @choicessa, @pbchoicesobsessed , @meeraaverywalker , @drakewalkerwhipped , @mfackenthal , @srawesleyghuewrites , @topsyturvy-dream , @enmchoices , @gardeningourmet @debramcg1106 , @alesana45 , @meladoridarcy, @blackcatkita , @tmarie82 , @annekebbphotography , @xxrainbowprincessxx , @lizk77 , @jayjay879 , @tornbetween2loves 

Pain… white hot pain… scraping up his spine and under his skin…. coursing through his veins is pure blinding pain…. 

It fills every part of his mind until he was sure that nothing else exists except for the flames that burn away at his brain… that is all that exists until….. 

There is a sound… so loud it pierces through the fog that surrounds his mind, keeping it hostage… he is moving now — How is that possible? — still he can feel the unmistakable vibration of a vehicle purring beneath him… the vibrations echo through his body, giving him a better grasp of where it is and where he is. 

As his brain adjusts to the notion of wakefulness, he remains still, eyes clamped shut as the neurons fire, attempting to soak up all the sensory information they can despite the agony in his head. He’s lying down on his right side, a slight movement in his arms tells him that his hands are bound together, so are his feet and his cheek brushes against the cold metal floor of a vehicle - he can’t identify it yet, not until the deeper sections of his mind decide to cooperate. The vehicle  jerks suddenly and he is pitched forward his entire bodyweight coming to rest uncomfortably on his left elbow as it pokes into his side. He is about to shift when he realises someone is speaking. 

‘- completely destroyed.’

 Its a rough accent, with a twang he can’t quite place but before he can contemplate it further, his thoughts are interrupted by a smoother voice, careful and measured but dangerous nonetheless. 

‘My instructions were simple Tomas: Grab the girl and detonate the emergency charges in the control room.’ 

 A rougher voice - Tomas, he concludes - starts to interject. ‘But sir our men -‘ 

‘Are a small price to pay for what we could have achieved instead.’ 

 Chills run down his spine as he listen to the man in authority wave away what must be dozens of lives lost so casually. He becomes more and more aware of  fights the urge to shift out of the uncomfortable position he’s in - the elbow digging into his side becoming more prominent with every second but he can’t, he needs to hear as much as possible. 

‘Whadda we do now?’ Tomas ventures hesitantly. There is a small pause before the unknown man - Why does his voice sound so familiar? - continues, disappointment clear in his tone. 

‘Your incompetence has cost me dearly. I will have to gather as much information as possible from the one you did manage to capture.'The implied threat is heavy in his voice now. 'Let’s hope for your sake, he can deliver me the data I require.’ 

 The man moves onto barking out more orders and his mind struggles to keep up but the discomfort of the position makes it hard to retain the information. Finally he can’t resist it - the pain is too much and he shifts again, the resulting movement bigger than he’d planned and it attracts the attention of a person he didn’t even register was there. 

 ‘Boss he’s wakin’ up.’ 

The smoother voice cuts itself off and he holds his breath in the tiny pause before it delivers its command. 

 ‘See to it that he doesn’t.’ 

 Something hard connects to the side of his head and the darkness engulfs him once more.

-

Waking for the second time was more visceral than the first. There is a pain yes, but its sharper, more concentrated and he pinpoints it to be around his left temple as it flares up angrily when he moved his head. He feels a warm liquid, blood, sliding down his face as he as he fights to gain control of his mind. 

 It takes a few moments but as the haze fades, the consciousness itself brings about a wave of sensations so strong he can’t even begin to decipher them yet. The facility, infiltrating the secure laboratory of a matching making service, there was a fight between him and his friends and somethings that weren’t human. Names ghost through his brain, on the hinge of his consciousness, Hayden, Sloane, Steve, Alana, Nadia… 

Damien! 

He remembers someone yelling out to him, calling his own name above the din, over the chaos that was unfolding around them. He sees her in his mind's eye. She had dark skin and even darker hair that whipped across her face she swung a metal tray at a guard, knocking him out cold. 

 Athena! 

Her name echoes in his mind, snapping him back to consciousness and he instinctively gasped as the memories came flooding back to him in full clarity. His eyelids snap open and he grunts audibly as the fluorescent lights burn themselves into his unprepared retinas and he flinches in response. As they gradually grow accustomed to the sensation, his eyes wander around the room, blurry and unfocused as he scrambles to identify where he is. 

His gaze is met by pristine steel walls that seem to rise high in every direction around him and on them monitors of various sizes were mounted, displaying all kinds of information and source code that he couldn’t decipher as unidentifiable figures tap away at their keyboards.   

‘Hey!’ Damien calls to them. ‘Where the fuck am I? What is this place?�� 

 They don’t seem to hear him, barely pausing in their routine as if he wasn't even there.   

‘Hey assholes,’ he yells, louder this time, meaning to move forward but he found himself strapped down by his wrists and ankles to a straight-backed metal chair. ‘I’m talking to you. Where am I?'

No sooner had the words left his mouth than an audible ding! sounds out in the room and the figures at the desks immediately cease their actions, standing up in attention as the doors of an elevator slide open to reveal a silver haired man in a well tailored suit. As he enters the room, he commands such a presence that the few closest to him almost shrink back in fear. As he strides forward, the only thing that disrupts his aura is the black eye patch over his right eye. Realisation takes only a couple of seconds to kick in but he knows without a doubt that he’s looking at none other than Rowan West, founder and CEO of Eros. 

 ‘You son of a bitch,’ Damien snarls feeling fury rising within him. ‘What have you done?’ 

He attempts to lunge towards the man, muscles tensed and ready to strangle the man with his bare hands but once again the action is curbed by the metal restraints encircling his limbs. Instead the silver-haired man regards him with an amused gaze but says nothing, seeming to take delight in watching him struggle. 

 'Where am I?’ Damien demands again, anger coursing through his body as he strains against the cuffs. 

 ‘I supposed you are entitled to some answers,’ Rowan sighs almost disappointedly. When he speaks, it is in the same smooth voice that he heard in the transport vehicle.‘Very well then, you are in a secure Eros facility, Mr Nazario. The closest one to our head quarters that your friends so kindly decimated.’ 

 ‘What can I say? They’re smart people,’ He almost shrugs before fixing Rowan with a poisonous look. 'Where are my friends? What have you done with Athena, you bastard?' 

'No need to be so touchy Mr Nazario. She’s perfectly safe. In fact she’s with you.' 

 Damien is puzzled to see something akin to amusement in Rowan’s gaze. 'You’re not making any fucking sense. I’m going to ask you again. Where. Is She? 

'I suppose I was rather cryptic in my answer. So why don’t you see for yourself?' He gestures to one of the gigantic monitors suspended from the ceiling. 

The screen fizzles once before an image of a familiar raven haired woman appears. She is smiling as she looks into the camera. 

Athena.

‘I bet you ten euros she’s going to ask the conceirge for sticky notes,’ she is saying with a grin. Damien’s heart lurches in his chest as he sees her. The first thought that enters his mind is that she’s alright and relief seeps through him it is quickly replaced by suspicion a man’s voice chimes in, sounding eerily familiar. ‘Double it. I call neon highlighters too.’

That voice... he knows it, almost as well as he knows his own. He can’t stop himself from frowning as he takes in the bigger picture. In the background of the shot there is a mirror and in the reflection in it he sees that himself that she is talking to. Bewilderment washes over him. But how? It is impossible, he has no memory of this taking place.. 

 ‘How-how is this possible?’ Damien stammers before his voice takes on a demanding tone. If he harmed a single hair on Athena’s head, he wouldn’t hesitate to make the older man suffer in every way he knew how. 'What did you do? Brainwash her? Drug her and coerce her into saying this?' 

Rowan shakes his head, almost disgusted now. 'Oh no, humans like you and your precious girlfriend are terrible messy to manipulate, full of emotion and morality, two completely useless concepts for the pursuits of a man like me. What I have created is truly a miracle. Something that even no man has ever achieved before.’ 

Damien’s confusion only grows, as does his desperation when he realises Rowan is being purposely, infuriatingly cryptic. ‘What the fuck are you talking about, you bastard?'  

Rowan ignores his question, on a completely different stream of consciousness right now. 

‘You know I hadn’t meant to capture you. I was really after your precious little sweetheart. Pathetic though she may be, she was one of our most successful candidates in the Matching program. The data I could have collected on her would have advanced my work by leaps and bounds. But when my men produced you instead, I almost despaired until I realised I could use you to collect data on her. Or rather,’ he corrects himself. ‘Your android counterpart. Nevertheless you and Ms Park deserve my thanks have been instrumental in helping me achieve my goals.' 

Damien recoils at the thought of doing anything remotely helpful for the madman before him, unconsciously or not. 

He isn’t going to be complacent while men like Rowan West gained power by exploiting the feelings of real people like him and Athena. He wants nothing more than to wrap his hands around that pale clammy neck of Rowan's and push down until he stopped breathing but he knows he can't, not while he’s still in cuffs. So he tried another tactic, a tried and true device any detective worth his salt should know. 

 ‘And what exactly are these goals you refer to?’ Damien goaded, hoping that by keeping West talking he could eventually find some weakness he could exploit. 

Rowans stares at him for a long moment with cool grey eyes. ‘Total control. Supreme unchallenged authority. Ultimate access to the world’s resources. Take your pick,’ he gestures passively before continuing. 'With the planet's most valuable assets at my command what choice would humanity have other than to bend to my will?' 

Damien fights to keep his expression neutral as realisation of what the words mean dawns upon him. Yet he cannot resist a jab. 'World domination? What are you, some fucking textbook children’s show villain?' 

The silver haired man sighs in disappointment. 'I really do hate that term you know. World domination is so... lazy. What I have in mind is so much more than that.' 

'And what is that exactly?’ Damien spits back venomously. 

 Rowan opens his mouth but catches himself before the words come out. He swivels on his heels to look at him. ‘If I told you that, I'd really be a textbook villain wouldn't I?' 

Dread and anger mingle together in a tight knot behind Damien’s sternum and it must have shown on his face as Rowan’s ugly face curls into a self-satisfied smile. 

'You are good, young detective,’ he gives him an appreciative glance before his smile widens. 'I’m just better.’ 

Damien lets out a roar of anger and lunges forward again, the metal of his cuffs biting painfully into his wrists and ankles. The force of his movement, drags the heavy chair a few inches forward and the guards rush to restrain him again. 

Rowan however is unfazed and looks at him condescendingly. ‘It is futile to fight back Mr Nazario,’ he drawls lazily. ‘You’re a smart man. You should know that people like me always win.’  

‘You are insane,’ Damien shouts after the Eros director as he walks back to the elevator. He refuses to give up fighting. He can’t... 'You are nothing more than a madman with a seriously mistaken god complex.' 

Rowan pauses in his retreat, casting a sympathetic glance over his shoulder before turning to face Damien again. 'I suppose you meant that as an insult. But I don’t have a god complex… With the technology I’ve created, I’ve essentially been able to replicate the human soul in my matches.’ He lets out a chuckle that chills Damien to the bone. 'I am God.'

Rowan gestures to the pair of beefy — obviously human — henchmen that lined the room and they advance on him, their purpose clear. The last thing Damien sees before he lost consciousness again is Rowan’s smug face staring down at him.

[antoine-roquentin]

It is Democratic congressional leadership -- not Donald Trump and his mad generals -- that has been the driving force in this year’s military spending insanity. Back in July, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi pressured her party to back a defense authorization $57.4 billion bigger than the Pentagon requested. Only a minority of Democratic House members supported the measure, but a majority of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) followed Pelosi’s lead -- including all five of the newest members of the Black Caucus, elected in 2016. By inflating the war budget even beyond the Pentagon’s demands, these Pelosi-Schumer-CBC Democrats ensured that what remains of the social safety net will be slashed into oblivion by bipartisan forces of austerity in future Congresses.

The Bernie Sanders faction of the Party is just as guilty, through its shameful silence on war. This group includes Our Revolution, whose purportedly “progressive” agenda suggests only that they would “take a hard look at the Pentagon’s budget and the priorities it has established.”

The imperial fist is inexorably crushing the domestic welfare agencies of government. The Democrats’ task in this infernal process is to coax their constituents to swallow the “Satan’s Sandwiches” that emerge from Congress -- as suggested by Black Kansas City Rep. Emanuel Cleaver back in 2011, when Barack Obama was presenting his “Grand Bargain” to the Republicans. Having put “all entitlements” on the table for cutting at the start of his presidency, Obama proceeded to wage expensive wars against seven countries. His Grand Bargain offered even larger social cuts than the Republicans demanded, before finally unraveling in the morass of Capitol Hill. Democratic leadership is still seeking that “bargain” with the GOP, knowing full well that it will be paid for by more austerity for people’s programs.

The result is both predictable and intended: the military budget expands to consume ever greater proportions of federal “discretionary” spending -- that is, moneys not locked into mandated programs like Social Security. Finally, the public is told there is “no choice” but to tap into Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare -- as Obama signaled at very the beginning of his presidency, and attempted to pull off in his first term in office.

Schumer and Pelosi have been throwing money at the Pentagon with abandon this year because both wings of the War Party (Democrat and Republican) are anxious to maintain the momentum of Obama’s global military offensive, after the unexpected defeat of the reliable warmonger, Hillary Clinton. That’s why, measured in military dollars, the Democratic leadership is more warlike than the Trump administration. Not trusting Trump to keep the pressure on Moscow, Beijing and any other “threat” to U.S. hegemony, the bipartisan political servants of empire flood the Pentagon with money and poison the political discourse with Russiagate. Although there are clear conflicts within the U.S. ruling class, in general the Lords of Capital appear at this juncture to be more concerned with terrorizing the world than maintaining domestic peace. Schumer and Pelosi were instructed, accordingly.

The Democrats’ cynicism is boundless. DACA, which has great political value to a key constituency but no monetary price tag, becomes the excuse to funnel additional tens of billions to the Pentagon -- on top of previous increases -- while enhancing Democratic election prospects in 2018 and 2020.

The Democrats can be expected to repeat the formula. If not DACA, any symbolic program will suffice as a political battle flag to rally the various Party constituencies while simultaneously boosting the flow of cash to the war machine.

And they’ll call it “resistance.” But it’s the kind of resistance that is useless when, as Dr. Martin Luther King observed, the “demonic destructive suction tube” of war spending comes to claim its ever-larger share of the budget.

[blindrapture]

an old Andrew Hussie quote (and then a ramble in the tags)

(In response to “are you aware of all the people wishing Act 5′s hiatuses weren’t so prominent”)

I don't know. I hardly ever read more than half way down the first page of questions. Too many, too repetitive, etc.

But through various channels, I detect certain flavors of reaction, ranging from disappointment to frustration to something faintly resembling outrage, not just at the lack of an incendiary production to mark year 2, but also the flagging rate of output in recent weeks.

These reactions are far from universal, but they exist, and to address them I think an education on why MSPA exists at all is in order. If you see a creator who begins to languish in production of what presumably accounts for his day job, the impression may be that he is falling down on the job and failing to live up to his professional commitment. So maybe this is the source of indignation, re: entitlement, that some may feel when my output falters. The problem is, MSPA is not a day job for me. It is an all consuming lifestyle. Hence, the mirage that is the apparent ease of output for what is at times ludicrous volumes of material is highly sensitive to even slight perturbations in my life situation.

Let me put it this way. You may work a full time job. It may be that something happens in your life that makes your job more difficult, because you are preoccupied. Your work may suffer to some extent, but you can still approximately match what's expected of you, because there is a partition between your job and your home life. You may nevertheless feel your full time job seems to dominate your existence, saps your energy, and leaves your weekend respites feeling all too short. This is not an experience I share, because MSPA is not a full time job. If you have such a job, then I would have to RADICALLY REDUCE my workload to match your level of day to day preoccupation.

The actual quantities involved have always been nebulous and I never made a point of keeping track, but 12 hours per day seems like a pretty reasonable average, since that is just shy of all waking hours. Time spent writing, drawing, animating, or just spacing out at my monitor while contemplating all the moving parts. This is what I did every day, including weekends and holidays, for two years, and to some extent another year prior to that with Problem Sleuth. Only a few weekends were missed due to conventions, and there was a single week off immediately following the infamous "robo smooch", and that's it. (Most of that week was spent wondering why the hell I wasn't updating...) There are other gaps in the archive, spanning days or a week, when I was animating. Those spans involved the usual work schedule, while simply omitting sleep!

Not only is this an unreasonable workload to expect of anyone, it's practically impossible to pull it off. Maybe you can expect some committed guy out there to really buckle down and duplicate that effort for a month or two. But years? Too much can crop up in the white noise of normal life to destabilize it. Momentum is absolutely crucial for maintaining that kind of pace. I find that if I only do an hour of work in a day, I get ten minutes of work done. If I do 12 hours of work, I seem to get 24 hours of work done. This is especially true of animation. Such projects notoriously take a very long time. I feel like because of the crazy head of steam I've built up from years of nonstop effort, I can knock out in days something that might take another animator a week. Or in a week what might take a month. Without that momentum, it's not possible. Starting up Flash cold is excruciating. Getting your head back into the stride of a story wastes energy you wouldn't use if you never broke stride. Without the momentum, the pace reverts to ordinary. Getting distracted by life destroys the momentum.

I've been pretty zealous about deflecting the distractions, even when I move, as I often do. A notable example was last year when I came back from the Emerald City con in Seattle, and found my apartment flooded. The con was already enough of a time sink, so I didn't have much of an appetite for going into personal crisis mode. I just kind of shrugged, picked my computer off the lone, miraculously dry part of the floor, dropped it in a temporary residence, and kept drawing. I think the flood mess occupied about a day of my attention, whereas something like that could easily take up weeks of your time and energy if you're living that "normal life". You know how it is, you come home and find water up to your ankles and go aw fuck, what's ruined, what needs replacing, gotta call whoever and deal with the fuckin landlord about stuff and auuuugh. I just didn't bother with any of that, because it just didn't seem to matter, and I preferred to keep working and not give a crap about all my soggy bullshit. And in retrospect, I guess it really didn't matter.

All of my moves have been similarly characterized by the unceremonious transportation of a computer and a few boxes to a new room, in which I'd continue working as if no change took place, with no service paid to the life that would be lived there, except as a workspace. I moved again recently, prompted by decidedly less dramatic and less soggy reasons than after Emerald City. This time, for whatever reason, I did it differently. I moved the normal way, the way I imagine normal people doing when I close my eyes, whereby more than a car trunk full of utilitarian belongings are imported into the household, placed on the floor, and never unpacked until the next moving day. I am not necessarily PROHIBITIVELY busy, but like I said above, any dent in the momentum, whether its a few trips to Home Depot or Target here and there or somehow waking up to discover I'd absconded from a shelter with two particularly energetic young cats, is something that precludes a pace of output that is insane and often bordering on miraculous.

What I'm trying to convey here is this isn't necessarily any sort of break, or a grand announcement of a big slowdown for MSPA. I'm trying to give you a sense of the reality which made MSPA heretofore possible, and that if for a period of time I descend from an altitude far exceeding the hours of a full time job, into "merely" those of a full time job, IT DOESN'T ACTUALLY COUNT AS A BREAK! And certainly not as any sort of violation in a pact with the readership. Different from what you're used to? Sure. But you should never find yourself in a position where you come to expect, let alone demand, that degree of effort from anyone, even me. If my output "sputters" from 10 pages a day to 1 or 2 or 3, IDEALLY (re: unrealistically) this should not even cause you to voice an internal observation on the matter! And if one is voiced, instead of "oops, looks like Andrew's slipping," it should be "oops, looks like Andrew's being a regular dude for a while."

Not that detecting a pace change is some terrible wrongdoing, since clearly I've done everything in my power to establish these absurd precedents, and people have naturally associated this with The Brand. I'd just like to suggest it would be beneficial to the reader to disentangle enjoyment of the content from the torrid pace its been commonly delivered. Who can say how fast or slow it'll come in year three? Would my assurances even be reliable? Maybe it'll stay at the current pace for a good long while. Maybe it'll soon hasten back to something more typical. Maybe it'll come back FASTER THAN EVER. Who cares??? Do you really NEED this site to be the fastest comic on the block to enjoy it? Are you prepared to contend with the backlash to your psyche that is risked by so fervently relishing that particular property of the comic? What if it's taken away? Don't go boasting to your neighbors that your slave can pick cotton ten times faster than theirs. It's unbecoming. Just enjoy the fluffy yield of his furious hands, while you wait and pray for Abe Lincoln to gently stroke his beard and relieve you of your bigotry.

[truemedian]

Meghan Markle Reportedly Feels Her Wedding Was Worth Tax Payer Dollars — And She's Not Wrong

One of the big debates about the royal family is if they deserve all the money taxpayers provide them. On one side of this debate, there are people who believe that the entire royal family is an outdated throwback to a bygone era and that taxpayers should no longer have to foot the bill for the lavish lifestyles of royalty. On the other side, there are those who believe that the royal family is a cherished and time-honored part of British culture and that the expense is worth it. Finally, there is a practical perspective that simply argues the royal family brings in more revenue than they cost, making them a financial asset — regardless of one’s personal feelings about it.  Now that Meghan, Duchess of Sussex and Prince Harry have bucked tradition and taken a step away from their royal duties, the debate has centered on the expense of their royal wedding. 

Taxpayers contribute a lot to royals 

The British taxpayers are definitely helping to support the lavish lifestyles of the royal family. This is one of the reasons they feel entitled to information about their personal lives. After all, they’re the ones who paid for them to live in those homes and build these lives.  The priciest royal family members might not be who you’d expect, however. While the tabloids have often focused on Prince Harry and Meghan to highlight their excess, it is actually Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall who have cost taxpayers the most. The travel budget is a large portion of the expenses the public covers, and Prince Charles and Camilla ate up nearly half of that all on their own. These expenses were justified, at least according to a royal aide, because Prince Charles is such an important ambassador: “His overseas travel was at the behest of the Foreign Office who realizes he is a terrific ambassador for Britain.” 

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle had an extravagant wedding

Meghan Markle | JONATHAN BRADY/AFP via Getty Images When Prince Harry and Meghan were married in May 2018, it was an extravagant event. Of course, that’s to be expected for royal family members as the wedding is also a very public cause for celebration and a major draw for tourism. The wedding took place at Windsor Castle, which was free for the royal family to use, but the cost of securing and decorating was around $500,000. Meghan’s dress — one of the most expensive in royal history — was an astounding $420,000. The catering alone cost a staggering $400,000.  All told, the event cost around $35.7 million. Obviously, that’s an enormous expense — and it far surpassed Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge’s wedding, which came in around $26 million. Thinking about this price tag and knowing that the royal pair exited from their public duties not long after tying the knot, there are some who are outraged at having paid for such a lavish event. 

Meghan defends her wedding expense

View this post on Instagram Today is #earthday – an opportunity to learn about, celebrate and continue to safeguard our planet, our home. The above, Their Royal Highnesses in Rotorua, New Zealand. Of the 170 different species originally planted in the early 1900’s, only a handful of species, including these majestic Redwoods, remain today. Next, we invite you to scroll through a series of 8 photos taken by The Duke of Sussex©️DOS sharing his environmental POV including: Africa’s Unicorn, the rhino. These magnificent animals have survived ice ages and giant crocodiles, amongst other things! They have adapted to earth’s changing climate continually for over 30 million years. Yet here we are in 2019 where their biggest threat is us. A critical ecosystem, Botswana’s Okavango Delta sustains millions of people and an abundance of wildlife. Huge bush fires, predominantly started by humans, are altering the entire river system; the ash kills the fish as the flood comes in and the trees that don’t burn become next year’s kindling. Desert lions are critically endangered due partly to human wildlife conflict, habitat encroachment and climate change. 96% of mammals on our are either livestock or humans, meaning only 4% remaining are wild animals. Orca and Humpback whale populations are recovering in Norway thanks to the protection of their fisheries. Proof that fishing sustainably can benefit us all. Roughly 3/4 of Guyana is forested, its forests are highly diverse with 1,263 known species of wildlife and 6,409 species of plants. Many countries continue to try and deforest there for the global demand for timber. We all now know the damage plastics are causing to our oceans. Micro plastics are also ending up in our food source, creating not just environmental problems for our planet but medical problems for ourselves too. When a fenced area passes its carrying capacity for elephants, they start to encroach into farmland causing havoc for communities. Here @AfricanParksNetwork relocated 500 Elephants to another park within Malawi to reduce the pressure on human wildlife conflict and create more dispersed tourism. Every one of us can make a difference, not just today but every day. #earthday A post shared by The Duke and Duchess of Sussex (@sussexroyal) on Apr 22, 2019 at 6:54am PDT RELATED: Why Kate Middleton Reportedly Can’t Stand Meghan Markle Comparisons It’s hard to argue that the wedding wasn’t expensive for the adoring public, but was it really money poorly spent? Even though Meghan and Prince Harry decided to step away from their royal duties in order to protect their privacy and focus on their family, the wedding itself was still a tremendous draw for tourism.  In fact, newly revealed court documents show just how much the wedding earned for the British public. “The Duchess’s lawyers allegedly state that the royal wedding generated £1bn in tourism revenue, thus far outweighing the cost to the taxpayer,” the report explains. This is the equivalent of $1.24 billion dollars. If those numbers hold true, there is no question that the wedding was a smart investment for the British public, and Meghan and Prince Harry — who were on display as much as they got to enjoy their big day — helped bring in a lot of money.  Read More Read the full article