#yeah today still four seasons time 'cos so i established

[chickenstilldancing]

Four Seasons p. 15

Since today's my birthday (just the day after Kagome's, feel so honoured) I'll bend the rules and post a panel from Four Seasons although it's not Sunday. This one is in all probability my favorite dialogue by far, because Rin is exactly like that, with this genuine respect towards any form of life of course but for death too. Such is the main difference between her and Sesshomaru. Centenarian daiyoukai though he may be, even with all his vast knowledge of the world, death is the one thought still eluding his mind, and in this regard young woman Rin, as a mortal, more, a mortal who's already died twice before, is much more experienced and thus you may almost say that she is in fact older than him (don't get me wrong, I'm NOT suggesting with that to endorse the whole sessrin thing as if it had no problems, of course you are free to enjoy that if you want to, but not at the cost of having your critical sensibility thrown away for some foolish fandom fighting, because you can't tell me that since by blood and law either Rin is not Sesshomaru's daughter then he has no power over her, my goodness, that girl trusts him completely and has idolized him since ever, how can you possibly fail to see a minefield ahead even taking for good that growing older she would be wiser?).

"Within the Numbered Days", chapter 1, on ao3

Yep, I like a lot seeking such connections with other fanfics. That's what I mean by saying that I enjoy those sessrin fanfics which bring to light aspects of these two characters that you can acknowledge as true even without liking them as a couple.

[ctimenefic]

fic writer interview

thank you for the tag @testarossa, this was a lovely indulgent way to spend an evening. @prettydangrotten, @onadarklingplain and @rockyteriyaki, if you care to play I'll put my chin in my hands and kick my feet as I listen like we're in a 90s movie sleepover

How many works do you have on ao3?

22 posted

What’s your total word count?

total word count: 166,741

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

they're all in the Daredevil (Netflix) fandom, and all Matt/Foggy. Let's swap chests today (mutant AU), Invisible Ink (Tattoo Artist AU), A Wizard Did It (um.... Magical Statue AU?), Indelible Ink (Tattoo Artis sequel) and Shampoo, Rinse, Repeat (or how I ruined haircuts for myself for four years). Do you see how I gave myself a complex about only writing AUs?

Do you respond to comments? Why/why not?

I try to! I've been fairly good about it recently. But I've had periods where I've been almost entirely out of fandom, and there's a pile in my inbox that are years overdue replies. And I reply because they make me feel good and I want to appreciate that! Every now and again I sit down an answer a pile from, like, 2020 with a biiiig apology and it genuinely lifts my spirits to do so.

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

dust and ashes. sometimes we process grief on the internet!

but for f1 rpf specifically, well. That'll be either the living and the dead or no second chances, depending on which mid-season driver change devastated you most.

What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending?

oh god nearly all of them in some way or another, I love a happy ending (in fact there's an ask in my inbox right now that's indirectly about that). in terms of feeling like sunlight after a storm, three's a crowd. the rest are more soft landings after a gentle flight, imo.

Do you write crossovers?

Sort of. I've written MCU fic that crossed over with X-Men before Deadpool got there. And there's some others languishing in my G-drive.

If AUs based on established media count, then yeah, definitely - I've got some (thinly drawn) ideas for Inception and James Bond F1 rpf fics.

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

I don't think so! if I have, I forgot. I forget many things.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yes, yes I do. And it's getting smuttier. What kind, um- idk, there tends to be a plot attached, or a plot emerges eventually. It's mostly slash? (Does Rule 63 George count as slash or nah??)

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I have a vague recollection of reading something once that made me go 'hmmmm' but once again, my memory issues save me from recalling if it was actually a thing or if it was a two Dennis the Menaces situation.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

No but I had my first podfic made this year! nony podficced positive negatives and don't like a gold rush, which is great because I consider them sister fics.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I am cowriting one right now with @latecomersprivilege. It's about the Australian GP and orgasm denial. Yes, this year's Australian GP. We're so good at meeting deadlines and writing in a timely manner (it's completely my fault).

What's your all-time favourite ship?

Merlin/Arthur, from BBC's Merlin. I only have one Merthur fic that I've let stay alive, but Merlin still occupies such a peculiar place in my life. I watched every season live, I participated in fandom to an extent I probably never will manage again - I loved those boys. I love them still.

What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

that one enjolras/grantaire fic that was going to be my magnum opus and ground to a halt at 20k. Some folders of my G-docs are cemeteries.

What are your writing strengths?

Worldbuilding, I think. Or, since that's quite a broad term, creating worlds that feel lived in. I'm not necessarily coming up with crop rotations and a full economy, but I think I'm good at suggesting the picture continues beyond the frame of the story. Also, I like to think I have a grasp on rhythm.

What are your writing weaknesses?

length length length. I hit 20k in a doc and my brain stutters to a stop, which means I really struggle with executing ideas that deserve longer. I am also very bad at editing. This is a terrible trait. And I write slooooowly.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I get very nervous about this as a mono-lingual person, because I don't want to end up turning actual languages into catchphrases? But I also want to reflect how our international blorbos speak. I do LOVE when authors make a point of saying someone is speaking in French etc vs English, even when it's translated for the reader, to make a point about intimacy.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

harry potter. scoured that from the internet a while ago

What's a fandom/ship you haven't written for yet but want to?

I have an elaborate strollonso fic in me. Unfortunately I do have to write the 50k galex fic it's a sequel to first. And, uh, remember what I said about length being a weakness of mine?

What's your favourite fic you've written?

I did a five favourite fics ask a couple of months back, and it mostly holds true, but I think I have to add three's a crowd now, because it kind of snuck up on me as a concept, and I damn near hated it by the end of writing it, and then was embraced so kindly by readers I could actually look at it anew and remember why I wanted to write it. And that's quite precious.

[sortasirius]

what makes you think the writers want deancas? not trying to be an asshole, i'm just genuinely curious as to why you think that. i know berens' episodes are pretty heavy with subtext so i can see why you'd say that he wants it, but i'm not so sure about the rest of the writers/dabb. it seems like meghan isn't a huge fan either, given her "they twisted it so fast" tweet :/ of course she's a very new writer (think she's only writing one ep this season?) but still

OKAY this is a great question, welcome to my dissertation.

I’m going to address the end of your question first. Meghan is actually DeanCas positive, she has been for quite a long time. She actually, a few years back, posted a picture of her reading a literal book about Destiel and captioned it “writing reading” or something like that.

This whole thing just comes out of a boiling over of tensions because of how nasty fandom twitter can be. Like I said here, I think this has just gotten blown out of proportion, they shouldn’t have posted all this randomly disparaging stuff, but also like...can you blame them? The fandom is a lot, we always have been, and they’re probably also under a gag order not to talk about the finale, and are annoyed that people keep asking.

So nah, Meg is not anti Destiel.

To the first part!! So let’s take a look at the show runners since Cas has been around.

Seasons 4 and 5: Kripke

Seasons 6 and 7: Gamble

Seasons 8-11ish: Carver

Seasons 11ish-15: Dabb

So starting with Kripke. Okay, yes, I will be the first to admit that we have some pretty incredible Destiel moments in these seasons, but it’s less directly written into the plot and much more from Misha and Jensen’s uhhhh ~chemistry~. The only times it was directly written into the script was when the episode was handled by someone like Edlund (“On The Head Of A Pin,” “The End,” “My Bloody Valentine”). And you have to remember, if in season 5, there are moments here and there where you’re like huh that’s suspiciously romantic dialogue, remember that Cas took Anna’s place. Anna was supposed to be endgame for Dean, but due to a myriad of issues and Misha’s general greatness, Anna was replaced with Cas.

Onto 6 and 7. Hmmm. Gamble. 6 and 7 are my two least favorite seasons and that’s no secret, and that’s not only due to the plain old weird shit in the overall storyline, but also that homegirl killed off Cas in s7 and then Bobby like four episodes later. (Also it ALWAYS rubbed me the wrong way they couldn’t have Baby in that season lol). We still had some great DeanCas moments, but again, it wasn’t really written into the overall arc (until they had to change the end of season 7 because of tanking ratings and bring Misha back lol, anyone remember the fact that Dean kept Cas’ jacket and would randomly dream of him? Yeah.). But we still had those moments, those distinctly romantic moments, probably the best example in these two seasons is from Edlund again, specifically “The Man Who Would be King,” I wrote a little about that here.

We move onto Carver, who gave us, at this point, the most overt DeanCas season with season 8 (season gr8 is a better name imo), and this is the first time Dean and Cas’ relationship is directly written as an arc of the season.  I mean, you have everything in Purgatory, Dean “seeing” Cas everywhere, the fact that he felt so guilty that Cas stayed in Purgatory that he manipulated his own memories to think that he was the one that failed Cas, because he couldn’t comprehend that Cas would want to leave him, and let’s not forget Dean snapping Cas out of Naomi’s hold on him in “Goodbye Stranger.”  It was a very obvious shift, not enough to alert the general audience, but more than enough for most of us in fandom.

It’s also important to note that this is when Andrew stopped co writing with Loflin and started writing his own episodes (”Hunter Heroici” anyone?)  I like Loflin fine, but Dabb was able to stretch his legs a little bit more once he stopped co-writing, and we also began to see some DeanCas themes in his solo episodes.

In any case, them and their issues being a big part of the seasons continued with Carver, and Berens entered the scene, his first episode (”Heaven Can’t Wait”) is one of my favorites, with human Cas and the fanfiction gap and Dean and Cas just generally being awkward and funny and sweet.  This is Bobo’s FIRST episode, remember that.  He comes right out of the gate with it.

Also in Season 9, this is when Dean takes the Mark of Cain, and the Cas/Colette mirror is born, so obviously, Dean and Cas are the fabric of the season once again.  This is also the season where Metatron says Cas is “in love with humanity,” and then immediately refers to Dean as Humanity so uhhhh yeah.

Onto season 10, Dabb and Berens continue with their greatness (I could write pages on the DeanCas date in “The Things We Left Behind” alone).  And then we have one of the best scenes in the entire show in “The Prisoner” where the Cas/Colette mirror continues and Dean, driven by grief and pain and rage and the Mark, still doesn’t kill Cas.  He still can’t kill Cas.

Season 11 is important because it takes choice away from both Cas and Dean, and shows us, as the audience, how much losing each other takes out of them. We saw in season 10 how much losing Dean takes from Cas, but what about Cas losing Dean?  Dean loses his choice with his connection to Amara this season, and loses even more when Lucifer reveals he’s been possessing Cas, and plays on Dean’s connection to Cas like a mockery.  It’s also worth noting that, similarly to season 8, Dean breaks out of the connection with Amara when he’s worried about Cas, and that’s something that even SHE is surprised by.

But then season 12, the beginning to the Renaissance.  This is when we get the writer’s that become important for what Dean and Cas are today, and, truly, why I believe they want canon Destiel as much as we do.

This is the first season with Dabb’s writers: Davy Perez, Meredith Glynn, Steve Yockey, and of course Bobo all come in with their incredible talents and gave us episode after episode of good content.  “Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets” is probably my favorite, probably the best example of what I’m saying.  An episode where Dean is called out by an enemy directly, told to “roll the dice” on Cas’ life.  And Dean won’t, it’s not even really a hesitation.  And this comes from a character that has known Dean for ten seconds.  I also wrote more in depth about this episode here.  There are also some.....distinctly domestic details we get this season, specifically in “The Future” (written by Berens and Glynn) with the mixtape.  The most tropey of tropes mixtape.  Yeah, I’ll just leave that one here.

And then season 12 ends with Cas’ death, but also with the parallel between Sam and Dean with Jess and Cas.  Sam literally has to drag Dean away from Cas, just like Dean had to drag Sam out of his burning apartment in the pilot.  The episode drives it home in every way that it can: Dean is the one left kneeling by Cas’ body, while Sam goes to find out what is upstairs.  Dean is the one who stares at the sky, finally broken.  This isn’t a random thing, this is Dean’s whole arc, it’s the entirety of the beginning of 13.  Dean’s pain, his anguish, his anger.

Season 13 starts with them burning Cas, with Dean, who has begged God to bring him back, who has split his knuckles punching a door, standing, staring at Cas’ pyre with brokenness on his face.

I mean.....

Anyway, season 13 is where it gets interesting (well, I think all of this is interesting but I’m a writer nerd so).  So Cas comes back from the Empty in “Advanced Thanatology” written by Steve Yockey, and then a wombo combo of “Tombstone” by Davy Perez next (”Brokebacknatural” as the PR said at the time).  Listen.  This is the part that SPN crossed a line that they couldn’t come back from.  With Cas being Dean’s “big win,” the fact that Dean and Cas watch movies together, “I told you, he’s an angry sleeper.  Like a bear.” Talked about it here.

This is where, in my opinion, the network stepped in, but the damage was already done.  They had already established that Cas was Dean’s big win, that Dean’s poor coping was not due to Mary’s disappearance, but solely due to Cas, and that Dean and Cas have more married energy than anyone else.  The network had nixed blatant canon at this point, and they writing room had been pushing the boundaries of what the network would allow. 

After these episodes, we see a marked drop off of DeanCas heavy scenes.  They’re still there, still a part of the fabric of the season, but not as...obvious as it had been in early season 13.

And this continued through season 14, we’re back to scraps of Destiel scenes here and there, but to me it always felt like there was something bubbling under the surface, something distinctly unsaid in the themes of the season, even after the walk back of obvious “Dean and Cas are in love” scenes.

And then we get to season 15, which, y’all know I talk about all the time.  What’s important here is that Bobo and Glynn are both executive producers, calling more of the shots than ever before.  Additionally, it’s important to note that, though they only co write occasionally, Glynn and Berens refer to each other as “work husband” and “work wife.”  Each episode has just turned up the volume, and, not for the first time, but certainly the most obvious, Dean and Cas ARE the season.  Sure, they’re trying to beat God, they’re trying to finally find peace, defeat the final big bad, but really?  This season has been about Dean, and Dean’s relationship to Cas.

And not only do we have obvious and clear Destiel in nearly every episode, but we have episodes like “Last Call” which canonize bi!Dean (wrote about that here).

And, maybe most importantly so far, we have “The Rupture,” the breakup, and “The Trap,” Dean’s confession (both written by Berens).  And here’s the thing.  These episodes feel connected, but also feel like they’re missing something.  Beren’s last episode is 15x18, “The Truth.”  We’ve all spec’ed about what could happen in this episode, and I think *I* know what it’s leading to.  But for it to be leading to that, it means that the network has to have approved what we’ve all been waiting for years for.

Who got this change to happen?  Who got the network to change their minds?  It wasn’t us.  It was them.  I am fully convinced that Dabb and Berens quite literally put their careers on the line for Dean and Cas.  They believe in them, they’ve shown that from the beginning, but the only thing standing in the way was the network, never allowing them to take the final step. 

So, to answer your question: I think the writers want canon DeanCas because they’ve already shown us that they do.  Take a look at their episodes, at Dabb’s, at Beren’s, at Glynn’s, at Perez’s, at Yockey’s.  They’ve been telling us what’s going on with Dean and Cas for years.

Sure, I’m not in their heads, I guess I don’t know for *sure* that this has been their thought process, but if we put it all together, from the marked shift when Dabb fully took over in s12, to the change right after “Tombstone,” to the new shift, the blatantly romantic shift in season 15, what else is there?

I’ve said for a long time that we, the SPN fandom, are beyond lucky to have the writer’s that we do.  They’re all going to go on to have prolific careers and we were lucky to get them at the end of our little show.  I give them a lot of credit for what we have in the show today.

Just remember, they’ve been telling us in all of s15 who Chuck is.  He says he’s the writer, right?  But a writer who doesn’t have control of his characters?  A writer who wants to do the same ending over and over because it “works”?  That doesn’t sound like a writer, it sounds like a network exec.

They’ve been showing us what they want for years, and the way s15 is going?  I think they may have convinced the network to let us have it.

[kindahoping4forever]

Santa Baby // Ashton Irwin

Welcome to a very special holiday edition of Hoe Hours! Cass and I have been brainstorming and bouncing ideas off each other about this for a while now and we couldn’t be more excited to share the concepts we came up with. Get ready for one blurb a day from each of us until Monday the 21st when we close out with a full length collab fic!

Be sure to check out the Cal blurb Cass posted over on @cal-puddies​ today and I’ve also linked an event masterlist for you to keep track of all our work in one place.

Warnings: Boyfriend!Ash looking like a holiday snacc in a Santa costume. So many Christmas puns and so much banter I don’t blame you for blocking me tbh. Unprotected sex in an established relationship, sex in a public place (I guess?) 

Word Count: 2100

Hoe For The Hoe-lidays Masterlist 

Masterlist // Taglist and Ko-Fi linked above

Let  me  know  what  you  think!

You wave goodbye to the last of your co-workers, wishing them a safe and happy holiday. You don’t know what possessed you to volunteer to organize your office’s Christmas party this year but it proved to be worth the stress, as everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.

It all went as planned except for one major hiccup: the guy you’d hired to surprise everyone as Santa had bailed on you that afternoon. With the clock ticking until the party, your boyfriend stepped up and offered to fill the role, even managing to find a store selling a full costume at the last minute. You couldn’t have been more grateful and as a man who loves being the center of attention, Ashton was a great addition to the party, taking photos and chatting with your co-workers in character.

After locking the front door, you head back to the now empty conference room, your mind sorting through everything you needed to do before you could head home. You stop in the doorway and smile fondly when you see Ash, still in costume, stacking chairs in the corner without being asked.

“Great party, baby,” he chirps when he sees you. “Everyone had such a great time, you might not get a lump of coal this year after all.” He winks and plops his Santa hat on your head as you walk by.

“Hahaha,” you respond dryly, shaking the hat off your head. You walk over to the dessert table and start putting cellophane on the leftovers. “You know, I never realized before tonight how much you have in common with Santa? Crazy beard, loud laugh, look fantastic in red… know where all the naughty girls live.”

He loudly laughs, snaking an arm around your waist as he steals a cookie off the tray you’re covering. “Aww, you know you’re my favorite ho ho ho of all,” he kisses your cheek and you both giggle stupidly. The two of you had been entertaining yourselves with these dumb Christmas jokes all evening and you’re shocked there’s still material left to mine.

Ash tosses a few more treats onto a plate and takes a seat on the nearby couch to chat with you. Midway through the conversation, he gets up to remove his Santa coat; you’re surprised and a little confused at how much him unbuckling the thick belt interests you. He shrugs off the coat, revealing a tight white tank top underneath and you feel a familiar desire rising in you; he turns to hang the jacket on the door and you can’t help but appreciate how the costume’s pants cling to him in all the right places.

He returns to his seat to finish eating his snack and telling his story while you distractedly clean up; you try to pay attention to what he’s saying and you’re really trying not to think filthy things about him in a Santa Claus costume but you’re failing in both regards.  

You jump at him loudly clearing his throat and when you spin around to look at him, you find him leaning back with a smirk on his face. “You really think I don’t know your ‘I’m super turned on but refuse to admit it’ face by now?” He teases you. “I’ve seen you making eyes at me all night, baby, don’t be embarrassed you still want to jingle all the way with me dressed like this.”

You shake your head, laughing at the absurdity of the situation. “I have to say, I’ve never wanted Santa to stuff my stocking like this before but ‘tis the season of miracles,” you wittily respond, loving how his eyes are shining with amusement and the faintest hint of lust.

Ashton pats his legs with a smile. “Come sit on Santa’s lap, baby, tell him everything you want,” he invites.

You only hesitate for a second before you think fuck it and bound over to him. You sit across his legs and wrap your arms around his neck, promptly pulling him into what you intended to be a lusty kiss but you have to pull back to comment after only a few seconds. “It’s very Santa of you to taste like cookies,” you chuckle.

He grins at you, murmuring approvingly as you trace his lips with your tongue, tasting sugar, cinnamon and chocolate. He nibbles at your lips before moving to kiss them, picking up where you left off. Your kisses are playful and unhurried but grow unmistakably hungrier as time goes on. Ash’s hands remain uncharacteristically polite, one sweetly running through your hair, the other lightly tracing designs on your knee.

You smile into his kiss when you realize he’s leaving it up to you to determine where this leads, seeing as you’re at your workplace; you decide to declare your interest by slowly rocking in his lap. It only takes a moment for him to respond to your actions by shifting you to straddle him, ensuring your movement results in better friction for the both of you.

You lick into his mouth as you move against him, feeling him get harder and harder through the thin fabric underneath you. He toys with the buttons on your blouse, briefly pulling away to raise his eyebrows, silently asking if you were comfortable with his intention. Your whispered “yeah” as you pull him back to you has him groaning into your mouth.

His fingers nimbly unfasten your buttons and his mouth immediately attaches to the tops of your breasts. “Always love you in lace, darlin’,” he comments as he plays with your nipples through your bra. “A little sexy for the office but I’m not complaining.” He chuckles as he traces along the balconette cups with his tongue.

You moan, running your fingers through his hair before tugging his head back so you can focus your attention on his neck, lightly scratching at his beard with your nails as your mouth works on marking your favorite spot below his ear. You feel him smile against your touch as you murmur, “Planned to make a move on you after the party,” you confess, gasping at how the seam of your pants catches on his hardness just right, delivering a jolt to your clit. “Figured I’d have to wait ‘til we got home but I’m not complaining.”

Ashton giggles with delight, reaching around to grip your ass and press you down tighter on him. “Who knew you were so eager to be Santa’s little helper?” He teases, giving you a light swat. You smirk and speed up your hips just to get a reaction out of him and he very quickly stills you with a groan. “We’ve either gotta stop this or start fucking, baby, you moving like that is about to make it a White Christmas in these pants,” he chortles loudly at his own joke.

“It is remarkable that I still want to fuck you even when you say shit like that,” you roast him, standing up to remove your pants. He grins and grabs your hips where you stand, kissing over your stomach, making his way down to the wet spot at the front of your panties.

You let him lick you through your underwear for a few seconds before you sit back down, this time getting on all fours beside him, bracing yourself against the arm of the couch. “Here I am ready to let you deck my halls and you’re making jokes when you could be getting your dick out,” you rib him before tossing a flirty look over your shoulder. “Come fuck me already.”

“Well… that’s definitely naughty list behavior, my dear,” he snarks, sitting up to deliver a playful smack to each of your ass cheeks.

You hear him shuffling and you turn to see him taking his pants down just far enough to pull himself out through his boxers. You feel a rush of pride at seeing his cock so ready for you, angry and glistening; you reach for him, using the precum to stroke his length, licking your lips when you hear him softly groan your name. You can't help yourself and bend down to flick your tongue over his slit, needing just a taste of him before you get back in position.

You feel Ash behind you as his fingers sweep your panties to the side and drag through your wetness, reaching up to tap at your clit before moving back down to tease your entrance. You roll your hips to encourage him but he quickly replaces his hand with the tip of his cock. He glides himself through your folds a few times before pushing in, causing you both to exhale in satisfaction.

He makes quick work thrusting into you, gripping your hips tighter and tighter as he gains speed. You lean forward, resting your head on the arm of the couch with your eyes screwed shut, head spinning with pleasure and adrenaline. “Yes, Ash… been thinking about this all night,” you murmur into the furniture.

“Love that you couldn’t wait ‘til we got home, baby,” he huffs, sounding more spent than you expected. “Love knowing that you need my cock that bad.”

You push yourself back up on your hands and start moving back against him, matching him thrust for thrust. “Always want it, baby,” you confess, whimpering as his length hits just where you need. “Fuck… always want to be full of you.”

He strokes his fingers down your back and you’re glad you’re wearing such a thin blouse because you can feel the heat of his touch through the light fabric. The two of you get lost in the moment, falling silent save for the occasional moan or gasp; the slick, slapping sounds of your bodies moving together blends with the hum of the conference room’s fluorescent lights to create a chorus you know you won’t be able to get out of your head the next time you take a meeting in there.

He growls your name with a tone you know means he’s nearly there; you want to reach down to your clit to finish with him but he’s railing you at such a rapid pace, you’re afraid you’ll lose your balance if you move. You’re not sure if you made a frustrated noise or if he’s just that in tune with you but moments later, Ashton pulls you up by your waist and leans you back against him, thrusting relentlessly while he slips a hand between your thighs.

“You ready to cum for me, darlin’?” He whispers in your ear, massaging your clit with precision so practiced, you don’t even get a chance to answer him before you succumb to pleasure. You cry out as your body shakes in his hold and his hips stutter as he begins to follow you over the edge; he groans at how tightly your walls grip him as he gives you one, two, three final strokes before he spills inside you.

The two of you stay still for a moment, stunned and breathing heavily; you twist slightly so you can capture his mouth in a slow, appreciative kiss. He pulls away, pecking your lips one last time before he pulls out, smirking at the whine you always give at how empty you feel without him inside you. He quickly hands you a stack of napkins off the table and you work together to clean up before the office couch gets noticeably defiled.

“Thanks for everything tonight, baby,” you say dreamily, buttoning your blouse back up. “Helping with the party, helping with the afterparty… it was fun.”

Ash tosses you your pants and grins. “Aww, baby. You know I’d do anything to give you a happy holiday,” he says suggestively, wiggling his eyebrows.

You pull on your pants and shake your head. “Think we’ve hit the bottom of the barrel with this humor, babe,” you snort. “Gotta be honest, I really appreciate you holding back on the ‘here cums Santa Claus’ jokes right now.”

He laughs heartily. “You’ve gotta give me some credit here.” He pulls you to his side and cuddles you close.

“Oh I do,” you tilt your head up and give him a flirty kiss. “In fact, when we get home I might need to spread my holiday cheer for you again."

Ashton giggles as he walks away to grab your coats so you can head out. You give a light smack to his ass, still looking delicious in those tight red pants; he whips his head in reaction and you respond with a wink, "Well, what do ya say, Santa Baby?"

————-

Taglist issues again so my apologies if you get notif’d more than once (or not at all)

@mymindwide​ @suchalonelysunflower​​ @pxrxmoore​ @loveroflrh​ @ghostofmashton​ @sexgodashton​ @feliznavidaddycal​  

@castaway-cashton​ @ashtonlftv​ @cashtonasfuck​ @megz1985​ @ashdork-irwin​ @angelicfluffs​ @findingliam-o​ @youngbloodchild​  @irwinsbetch​ @everyscarisahealingplace​

@wiildflower-xxx​ @metalandboybands​​  @realisticnotes​​  @makeamovehemmings​​ @golden166​​ @burstintocolor​​

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[4evamc]

Misha Tweets

Transcript

Ed Levine: Welcome to Special Sauce 2.0. Serious Eats podcast about food and life. Every week on Special Sauce we begin with Ask Kenji, where Kenji Lopez-Alt, Serious Eats Chief Culinary Consultant, gives the definitive answer to the question of the week that a serious eater like you has sent us.

J. Kenji Lopez-Alt: Generally, sort of like delicate leafy herbs like cilantro, parsley, basil, they tend to not be very good in their dried counterparts. Thyme, rosemary, oregano, they actually work pretty well in their dried forms.

EL: After Ask Kenji, a conversation with our guest, today in house, Misha Collins. He is, of course, an actor best known for his role as the angel, Castiel. Did I pronounce that right?

Misha Collins: Castiel.

EL: On the CW television series Supernatural, and has now written with his wife Vicki Collins, The Adventurous Eaters Club: Mastering the Art of Family Meal Time.

EL: Now it's time to meet Misha Collins. He's, of course, an actor best known for his role as the angel, Castiel?

Misha Collins: Castiel.

EL: On the CW television series Supernatural, which has had an insane run, right? It's like 2008 to 2019.

MC: Yeah, we're in our 15th season right now.

EL: That never happens.

MC: No, it doesn't. I don't know why they kept us on the air.

EL: Collins is also the co-founder and board president of Random Acts, a nonprofit organization dedicated to funding and inspiring acts of kindness around the world. He's also a published poet. Very impressive dude.

MC: Thank you.

EL: And has now written with his wife Vicky Collins, The Adventurous Eaters Club: Mastering the Art of Family Meal Time. So welcome to Special Sauce, Misha.

MC: I'm very happy to be here.

EL: So the first question I always ask, in your case it's particularly relevant, is tell us about life at your family table growing up. Your family table was not exactly traditional.

MC: That is true. I was raised by a single mom. My parents separated when I was three years old and I visited my father on every other weekend for most of my childhood, but he wasn't really a cornerstone of my upbringing. But my mother and my brother and our dog were a very tight family unit, and we lived in Western Massachusetts primarily growing up and moved a lot. We were in a new home I would say on average once every nine months or so. I think I lived in 15 places by the time I was 15.

EL: So you were like an Army brat, only you were a different kind of brat.

MC: Right. An Army brat without the parents building up a pension plan.

EL: Right.

MC: Another thing I think that an Army brat family has is a cadre possibly, of other kids that are going through the same experience, and I was generally going to a new school every year and meeting kids that were in fairly stable childhoods and who knew one another and who were familiar with the school, so I was always approaching schools and new towns-

EL: You were the permanent new kid.

MC: Yeah, with a little bit of trepidation, and trying to figure out how I could ingratiate myself to the new communities and the new schools. My mother was very eccentric and iconoclastic. She talked about the revolution a lot. I was born in 1974, and we lived through a tumultuous political time in our country, and she didn't want to have us grow up being conventional young men, so she would do things like dress me up in pink tights and paint my nails and send me off to Cub Scouts. Which I think in 2020 might actually fly, but in a working class community in Massachusetts, when you show up at Cub Scouts in the boys' locker room with nail polish and long hair-

EL: Not so much.

MC: And pink tights, you're ostracized. So, I kind of had to find a way to blend in and disappear a little bit as a kid in new schools, and I think that it built a lot of character in a lot of ways, and made me more resilient and adaptable and independent than I otherwise would have been. But at the same time, there's a certain lack of stable foundation that was challenging.

EL: I had not the same kinds of travails in my own childhood, but you do become resilient and eminently adaptable, but it also has a cost. It exacts a cost that you can't deal with as you're going through it, but you almost have to deal with it at some point in order to really resolve some of the issues that came out of it, I assume.

MC: Yeah. I'm sure you've found the same thing, but I feel like I'm a 45-year-old man and I'm still discovering things and unpacking them and repairing them, I think. There are definitely things that you take away from a childhood like that that give you real strength.

One of the things that I love about my childhood is that I know that you don't need money to be happy and you can get by on just about nothing, and that gives you, I think, quite a bit of power going into the world because you don't feel beholden to the comforts of ... I don't feel beholden to the comforts of money. I'm okay with scarcity. At the same time, I don't know that I was really terribly good at connecting with people or making friends, and I probably still struggle with that.

EL: Yeah. So, you wrote this amazing piece in The Times, and you wrote that “times were often lean, but one luxury we always had an abundance was food, even if it came by the five finger discount. My mother taught me how to steal peaches from the Stop and Shop grocery store when I was four. We were stealing from the man. It was a justified rebellion against an unjust system.”

EL: So, whoa. Okay, those sentences made me stop in my tracks. That's pretty intense. I was actually thinking about this movie, Shoplifters. I don't if you've ever seen it.

MC: Oh yeah. Yeah.

EL: Because in there the father figure, who turns out not to be the father, teaches the kids how to steal so they can eat. And so, wow. I mean, talk about that. Talk about getting conflicting messages from your mother. It's like, whoa.

MC: It's funny, because now hearing you read that, it paints a portrait of a parent who was raising children without a moral compass, and I think that was not at all the case. This was righteous rebellion. We were stealing ... We would never have stolen from the local co-op, but this was from a corporate entity, and these corporations were out to exploit the proletariat. I actually felt the exhilaration of feeling like I was part of a rebellion at that point, and frankly indoctrinated into that at a really young age. At the age of four, I was aware that it was us against them. We were the little guys and that we had a justice on our side. At the same time, it's a complicated thing to be training a little four year old how to steal.

MC: I have a very distinct memory of the fruit island in the Stop and Shop, and me grabbing a peach. This was the first time that I remember ever shoplifting anything. I grabbed the peach and then I ducked down behind the island, and my mother said, "No, no, no, no, no. You can't do it like that. You have to take it. You have to be very calm. You have to not look around. You can't show that you're distressed at all or that you're nervous, and then you put it in your backpack." Then we would go up to the cash register and we would pay for some of the groceries, so that we were distracting them, and then scoot out the door.

EL: And you just, I assume, felt that there was nothing particularly abnormal about this because you had nothing to compare it to.

MC: Right. Yeah, this was my normal.

EL: Yeah. You weren't stealing from somebody or something that needed the money, you were stealing as part of an ethos. Right?

MC: Right.

EL: As part of like, this is the way we work the system to fight the man.

MC: Right, precisely. Yeah.

EL: You also wrote, and I'm going to quote a couple of more sentences from the piece because it was so beautiful, "My upbringing taught me you didn't need money to be happy, that you didn't have to play by the rules, that the whole world was just begging to be explored. But now by the hindsight of fatherhood and from the comfort of a therapist's couch, I see that while my childhood had been rife with adventure, it also had been lonely and frightening and wanting." So you were always reconciling those two things, weren't you?

MC: I wouldn't say I was always reconciling them, because as a child I struggled at times. I felt sad and lonely, but I didn't think that it was because of my childhood.

EL: Got it.

MC: I thought my childhood was full of adventure, and I was proud of my childhood. Up until when I was 25 I don't think I looked back on it and thought that there had been any damage done by that.

EL: Right, and that there was anything dysfunctional about it.

MC: Right. And on balance, my childhood was incredibly ... I think I had a secure attachment with my mother. My mother was there. She was loving. She never failed to convey that love to me and my brother. So she served as my anchor emotionally, and that was unfailing. But because the rest of our life was so fractured and so nomadic, she was my only anchor.

EL: Yeah, because as you said, how do you establish connections with any kids when you're moving every few months?

MC: Right, and when you're showing up at school in pink tights at a working class school you're also getting alienated by your peers, and so the other kids actually ended up being kind of frightening to me.

EL: I read your Wikipedia page, and somehow you escaped and you ended up at a prep school, Northfield Mount Hermon, and then the University of Chicago. What a narrative your life has been. How did that happen?

MC: Now that you're asking the question, I'm reflecting on it possibly for the first time. But one thing that I know happened as a result of my childhood and and partly as a result of feeling like I wasn't fitting in with other kids, is that I was a smart kid and I could win the favor of my teachers. So when I was in school, I did very well in school. It was like the thing I could throw myself into and be safe and get some accolades.

EL: Some positive feedback.

MC: And some positive reinforcement. So I did well in school, and we lived in the town of Northfield for a little while, which was where Northfield Mount Hermon is. They had a program that had been implemented from the inception of the school where local day students could get pretty much a full ride if they were in need, and we were in need, so I could go to a fancy high school for free as a day student. Then I ended up basically getting the same deal at the University of Chicago.

EL: Amazing.

MC: Yeah. At the time, I thought I was going to go into politics, so I was sort of on a very clear path. And that wanting to go into politics was also born of my childhood and of my mother talking about politics all the time, and making me and my brother very aware of the plight of people in need in our country and around the world. It felt like that was the right place for me.

EL: Yeah. Again, and this is the final sentences I'm going to read from the Times piece, because it gets us back to food. Which is, "I recently found an old journal in a box in the back of my closet, and on the page from a decade ago where I had taken inventory of the good and bad of my upbringing the word cooking is circled and underlined with urgency in the plus column, as if I was thinking that food had been the cornerstone of happiness in my youth." Elaborate on that. I mean, that's an amazing statement.

MC: I think as a nomadic family, we moved around and we brought with us what we could, and in terms of material objects, there was very little that was a through line. But we did bring with us from place to place the tradition of sitting down for family meals every night.

EL: Even if you were in a teepee or in a park.

MC: Right. Even if we were sitting on a log in the woods in the rain, we would be sitting down and eating together. There were no distractions. There was never a television on, and there was no coercion in getting to the dinner table. There was no question about it. Not because it was an edict from an authority figure, but because we all just coalesced around dinner and loved it.

EL: You needed it.

MC: Yeah.

EL: It was a permanent form of glue for the family, right?

MC: Yeah. It really was important to us. We would go spend Christmas with my mother's mother, my grandmother, and she was a cook as well, and food was a centerpiece of that family interaction. And for me now that I have kids, I notice that when I'm feeling like a guilty or absent father, the way that I most quickly show my affection and love for my kids is I just make them food. It's like the way that I know to convey to a child everything's safe, everything's okay, and I love you.

EL: Yeah. But in 21st century America, and maybe all around the world, it's hard to do that, right? There are lots of pressures that are forcing people not to eat together.

MC: Right.

EL: Both parents are working, kids are all over the place. But you obviously, I think as a result of your upbringing, it was important when you had a family and a wife that you made that same time for dinner.

MC: Yeah. It feels very important to me. I think sometimes I'm actually kind of maybe forcing my agenda of cooking on my kids. Like, "Come on guys, let's make something in the kitchen." A lot of times they want to go outside and I want to work in the kitchen, and I have to check myself and say, "Okay, we'll go play a little bit of soccer first before we get to canning the pears."

EL: Right. Because the act of eating a meal and preparing it is imbued with so much more meaning for you than it is for them.

MC: Yeah, I think that's true. Yeah.

EL: So you end up being an actor, and I'm just assuming that like all actors, you struggled for many years before you found yourself on the set of Supernatural. So, tell us in a few sentences the arc of your acting career.

MC: Well as I mentioned earlier, my intention after college was to go into politics. I interned at the White House and I got a job at NPR in Washington, DC, and I was really disappointed with what I saw at the White House, and I thought, "Oh God, I have to come up with a whole new plan here." I thought it was going to be the best and the brightest minds under one roof. This was the Clinton administration. And instead what I found was the halls were filled with people who were sycophants, whose parents had donated money to the campaign. They were all yaysayers. There was no real discourse about political ideas, which of course is actually what you need in an administration. You need people who are going to be in lock step and are going to support your decisions, but I was too young and naive to know that.

So when I saw it, I thought, "This is not for me." I thought, "I will try to find another way that I can have an impact." I think there's a lot of hubris in this, but I thought, "I know what I'll do. I'll become an actor. I'll get famous and then I'll parlay my celebrity into some sort of political influence."

EL: Oh, because that happens all the time.

MC: Right. I mean really, really completely naive, and totally full of myself. Then I moved to LA and I thought it was going to take a couple of years to attain a certain level-

EL: To become rich and famous.

MC: To be rich and famous. And it took a long time to become-

EL: It took a decade, probably.

MC: To become moderately comfortable and a C-list celebrity. But somewhere along the line I stopped thinking about that end goal of I'm on this path so that I can have influence, blah blah blah, and I just started becoming an actor, and I was just acting for the sake of acting and not for this aspirational, high-minded goal.

Then a couple of years ago we got a new president, and that lit a fire under me. It was actually during the campaign when I started to think, "Oh, Trump might get elected. Oh, this is serious," and then my C-list celebrity started to come into play and I thought, "All right, well I can use the platform that I have."

EL: By the way, I think it's at least B-minus, okay?

MC: Well you, as everyone knows, grade on a curve, so thank you for your charity. In a strange way it feels to me a little bit like it's come full circle, and now that the show's ending and after 15 seasons I'm asking the question, "Okay, how can I be of use in the world?" I don't know what's next for me. I don't know if I spend a lot of time on television sets after this or not. I'm trying to do some soul searching and figure out what I really want to be when I grow up. But that's, in a nutshell, my path.

EL: It's an amazing path, and you accomplished much more as an actor than almost any actor I know. To be a working actor and to have made some money doing it is actually an incredible accomplishment, and maybe it's to the resilience you discovered you had in your childhood.

MC: Yeah, I think possibly. I think obviously there's a lot of dumb luck that comes into play. It's not my fault that the show that I'm on has been on for 15 seasons or has the devoted fan base that it has.

EL: There are conventions for Supernatural. I notice this-

MC: We have conventions. There are tattoos with face on them. I mean, it's hard not to be full of yourself in this context. But yeah, we have a really, really devoted fan base, and it's quite remarkable to be a part of.

What was it? I think it was Freakonomics at one point. Maybe it was in the book Freakonomics, but they said that pursuing a career in acting is like pursuing a career as a drug dealer. It's very, very difficult to be one of the kingpins, to be successful in the field.

EL: Right.

MC: The odds are so bad that it takes a certain personality that's defective that wants to even pursue that in the first place, because 99 out of 100 people are going to fail at that and then you're just going to be a low level street corner drug dealer, or barely getting food on your table as a background actor.

EL: Yeah. Well Misha, we have to leave it right here for this episode of Special Sauce, but you're going to stick around and tell us all about your two terrific kids, West and Maison.

MC: We just say Mason.

EL: West and Mason.

MC: Yes, we anglicize the French spelling.

EL: And your wife Vicki, and your family collaboration on The Adventurous Eaters Club. Thank you for spending so much time with us on Special Sauce.

MC: Thank you so much for having me, and I can't wait to talk about the book.

Listen to the podcast here

[rachelbethhines]

Tangled Salt Marathon - Keeper of the Spire

You wouldn’t know it upon first watch, but today’s story is one of the few non-filler episodes of season two. 

Summary:  In order to acquire the third scroll piece, Rapunzel, Eugene, Cassandra and Lance travel to the home of the Keeper of the Spire and meet Calliope who informs them the third piece is kept inside the Spire’s vault at the top of the mountain. The group begins the long journey to the Spire's vault the following day and become increasingly annoyed by Calliope’s rude, arrogant and inconsiderate behavior. Despite Calliope's treatment, Rapunzel insists they still need her help all while they being dangerously pursued by the vault's protector, the Kurlock. The group eventually reach the Spire's vault, but again encounter the Kurlock and discover Calliope is not the real Keeper of the Spire.

Once Again, ‘Destiny’ Isn’t a Goal

If you want to build up some sort of mystery with the scroll pieces and what awaits Rapunzel at the end of her quest, then that’s fine. But at some point you have to actually explain what her destiny actually is, how the scroll connects to it, and most importantly, why she needs to fulfill it. 

We’re never given a reason for why Rapunzel needs to reconnect to the moonstone, nor why she couldn’t have just stayed home and did nothing. The scroll itself doesn’t tell her anything and what it leads up to has nothing to do with ‘destiny’ and ultimately comes to nothing in the grand scheme of things.  

Indeed, much like the quest itself, things would have been better for everyone had she not found the scroll at all. 

Meet the Best Written Character In the Show

No, I’m not exaggerating. Calliope is the only recurring character in the series not to get royally screwed over by last minute rewrites and poor pacing. In fact her arc may have actually been improved by the dumb creative decisions of season three.  

Which is a problem because she’s not a main character. Her story and arc shouldn’t be more well rounded than Rapunzel’s. It’s also clear, given how the writers try to pitt her as annoying thorn in the heroes sides that is only tolerated because she’s useful, that they weren’t expecting the general audience to identify with her, and so her subsequent portrayal as the most developed character in the show is fully accidental.    

We Finally Get Some Indication of Cassandra’s Age

Well first off, we probably shouldn’t be getting such information about our deuteragonist this late in the game, but also, putting Cass in her early 20s recontextualizes her arc the same way Varian being 14 recontextualizes his conflict, but in the opposite direction. A 24 year old is more accountable for their actions than a 14 year old. Always will be. 

And before people try to get all pedantic on me; yes she’s only 23 here, and Varian is currently 15. What I meant is those are their ages at the start of their villain arcs, because the linear progression of time is a thing. 

This Joke Actually Highlights One of the Bigger Problems of Season Two

I laughed when I first heard this joke, but that’s cause I was under the assumption that they would go on to develop a friendship between Cass and Lance as the season went on. But they don’t. 

Cass never has any focus episodes that aren’t about her failing relationship with Rapunzel. She never interacts with the other four people that she’s traveling with outside of group scenes like this. Not even with Eugene, who we spent the whole previous season establishing a bond with. 

This undermines Cassandra’s arc in several ways. She less well rounded and developed without other people in her life besides Rapunzel; it ignores her place in the show as the older and wiser friend if she’s so majorly co-dependent upon only person. It also ignores what was set up in season one in order to push a certain narrative later that clashes with what we the audience already know.  

Plus there’s the added effect of other characters getting poor representation within the story. 

So Why Didn’t the Others Come Along Again?

I understand not being able to take the caravan upto the top of the mountain, but the road was wide enough to get it up this far. Also it didn’t take you all day to get here so you could just walk back to camp. 

But let's get to the real reason why the caravan was left behind. The writers wanted and excuse to get rid of Hookfoot and Shorty. Because they didn’t want to write them into the story. Because they have nothing to do with the overall plot and together they’re one too many characters to keep up with and give stuff to do to. Which begs the question of why they were ever included into the season at all. 

Also why leave Adria behind? She was the one who sent them up here. She’s the one who has a vested interest in getting Rapunzel to the end of her journey. She’s the only one driving the plot at the moment, so why not have her present to do just that?  

Rapunzel is a Hypocrite 

There’s not a single description that Rapunzel says here that couldn’t be applied to herself. 

Which would be funny if the writers ever actually acknowledged this within the series. 

Having parallels simply exist on their own and not actually inform the story is bad writing. Same with character flaws; acknowledge them, use them to advance both the plot and the characters, and build off of them to establish character dynamics. This is in part why Calliope is the better written character between the two of them. 

Behold, the One and Only Time Lance and Rapunzel Hold a Conversation with One Another! 

Speaking of characters not getting enough focus.... It’s just a set up for a recurring gag in the episode, but this is indeed the only point in the series where Lance and Rapunzel talk, about anything. 

It’s not just Cass who is prevented from establishing relationships, it’s literally everyone. All of Rapunzel’s focus episodes alternate between Cassandra, Eugene, or a random side character. Cassandra only gets focus when with Rapunzel. Eugene only gets development with either Rapunzel or on his own. Lance is only ever shown interacting with Eugene or Adria, outside of some highly specific one off instances like here. Hookfoot is left out in the cold save for three episodes and two of them double as New Dream folder. 

We’ve managed to pair the cast down to only six, as opposed to a whole kingdom’s worth of characters, and yet they have less development here than they did in season one. The group does not feel like a group, and that is a problem. 

How is This Meant to be Encouraging? 

Ok, I get what the writers were going for here. Calliope has low self esteem. she feels useless because she’s lost her only support group, her mentor. So Rapunzel is ‘inspiring’ her to fulfill her dream of becoming the new keeper of the spire. 

However, this is an incredibly bad take. 

Calliope lacks self esteem because she’s lonely. Her dream of becoming the keeper is directly tied to her father figure, who up till now was the only person who gave a damn about her. She only wants to impress Rapunzel because she wants a friend and she believes that she needs to be useful in order to get that. And here is Rapunzel and the narrative reinforcing that belief under the guise of ‘achieving a dream’. 

No fuck that! 

You don’t need to have a ‘purpose’ to have friends.You shouldn’t have to prove yourself useful just be respected and included. Also, Rapunzel doesn’t even befriend her. She just uses Calliope to get what she wants and then avoids her for the rest of the show; only checking up on her out of obligation in season three. 

So not only are we denied another female friendship in a show bereft of female relationships, but we also have a character who can be easily read as autistic by the audience needing to prove she’s useful to society in order to be accepted. 

Ugh! 

And yeah, I said autistic. We have a character who fails to pick up on social cues, hyperfixates upon her special interests, is rejected by society for trying to share these special interests, and she even pulls out her magic linked rings to fiddle with when stressed, which can be coded as a stim. I’m not saying that this was the writers’ intent, but nevertheless these are traits that people on the autism spectrum tend to identify with. 

So how insulting is it to watch this episode and see someone you could relate to being constantly put down by the heroes behind their back and then never apologize for it, even when said character admits their own fault? 

So Are We Ever Going to Get Any Background on this Spire? 

So the spire is one of the few places that is plot important in the show. Yet we never find out why it exists, who built it, how it came to hold such important plot devices, nor the story behind the keepers who guard it. It’s just there, and that’s infuriating because it’s both a lack of much needed worldbuilding and lore. 

Still A Better Dad than Frederic

Leaving for months on end without telling you loved ones why and where you’re going is a shitty thing to do. Doubly so if its just to teach your kids ‘a lesson’. However, The Keeper still winds up being a better parental figure than most of the other dads (besides Cap, who is awesome) in the series. That’s how low the bar has been dropped by Chris and his weird ideas on parenting. 

So What Was the Lesson Here?

Ok first off, Calliope didn’t need to be reminded of anything. The Keeper says as much. She was always persistent. The only lesson that she does learn is not to lie but apparently that’s not what we’re supposed to take from this episode. 

But what are we supposed to take away? Because Rapunzel doesn’t learn anything either. There’s no admittance of wrongdoing on her part  and she does not change her outlook or behavior from this encounter. 

Calliope at least learns to become more self assured after this episode and remains honest and true to herself once the episode is done with. Rapunzel however is the same. You can’t claim that this is ‘Rapunzel’s story’ (Chris’s words not mine) if it’s only random side characters who are allowed to grow.  Which is yet another reason why the main cast of characters don't get the development and interaction that they should.

That’s also why Calliope is better written than the main character and she shouldn’t be. It’s a bewilderingly oversight of basic writing.

Conclusion 

I don’t mind this episode. As I said in the beginning, it is one of the few non-filler episodes in season two. However, there’s a lot of problems with it to the point where I can’t actually call it good, just mediocre. 

[iam93percentstardust]

I'm bombarding you with those prompts, so I fully understand if you just ignore all those you don't like, lol. Would WinterIronFalcon be an OT3 you're intrested in writing? Some established WinterFalcon with Tony pining helplessly after them, not believeing he could have a chance? With a dash of angst in it? Thank you ♡

There isn’t much angst in this but there is hopeless pining so yay?

Also on ao3 here

~

“Share Bear, it’s not fair,” Tony whines into the phone.

“What isn’t?” his cousin asks, sounding patient but also kind of amused. He takes the phone away from his ear and squints at it. Is she making fun of him? She probably is, Sharon always makes fun of him. She’s mean like that; he’s pretty sure she gets it from Natasha.

“They’re so fucking gorgeous, I can’t stand it.”

“Oh. Them again. Seriously Tony, didn’t you used to have better taste?”

“Excuse you,” he says, offended. “My taste is perfect.”

“They think arguing is foreplay.”

“It’s bickering! And it’s cute!”

“Gross,” Sharon says cheerfully.

“God hates me,” Tony says dramatically, flinging his hand over his eyes. “That’s why he cursed me to work with two such beautiful humans who are already dating each other.”

“Tony—”

“I know Bucky stays up to date with the fandom,” he continues, going a little quieter. “He’s gotta know that tons of people ship the three of us. But he doesn’t say anything about it. Share Bear, why doesn’t he say anything?”

“Probably because for every person who ships all three of you, there’s twice as many who ship just you and him,” she admits. “I know that if someone were shipping Maria and Nat and ignoring that I even exist, I’d be pretty upset.”

“Yeah,” he says glumly.

“What’re you filming today anyway?” she asks.

“True Crime. We were supposed to be doing an episode of Supernatural at the Odinson Mystery House, you know, over in Norway where the son found out he was adopted and then got super into Norse mythology and supposedly disappeared into a rainbow?”

“Oh yeah, that guy was crazy.”

“Wasn’t,” Tony insist stubbornly. “There are three different eyewitnesses and they all saw the same thing.”

“All three eyewitnesses tested positive for meth.”

“It was trace amounts and ruled irrelevant to the case. Anyway, there’s some sort of blizzard so our flight got canceled. We figured we’d get a jump on this season’s True Crime episodes instead.”

“What are you doing this week?”

He scowls into the phone. “Fandom episode. They voted for Captain America.”

He can practically hear Sharon wince. “I’m sorry. That fucking sucks.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, not least because both of them know exactly what happened to Captain America. He was recovered from the Arctic back in the 50s and went on to live a very happy and fulfilling life with Aunt Peggy. But that’s a very closely guarded state secret; the U.S. government can’t let it get out that Steve Rogers survived nearly a decade in the ice. Technically, Tony and Sharon aren’t even supposed to know but Aunt Peggy had insisted she be allowed to tell them after she took custody of Sharon and Tony moved out of Howard’s and into her home. It’s kind of cool actually, knowing that Uncle Steve is really Captain America. He’s a pretty great guy. It just kind of sucks that he can’t tell anyone about it and now he has to do a whole episode about it when everyone knows he’s a shitty liar.

He’d talked it over with Uncle Steve and Aunt Peggy when the results of the vote had first come in. Aunt Peggy’s advice had been to act more manic than usual, throw even more outlandish theories into the mix, and really make this episode about the banter between him and Bucky. “Direct their attention away from Steve,” she’d said. “They’re already going to be looking at you. Just make sure they’re doing it for the wrong reason.”

He kind of wants to kiss Bucky. That would definitely draw attention away from the episode. But that’s not fair to either Bucky or Sam, who are very happy with their relationship and don’t need a homewrecker like Tony throwing a spanner into the mix.

“Good luck,” Sharon tells him before they hang up. “You’re gonna need it.”

“Wow, thanks,” he mutters but she’s already gone.

~

Marvels Unsolved was never supposed to be this popular. It started off as a novelty webseries about Tony trying to convince Bucky about the existence of the supernatural—he firmly believed that if science could turn Uncle Steve from an actual shrimp to the god of muscles, then magic had to be out there—and then they’d started talking about an unsolved crime from the early 20th century after filming an episode one day, forgetting that the camera was still rolling, and had ended up with enough footage to make a second episode about real crimes. They had stayed pretty unknown throughout that first season but then true crime podcasts had exploded in popularity and Unsolved along with them.

Now they have a fandom and merchandise and actual fanfiction written about them, which is the craziest thing. They both have several often-quoted gifs floating around the Internet and Bucky has somehow become the poster child for being unimpressed by literally everything (he actually makes some of the best faces when something genuinely scary happens but they always end up editing those parts out—he has an image to maintain after all).

They brought Sam on once they started gaining in popularity. Tony, by that point, already had a pretty well-established crush on Bucky. He’d even thought that he had a chance with his co-host, small as it may be, and at first, it hadn’t seemed like Sam was going to change anything. He and Bucky argued all the time so Tony had been absolutely stunned when he’d stumbled upon them making out like it was the end of the world.

They had just finished filming their second season. Sam had suggested going out to a local bar. He’d suggested it for all three of them but Tony had, inexplicably, felt like a third wheel all night as Sam and Bucky bickered. At one point, Sam had disappeared off to the restroom and a couple minutes later, Bucky had followed him. Tony doesn’t know how long he had sat there waiting for them but he’d eventually gone looking for them only to find Sam pressing Bucky up against a wall.

And that had been that.

Three years later, Sam and Bucky are still going strong, Tony is as smitten with Sam as he is with Bucky despite knowing how hopeless both crushes are, and the fandom seems convinced to either write Sam out of Tony and Bucky’s relationship or write Tony into Sam and Bucky’s. He wishes they would stop. He stays pretty up to date with the fandom as well and they have all these meta posts about the way Bucky looks at him or something. It just keeps giving him hope but, well, it’s been three years. If Bucky wanted him, or if Sam did for that matter, they would have done something long ago.

~

“Hey, you doing okay?” Sam asks him as they’re setting up.

“Sure, why wouldn’t I be?” He avoids meeting Sam’s eyes, focusing instead on adding creamer to the coffee. Marvels had presented them with these mugs last year to congratulate them on four years of Unsolved. They’ve got their most iconic quotes printed on them, Bucky’s with “Obviously I killed JFK” and Tony’s with “I’m the dramatic bitch your mom warned you about.” Sam has one too with his one and only line in the entire show printed on it (“Why did I agree to work with you?”) but since he’s always behind the camera, he doesn’t have to use the same mug for each episode.

“You just seem a little off.” The worst part is that Sam genuinely looks concerned. If they didn’t care about him, he thinks his crush might be easier to manage but they do because they’re just nice guys like that. “I know you weren’t too thrilled when we announced this week’s case.”

“Howard worked with him, practically hero-worshipped the damn guy. Of course, I’m not excited.”

Sam winces. They know all about Tony’s shitty relationship with Howard after his dad called Marvels furious that his son was hosting a webseries instead of coming home to grovel at his feet and take over the business. The whole team had been brought in to listen as Fury tried to placate him. By the end, Bucky had been furious on Tony’s behalf and Sam had berated Fury for twenty minutes for making Tony listen to the vitriol his dad had spewed. It had cemented his crush on Sam, then just a passing fancy, into something real and permanent.

“Seriously, Sam, I’m fine. Might be a little off today but I would have said if I didn’t think I could do it.”

Sam doesn’t look convinced but he agrees anyway. Tony sits down next to Bucky and passes him his mug. Bucky shoots him a grin and murmurs, “Thanks, doll.”

Tony doesn’t blush but that’s only because he has five years of practice. Out of the corner of his eye, he spots Sam counting them down and he turns to face the camera, settling his hands in front of him.

“This week on Marvels Unsolved True Crime and in celebration of our 100th episode,” he begins, “we asked you what you’d like us to investigate and you came back—”

“—overwhelmingly,” Bucky interjects.

“Many, many times,” Tony agrees, “with a topic near and dear to my own heart: Captain America.”

“That’s right,” Bucky says, sounding surprised though Bucky had been the first to point out that maybe they shouldn’t do this episode because of Tony’s connections to Project Rebirth. “Your dad helped turn Steve Rogers into Captain America, didn’t he?”

“And he never let me forget it!” Tony says cheerfully.

“One hundred episodes,” Bucky says slowly, enunciating each word. “Can you believe that, doll?”

Sometimes, he wonders why the fans ship them when Sam is right there. Other times, Bucky says things like this and he understands completely.

“Not even a little bit, Bucky Babe.” Okay, so maybe he doesn’t help.

“One hundred. The big one zero zero.”

“We tried to do something extra special and get Sam in front of the camera for you guys—”

“—so you could see what a hunk he is—”

“—but Sam said that he didn’t trust anyone else to film us properly—”

“—which makes sense because Tony? If you put him in the wrong light, he’s practically a gremlin—”

“Hey!”

“I’m just telling the facts.”

“Well, the facts are wrong.”

“They’re facts, sweet thing, they can’t be wrong.”

“Can too. Anyway, since Sam refuses to join us—”

“—and that just breaks my heart because Sam, he’s one of my favorite guys, you know?”

Tony pauses. It’s not like Bucky to say anything nice about Sam. Usually, it’s all good-natured insults and bickering. He must really be fed up with the Starkbucks shippers to say something like this when they’re still this early in the show.

“Only one of?” he asks curiously.

Bucky shoots him one of those filthy grins that their audience loves so much. “Well, it’s hard not to include you on that list,” he drawls.

He’s not going to blush.

He’s not going to blush.

He’s not going to—

Damn it.

Whatever. It’s no big deal, that’s what editing is for. So what if Sam has never edited out one of Tony’s blushes yet? Maybe Tony will get lucky and he will this time.

“You know, I was actually named for Captain America’s sidekick?” Bucky asks, getting them back on track.

“Wow, that is deeply unfortunate,” Tony deadpans.

“Yeah, Dad’s a fanboy. His whole troop was pinned down and rescued by the two of them. He tells the story all the time—kind of like your dad.”

“Except my dad goes straight past into fanboy and directly into obsession territory.”

“…Fair enough.”

“Really? That’s all you’re going to say?”

Bucky shrugs and takes a sip out of his mug. “I’ve been inside your house. I’ve seen the Steve Rogers shrine. I’m not going to argue with you.”

Tony thinks about that for a moment. “It is kind of a shrine, isn’t it? Anyway, we’ve got some great stuff for you today. We’re going to crack open this cold case, show you some never-before-seen footage courtesy of my mom sneaking my dad’s old war tapes out of the mansion, and then we’ll talk a little bit about the theories out there.”

“How many of them are going to be ridiculously outlandish and physically impossible?”

Tony glares at him. “None of them. I have never once presented a ridiculously outlandish and physically impossible theory.”

“Right because alien abduction is a valid—”

“Aliens are real!”

“You said that crabs might have eaten Amelia Earheart!” Bucky shouts over him.

“It’s a valid theory!”

“I take it back, you’re not one of my favorite people anymore.”

“That really hurts me, deep inside,” Tony says sarcastically, trying to cover up that maybe that does send a small pang shooting through his chest. He likes the thought of being one of Bucky’s favorite people. He doesn’t want to lose that.

“How deep?” Bucky asks and winks.

“Very deep. Way, way deep down. Practically in my—”

Bucky’s eyes widen and he nearly chokes on his coffee. “Okay, that’s enough of that. Let’s get into the facts.”

“Hey, that’s my line!”

~

“With a missing plane and pilot and so much redaction in the files, we’re lucky to even have a name, let’s get into the theories.”

“Actually, wait, before we do that,” Bucky says, “I want to ask if you’ve ever noticed that your voice changes when you’re doing the voiceovers.”

“Wait, what?” Tony asks. He glances at him, to one of the cameras, then back to Bucky. “What do you mean?”

“You know, it gets all deeper like you’re trying to voice movie trailers or something.”

“No it doesn’t.”

“Sure it does.”

Tony shakes his head. “There’s no way.”

They both turn toward Sam, who thinks about it and then makes a ‘sort of’ motion with his hand.

“Told you!” Bucky says triumphantly.

“You’re such a child,” Tony sneers.

“Yeah, that’s why you like working with me so much.”

Behind the camera, Sam silently snickers and Tony glares at him before telling the camera, “If you’re watching, let us know in the comments. Is my apparent movie trailer voice okay or does it need to go like Bucky clearly thinks?”

Bucky goes paler. “Hey, wait, I didn’t say it had to go.”

“It was implied when you brought it up,” he argues.

“No!” Bucky insists. “I was just wondering if it was on purpose.”

They both turn toward Sam, who thinks about it and then makes a ‘sort of’ motion with his hand.

“Aha!” Tony says triumphantly.

“Traitor,” Bucky mutters into his coffee.

Sam signs, “I’ll make it up to you when we get home tonight.”

“And that was more than I ever wanted to learn about Sam and Bucky’s love life,” Tony lies through his teeth. “Let’s get into the theories. I only have two for you today, one of which I think Bucky will particularly like.”

“Oh no.”

“Our first theory is that Steve Rogers died in a plane crash on December 16, 1944. Winter months in the Arctic are known to be particularly stormy. There would have been low visibility due to the high latitude and time of year and with the waters and surrounding land being well below freezing, it’s possible that, even if Captain Rogers survived the impact, he would have frozen to death in the stormy seas.”

Bucky thinks about it for a second. “Yeah, that seems plausible.”

“In addition, Howard Stark, a known Captain America aficionado and the father of Marvels Unsolved’s best host—”

“You lie like a rug!” Bucky howls.

Tony snickers and then when Sam signs, “He’s really not,” bursts out into full-out laughter.

Once he’s recovered, he continues, “Howard Stark has spent the first fifty years after the crash of the Valkyrie and the last twenty funding searches in the Arctic in the hopes of recovering Captain Rogers’ body. He has found no evidence that Captain Rogers survived the crash although he did find part of the remains of the Valkyrie and has since stated that, ‘No human could have survived that crash.’”

The expeditions are a scam and have been since Howard first found the Valkyrie crash site and Uncle Steve along with it. He hadn’t been planning on continuing the expeditions—too costly, as he claims—but when Aunt Peggy had told him that Uncle Steve’s survival had to remain a secret, he’d kept them up for pretense’s sake.

Bucky is saying something about how it sucks that the first superhero is gone and when he finishes, Tony grins and says, “Then you’ll like our second theory.”

“Somehow, every time you say that, I end up completely hating it. Wonder why that is.”

“Our second theory is that Steve Rogers survived the crash and is still alive but cryogenically frozen in the ice. There—”

“Bullshit!”

Tony starts laughing but he tries to continue on over Bucky shouting that it’s complete nonsense. It’s hard and he knows that Sam will probably have to do some editing and maybe make Tony do some voiceover work in order to make the theory audible but he thinks he manages to do a pretty good job.

Bucky is pouting by the end of it, arms crossed over his chest. “What fucking bullshit,” he mutters.

“The supersoldier serum—” Tony starts to point out.

“Isn’t a miracle drug.”

“That’s exactly what it is.”

“No, it just made him big and strong. It doesn’t just magically keep people alive when they should have died.”

And then they’re off into familiar territory, arguing about the merits of either theory. Tony’s actually feeling pretty good about himself, convinced that he’s doing a decent job of steering the conversation away of anything classified, right up until Bucky says, about halfway through the episode, “I’m surprised at you, Tony.”

He wrinkles his nose. “Surprised?”

“Usually, you have some absolutely batshit, off-the-walls crazy theory but these have actually been pretty normal for you.” He pauses and then adds for effect, “And you’re usually much better at your research than this.”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh come on, even I know that there’s one more theory.”

He starts tapping at his chest nervously, almost wishing that he had a pair of sunglasses. Aunt Peggy always said that his lies are in his eyes, that they’re too expressive to hide the truth. When he was living with Howard, in the spotlight, he always had a pair of sunglasses to hide his eyes but he hasn’t wanted to use those since he moved out. He wishes he had them now.

“And what’s that?” he asks, feigning a casualness he doesn’t feel.

“That Steve Rogers lived and came out of the ice at some point and has been living out his life in anonymity.”

He barks out a nervous laugh. “I didn’t mention it because even I know that that theory is completely impossible.”

“Hasn’t stopped you before.” Sam nods agreeably. Bucky nods back at him and adds, “Even Sam agrees with me.”

“He’s your boyfriend, he’s practically required to.”

Both Sam and Bucky laugh at that one and yeah, okay, it was a pretty ridiculous statement. Anyone who knows them knows that being boyfriends is less likely to make them agree with each other.

“Look, Steve Rogers didn’t come out of the ice alive. Howard would have known for one thing and if you think, he could keep something like that quiet, then you don’t know him very well.”

“Maybe the government insisted it be a secret,” Bucky suggests, shrugging. “There have been plenty of people who have claimed over the last couple decades to be Captain America.”

Tony scoffs. “Oh come on, by that logic, anyone could be Captain America.”

“Maybe they could be.”

“No,” Tony says flatly. “It’s like that crazy conspiracy theory guy over on Reddit who’s convinced that Bruce Wayne is Batman.”

“Maybe Bruce Wayne is Batman.”

“Ooh do the butts match?” Tony says mockingly. “I mean, really, Bucky Babe, if we’re going off of lookalikes, then my fucking Uncle Steve is secretly really Steve Rogers, which is ridiculous because the guy’s like practically ancient and faints at the sight of blood in PG-13 movies.”

That sets off another round of arguing that lasts the rest of the episode until finally Tony wraps it up with, “Whether Steve Rogers died in 1944 or is still alive today is a mystery that will remain unsolved.”

They both pause for a moment to provide time for Sam to edit in the theme music and closing title. Usually, there would be some lighthearted bantering afterwards, maybe a joke about something they said earlier in the show. This time though, Bucky says thoughtfully, “The thing is, though, I’ve met your Uncle Steve—”

Tony goes cold.

“—and he really does kind of look like—”

Tony panics. That’s the only explanation that he has for declaring, “I’m done waiting,” reaching across the tables and grabbing hold of Bucky’s shirt, and yanking him forward to kiss him.

For a moment, Bucky is too startled to do anything but then he melts into Tony, mouth opening under his, tongue pushing forward to meet his. Bucky’s arms come around him, pulling him up and out of his chair and settling him into his lap. Tony makes a small greedy sound, swallowed by Bucky’s kiss, and then they’re both pulling away. Bucky’s lips are very red; Tony can’t stop staring at them even as he’s filled with dismay.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I shouldn’t have—”

“Why not?” Bucky demands.

“You—Sam—” He glances toward the camera but Sam isn’t standing there anymore. His heart drops into his stomach—has he just ruined Bucky and Sam’s relationship? But then he hears someone drop to their knees behind him and when he turns slightly, Sam’s fingers are on his chin, gently turning his head.

“How long?” Sam asks.

“How long what?”

“How long have we been wasting our time when we could have been kissing you instead?”

Three years, two months, and fifteen days. “Too long.”

Sam kisses him then, mouth gentler than Bucky’s but no less consuming. Bucky is a hard, hot line against his front; Sam is warm against his back and Tony? Tony loses himself in the storm that is the two of them, sparks shooting through him as Bucky’s hands find their way to his hips, as Sam’s tongue slips into his mouth, as Bucky whispers into his ear, “We’re not wasting any more time.”

~

Marvels Unsolved’s 100th episode shoots to their most watched, most liked video in less than a day and when asked, maybe the smallest handful of viewers could have said what it was about.

The day after it posts, only a week after it was filmed, Tony’s phone rings.

“Kill it with fire,” Sam says sleepily.

Tony, however, recognizes Aunt Peggy’s ringtone and he rolls over to grab it before Bucky can throw it at the wall. “Hello?” he asks groggily.

“Congratulations on not blowing Steve’s cover,” she says.

“Oh yeah,” Tony mutters. “Can I go back to bed now?”

“One more thing, duck.”

“What’s that?”

“Congratulations on the new boyfriends.”

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 220: My Villain Academia

Previously on BnHA: Shouto and Kacchan took on a purse-snatching gang led by a dude who could manipulate and control carbonated water. Katsuki blew a bunch of them up (but, you know... gently), but then Soda Sam knocked over a metal pole that almost killed some stupid lady. Thankfully All Might knocked her out of the way and Katsuki deflected the pole with another explosion. Meanwhile Shouto one-hit KOed the Soda Sam guy to wrap things up. Afterwards the two were praised for their quick and professional action, and All Might proudly headpatted them and it made my fucking day. We then cut to the Brotherhood of Destro, where the Detnerat CEO’s thugs brought in a “guest” they had just apprehended -- none other than the League of Villains’ favorite broker, Giran, looking somewhat worse for wear. DetCEO politely asked him for info on the League, and Giran told him to go fuck himself. So it looks like DetCEO’s gonna try to get this info from him via some unpleasant means. We then flashed back to a month and a half prior and cut to some cliffside where Gigantomachia was decimating the League of Villains (sans Dabi) and complaining about how weak they all are. Seems like AFO’s underlings have some issues to work out amongst themselves.

Today on BnHA: The series continues its streak of excellent chapters with a flashback showing what the League of Villains has been up to for the past however long. We open with Tomura and the gang crashing the secret meeting of some racist anti-mutant cultists to rob and murder them (which, can’t really condemn that tbh). Unfortunately they don’t wind up with much to show for their efforts aside from a sense of satisfaction. The thing is, they’re broke, and currently holed up in some condemned trash house in the countryside while Tomura sits around waiting for the plot to come find him. Specifically he’s on the lookout for a “great power” that AFO supposedly left behind for him, and also trying to track down AFO’s personal doctor -- the guy who developed the Noumu. Anyway, he seems pretty content to sit and wait, but the other members of the League aren’t quite so patient, particularly Spinner who only joined them in the first place because he was inspired by Stain. Fortunately for everyone, the plot finally does choose this moment to barge in on them all in the form of everyone’s favorite Goron, Gigantomachia. He literally rips the house apart, and then demands that Tomura prove he’s worthy of succeeding All for One. Fast forward to where we left off last chapter, and as Giganto laments that the League is too weak, Tomura suddenly hears the doctor’s staticky voice coming from the dude’s radio.

(As always, all comments not marked with an ETA are my mostly-unspoiled reactions from my first readthrough of this chapter. I’m caught up with the manga now at chapter 226, so any ETAs will reflect that.)

so we’re starting with Tomura, who’s doing this

and then this

which I guess is only to be expected

oh shit hold up

feeling artistic today, were we Horikoshi? having some fun with that there fourth wall

“before we continue from where we left off, let’s see how we got to our present situation.” lol okay

so this appears to be a very nice house out in the woods somewhere. if I had to describe it, I’d say it’s the kind of house Detective Conan characters would get invited to only to find themselves caught up in a sudden murder spree (which they would eventually solve, but only after like three people were killed in a row)

but seriously, doesn’t it look like the power and phone lines are just waiting to be suddenly cut off at the same time that the only bridge back into town is conveniently blocked or destroyed, leaving them with no immediate way out and no way to contact anyone (because of course there’s no cell service either)?

by the way this is the best title Horikoshi has ever come up with, full stop

straight up thing of beauty, this

so anyways, apparently this is some weird cult meeting or something? and Tomura’s gone and crashed it

the examples he decided on, though. Horikoshi have you had some strange encounters with chocolate-hating cockroach fans lately or what

I see Spinner’s making do with just a regular dumb old sword nowadays. no more over-the-top Game of Thrones-inspired swordmalgamations. hey Spinner what is your quirk

holy shit

so basically they’re racist against people with mutant quirks. we had quirk supremacists, and now we have very nearly the opposite. this arc continues to be fascinating and Horikoshi’s worldbuilding continues to get deeper and deeper. this is so far beyond what I imagined we might one day get when I first started reading this series, and it’s amazing

also the Tomura-led LoV continues to somehow be inherently likable in spite of all the murders and whatnot. don’t know how they do it, but damned if they don’t pull it off

now all in favor of them killing off this entire gathering of racist shitbags and taking their mansion, say “aye.” I mean, why not. unless these people were all open with their family and friends about their secret Racist Society Gatherings, no one’s gonna have any clue where to start looking if they all suddenly disappear

anyway, so next page. is this Spinner’s narration, then?

holy shit does Spinner have an extra pair of eyes that I’ve only now just noticed or what. this is freaking me out

(ETA: it’s just his usual ninja turtles mask, but it seriously does look like there’s a second pair of slit pupils in this one panel and it had me second-guessing everything I ever knew for a moment.)

lol meanwhile Compress and Toga are digging through the CRC’s cabinets looking for shit to steal and sell

how are you guys so badass and so fail at the same time

wow and apparently these racists aren’t just racist, they’re fucking stupid as hell too

yes, a candelabra against the guy who can disintegrate people with a mere touch. you really pose one hell of a threat there

so Tomura’s dodging and he’s grabbing the back of the guy’s head!

show of hands, who thinks they’ll actually be smart enough to listen to him. ...yeah that’s what I thought

so now there’s some glorious carnage, and since we’ve thoroughly established that these assholes are The Worst, of course no one actually minds watching them all die horribly

and no one’s gonna mind when they finish off DetCEO at the end of this arc, either. because of what he did to that poor mouse. so apparently all you need to do to keep your audience rooting for the villains is to keep pitting them against Even Worse Villains for the rest of the series lol. plot twist, the League never actually faces off against Deku & Co. for the rest of the manga

I’m only half-joking, too. for me, it really all hinges on whether or not they’re actually responsible for the Noumus (because kidnapping and experimenting on children and turning them into your helpless minions and then getting them killed = Not Cool), and/or how much involvement they actually have in that. but if their hands are clean of that, I will gladly be Team LoV for as long as possible. it’s very easy to do just so long as they keep playing in a separate conference from my 1-A kids. not sure what I’m gonna do once playoff season arrives, though, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it

(ETA: and well, we now know that they have no idea where the Noumus come from! and that Tomura himself is a confirmed victim of Ujiko and AFO’s child abduction and manipulation games as well. so for now I’m perfectly happy to root for them. villains who are just doing their best.)

anyways, I guess it’s bad that I pretty thoroughly enjoyed that, huh

well you can always take the mansion as mentioned. you guys could use a more swanky hideout now that the Ol’ Villain Bar is out of commish

lol oh shit these guys really are broke

if only there was a company out there who recently branched out into the black market villain goods business and was looking to get in contact with you. but I guess we’re still a month and a half away from that. oh and also it’s a trap and they want to kill you (but you guys seem pretty capable of handling yourselves though, so)

also, this is easily the most attractive/least creepy Tomura has ever looked and it’s very strange. did you grow out your hair dude

lol what are you guys even doing

you had a sweet new mansion all to yourselves! just slightly bloodstained and possibly now haunted! but still a real steal considering you would have gotten it for free!

and now Spinner’s headband seems like a normal headband again. where did the eyes go. Spinner you’re starting to freak me out here

anyway, so Kurogiri was clearly the breadwinner around here. without him these guys have no clue how to go on. though Tomura seems to be perfectly content as long as he’s got a couch and a table to put his feet up on

!!! well LOOK WHO IT IS

hello Touya

so he says he’s the only one who’s been trying to gather allies, and Twice is pointing out that he’s yet to bring a single person back with him

and Tou -- I mean Dabi, says “that’s because they’re all trash”

is this how you talk about your good friend Hawks behind your back. for shame

ah okay, so now we’re getting a better idea of the timing here, as Tomura says it’s been approximately one month since Kurogiri’s capture. as you recall, that happened on the same day of the Overhaul raid, which was back in late September if memory serves. so this is now late October, which means that it won’t be long before the encounter with Giganto

(ETA: lol for real. in five... four...)

anyway so we’re flashing back to what I guess is the last conversation Kuro had with Tomura before his capture. I’m interested to see if we learn more about who he was planning to meet up with. probably was Giganto but we never confirmed!

“a great power.” interesting! well, Giganto certainly would seem to fit the bill

and now Tomura is staring at the Quirk-Be-Gone in his hand, and saying that Kurogiri failed in the end, and thanks to that “we’re having a real hard time searching for the doctor”

so now WHO IS THIS DOCTOR, THEN. I THOUGHT KUROGIRI WAS YOUR DOCTOR. WHY WOULD YOU SHATTER MY ILLUSIONS LIKE THIS YOU RAISINY SOB. CLIP YOUR FUCKING NAILS

also you expect me to believe that Giganto is a doctor? that Giganto? that one??

-- OH SHIT HOLD UP!!!

AHHHHHHHHH OKAY HOLD UP LET’S HAVE OURSELVES A QUICK BLAST FROM THE PAST HERE AS I GO AND SEARCH FOR THE PANEL FROM CHAPTER 59

okay, first of all!

I didn’t notice this my first time through, but it’s implied that this is the building where AFO is holed up and watching Tomura from afar. please note how this is not the Ol’ Noumu Warehouse. not even close

(ETA: hey guys is it just me or does Ujiko live in the fucking Chrysler building)

second, here are the two panels with The Doctor

and third...

okay, so this is something I’ve seen mentioned in Dad for One posts, and now that I look at these panels again... yeah. definitely a resemblance there. this is either the same guy, or his evil twin

and now add to that that Tomura just confirmed that this dude is the one who was in charge of the Noumu project. a project which we know most likely involves kidnapping children. and this doppelganger who may or may not be the same person is a fucking pediatrician. and not just anyone’s pediatrician -- Izuku’s pediatrician

which makes one consider two things. one, is it really a coincidence that AFO’s personal physician just happens to be baby Izuku’s as well? (although he might also be a quirk specialist that Inko took him to see.) and two -- presumably this means he would have treated other children in the Musatafu area as well, right? possibly including this boy here?

I mean, we all agree that this means this little guy was fated to be turned into this thing and subsequently get murdered by Stain, yes?

lol yeah so friendly reminder that this series has been pretty fucked up since long before we started dealing with kidnapped little girls and strangled mice and mansion cult murders

(ETA: okay so as of the Ujiko reveal I’ve gotten to read up a lot more about the good doctor here, and there’s one more thing which I feel should be added to this post:

this is from page 174 of the BnHA character book, and basically confirms that our lil winged buddy Tsubasa-kun here is the doctor’s fucking grandson. you know, because this whole Noumu plot wasn’t horrifying enough yet. let’s just see how fucking dark we can make it. holy shit.)

anyway! now that we’ve enjoyed that refresher, let’s continue and see where this all leads

lol Toga is poking fun that Tomura didn’t even deny the “you’ve been lonely without Kurogiri” part. and indeed, he still isn’t

and now Spinner is addressing Tomura directly and asking him “what the hell are we even doing?”

he says he’s here because he was inspired by Stain

apparently he was discriminated against as a child growing up in a bad area. people called him a dumb lizard man and he was used to things just being like that and he just accepted it as the way of the world

watch out kids, we may or may not be getting some fucking Spinner feels here oh shit

anyway, so that lasted until he saw Stain’s last moments on TV and was inspired by how he was trying to change the world all on his own

he says he realized for the first time how suffocating the world is, and he couldn’t sit still after that and that’s why he joined the League

wow Dabi

that’s all you’ve got to say dude?? don’t sleep on other people’s angst just because you obviously have your own horrific secret backstory that you have yet to share

so now Spinner is getting really bold and grabbing Tomura by the collar and shouting in his face that he doesn’t understand his lazy attitude

well Tomura? do you have a good answer?

the others are all watching, and Twice is the only one who seems anxious lol. Toga’s actually yawning and Dabi just seems mildly interested in where this leads. and Compress’s face is unreadable cuz of his mask

eh what’s this now

OH SHIT

ALREADY?? SO THEN WHERE WAS DABI IN THAT TWO-PAGE SPREAD FROM THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER

also wtf at Tomura diving to grab all his spare hands and (I presume) frantically scramble to put them all on before the wall comes busting down

oh, he looks very excited though

and not at all concerned at the fact that this dude just ripped his house apart. I guess because he naturally expects that AFO will be loyal to him if he’s someone that AFO left behind. remember how entitled he used to be about things like the Noumus? “I’m allowed to have whatever I want, right?” or something along those lines? no doubt he feels similarly about Giganto here and is probably in for a rude awakening in three... two...

anyway, so Tomura is explaining to the others that this is one of the “battle assets” that AFO left behind

oh boy here we go

“brat”? can the radio communicate his thoughts or something?? seriously, what’s up with that thing?

anyways lol

his face omgggggggg

that’s right Tomura, if you were waiting for shit to just be handed to you like how it always used to be, you got another thing coming boyo

anyway so now we’re finally back to the present! (which is still a month and a half in the past though lulz)

nah he ain’t weak he just needs to get up off his ass

so now Giganto is clutching his head and falling to his knees in despair as the others look on in confusion

!!!

DON’T TELL ME

WELL SHIT, O-FUCKING-KAY THEN

aggghhh you guys. so today is March 26 2019. as of my writing this, there is exactly one more chapter to go. and then that’s it. I’ll be all caught up. I am simultaneously excited and dreading that shit

but. here I go

[nanowrimo]

NaNo Prep: Make a Box for Your Bully

As we dive into NaNo Prep season, we’ve talked to some participants to get the inside scoop on how to best prepare for November. Today, author Mur Lafferty shares how she manages to make her inner editor be quiet:

I'm writing a new book now. I hate it. 

This is standard, whether you're a pro or a beginner. The idea in my head was so glorious and perfect, but the minute I put it into words I feel like a finger-painting four year old, except kids take more pleasure in their creation than I do. Nah, this is drek. 

And I hear them, the little whispers in my ear: "This is crap. Just quit. No, not just this book, you should quit it all, stop calling yourself an author. Go back to corporate America and make room for someone else who's more talented." I turn my head and sitting on my shoulder is a little person shaped like a potato. It's lumpy and ugly and has a permanent smirk on its face like it knows it's better than me. 

This is my bully, my constant companion, my internal editor––and I would bet my next advance (that isn't coming, remember, because this book is crap and definitely won't sell) that you have one similar to it. 

My bully's name is Travis, by the way. But I'm not here to talk to you about Travis the bully potato. I'm here to talk about your potato, or whatever your editor looks like, and to talk about how to prep for the novel you are going to write in November. 

1. Identify your bully. 

As I said, mine is a potato. No, I don't know why it's a potato, shut up. You might follow standard pop culture mythology and make yours into a devil, or an angel with black wings, or a little version of you, with a goatee, dressed like a delinquent. Incidentally, your muse is usually the one on your other shoulder. Mine isn't another vegetable, although it would be balanced and tidy if it were a pretty vegetable maybe like a fennel bulb with long flowing hair. But it's more like a friendly fairy that is easily harassed into silence by Travis the Potato. Freaking Travis, man. I hate that guy. But anyway, once you identify your bully, and realize that what it's telling you is all lies, you can accept that you're not realistic when your subconscious says to quit; you're just having fear. Doubts. And that's normal. 

2. Grab it! 

Once you can identify and spot the wily bully, grab it with all your might. It's like a nettle, which I have never seen, but I hear you have to be firm when you grab or else you'll get stung. Instead of grabbing nettles, grab that bully by its potato and don't let go. It will whine. It will fuss and squirm. It will tell you that without it, you will write something terrible and not even know it. That's OK, just don't let it go.

3. Get a box. 

We've been talking metaphorically up to now. No, I don't really think a potato named Travis sits on my shoulder. But I'll admit I sometimes do something physical to shut it up. I'll close the office door. I'll turn up music so I can't hear it. Or I'll get the time-out box, which is a little chest on my desk. The bully goes into the box while I write, and I promise I will let it out when I'm done. It can complain and insult me all it wants, I can't hear it from the box. So either imagine your box, or heck, get yourself a real box. NaNoWriMo is not for the faint of heart, and the sturdy-hearted writers have boxes, dang it. 

(Aside––why am I talking so much about potatoes? Because the bully is what will keep you from your novel. If you've failed NaNoWriMo in the past, then you know that unless something catastrophic happened, you quit because you had doubts, or fears, or just wasn't sure what to write next and you let the blank page––the bully's cousin––get the better of you. Before you write word one on your book, you must decide where to put that bully, or it will do all it can to stop you.)

4. Spread the word. 

What you're doing is a big deal, a large venture, and if you're in the USA, then it's happening during a major holiday as well. You will have a greater chance to succeed if you tell the people close to you what you're up to, and what it means to you. That last part is key. You're not just trying out a new hobby, you're challenging yourself to accomplish something at a pace that some pro writers find difficult to maintain, much less beginning writers. If your family, friends, roommates, etc, don't respect that, it's going to be much harder on you. Establish a time you want to write daily and then request help from those close to you to give you the space you need. And if they don't help you, call them all potatoes and slam the door.

5. Make an outline. Or don't. 

Outlining can be quite useful. It gives you a roadmap that you can follow as you work on your book. If you don't know what to write that day, then the outline should point you in the right direction. However. You might be like me, and the thought of writing an outline makes you want to take all the advice that the muffled potato in the box is still shouting at you: quit quit quit. It's possible that maybe outlining isn't for you. And that's ok. Some prefer maps. Some can't fathom the shape of the story until they're out with a flashlight, making their way through it, only knowing what to write when their light falls on it. That's how I prefer to write. So yeah, make an outline. Unless that isn't something that works for you. 

6. Don't fall into the rabbit hole of advice. Even this one. 

I'm a pro writer (that still feels weird to say) and I still get paralyzed when looking up advice and tips and tricks instead of actually writing. Many beginning writers have been halted in their tracks when they come across writing advice that goes counter with how they do things. "If you don't do [X] then you're not a real writer," is my favorite. It makes me want to find my knives.

I'm betting you know more than you think you do about how to do this. The rules are simple: get to 50k by the end of the month. For most, that means writing daily. That may not work for you. For others, 10000+ words on the weekend may work. Worried that your Rashomon-style retelling of King Lear, only in present tense, second person, and set in the far future isn’t going to work? Write that thing! Don't get bogged down wondering if your writing is good or your are doing it right or even if the story is salable. Or readable. The bully is in the box, remember, and you don't worry about the quality of what you're writing anymore. 

Which brings me back to the beginning, where I'm working on a new book right now. It's drek, probably, but I don't mind. My bully is in the box, and I'm not worried about it because this is a first draft, and our one job for a first draft is to get a story on the page. We can worry about the details later. That's what December is for!

Campbell-winning author Mur Lafferty is a freelance writer, editor, and podcaster whose life consists of spinning plates and hoping they don't fall. Her latest books are Six Wakes and I Should Be Writing, and she co-edits Escape Pod magazine. In the last few years, she has lost the Hugo Award and been inducted into the Podcaster Hall of Fame. She lives in Durham, NC, with her husband and daughter.

Author Photo by JR Blackwell.

Top image licensed under Creative Commons from Monica Müller on Flickr.

[flynnspeaks]

Flynn Marathons Doctor Who, Part 11

(for anyone needing caught up–I’m doing a watch of Doctor Who from the very beginning of the show, bingewatching it by episode instead of by serial (which I find to be closer to the original spirit of the episodes, albeit still nothing like it at all), and then doing a writeup roughly every three serials or so)

Continuing Season 4, starting up the Troughton era:

The Power of the Daleks: Stunning. Absolutely brilliant. Gripping and tense, with a marvelous build-up over the first five episodes to the unrelentless action of the sixth. The Daleks are fascinating here--if I’m right, this is the first episode that really establishes how dangerous even one Dalek can be. Before this, we’ve understood them as galaxy-conquering terrors, but it was always in groups. Here, just one Dalek is enough to send the Doctor into a panic.

The story is well-liked enough, so I’ve only a few things to add: I like how Whitaker essentially structures the story as a two-parter leading into a four-parter, with the first episode spent mostly dealing with the regeneration (which is of course handled sublimely, both in the writing and Patrick’s performance (and I love the detail of Ben being suspicious and Polly just going with it)) and the second with Lesterson reviving the Dalek--all of course leading to the Dalek recognizing the Doctor, conclusively confirming Troughton as our new hero, and the iconic “I am your servant” cliffhanger. Other minor things: interesting that Whitaker brings back the whole “Daleks run on static electricity” detail, which for the most part was forgotten after “Dalek Invasion of Earth”. Also interesting that two of Troughton’s recurring lines (”When I say run...” and “I would like a hat like that”) come from this serial, which I didn’t know.

I also love how the story deals with the rebels, effectively showing how revolutions are so easily co-opted by fascist militants (who in the story are in turn co-opted by the uberfascist Daleks). It’s a surprisingly smart depiction of revolution that is unsettling and relevant today.

So yeah. Marvelous story. By far the best in the series so far.

The Highlanders: So the first three episodes left me kinda bored--not that I felt they were bad, but they weren’t particularly engaging and I wasn’t enjoying the story as much as I had previous historicals. Then the fourth episode happened, and honestly I kinda dug it. The story ended up in some directions I wasn’t expecting, and made the first three more interesting in hindsight. I enjoy the supporting cast, and the reversal of Grey seeming like a good guy, getting the Doctor and his friends out of trouble, but turning out to be a slave trader for the West Indies plantations (and then Perkins turning on him in the end was deeply satisfying).

One of the things I did like about the story from the getgo was how no-nonsense Polly was--from the outset getting out of trouble and preferring action over sitting and waiting to be rescued. In particular her and Kristy capturing Algernon was fantastic, as was his eventual arc in helping them out in the end. I dunno, in general this was a fun little outing, and I think a fine sendoff to one of the more odd facets of Doctor Who’s early days.

(one thing though: I think Episode 1 of this has possibly the lamest cliffhanger in all of Doctor Who, in which Polly is threatened by someone with a knife, only to find in the next episode that it was Kristy...the girl she had been travelling with nearly the whole episode. It’s the cliffhanger equivalent of that horror movie “it’s a jump scare but it’s a cat!” cliche)

The Underwater Menace: Love it. Balmy in the most wonderful ways--”we get the fish people to go on strike!” is one of those lines of dialogue that just makes me happy to be a Doctor Who fan. It helps that this is the first story in the Troughton era to have existing episodes, so you get to actually watch Troughton perform--of course, he’s absolutely magnetic. Always compelling, making active choices with the material and playing off of others brilliantly--his early scenes opposite Zaroff are a particular highlight.

About the only problem I actually have with the story are the companions--Ben is great as usual, and over the past few serials has had a remarkably consistent, interesting character, but Polly’s character changes constantly depending on the needs of the writers. It’s really obvious when you’re watching them in context--last serial Polly was no-nonsense, clever, and conniving; here she suddenly becomes a peril monkey. It’s inordinately frustrating that the female characters continue to be wholly inconsistent like this (meanwhile, Jamie weirdly doesn’t get a lot in the story, mostly shining in the TARDIS bookends).

Outside of that, I can see why this story was hated for such a long time, but like “The Web Planet” it’s just so damned crazy I can’t help but love it. Disgraced scientists in the near-future hidden deep underwater in the Lost City of Atlantis, living off of plankton and trying to blow up the world for the sheer marvel of it? Brilliant (I want to emphasize--I really love the detail that Zaroff wants to blow up the world just for the scientific marvel of it. That’s a fascinating detail that gives interesting layers underneath the copious amounts of ham Furst imbues him with).

Speaking of Furst actually, I don’t mind the camp here--the whole point is that Zaroff is clearly unhinged but everyone is too superstitious to take notice of it, so the ham kind of works. There’s a fantastic moment where the Doctor tells Theos to watch Zaroff’s eyes, and a scene later you see Theos start to see what the Doctor is talking about when he talks to Zaroff. Plus I mean, look, “NOTHING IN ZEH WORLD CAN STOP ME NOW” is fucking fantastic. Nah, this story’s great fun, with a ton of interesting concepts. To me, this stort of story is exactly what Doctor Who is for.

[ntheclover]

All Who Enter In

Author:  @ntheclover

Rated: R for disturbing imagery

Length: 2k words

Triggers:  Death

Thanks for the prompt and beta read from @2moms-0fucks

Why not celebrate the news of season 11 with the abduction and death of Mulder in season 8 and the aftermath he left for those closest to him.

Helena, Montana 7:59pm

“This is not happening!”

First, the uncontrolled sobs consume her body followed by a wave of nausea then narrowed vision; as if she may lose consciousness.   The spinning room forces her to lie on her side, pulling her legs toward her chest.  Her hands go instinctively to her lower abdomen, to the place where her heart now resides alone with her unborn child. Mulder’s gone… He’s really gone…

Agent John Doggett knows Scully’s unique and terrible kind of pain.  It was in a field, much like this one, that a mad man dumped the body of his young son.  It is the first thing he thinks about every morning and the last thing that he sees when he closes his eyes at night.  The nightmares are always the same: Monica, the uniformed men surrounding the small lifeless body, the look of pity from them all.  No one knows what to say to you when you lose a loved one in such a sudden and violent way.  Words can’t heal wounds ripped that deep.

He runs after Scully, knowing she is now lost in her own nightmare.  Yelling her name as he navigates the dark forest underbrush, he catches a glimpse of her through the trees.  She appears to be headed to the compound which is now bathed in a strange bright light.  It blinds him temporarily and he has to stop and shield his eyes with his hand.  When his vision returns, she is gone.

Once inside the dilapidated building, he searches the faces in the room scanning for a glimpse of red hair.  Yelling her name, he grabs the closest person by the shirt collar and asks them if they know where she is.  They all point to toward a small room at the back, the one where the man known as Jeremiah once stood.  He crosses the threshold and finds her there, collapsed at his feet.  “Agent Scully…”  His voice little more than a whisper and thick with concern, he reaches down for her. 

Her crying grows louder when he tries to pull her up and remove her from her place on the filthy wooden floor.  Elbowing at him she cries out wanting to be left alone, for him to just leave her there and go away. 

“I’m not leaving you…” she hears his words muffled like he is at the end of a long dark tunnel.  Having not had a night of peaceful sleep since Mulder had been taken, her energy finally dissipates as does her desire to keep fighting.   She gives in to his embrace and allows him to pick her up and carry her.  He cradles her in to his chest where she goes limp and surrenders to the grief.

Monica finds them at the door then staggers back a step, grabbing at the door frame for balance.  She can feel their shared anguish slam her in the chest pushing the air from her lungs.  John eyes her with concern but she recovers and waves him off.  She touches John’s shoulder then brushes an errant lock of hair from Scully’s forehead.  Beyond being physically with them she feels helpless, the weight of their combined emotions too heavy.  Scully speaks between sobs to her, incoherent at first but after a few attempts she can hear “Mulder…alone…be with…him…”

“He’s not alone, Dana” replies Reyes.  “Skinner is with him.  He won’t leave him and he wants you to go to your hotel and get some rest.”

Scully lifts her head from her tear soaked spot on Doggett’s jacket and looks at Monica with panicked eyes. “No! I’m not leaving him!”  She pushes at John to let her down which he does to keep from dropping her.  Monica grabs her wrist and pulls her back.

“Dana, let us take you. There will be investigators that need to photograph the area.  You know the protocols and you know what they will need to do.  If at any time you want to leave, we leave.”

John takes her other wrist and adds “If I feel it is too much, I’m taking you outta there.  You hear me?”  Scully numbly nods and wipes at her face, trying to convince them that she is up for this.

After calling in to the local authorities and reporting the death to FBI headquarters, A.D. Skinner walks away from the commotion and leans heavy against the side of a nearby tree.  He notices his three agents as they walk down the hill towards the field to the decaying corpse of Special Agent Mulder.  The search party is now in recovery mode, surrounding the immediate area with yellow crime scene tape.  John and Monica each have Scully by an elbow her eyes red and swollen, her chest still racked with muffled sobs.  Her attempt to look strong at this moment doesn’t fool him.  He has never seen her so lost.

Skinner turns away from this hell.  He had promise Scully she wouldn’t come across her partner dead in a field and that is exactly what fate has delivered.  Removing his glasses and bringing his forearm up to his face, he wipes at the trail of a tear that escaped from his eye.  He hurts for her, for what they have all been through and for a child that will never know a father.  Guilt pulls at him.  If had hadn’t lost Mulder in the woods of Oregon, none of this would be happening.

Doggett can feel Scully’s body become tense when they are close enough to see Mulder.  Large portable lights are being set up around the area to illuminate the body for pictures and evidence collection.  One of the team puts up a hand to stop them from entering.  

“Agent Scully, I’m sorry for the loss of your partner, I truly am, but we have established the perimeter and we can’t let you near him until he has been released in to our custody from the local Medical Examiner office.”   Monica steadies Scully as she wobbles then addresses the man.  “Why are we bringing in the locals? The FBI has a right to jurisdiction and a forensic team in Helena.”

The man shakes his head.  “Yeah but we don’t have a medicalegal investigator.  Agent Scully is the only FBI examiner we have currently in state and for obvious reasons that is not going to work.  Headquarters has asked us to use the local office for initial investigation, bagging and tagging then we are flying him to Quantico for an exam in the morning.”

Scully’s knees begin to buckle, the weight of this reality becoming too much for her.  She knows the procedures, how deceased humans are placed in thick plastic body bags with a paper tag looped around their big toe for identification.  How they are refrigerated to prevent further decay, the exams and autopsies that follow a suspicious or unexplained death.  A pathologist will make a Y incision, then the removal and weighing of organs, tissue samples and stomach contents.  There will be blood samples taken and toxicological tests to run.  It is her knowledge of these things that almost bring her to her knees once again.  The thought of her beautiful Mulder being tossed in a bag and transported like any other body that she had examined over the last ten years breaks her. He was not just anyone.  He was hers.

She decides then that his body has been through enough.  She stands up with John’s help and focuses on the man who seems to be in charge.  “I am Agent Mulder’s Power of Attorney and it has a post death clause that allows me to make his arrangements.  His family is Jewish which means he must be buried without an autopsy, without embalming and soon.  We are going to let this team come in here, take photos, and collect whatever they need.  Then you are going to put Mulder on a plane with me to Quantico where he will be examined with me present.  You got that?” Before the man can answer, Skinner places a firm hand on his shoulder.  “Do what Agent Scully says, now!”

Quantico Morgue, Washington D.C. 8:15am

Scully stands in an autopsy suite at Quantico, a work space she and Mulder have shared many times over the years.  Today, he lays on a metal tray cold and nude before her, Frank the forensic tech is photographing his injuries as she points them out.  Having performed the autopsy on Gary, who was found in a field just prior to Mulder, she knows the damage the abduction has caused: trauma from restraints on all four extremities, deep bilateral lacerations to the face, biopsy incisions in the soft pallet and sinus cavity, multiple injection sites and the bisected sternum with scooped bone and tissue missing inside the chest cavity.  His once perfect form now shows an advanced state of neglect, dehydration and malnutrition.  Without knowing the exact details of the environment his body was held in while missing, it was hard to say when he met his death.  With the absence of rigor mortis and the appearance of his skin she thinks it has been two or three days.  Her clinical detachment waning, she takes a step back and takes in a few deep breaths in attempt to calm herself.

 Dr. Meredith Jenkins is currently the only other female pathologist at Quantico and she is one of the few co-workers Scully socializes with besides Mulder.   A.D. Skinner called her at dawn to ensure she would personally work this case.  After he and Agent Doggett dropped Scully off this morning they refuse to leave her, holding vigil in the lobby.  Grabbing a steaming cup of black coffee, she scans the Field Report and the Report of Investigation Skinner just handed her. 

  Performing a forensic exam on a fellow agent is always hard and when you know them personally, it is damn near impossible.  Witnessing it being done on someone you love-well that qualifies as torture.  Dana is a private person but Meredith has spent enough lunch breaks with her to know that Dana Scully loved Fox Mulder in every way there is to love another person. 

With a deep sigh she sips her coffee and ponders how she can talk her friend out of putting herself through this.  But like all others that know her, she is familiar with Dr. Scully’s large streak of stubborn determination.  It would be a lost cause.

She enters the room to find Scully in pathologist mode: scrubs, hair pulled back and donning protective eyewear.  Blonde with an athletic build and over six feet tall, she towers over Scully as she places an arm around her shoulders and pulls her in to a comforting side hug. “I was told you wanted to observe the exam.”  She pauses then adds, “Dana, do you think this is a good idea?”  

Scully stares ahead, her eyes focused on Mulder.   She shrugs then responds in a slow and measured tone.  “Meredith, I appreciate your concern but I know this case, I know how I want this handled and… I have to be here.  I have to be with him every possible second I can be with him.  Even if it is here… and I have to wear gloves to touch him, I have to be here.” Tears she thought she had exhausted start down her face causing the tech to pause from taking pictures and stare in uncomfortable silence. 

Dr. Jenkins waves him over and takes the camera.  “Thanks Frank, you can go now.  We can finish this.”  Meredith can’t imagine the pain, the living hell Scully has gone through and is standing in the middle of right now. She takes the camera and nods to her friend. “Are you ready for this?”  With a deep breath and a long exhale, Scully nods.  Together they document the story his body has to tell, a grisly portrait of his sacrifice and last testament to the truth he died trying to find.  

Once they have completed the external exam, Scully thanks Dr. Jenkins for her kindness and asks if she can stay with Mulder until the funeral home arrives.  There will be a delay, she is told and she has another hour with him.  Waiting silent beside his corpse is not an option-she just mentally can’t.  She wants to interact with him here in this place one last time and decides to bathe him. An unusual act for a pathologist but it may be their last time alone and she wants to show him one final act of love. After gathering the supplies, she runs warm water through the clear hose then takes his pale hand into her gloved one. 

  With a sponge and slow delicate motions, she soaps his arms that have held her when she needed comfort, his chest she laid her head on while watching old movies on his couch late at night, his beautiful face and lips that she sees every time she closes her eyes, and his thighs that have that ticklish spot that she loved to kiss.  She rinses him then gently washes his hair with the shampoo she keeps in her Quantico locker.  She weeps as the lavender scented bubbles swirl down the drain.  After drying him with a towel, she removes her latex gloves. 

With her hands now bare she runs her finger tips over him, committing the wonderful shapes of Fox Mulder to her memory.  Pulling a white sheet from a nearby shelf she lays it over him and places a kiss to his forehead then whispers “goodbye, my love” as the funeral staff arrives to take him away.

[dunkleduck-blog]

What Is Your Name?

[ LOOK AT ME. WRITING BS UF SANS/READER. WOWIE. P.s. First attempt to write something like this. JUST AN EXCUSE TO WRITE ESTABLISHED MARRIAGE UF SANS/READER. English is not my first language. Please point out my mistake. I think I need to fix both characters interpretation too. Hnngh. ] Summary; You lost your job, you went to drink for comfort. The next thing you know when you woke up, you were married to a skeleton. And you have no recollection of ever met a skeleton before. * * * * * Chapter 1. According to your fortune cookie, today would be your lucky day. So much for lucky talk and belief but you know that was all empty bullshit. Just earlier you got fired for no reason whatsoever at all! Wow, where's this 'luck' when you need it the most? Your employer apologized for unable to pay you anymore but does getting your last payment counted as luck? You are not sure. At least, they were being polite and honest aside from giving a brief explanation and reasoning for their action. You sighed. Well, they got some points and... it was acceptable, reasonable even. After all, they are THE boss. The talk about the downfall and the instability of economy didn't seem to glue in your mind. Heck, you didn't even catch any provided informations at all. Not appealing at all. All you want to do now is to get drunk of yourself and clear up your mind. The deadline to pay your rent was just around the corner and you don't need to deal with that bullshit after you just lost your job. You can start for job-hunting tomorrow, right? Still got plenty of time. But tonight? Tonight is still young and getting all wasted sound good. You pulled your car right up into the first bar you spotted; Grillby's. Never heard of it before, but you are not even picky when it comes to drinking. You need the sting-soothing burning sensation of the good alcohol. Finding some comfort by drinking had seemed to be your habit when you started to work. It becomes more frequent when you started to switch from jobs to jobs. But it didn't matter, at least you are drowning yourself by drinking instead of talking it out. You never trust any of your colleagues or co-workers. The past stayed in the past. You rather not repeated the same mistake. You parked your car right next to a black Cadillac and strutted yourself in. Couple of eyes wildly wandered over you, your body but you could careless about it. Your mind was occupied with far much more important problems, you don't need to deal with this new annoyance feeling too. Five-six-seven strides and you found yourself in the stool right before the counter. And surprise by the fact that you were greeted by a fire-element monster. Yeah, those Monsters... Being trapped for God-knows how long and now their kind scattered across the surface, all over the world... some years ago, right? How old were you back then? 15? 16? You lost count. But then again, YOU don't even know that Monsters DO exist. How very ignorant of you. ... Oh. Now that you realized after taking a quick glance, majority of the customers were Monsters. Oh well. They DO serve humans too, right? Guess you either you walked out and make yourself look like an embarrassed fool or just order whatever on the menu. Because at this point, you don't really care anymore. The only thing that kept you still on your ground is your obnoxious ignorance self. And your mission to get drunk. Despite of fast your heart thumped, racing as if all this monster was going to - You ordered for a shot of vodka. The bartender seemed to get the clear order and he was gone from your sight. You didn't even bother to look or glance around anymore, eyes straight towards the cabinets, lined with various vintage-looking bottles. It didn't took so long and the bartender retreated with a bottle of Vodka and a shot glass infront of you. You started to drink. First shot, you could feel the burnt on your throat, gliding down. A slow opening but you were sure feeling good. Second and third shots, followed with a couple more. Your mind started to feel fuzzy and buzzed after you emptied half of the bottle. The glass was still in your hand as your flailed your arms around in a wobbly fashion, hitting the person next to you. You were no longer sober as you spoke inbetween laugh and tears. You just wanted some peace of mind, some luck and faith to believe; to believe there was still hope in your future, that you could still dream for a better future life. You didn't even wish to be in this life. Family problems, lack of friends, back-stabbing. Everyone just used you for their own advantages and pleasure, not to mention all the guilt-trip cycle. You practically cling onto the person next to you, and they seemed to hold you in place while you slobbering out your misery. Every words came out from your mouth wasn't exactly audible or manageable. Couple of curses slipped out too until you were out limp and darkness welcomed you. * * * * * You woke up by the lukewarm of the sun kissed against your skin. It was a nice tingly sense to be awakened to, except... You were pretty sure your apartment's window wasn't face directly on your right bedside. Eyes flicked open insteadly as you jolted out of the whoever-bed's-is-this. Practically scrambling yourself out of the bedroom, you found yourself donned in a crimson nightgown, made out of silk. It fitted nicely on your body, your right size. This is getting... creepy and weird. You could feel the pit in your stomach rushed back and forth violently, anxiety built up within. You just don't feel right. Last night was a total wreck, you drunk yourself to the core just because you lost your job. Wow, that's a new record. You don't even remember what happened on the latter. You just can't recall the event when you tried to think. As if a black hole domained it and ate the memories away, leaving you with blank empty answer. Common sense kicked in. Whatever bullshit happened, you just need to know where are you right now and THIS isn't your lousy apartment at all; you knew it for sure. As you descended downstairs, you found no one but yourself. Okay... What if this house was truly yours? Does the fortune and luck finally sided on you this time? That would be real great and fantastic. Maybe, you ARE real rich now. Hah, you thought. Metal spiral staircase, black in color just to match with the rest of the living room. It was as if some colour theme had played on. Black and white and red? It was least to your liking or so to say, much to your opposite. You are more the rainbow-type of person but you aren't complaining if this is your house. The wall painted in black, while the marble floor in white. Some of the furnitures in the other hand were varied inbetween black or white or red. As if someone just tossed whatever they wanted and they were super clean too. Must be a neat freak. But in all honesty, the living room is real huge. Is this some rich dope mansion? You found yourself wandered over the white cabinet with some picture frames -donned in black- on it. A couple of pictures taken from all the four seasons but the Spring caught your attention. You picked up the frame for a closer inspection. It was a wedding picture of... YOU and a s-s-SKELETON?! You looked down on your hand - and found a red band on your third finger. If this is a prank set up by someone, they had done a good job. You tried to pull off the ring but to no avail. It didn't even budged. You are married. Married to a skeleton. This must be a mistake. This has to be. You Calm down, ___. You must be dreaming. You will get up in no time. You pinched yourself... ... annnnnnd nothing happened. And ouch, why did you pinched that hard. Damn, why did you do it on first place. Still, you shook your head in disbelief. Take a deep breath, ___. There must be a... misunderstanding?? You don't know but you KNOW that this was never happened. Maybe you can explain what happened last night - Before your mind could trailed off further, your ears caught a faint conversation- more like an argument banter back and forth beyond what you assumed to be the front door. "dunno, boss. they just - passed out right there. so, i just leave them at home - " "STARS, SANS. OF ALL THE THING YOU SHOULD DO AND YOU DECIDED TO LEAVE THEM /ALONE./ GOOD JOB FOR NOTHING. I DON'T GET WHAT THE HUMAN SAW IN YOUR SELF-SLOTH-BEING. ONLY A MORON WOULD MARRIED TO YOU." Well, if you did took a quick glance of the state of the bedroom you just left, some socks were sure scattered about and a strong pang of mustard? But overall, it smelled stinks and you agreed with the loud voice. You can hear the jingled keys noise. Maybe that's your cue to hide. Wait. Why would you even hide yourself from someone that you - well, your 'husband'? Skele-husband? Well, you don't know anything about them, hell you don't even remember of ever married to a skeleton. But if you played it out nicely, maybe you can make yourself out and through. Yes, that's about the idea. Good one, ___. The door was about to open but you dashed upon it, gave it a HARD slam and with a quick lock of course. Click! ... That wasn't in plan. You can hear whoever behind the door, cursing and yelling. That was the second voice's owner. Also, you heard the owner of the first voice just laughed at the misfortune. "WELL, YOU MUST BE PLEASED FOR WHATEVER YOU HAD MADE HER TO BE THIS RUDE. INFLUENCE HER WITH YOUR CUNNING ANNOYANCE ATTITUDE. I EXPECT BETTER THAN THIS, YOU GOOD FOR NOTHING BROTHER." "chill, bro. i got this one. geez." Knock, knock. Silence. Was you supposed to open the door all nice? And that was what you exactly did but to your dismay, it jerked back on place. "ah, ah, ah, sweetheart. i hope you don't forget when it comes to a-door." That was awful and you snorted. But still, you are a little confused - well, HUGE confusion of what you should do. Until it hit you. This. Was supposed to be a knock-knock joke, huh? They knocked the door twice again for you. But you can also hear some impatient footsteps on the other side. Better make this quick. Knock knock. "W-Who's there?" "who." "Who... who?" "wow, i didn't know my bro got startled up by some owl on the other side of this door. guess the bird just ruffled his wings away."

[letspretendfictionpressworks]

body language 8

I have a weak grasp on time. I measure time by the monotonous drone of work. There are days that I work, and days that I do not. I do not do anything particular or interesting on my days off, so I have no reason to keep track of the date. It does not matter what month or day of that month I currently reside in. Why would it matter? The only thing that I need to keep track of is whether or not I need to be at work by eight o’clock today.

 It's a new thing, an odd thing, then, that I’m hyperaware of the fact that it’s Monday. Usually there’s a dull understanding somewhere in the back of my mind that the first day of my work week is Monday, but I never give it more than a passing thought. If someone were to stop me on the street and ask what day it was, I wouldn’t think to say “Monday.” I would say “first day of work this week.” The fact that that day was “Monday” would be a detail that required too much effort to dredge up.

 But right now, I am hyper-aware of the fact that it is Monday. That there are four days until Friday. I have to work today and four more days until Friday.

 I think this is excitement. It seems melodramatic to say that I haven’t felt excited about anything that I nearly forget what it feels like, but that’s the most accurate way to describe it.

 I think I’m excited.

 It’s not an all-consuming excitement that eats away at the corners of my mind and infects me like a drug or poison and makes me until there is nothing else.

 I can focus on work. I can clean. I can refill the napkin holders. I can manage the register. I can take orders. I can force my brittle, false smile at the customers who offer me small talk that I do not know how to respond to.

 It’s more like the glow of a firefly on a dark night. Soft, ephemeral. Something that comes and goes. Sometimes I see it, and sometimes I don’t. But it’s something to look at in the dank darkness. It’s something to occasionally tickle my thoughts. It breaks up the monotony of my life.

 And so, for a moment, I think perhaps my mind is playing a bizarre trick on me. I think that I allowed myself to manifest some sort of daydream.

 But then the daydream speaks to me.

 “Markus?”

 I blink. I blink again.

 My daydream is staring at me, expression as surprised as mine.

 I open my mouth to speak but find it is confused. My autopilot function is used to a simple code with a small pool of replies while I am at work. Instead of asking, “What are you doing here?” or even clarifying “Are you real?” my mouth forms words it has been programmed to say in this building, in this setting.

 “I recommend our daily special of lingonberries.”

 It is only after the words have been issued from my mouth that I remember I am not behind the cash register. I am in the middle of emptying a trash can that is set off to the side of the dining area. Even my autopilot mode is confused by this sudden apparition. Normally, I would say “I’ll be right over to take your order” if there were no one behind the cash register, and only if prompted by the customer. Normally I would keep my eyes down and speak only if spoken to. Normally I wouldn’t have said anything.

 But the fact that this customer—or daydream, I still am not sure which of the two it is yet—addressed me by name instead of following the usual script that customers use that I programmed myself to predict—that leaves me flailing.

 “Lingonberries?” he asks. If he’s surprised by my reply, he does not seem it. He has a quirk to his lips, a boyish expression that might look ridiculous on most people but makes him look more innocent. “I’ll try that, then.”

 My hands are full of fistfuls of plastic trash bag and I feel so stupid, so suddenly. I drop the bag back into the trash receptacle.

 “I can—” I glance at the register and see no one is currently behind it.

 “I need to—” I raise my hands as though the site of them is explanation enough. They must be, because the daydream nods and I retreat to wash them.

 I honestly expect to find that he has disappeared as I scrub my hands in the industrial sink near the kitchen. But then I’m behind the register, and when I glance up, I’m staring up into his eyes, chips of lightly colored glass.

 There is direct eye contact.

 It lasts longer than I mean to, like his eyes have magnets and I can’t fight the pull of them.

 “I— Special today— We have— Special is— I—”

 My programming has short-circuited, the commands have been corrupted, and I have been glitched.

 Trevor.

 It is Trevor standing just on the other side of this counter, and I cannot figure out why he would be here. Why he would be here when I have never seen him enter this eatery before. I have not seen him prior to our random encounter at the amusement park, and I cannot understand why I would be on the other side of a counter with him now, trying to remember how to do a basic job of taking an order.

 But Trevor is here.

 And my words are infected with a virus.

 He is not a daydream, and I am a broken record trying to play itself, skipping words and repeating them, with no end in sight. A robot set to complete a simple task and overloading. A catastrophe.

 “I— There are— We have— We have— We have—”

 His eyes dart away to the small chalkboard where the daily special—rotated seasonally—is written out. It isn’t an awkward gesture, it isn’t a purposeful gesture, like he’s too embarrassed to keep looking at me. Instead, it’s an honestly curious glance, like he’s charmed by the small things that mark this as a family-owned establishment.

 But it saves me, nonetheless.

 The intense focus of his eyes are no longer on me, and I can breathe. I can catch my breath. I can stop babbling long enough to collect my scattered thoughts and try to arrange them. My programming can update.

.

I’m careful when he turns to face me again. I keep my eyes fixed on a point to the side of him. I do not like eye contact. It makes me uncomfortable. It’s intense. It’s too much to handle.

 And with that small release of pressure, I am able to remember that he already expressed interest in our daily special.

 “Pancakes with lingonberries?” I ask.

 “That sounds lovely,” he tells me honestly.

 He does not mention my earlier stumbling and stuttering speech as I ring up his order and he pays. He lets it slide. His reasons I cannot fathom, but I am grateful.

 “When do you get off for lunch?” he asks.

 I glance at the clock and realize I should have started my lunch break ten minutes ago, right around the time Trevor first came in. However, many of my coworkers are younger than me, teenagers fresh out of school, who think it’s trendy to work in family owned eateries and who think that time restraints on breaks are merely suggestions and need not be taken seriously.

 My coworker was supposed to be behind this register, taking orders and relaying them to the cook. But as usual, she allowed herself a “well needed” extra fifteen minutes on her lunch break.

 I feel mildly irritated at her lack of courtesy, at the indifference she feels about my own need for a break, for a meal.

 But what did you expect, Mikey? You never complain and never try to seriously chastise her. Instead of fighting for yourself, you roll over and play dead, hoping the tension and issue will pass you by without any further conflict.

 Trevor is still waiting for an answer, I realize.

 “Soon,” I say. “When my coworker gets back from her break.”

 There’s a rumple in his eyebrows and I see that he’s disappointed. That surprises me.

 “But,” I find myself hurrying on to explain, “she should be back any minute.”

 His brow smooths, disappointment melting away, and there’s something almost eager in his voice when he asks, “Would you sit with me? When you can go on break, that is.”

 There isn’t a reason to tell him no, and so I say, “Yes.”

 He finds a seat at a table and not more than five minutes later, my coworker slips on an apron and returns to work.

 (“Oh, did I take too long for break? My boyfriend called. He wanted to tell me…”

 “Yeah, I understand.”  

 “You’re the best, Markus!���)

 And I’m joining Trevor at the table. It’s a smaller one, with only two seats. There aren’t many large tables available. Not many tables at all, honestly, since the place is relatively small and designed for quick bites and not many people linger.

 “You aren’t going to eat?” Trevor asks when he sees I’m empty-handed.

 I am fidgeting.

 “No,” I say.

 “Not hungry?”

 Sometimes I ask the cook for an order of pancakes. I was told I’m allowed some for free, if I want them. Perks of working in the food industry. Sometimes I ask for an order, sometimes I don’t. I cannot imagine a world where I ask Kay or his wife to make food for me. I already owe them too much.

 Today though, now though, I am too nervous to even think about food.

 “Not really,” I tell him.

 “I didn’t realize you worked here,” Trevor says.

 I want to tell him that is obvious. We know almost nothing about one another, and I didn’t expect him to know where I work. But I recognize his words as an attempt at small talk.

 “Yeah,” I say, even though there wasn’t a question attached to Trevor’s statement. It’s the only thing I can think to offer.

 I hate small talk.

 “I work at the mall,” Trevor says. “The one down—”

 He gestures with his hand.

 “Oh,” I say.

 I am not good at this small talk business and I am regretting that I took him up on this offer. I should have turned him down. I can’t imagine he’s going to have a good opinion of me after he leaves, between my stuttering sentences earlier and my clipped replies now.

 I am no good with words.

 “I’m on my meal break, too,” Trevor tells me. “I asked a co-worker for recommendations and he told me about this place. ‘Have you been to Cut the Crepe? Oh, man, you gotta go! Best pancakes in the area!’”

 I recognize this as an attempt to start a conversation, but I have no passion for this eatery. I work here because I need money, and because they would hire me.

 I try something new. Instead of taking the topic he’s offered me and continuing it, I try to go for a different one.

 “Do you usually get something to eat at the mall?”

 “Ah,” he says, a shadow flittering across his expression. “Well, no, actually. I normally bring lunch, but I didn’t think to make my own this morning before I left. Normally, my girlfriend—uh, ex-girlfriend—makes it for me.”

 It is suddenly so very awkward and I curse myself. This is what I get for doing something different. This is what I get for trying to keep small talk going.

 “Oh,” I say in a small voice.

 I can see his expression shifting. I don’t know what he’s thinking, but I can tell he’s trying to figure something out.

 “You didn’t— It wasn’t because of you,” he says quickly. “We were already broken up when— I didn’t think she would come back to the apartment again. The amusement park— we broke up there.”

 A part of me appreciates the explanation, told in jumbled pieces. I don’t know how I’d feel if they broke up because his ex-girlfriend thought he cheated on her with me. I suppose that part of me is relieved. But another part of me—a larger part of me—finds this conversation too awkward to tolerate. I’d rather not know. I’d rather remain oblivious than hear about it, especially since I had to witness part of it.

 “Okay,” I say.

 He lets out a small exhale. After a small beat, he says, “I didn’t, uh, know you worked here. Honestly. I wasn’t trying to stalk you or anything. I mean,” he adds hastily, “I’m glad I ran into you again.”

 “You are?” Surprise urges me to speak. I didn’t think he was stalking me. The town isn’t so small that running into the same stranger time and time again is coincidence, but it also isn’t so large that it doesn’t happen every now and then. I’m not surprised to run into him, but I am surprised that he’s happy to see me again.

 “Yeah,” he enthuses. And then, hesitantly, almost shyly, he adds, “Aren’t you?”

 “I am,” I tell him. And it’s the truth.

 He smiles at me, that small curve of the one side of his mouth. I smile back.

 “Do you want a bite of this?” he asks, gesturing towards his forgotten pancakes. “I can get another fork.”

 “Oh, no, I—”

 I am still too nervous to have an appetite, but Trevor is already halfway across the dining area. He asks my coworker for a spare fork, she obliges, and Trevor returns, holding it up triumphantly like it’s a trophy he’s just won in the Olympics.

 “For you,” he says, offering it to me when he sits down again.

 I take it, even though I still have no appetite. He pushes his plate closer towards me, smiling, waiting and watching, like I’m a stray kitten he’s found and this is a test of trust—if the kitten will come close enough to be fed, he has won it over.

 I cannot refuse, I find. Trevor is too eager and I have no excuse other than a lack of hunger. I cut off a small bite of a pancake and put it to my mouth. The lingonberries are tart, only mildly sweet, perfectly ripened.

 “Is it good?” Trevor asks, watching me for a reaction.

 “Yeah,” I answer, smiling at his enthusiasm. “It’s good.”

 He lets out a relieved breath like he’s just passed an impossible test.

 “But you’re the one who bought it,” I tell him. I feel almost overwhelmed by his odd desire for my approval. “You’re the one who’s supposed to think it’s good. I work here. I can get them whenever.”

 Trevor looks like I’ve severely chastised him. “I didn’t think about— You’re right. Of course, you’re right. That was stupid of me. Sorry, I didn’t think about the fact that you probably get these for free all the time.”

 He looks so dejected, poking at another bite of his pancakes.

 With a small sigh, I reach to grab another small bite. I do not miss how Trevor is watching me, curious.

 “They’re good,” I explain.

 He beams, a smile too bright for his face to contain. It illuminates the room.

 My face is warm.

 “You’re blushing,” he notes.

 “No,” I say, ducking my head.

 “You are,” he marvels. “Why?”

 “The pancakes,” I mumble. “They’re really good.”

 Trevor laughs, and my embarrassment nearly washes me away. But I like that laugh, quite a bit. It’s a nice laugh.

 It isn’t long before Trevor says he needs to leave to head back to work, and I can’t object because my break is almost over, too.

 He leaves, and I return to work. It’s Monday, I remember. Normally I wouldn’t remember what day of the week it is, but it’s Monday. Only four days away from Friday.

 I am walking on air.

[goodra-king]

Transcript of Changing the Game as an Entrepreneur

Transcript of Changing the Game as an Entrepreneur written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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John Jantsch: This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Gusto, modern, easy payroll benefits for small businesses across the country. And because you’re a listener, you get three months free when you run your first payroll. Find out at gusto.com/tape.

John Jantsch: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape marketing podcast. This is John Jansen. My guest today is Greg Meade. He the CEO and co-creator of business and let’s just face it, a sport called Crossnet. So Greg, thanks for joining me.

Greg Meade: Yeah, no problem. John, thanks for having me.

John Jantsch: So I guess we ought to start with the two minute summary of what is cross net? Explain the game.

Greg Meade: Yeah, so cross net is a recreation of a childhood game. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with four square box ball. It’s a old middle school, elementary school game. You’d play in the ground, you bounce it, you’d have four quadrants and you’d always want to be the king and usually you want to stay in that four square. By the time recess ended or whatever lunch was coming. And so that’s the whole objective of that game. And then we ended up bringing it back to life. And it’s in the air now. So it’s four square in the air that’s cross net. So you play two 11 and you can only score in the king square, which is also the foursquare.

John Jantsch: So, so there’s an element of volleyball to it, I guess.

Greg Meade: Yeah, absolutely. You don’t have to be good at volleyball though. So I mean, obviously if you’re better at volleyball, the better you’ll do. Me and our founders, we actually aren’t volleyball players at all. We play basketball, soccer, everything else besides volleyball. So we have a little taps creation of it. And we’re athletic. So it, it works out well.

John Jantsch: So I’m envisioning this, I know when I was growing up, we used to do this. I’d get together with my friends and we’d make up these games and our own rules and it may be involved to baseball at a bat, but you know, other than that, we had our own rules. I’m envisioning you guys sitting around drinking one day. Okay, this is just my vision. Drinking beers one day and you said, “Let’s do this”. I mean is that the origin story of cross net?

Greg Meade: Similar, yeah. So my friend Mike, our co founder and partner, he graduated from Northeastern and he called me up one day. He’s like, “Greg, I want to do something. I want to invent something with you.” He knew I was in the marketing and entrepreneurship so he’s like, “I don’t want to be an engineer nine to five let’s go do something.” So I was like, “All right, come over right now.” So he came over, it was probably like two in the afternoon. We sat there all day on the couch watching ESPN highlights over and over, just thinking of ideas, jotting them down on notes pad on our phones. We came up with a list of 50 products. It was a wall charger, another speaker, and then cross net. And we were like, okay, we have to do this. We wanted to bring the element of sports to the next level.

Greg Meade: So we decided to go with go cross net. And the next day we went out to Walmart target and we bought two badminton sets. We ripped one apart and put it against a tree in my mom’s shed and the other one was normal and we ended up calling some friends over, we played it and it was a fun time. Then we actually produced it and made it official.

John Jantsch: So is this one of those things where you just making up the rules as you were going and eventually after enough trial and error landed on what seemed to work?

Greg Meade: Yeah, so we wanted to incorporate the normal foursquare rules. You know, you mess it up, you go to the back of the line. But normal foursquare, you don’t play to a points system. It’s more of like, whoever is in there the longest wins in a time period. We play basketball, play a lot of pickup basketball. You played 11 you win by two. So we implemented the score to 11 and you must win by two and if you mess up, you go to the back of the line still like Foursquare and you keep your points.

John Jantsch: All right, so you’ve got the idea, you’ve played enough, you’ve played with some friends to maybe people tell you, “Yeah, this is fun.” I mean, how do you take it to the next step to make it a real thing?

Greg Meade: Yeah. So we knew it was going to be a hit. So what we did was we outsourced it, we manufactured it, and we made it a playable game and a presentable game so we can bring to the beach, to a grassy area, and we got people’s reactions and they loved it. If you set it up right now, you go to the beach, you’ll set it up and there’ll be a line of 20 kids sometimes. And people taking photos, videos, asking what it is. It’s surreal.

John Jantsch: In some ways you have to create the demand, right? If you’re going to go to Walmart or Scheels or somebody like that and say, “We’ve got this great idea.” I mean they’re going to want to see people want to play it, right? I mean, so did you have to go out and I don’t know, for lack of a better term, expo and to create some demand where people are like, “Yeah, where can we get this?”

Greg Meade: Essentially. Yeah, when we go out in public, we play and then like I said, people would come up to us and end up playing. But we did a lot of marketing online, social media, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. Really got social presence out there. We’re pretty good at that stuff. And then my brother’s also a lead sales man. So he picked up the phone and he got some deals done for us. We’re in Scheels right now.

John Jantsch: Yeah, I looked at your locator map and found a few of those. So what has been the biggest hurdle to this entire, I mean, obviously you’re not done, but so far what’s been the biggest hurdle to this entire idea or adventure?

Greg Meade: It would definitely be keeping up with demand. Last summer we got hit big time with a wave of orders. We weren’t anticipated for. I think we skyrocketed by eight times our sales. Our inventory depleted overnight and we had to make our customers wait a month for the product, which is, it’s unfortunate. We don’t want to keep running into that issue and that’s something we’re still actively trying to fix on this team. But we keep growing at a faster pace than we actually anticipate. So next time around we’re going to anticipate times 20 so we’re ready for everything.

John Jantsch: Is there a season to this? I’m guessing anytime you can do stuff outdoors that’s probably better than, say winter?

Greg Meade: Yeah, for sure. Summer is our Christmas. It’s hot everywhere, but when it comes to Christmas time, winter time, it’s still crazy off the charts. People are buying it for the summer or they’re just buying it because they live in hot locations. California, Texas, Florida.

John Jantsch: Yeah, where they can play year round.

Greg Meade: Some people play in the snow too, which is cool.

John Jantsch: Yeah. We have a little game that my kids and I play and it’s actually more fun. We’ll take it on a hike or a camping trip or something. It’s actually more fun in the snow and involves a little net and a ball as well. So what’s your marketing look like and how has it evolved? Or it simply just been word of mouth?

Greg Meade: It’s been definitely word of mouth after our initial marketing I would say. So we definitely scaled Facebook ads drastically over the last two quarters. We’ve found out our target market, which was essentially mom and dads. More than the typical volleyball player or the typical 20 year old kid that would be competitive at this. Obviously those people still buy, but our arc market is more towards the moms and we’re going to scale that and grow it and get them more involved essentially as that’s our main market right now.

John Jantsch: So they’re buying it more as a family activity.

Greg Meade: Yeah, that’s what it seems like for now.

John Jantsch:  Everyone loves payday, but loving a payroll provider, that’s a little weird. Still, small businesses across the country love running payroll with Gusto. Gusto automatically files and pays your taxes. It’s super easy to use and you can add benefits and management tools to help take care of your team and keep your business safe. It’s loyal, it’s modern. You might fall in love yourself. Hey, and as a listener, you get three months free when you run your first payroll. So try a demo and test it out at gusto.com/tape that’s gusto.com/tape.

John Jantsch: So have you made anything that you look back now and go, “Oh that was a mistake. I wish we hadn’t done that.”

Greg Meade: I would say the development of the actual game in the beginning. We rushed it. Well, we didn’t rush it. We’ve had a bunch of different prototypes. We never really had that product that was the final product until recently. So I wish we went back and more in like just really went through each material, each process of playing the game. And from when it ships out of our warehouse to delivery to the people setting it up and actually enjoying it. So I would say that was a hurdle.

John Jantsch: Have you sensed there’s a competition to what you do?Are you having to teach people about the game before they have an interest in playing it? Or are other established games keeping you out of places? Have you sensed where your competitive pressure is?

Greg Meade: Yeah, I would say when people start seeing it, they always ask questions. How do you play? What is this? A lot of them understand that it is Foursquare and they just need to know the rules on how you actually keep points, win, and stuff like that. So that is a hurdle. We have actually implemented a nice rule book. So when people do get the game, they understand how to play, how to set it up. So you just read that, quick five minutes and you actually understand it. It’s really simple once you play once or twice and you really get the hang of it and it gets intense.

John Jantsch: So was there a moment when you were doing this and everybody’s like, “Is this is going to work? We’re putting a lot of effort in it.” Was there a time or something that happened where you said, “You know what? I think this is going to work.”

Greg Meade: Yeah. We have always had a good faith in it and we knew it was going to take off. It’s just a matter of time. I don’t think there was ever a moment where we had a relapse or whatever thinking that it wasn’t going to work. I think it was more of we hit Scheels, right? And we were like, “Okay, let’s really take this to the next levels. So yeah, we got into some good shot stores really quick and we knew that it was possible.

John Jantsch: Would you say the chain store purchase was a big break?Because sometimes a lot of people think, okay, I’ve got this product, it’s really profitable, we sell online, one at a time we make a lot of money and then a big retailer comes along and all of a sudden it’s like, “Yeah we want to buy a thousand of them” or whatever the number is, “but we also want it for 75% off of what you’re selling.” I mean, so sometimes there can be some like, do we really want to go that route? Did you ever have a moment where the type of distribution for a Scheels, even though it felt really great, felt scary too?

Greg Meade: Yeah. When it comes to Scheels, we just wanted to jump on that right away and get a feel for the retail side and we got a good deal with them. Moving forward though, like some future companies like Dick’s and all that, they work a little harder. So we do want to make sure we’re on the positive side of it things. And every place I’ve gone and we’ve been satisfied and have a good relationship with them. So I would say just make sure you’re risking it and make you’re being smart about it too at the same time.

John Jantsch: There are horror stories, and I hate to pick on Walmart, but there’s one that I know for sure where, went to a small company and so we’re going to buy 50,000 units and we need this price. And they basically were almost break even. And then they sent half of them back. So all of a sudden it’s like, yeah, this great deal that we got with Walmart sunk us. That that can be a scary time, I think.

Greg Meade: Yeah, for sure. And then we’re not going to face that difficulty, I don’t think. I think we’re smart enough and we’re above our market and we know what to do and what not to do. And we know our.com sales are very important to us. And we know people will go there regardless to buy.

John Jantsch: So are you starting to feel the pressure to expand? In other words like, okay, we have one hit, now let’s make another one.

Greg Meade: Yeah. As in terms of products or?

John Jantsch: Yeah. Well the products or really any fashion. But I guess I was thinking the typical way a lot of people expand is they, they get a hit, they get a little reputation, they’ve got some distribution. All of a sudden now it’s easier to go back to the well.

Greg Meade: Yeah, for sure. So we want to definitely expand to different countries now in 2020. Get more involved in Australia, South America, and countries that love volleyball. We’ve had a lot of love from different countries, over 30 countries. So we want to expand on that aspect, set up some tournaments. In regards to new products, we actually have an indoor model coming out in about 27 days and that is for the gymnasiums, physical educations, concrete so you can tailgate with it. It’s really good for gyms, schools in classrooms. So they can get it into the curriculum, which we’re all for.

John Jantsch: Yeah, that’s a, that’s a whole different sales channel isn’t it?

Greg Meade: Yep. And that means we need more manpower.

John Jantsch: So you started hinting at some tournaments and things. Do you ever see in your wildest dreams that cross net becomes, I’m trying to think of the right word, but a sport that has leagues and that has summertime sign ups for things and maybe even becomes a sport that has maybe levels of competition?

Greg Meade: Yeah, absolutely. We’d love to get it on ESPN, obviously, sports center and get it into a professionalist sport, I guess we can call it. Definitely. We do definitely see that in the long run. We have to grow our brand first and make sure it’s, what we want it to be and go down that route. If we want to make it a competitive side or makw it more fun side. But I think we have leverage to do both. Our first tournament actually was a few months ago in San Diego. We thought it would be 15-20 people. We ended up having 50-60 people come out and it was a hell of a time.

John Jantsch: Yeah. I hate to dwell on anything negative, is there ever a sense that this would be something easy that somebody else could knock off?

Greg Meade: No, we’re patent protected and we have a good legal team so I’m pretty confident in anything they try to do we’ll be able to back our end.

Greg Meade: Good. The reason I asked that is because I think a lot of times people pass over the need to do that in a situation like this because it costs money. It’s expensive to have a good legal team. And so I applaud you for taking that a longterm investment. So Greg, tell people where they can find out more about just the game, how it’s played, and obviously acquire the equipment that they might need.

Greg Meade: Yeah, you head over to crossnetgame.com and you can also buy it on Target, Walmart, Amazon, eBay, all that. If you go to our website though we’ll give you a pretty good description of how to play. You’ll see some videos. You can go to our YouTube channel, Instagram, Twitter. We’re always posting organic raw photos and videos to see how people play and stuff.

John Jantsch: Great. A small business success story. I appreciate you stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing podcast, Greg, and hopefully we’ll run into you soon out there on the road.

Greg Meade: Sounds good. Thanks John, for having me.

from http://bit.ly/2S026SW

[lewishamledger]

A shirker’s paradise

Words by Seamus Hasson; Photo by Lima Charlie

For anyone unfamiliar with the cult blog Deserter it could probably be best described as a shirker’s guide to kicking about in South London. It reviews pubs and restaurants as well as offering expert advice on how to get away with doing as little work as possible.          

The writing is iconoclastic, often profane and always exquisite, attracting a dedicated and growing fan base. The duo behind it, Andrew Grumbridge and Vincent Raison – aka Dulwich Raider and Dirty South – have now written a book - Today South London, Tomorrow South London. It’s a chronicle of the pair’s misadventures south of the river and has been described as being ‘part guide, part travelogue.’

I met the irreverent pair for a pint at Sutton’s Radio in Lewisham to find out about the book launch and to ask what they really think about the nine to five. “I’ve never enjoyed it,” Vince assures me. “I find it insulting Seamus on a spiritual level” Andrew concurs.

It’s a Sunday evening when I meet them and just a few days after the book launch. Andrew is sporting a Dulwich Hamlet scarf and Vince is wearing green cords supported with a pair of braces. They each exude a certain anarchistic charm, like the Sleaford Mods but with RP accents.

I find them both in good spirits, that maybe because firstly they’re at where they love being most – the pub and secondly the book launch has gone rather well. “The launch was amazing, I mean it was absolutely packed,” Andrew tells me. “It was at the Dulwich Beer Dispensary. It was so packed my daughter couldn’t get in. It was sensational.”

“We did give the audience free beer early on though, that might have helped,” Vince suggests. “Nothing to do with it,” insists Andrew. The response so far to the book has been extremely positive, even attracting celebrity endorsements from the likes of Jenny Éclair and Jay Raynor.

The first run sold out in the first week “due to a pre –order frenzy,” Andrew tells me, “their words (the publishers), not ours,” and there’s a genuine sense of excitement surrounding it. “It’s actually the second book that we’ve written,” Vince explains. “The first book we did was more about the philosophy aspect of shirking and why you should spend more time not working.

“We got very close to a publishing deal with several high-profile publishers but it didn’t happen in the end and we ended up thinking we would attack the hyper-local stuff we do. We collected some of the stuff about our days out which worked well.”

“The publisher insisted on a pile of new stuff as well which was very annoying because it meant we had to do some work,” Andrew adds. “Yes, and we had to try and link the stories so we actually had a full four seasons of deserting although I wouldn’t call it a narrative exactly,” Vince elaborates.

The two men have an obvious rapport and when it came co-writing the book an almost telepathic sense of each other’s working patterns. “We’ve been doing the blog for so long, we don’t sit down and write the same piece,” Andrew explains.

“It’s always written separately. But basically one would write it and the other would edit it and make suggestions.” “Yes, and because we’re both fundamentally lazy,” Vince adds matter of factually, “what one person would normally do, there were two of us doing so that worked perfectly.”

“I don’t know about you but my Mrs sometimes says she can’t tell who wrote which passage now” Andrew refers to Vince.” “I think there’s definitely a deserter voice.” That voice was first established in 2014 when they launched the blog.

They had been working together on an ill-fated idea for a TV series about aliens but without any of the explosions and horror usually associated with the genre. “It was more about the backroom stuff, like the logistics and the warehouse,” Andrew explains.

“I still don’t know why it hasn’t got picked up.” “Yeah, it’s a mystery, alien admin,” Vince adds. A TV producer they were pitching to advised them they needed more characters and a light bulb went off. They decided to write about characters and places in South London.

“We started writing about what we actually do in our kind of play time; our little days out. I mean I wouldn’t say our days out are necessarily themed but there’s often a reason that sparks it off,” Vince says.

“Yeah, they’ve probably become more themed as we realised you need to do different things to keep people interested and indeed keep us interested,” Andrew adds. “I think the first post we did was about the World Cup in 2014 and where you could watch it with a partisan crowd,” Vince explains.

“So, if you’re watching Argentina why not go to an Argentinian pub.” (Incidentally there aren’t any, but the guys inform me that the Elephant is the best place to go for South American bars in general).

“When we started writing about South East London we realised that nobody else was really covering it as we were,” Vince tells me. “Or the way that we wanted it covered,” Andrew agrees.

“I always wanted to read travel logs that tell you about the darker side of the locale as well as you know the best places to eat or drink. I wanted to know the worst places to eat and drink as well.”

As well as the blog Vincent and Andrew also have their own podcast which covers similar themes - pubs, days out and deserting. It’s a tongue-in-cheek broadcast where the two guys have occasional like-minded guests to discuss the finer aspects of deserting.

They’ve also recently introduced a literary corner to the podcast where they discuss humorous books they’ve both found funny down the years. “We’ve got an insider friend who does still work in a high powered job but he’s an utter slacker and he tells us about his experiences of sleeping on the job and getting away with it,” Andrew tells me.

“We get the odd guest who has an angle on how to live for less such as opting out of the property market and living on a house boat or someone who’s letting their flat and travelling the world,” Vince adds.

“There’s a friend of ours who rents out his house and just travels around all the time. He considers himself homeless, which is a bit rich because he’s renting his house but nonetheless he has to keep travelling because he really has no choice.”

“Obviously not everyone can do it but it’s kind of nice to know that someone is doing it,” Vince adds.

The podcast is split into sections and each episode covers what the pair have been up to since the previous broadcast. There are also sections on what Andrew describes as “the philosophies behind deserting and slacking off, you know how to make ends meet.

“It’s Kind of a support group” he says. “More people I talk to now, I don’t know about you Vince know us for the podcast rather than the blog.” “Yeah I think the podcast is the rising star of entertainment,” Vince agrees. “Our slightly long form written pieces on the blogs are perhaps increasingly old fashioned.

“I mean we like them, because we had to write what we wanted to read I suppose ultimately. We had to amuse each other as well.” “That was a guiding principal,” Andrew agrees. “Just to kind of blow the tumbleweed.”

For now at least, the guys have resisted commercialising Deserter believing that sponsorship or at least certain types of sponsorship may dilute the brand. “To run an ad for windows 10, alongside an article saying ‘don’t go to work, it would just undo everything we stand for, our beliefs,” Andrew explains.

“We’ve had to turn ads down because it just doesn’t feel right.” “Yes, when we started doing the podcast a couple of them we got offered were for razors,” Vincent adds, “and at the time we both had massive beards.”

“They simply hadn’t done their research,” Andrew laughs. Whatever the duo’s hostility to the gloomy nine to five rat race, there’s no doubting their passion and drive for what they do. Their book is an achievement that could only be possible through determination and whether or not they’d like to admit it hard work.

“Although it’s a hyper local book about a small part of the country,” Vince says, “it would be nice if it was received more universally” “Yes,” Andrew agrees, “I think so because the message is a universal one, the message is you can have a good time with the right people wherever you live, you can go out and look for it.”

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

Today South London Tomorrow South London is available at all good local and national book shops as well as online outlets including Amazon.

[ethelbertpaul444-blog]

5 Stupid Things We Need To Stop Clicking On

We “re living” the final choke of the Information Age. Experts estimate that 62 percent of all the points we now receive is purposely mistaken, and that includes the percentage and professionals I made up at the start of this sentence. The sad fact is, the majority of members of you are able to never have the critical envisage or research abilities to know what’s real, and that will simply manufacture you more absolutely convinced the erroneous situations your stupid ass belief. The good story is that this article isn’t about that shit. The imitation information fighting is over, and stupid won. No, this article is about the dumb things we all keep falling for — even you, the genius who chose the right political area and religion. 5 Pointlessly Insane Product Are Not That At All Last year, Tiffany& Co. started selling the Sterling Silver Tin Can, an empty can that costs $1,000. You’ll notice that this is far more than you’d naturally pay for soupless garbage. To be clear, this wasn’t some tin can that once impounded Prince’s final dark-green nuts. It’s simply a can. As an imaginative word, it was 50 years stale, and as a money-making strategy, it was somewhere between a portable diarrhea carton and that same product without a eyelid. It’s the kind of sentiment that they are able to offset the other Saved By The Bell novelists tell, “Look, if you’re not ready to come back to effort, make more time off to deal with the death of your son.” The item I’m building is that it’s hard-boiled not to comment on Tiffany’s silly can, and that’s more appealing to Tiffany& Co. than where reference is comment on how the ones who quarried their concoctions all lived of slavery. “Darling, I was part of many someones transcending penetration to convert a utilitarian men’s room into an installment of signature Tiffany oeuvre.” — this Tiffany copywriter justifying to his wife why “theres” seven colourings of pubic hair in his underpants Read Next 8 Baffling Poop-Themed Toys Kids Are Lining Up To Buy And it’s is not simply tin cans and Wu-Tang recordings that are marketed in intentionally strange modes. Food advertisers have figured out that they can get more attention by being ridiculous than by being delicious. Retain when KFC employed fried chicken as sandwich food in the Double Down? Or when Chick-Fil-A announced that their fried chicken detested lesbian people with the Cajun Titty Jiggler? We all made amusing of them, but they perfectly did not care. These are people souring pigeon meat and “deported” foreign nationals into nugget figures. They’ll take any press they can get. We need to stop doing this. It’s very possible the only conversation any of us had or will ever have about Dr. Pepper started when they liberated a special copy of their soda for men exclusively . We all went on Twitter to add stuffs like, “Forbidding females from savor Dr. Pepper Ten will only retard the disclosure that it’s made from semen , not stop it completely.” We asked questions like, “Why would you make a soda for men exclusively? Are you trying to find the perfect drink to pair with losing custody of your adolescents? ” Or maybe you are only pondered, “Dr. Pepper Ten sounds like the refreshing discus you contact for when defending an alleged rapist you haven’t met.” SORRY LADIES, OUR CREATIVE DIRECTOR IS STILL DEALING WITH SOME CHILDHOOD TRAUMA INVOLVING PENISES . b> Products should conclude the customer happy , not be so intentionally foolish that the customer hears about them during a Jimmy Kimmel monologue. You shouldn’t spawn every tenth new Oreo out of cat suppository in the hopeles said he hoped that cookie influencers tweet about it. And pizza, you peculiarly need to get your shit together. In 2012, a Pizza Hut employee happened upon the relevant recommendations of a hot-dog-stuffed crust, relatively by coincidence, when his administrator caught him fucking a pizza and asked written explanations. This distinguished the last experience there would ever has become a non-insane pizza ability. Today, pizza marketing is a series of deranged inventions, like a serial killer’s pilgrimage toward becoming the Minotaur. For speciman, Pizza Hut created “smart” shoes that situate an degree for you. Aside from get the elderly to wonder what they’re going to come up with next, what the fuck good do pizza shoes do anyone? If you have a use for dictating Pizza Hut via shoe, your foot is going to fall off from diabetes long before you get to make love a second time. essay > And did you know that Domino’s devoted millions of dollars promoting something called “carryout insurance? ” It’s what it sounds like — a monetary guarantee that when your haphazard ass puts a pizza, they give you another one. Aside from getting us to mention how foolish that is, what’s the pitch? Was there a community of overweight idiots devouring pizza off the foot and involving their representatives do something? Let’s say it’s only to place your subconsciou at ease. Let’s profess you’re “ve been thinking about” prescribing Domino’s, but decide against it because you’re always stopping pizza. Will this convince you? Of track not. You’re not even here. You were taken in the night by mad scientists, and now you’re a bulge of brain material named “HISTORY’S SADDEST FUCK.” “CARRYOUT INSURANCE !? Hey, boss? Yeah, I just perceived a loophole that gives me boundless flooring pizza. So what I’m saying is you can kiss my ass . i> “ div > 4 All Things “Of The Year” Are Arbitrary Decisions Made By Small Teams Of Random Assholes We are living in the darkest of goes. Our current sexiest guy alive looks like a rectangle who acquires its living hustling milk-drinking contests. “I’m digesting four gallons of Half& Half. Hi, I’m Blake Shelton, your sexiest mortal alive.” When People store announced hoedown music standout Blake Shelton as the sexiest humankind alive while Casper Van Dien was still not dead, it stumbled like a bomb. Every Gab report and Safeway express lane had a hot take on it. It wasn’t simply controversial; it was a direct challenge to what vaginal lubrication even wanted. What will it do to society if passably handsome NASCAR dads are the brand-new standard of seductive? Do we need to stop doing sit-ups? Will there be enough denim? What will Casper Van Dien do with this boner? div > You know what we should have been doing that whole season? Not establishing a shit about how handsome Blake Shelton is. Don’t get me wrong, Blake Shelton is alright. His condoms maybe don’t expire, and if he was arrested for sodomizing a dairy moo-cow, you’d anticipate “Him? ” But let’s not play games. He’s not the sexiest male alive. At best, he’s “Oklahoma’s Hottest Mostly Ham DNA.” But we should remember that this isn’t some enormous honor decided by appraising the gonad stimulation of test subjects. “Sexiest Man Alive” is picked by four or five journalists desperately trying to hang onto print media chores, and every now and then one of them is smart enough to say, “What if we trolled everyone? ” With all respect to Blake Shelton’s fuckability, if you died trying to learn a prosthetic forearm how to give a handjob, the People organization would write your figure up on the “Sexiest Man Alive MAYBES” board. It’s important is maintaining mind how insignificant these entitlements are before we get outraged. Before Donald Trump, Time opened its 2006 “Person of the Year” title to You, as in the second-person pronoun. And in 1938 they gave it to Hitler, the Donald Trump of 1938. These are meaningless choices meant to engender awful conversations between uninteresting people. Did you think LaTonya from Fayetteville was chosen as Jet ‘s “Beauty of the Week” because of her prevailing tits and smile? Wake up. It’s because her front tattoo announces “Abortion is Bae.” Please, all of us, we have to stop get outsmarted by the Jet magazines of the world. 3 It’s Not An Contest When Fictional Characters Die In 1992, DC Comics killed Superman — an indestructible ventriloquist with laser noses, frost wheeze, and chronosphere-bending flight speed — with a rock ogre who was pretty good at punching. Despite it being the third occasion he had died, the country is entered into mourning and the tale was picked up by the actual bulletin. Which was weird, because if the media wanted to cover upsetting Superman fibs, where were they when his girlfriend get turned into a pony and fucked his mare? I think about this every day. Every day. div > Why are we so preoccupied with fictional deaths? Most of the time, they’re not even real in the make-believe macrocosm in which they happen. Captain America and Batman vanish around 20 epoches a year, each in different combinations of fake-outs, resurgences, and universe reboots. If a dead guy’s best friends own a meter machine and the Eye of Agamotto, you can probably hold back on making funeral proposals. And if your favorite person dies on The Walking Dead , perhaps don’t debris an hour watching Chris Hardwick cry until you accompany the body. It should help you relax knowing that most fictional fatalities are exclusively abusive escapades, but the “real” ones are about as meaningless. I mean, you knew there wasn’t going to be any more Firefly . This death cost us maybe two wisecracks. div > Remember when Han Solo expired? He was a 73 -year-old laser gun fighter scheduled to get his own movie in three years. His death was both long overdue and altogether inconsequential to the amount of Han Solo you will continue to see on your TV. His father-in-law, Darth Vader, was on screen for about 36 minutes before he died in 1983, and since his death, there have been more Anakin Skywalker narratives than anyone could ever require. Anakin Skywalker is the Nicolas Cage of outer space. He stopped making good movies three decades ago, more he’s still everywhere and radiating inexplicable planetary energy. If George R. R. Martin gone on TV to announce that a comet smacked Westeros between works and everyone in A Song Of Ice And Fire is lead, how is that different from “the worlds” you’re living in now? The chap have undoubtedly wanted to focus more on snacks for about four works. You know what’s sadder than identifying Ned Stark get his head chopped off? Watching some fragile-hearted slobs go across the various stages of sorrow in a YouTube video afterwards. Mothers, if your child is filming themselves weep over a make-believe death, that’s a bigger default than if your child is filming themselves pee into a tube sock for Patreon advocates. I symbolize, you can do whatever you demand, but when you cry over forgery people whom you can still hear every day for as long as you miss, you’re exclusively sending a message to the people around you that you’re a drastic piece of shit. But I know something that will ovation you up! 2 Being Special Is Free That’s right, I said it. You’re welcome. It’s pretty easy to sell someone nothing more than the notion that they’re special or important for actual money. For illustration, somewhere right now, a Todd is looking through a rack of keychains to see if they have one with his reputation on it. “I hope they have a Todd, ” he might announce as he thumbs through dusty debris. “They do! And it’s spelled right ! b> ” So Todd will buy it, a cute remember of the worst collected in the least interesting part of a town he formerly called, and it will never occur to him that an Indonesian plant gambled and won that a completely shitty Todd would one day pay money to prompt himself of his own name. This next part is way off-topic, but not even the Indonesians could have foreseen that this keychain would one day be used to frame Todd … … for Toddslaughter. div > Back to the point I was trying to utters: We are all prone to this idiocy. Coke had its first marketings increase in more than a decade when it introduced the idea of adding the customers’ stupid fucking lists to their cans and bottles. And the internet has been recurred by ego-stroking personality quizs and IQ tests since before we used it to pay girlfriends peeing into tube socks. We are so desperate to be told we’re special that we will expel all disbelief and critical consider to hear it. You should know that answering a few simple-minded personality interrogations does not determine you the coolest ninja turtle, and you shouldn’t trust the scores of an Iq test that you watched yourself cheat on which likewise advertises free Slavic women and four new pounds of dick girth. One of my favorite a few examples of this, and favorite things in general, is an online community announced Intertel — “An International Society of the Intellectually Gifted.” It’s very difficult to get in. You can only affiliate if you tally in the top one percent of any self-administered intelligence test and mail in a $10 lotion reward. You may have considered that this in fact checks to see whether you’re stupid enough to forward in a test with a 98 percent composition or less and nothing else. If you get accepted, you then compensate a $39 annual reward to be a part of a genius squad for people who are very specifically not. What do you get? I’m so glad you asked. For the annual reward, you get inexhaustible pity and the human rights of berth a photo and bio about your singularly unsophisticated soul. It has created an avalanche of unearned narcissism that looks like a late ‘9 0s Casper Van Dien supporter page whose webmaster travelled mysteriously missing. Image courtesy of the property of the Casper Van Dien Fan Page& Genius Community webmaster. div > OK , no, but seriously, this next epitome is a real screenshot from the Inertel( An International Society of the Intellectually Gifted) website. This is a real person who really thinks he’s in the 1 percent of intellectual nobilities, and this is his real profile. I didn’t doctor this. This is what an actual genius named BigJim3 69 remunerations $39 a year to expose. Fucking! This macrocosm is spell and you get to live in it! div > Another business that employs your adoration of yourself on a big, sprawling magnitude is the pop-up museum manufacture. The reputation implies that there are things to do or learn inside them, but they’re more like oversized photo booths than artistry halls. For speciman, if you take a junket to the zany, world-famous Museum of Ice Cream, you will memorize zero to one things about ice cream and feed ice cream worth $45 less than the entering ticket. What you will do is wait in line to make photos of yourself next to what you’d describe in any other situation as “nothing of interest.” So to be clear, we are so self-obsessed that it’s now an efficient business model to charge us money to make pictures of ourselves so we can promote you online. You didn’t fool ME, Museum of Ice Cream. But my family loved it. Five stars. div > 1 Stop Attaining It Seem Like There Are Nazis OK, so the world has just fairly stupid prejudiceds to elect Donald Trump chairman, but not all of those voters were full white supremacists. Some of them were simply extremely theological to know when someone is lying or too old to change their memory about politics. And yes, a troubling number of them were Nazis. But in a lot of ways, most things are fine and the world isn’t as unpleasant as you think. You’re welcome again. div > Impossibly shitty parties, like the Trump supporters who made that Garfield mug privately, looks a lot like they’re everywhere. A pile of that is our omission — the good beings making fun of them. They use us to amplify their articulates, like Han Solo( R.I.P .) reassuring a hallway of Stormtroopers that he’s acces more people than he actually is. Every few minutes, a website publishes a variant on the article “These Miserable Fucks Said Something Racist About A Thing And Got Annihilated By Twitter.” They’re fun and vaguely heroic, but if you read more than one, you’ll start to see that they all share the same content. It’s the same three or four prejudiced tweets quoted in each article, tweeted by the same three or four prejudiceds who “attacked” the Star Wars with the Asian girl and “staged boycotts” of the all-lady Ghostbusters . We need to stop treating these three or four beings like they’re a threat to anything other than skewing PornHub’s algorithm to favor mother-son incest. BREAKING NEWS: Regional high school’s least-likable puncture still manufacturing quite a sight out his irrelevant awfulness. div > Here’s a comforting information: A analyse of Reddit found that 1 percent of communities were responsible for 74 percent of all conflict. We are taking the intentionally insensitive notes of a Kia’s worth of debate club hobbyists and feigning they’re a tidal wave of detest “were supposed to” stand together against. The “alt-right” movement is 30 sons more cranky to year and too slow to hear Dungeons& Dragons . Their adherents are a lethal group of gamers who will disappear once they sour 17, and their media channel is a cable network whose entire audience will be dead in two more flu seasons. All these people want is for the other side to get upset, so if we stop writing thinkpieces about the rise of dapper grey patriotism and focus more on how liberals hate suicide religions, we can be rid of them almost immediately. BREAKING NEWS: C-word who are tweets C-wordy antisemitic concepts DOES! div > Ann Coulter is a good example. She’s the skeletal are still in relic antipathy, and she has about as much cultural affect as Corey Feldman’s band, Oral Thrush and the Yeast 2000 s. Has she ever done anything other than hiss bad acts at impatient Tv identities or suppose that clinical antisemitism is antisemitic slapstick? She only seems like she is a thing because 10,000 of us dunk on the bitch each time she condemns her oral thrush on the Jews. Without all of us excusing to one another how mistaken she is, Coulter would just be straying through Home Depot to see if there are any lily-white works she can ask about the lavatory refuge rails. And soon she would be spawning spider eggs in her lip while her parakeet watched their own bodies rot. “Rawk! The Jews are at it again! ” it would recite to her undiscovered body. “The Jews are at it again! “ We all seem to get how foolish it is when the story answers “teens” are doing a comically apeshit circumstance like human centipede gatherings or detergent eating. Why can’t we use those same beings psyches to figure out how one Nazi nerd looking for attention isn’t “the Right”? I know it’s tough to stand trolls, but Kim Kardashian owning all the world’s money should have taught you that there is virtue in shutting the fuck up about some things. We need to stay strong not in the battle against the “alt-right, ” but in the battle to ignore them. The next time you verify another tower about how maids won’t time republican people, leave it alone. Let those dickless Nazis prevent writing versions of that section into the empty vacancy until they discover evil campaigns brides to dry up. And the next time someone on your Facebook thread attacks their Second Amendment liberties after local schools shooting, don’t confirm their child assassination fandom with tending. Move your cursor to the left and click on their mother’s chart. Pose as Blake Shelton, acquire her moist rely, and calmly destroy that child-murderer’s family. Every one of us can shut up and make a difference. Seanbaby devised being funny on the Internet. You can follow him on Twitter, or frisk his hit mobile competition Calculords . b> Did you realise Casper van Dien was in a Tarzan movie in the 90 s ? i > b> Support Cracked’s journalism with a tour to our Contribution Page. Please and thank you . i > b> For more, check out 5 Deeply Embarrassing Thing The News Keeps Doing and 6 Time The News Went Totally Overboard Chasing A Story . i > b> You should click on this join and follow us on Facebook . i > b> Read more: http :// www.cracked.com/ blog/ 5-stupid-things-we-need-to-stop-clicking-on / http://dailybuzznetwork.com/index.php/2018/06/30/5-stupid-things-we-need-to-stop-clicking-on/