#and often even those fail to do it because of bad script writing or low production value

[leonawriter]

I just got reminded of my feelings about Makoto by looking at choices, and thinking about how out of all the Phantom Thieves, she's my least favourite. How I'll actively choose her last. Which is - well, originally I was thinking "that's not something people would want to read, though, is it?" but then I remembered that I'd been asked to share my thoughts on her, and how I'd (re)write her.

So. Makoto.

I'm going to start out with the things I dislike about her, and address them as best I'm able, along with what I'd like to have seen instead.

The first thing that comes to my mind is a rather broad aspect, which is that even after she becomes a Phantom Thief and embraces her own rebellion, she has a bad habit of assuming that everyone should fit her own view of "a successful life" and that she's doing nothing wrong by helping others achieve that. This kinda seeps into everything else, and informs her failings.

The small - and not all bad - way that this shows through is in the way that she pushes everyone on the team to keep their grades up. She effectively acts as someone to remind them to study, who reminds them of how important their schoolwork is, and also how important not slacking off is when they're trying to keep a low profile.

The good part of this is that yes, most of them DO need this! They're not good at remembering to!

The bad part is... she only knows her own way of studying. So we end up frequently seeing scenes that have study sessions ending with Ann, Ryuji, or others going "I haven't been able to learn anything." And of course they haven't! They have different learning styles, and different needs. Ryuji especially is ADHD. This also kinda says to me how she's not as effective as the Student Council President as she wants to be - because she isn't flexible, and can't see her fellow students' individual needs.

I think that what would have been cool would have been if, after awakening her Persona and starting to hang out with the Thieves more often, there was a main storyline b-plot with her actively trying to learn how to connect with her peers not just with arcade games, but by talking to them about things that would actually help them learn better, which would be things that she could actively pass along to the teachers and would improve the school. If she paid attention to the study habits of her friends even, she'd be able to say "this works better for people like Ryuji, this works better for people like Ann..." and that, too, would be an improvement.

Or, alternatively, that could be a replacement for her canon confidant, which is... less than ideal.

Talking of her confidant... hm! A lot to talk about!

For one thing, when I was going through that story the first time, I thought that it would match the theme of the game if the guy Makoto's new friend was dating wasn't actually one of the bad ones, and that Makoto was making assumptions about people based on her own preconceived notions of them, but that... was hardly the case.

Like, yeah, that's an issue that could be brought up as a real problem, and there is a difference between those guys taking advantage of girls and a woman getting taken advantage of, but... there IS a certain irony and double standard that Akechi's mother was portrayed as a sex worker who committed suicide, and how the men are only allowed to be predators, not victims themselves. It could've just been one. And maybe this is just me! And it's kind of an aside to the point.

But yeah, we have her basically interfering with her new friend's life choices, and that's... another example of "everyone should do what Makoto thinks is best" in a way, and the game's storyline/script proves her right. It would have been great if something had proved her wrong, and forced her to think about her prejudices and assumptions!

Moving on, and I'm gonna quickly point out how she treats Futaba. Makoto trying to get Futaba to respond in a more neurotypical way and (basically) Just Stop Being So Autistic is painful. Thing is? Makoto as she is at this point? I wouldn't expect her to be any different. She's still learning. What I'd like would be if she could learn over the course of the story to just... accept people as they are more. Because yes, this is another point for "everyone has to be the way that Makoto thinks makes a successful member of society." But given how much trouble she has interacting with others, I do have to wonder - how much of this is what her sister drilled into her?

Perhaps, even, we could have had Makoto bonding with Futaba in later scenes over how neither of them really understand how to make friends or fit in with society, just in different ways. That'd be nice.

The funny thing is?

If you add up her canon traits - everything that falls under the umbrella of "people should act and conduct themselves in a manner that fits what Makoto thinks is best" - then unfortunately, you DO end up with the perfect kind of person who'd want to apply for a job with the police, whose JOB it is to ensure that everyone plays by the rules, and becomes a "good, functioning member of society," effectively.

This does not oppose her place in the Phantom Thieves, because the ones that the Phantom Thieves target are people who the law should be bringing to justice anyway, but because of the corruption, is not. The reason the theme of rebellion even exists at all is because the law isn't doing its job. If the law was doing its job, if people were good and kind to each other as they're supposed to be, then the Phantom Thieves wouldn't be needed. (This isn't me criticising the game for saying this. I actually agree.)

But being a cop isn't the way to go about creating change when she should know damn well by the point she says that she wants that profession in her confidant, and it's her own attitude that prevents her from seeing that.

If, however, there were all of these relatively minor changes to her writing?

If she was forced to see that her assumptions can be wrong, that she isn't always right about how the world should be and how people should act? If she learned to be flexible in helping others study and also in realising that some people just need to exist in their own way, and that's not bad?

Then she'd already be partway to becoming some kind of social worker, who'd be able to make an actual change in the world, and even if it's not on the big scale that she was thinking about, it'd still mean the world to whichever kids or adults she was able to help.

If she could find the temperance to learn a balance between "understanding how the law works" and "knowing that it does not always work in the favour of the people she wants to help" then she would be SUCH a better character.

And- like I said. All it would take would be a few minor changes.

Also as a disclaimer: I'm well aware that a big part of why she's written the way she is, as well as why she's so damn popular, is because she really is that goody two shoes character that has a veneer of rebellion without actually going the distance, so - especially in Japan, where she was created - that makes her more marketable.

As well, the game goes to great lengths to state how badly corrupted the police are, and I wouldn't be surprised if Makoto wanting to be a "good" police officer is its way of evening that out so that the game isn't seen as "too anti-establishment/police" when that would harm sales, or potentially get it to not be made at all.

[strongwomenarethebomb]

I'm SO TIRED of not having representation

I’m so tired of only seeing wh*te faces in popular media. I’m so tired of seeing brown people get less love and attention in the media. I used to be so active in fan communities but I’m SO TIRED of always trying to relate to stories that don’t even come close to representing me or anyone in my community. I’m tired of seeing the same story over and over again. everywhere I look I see average wh*te stories being hyped up- and sometimes they should be, but it’s so frustrating to never see the communities I know and love getting any representation. This is a big reason I’m so invested in art and want to be an actor/writer/creator, but from what I see it really looks like people like me don’t get opportunities just because stories are never written about us and when they are, they’re never centred in the media. Like fuck, most of the time I see Muslim voices in the media, they’re wh*washed or tragic. Most of the time I see Pakistani/South Asian voices in the media, they’re t*rrorists or in the rebellion of their culture- because of course, they can’t just be like any other character. I know there are smaller pieces of media that have decent representation, but it’s not enough. African American/black stories are JUST NOW being centred and even still now a lot of them are becoming trauma p*rn centred once again towards wh*te audiences (I mean Jordan Peele did amazing things but look at the show THEM what a cheap knockoff looking to profit off of trauma). I haven’t even scratched the surface of how exclusive mainstream media is, but I’m so frustrated. People of colour deserve so much better. When I say representation matters, I MEAN IT.

[ahtsumu]

the mystery of love ; kuroo tetsurou

pairing: kuroo tetsurou x f!reader

synopsis: kuroo tetsurou does not believe in soulmates. he believes in science, himself, and sometimes other people. but that doesn’t mean he can’t believe in love.

tag(s): sweet summer lovin’, friends to lovers, inspired by call my by your name, university student!kuroo tetsurou, lab intern!kuroo tetsurou, so much pining lol, fluff, angst, slow burn ; warning(s): profanity, mentions of alcohol ingestion (it’s legal bc they’re in italy!), suggestive themes ; wc: 4.8k

a/n: happy birthday tetsu!! i hope you guys like this. i really enjoyed writing it ♡

Kuroo Tetsurou does not believe in soulmates. He believes in science, himself, and sometimes other people. At least, that’s what he tells you. Sometimes you treat this information as a source of hope; other times, you’re not sure what to make of it.

This, you realise with his shoulder pressed against yours and both your bodies sprawled across his wrinkled bed sheets, is one of those other times. You turn your face to look at his.

“What?” he asks, one side of his mouth curling up in a smile.

For a moment, you wonder what would happen if you just said it. You could blame the alcohol. Get away with it scot-free. While you mull the option over in the dead silence of his room, your brain suddenly registers the music still playing from the living room. The low bass reverberating through the walls. How close your lips are. The sound of his breaths.

“Earth to Y/N?”

And like that, the little what-if that rose in your mind falls back with its tail between its legs. You bite your lip, look around his room like the walls have a script printed on them. Unfortunately, they do not.

“I was just thinking about my shirt.” It’s not great, but it’s the best you can do while still feeling the vodka and orange juice burn in your stomach. And smelling it on yourself.

Kuroo’s laugh booms through the room and you can’t help but giggle along with him. “I said I was sorry!” he says, hazel eyes twinkling with mirth. He pauses and glances at his closet, then nods his head in its direction. “Take a hoodie. Your pick.”

A smile–– one you try to downplay but fail miserably to–– creeps up your face. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Kuroo replies. “You can also shower here if you want. It's the least I can do after spilling my drink all over you.”

When you emerge from Kuroo’s bathroom in one of his thinner hoodies, a lot soberer and drying your hair, he’s not on the bed anymore. Quietly, you step out of his room and look for him through the house. People are crashed everywhere–– on the sofa, over the kitchen counter, even propped up against walls. The floor is covered with plastic cups and mysterious pools of liquid. Wrinkling your nose, you try your best to step around the messes, looking in every corner in the house for the raven-haired boy.

You find him back in his room, actually. He’s back on his bed scrolling through his phone, the light illuminating his sharp features. When he hears you close the door behind you, he looks up, eyes immediately zeroing in on the black hoodie over your torso. The corner of his mouth twitches up.

“Where’d you go?” you both ask at the same time. He chuckles; you grin. Crawling back onto the bed, you tell him to go first.

“I went around to make sure nothing’s broken,” he explains. “Perks of being the only sober intern in the house, I guess.”

A beat passes.

This house is rented. You forgot about that. All his expenses are paid for by your mother’s lab. You forgot about that. He fits in your world so well, like maybe he’s always had a spot there, that you forgot that Kuroo Tetsurou is only here for the summer.

“Right.”

Kuroo raises a brow. “And you?”

“I went to look for you.”

He smiles and holds his hands out like a magician at the end of a trick. “Well, you found me.”

“Yeah,” you muse. “I guess I did.” Aren’t you lucky.

With that, something shifts in the air. A contemplative expression crosses Kuroo’s face. Maybe he’s realised how his words come out sometimes. Kuroo often says things that sound like they have more than one meaning and it used to throw you off, but now you just go with it. You’ve even picked up that habit yourself. “Do you ever wish that you’d met someone earlier? Maybe under different circumstances?” he asks.

Sighing, you fall back against his mattress and stare up at the ceiling. Telling the truth feels easier when you can’t see him. “Yeah. All the time.” A few seconds pass. “Do you think we would’ve been friends if we went to the same college?”

He also lies down. You’re both back in the same positions you were in an hour ago, but something’s changed. “No,” he admits. You’re not surprised–– that’s what you’d expected. “I’d be a junior and you’d be a freshman. We probably would’ve never met. And even if we had, I wouldn’t be caught dead hanging out with a… freshie.” He chuckles softly at the end. “And look at me now,” he adds softly, more to himself than you. You look over at his face. A contemplative smile rests on his lips.

That urge to just say it returns.

“Kuroo, I think––”

“You’re my favourite p–– oh, my bad. You first.”

And it goes away again.

“Um, uh,” you stutter, “how long do you have left here?”

Kuroo raises his brows. “On this planet? Hopefully a while, Y/N.” He sees your unamused expression and drops the front. “Three more weeks.”

Your eyes widen. Eight weeks have already passed. Blood rushes to your ears. Eight entire weeks have already passed, meaning that in three weeks, Kuroo Tetsurou will leave forever. And in four, you will, too. Except you’ll come back. You’ve done so every summer since you were born, probably will do until you die.

But this place will never be the same as it used to. Not after him.

“Y/N?” Once everything comes back into focus, you see the concern riddling his features. “Everything okay?”

“Hmm? Yeah.”

Say it.

“You didn’t have too much to drink, right?”

Say it.

“I just got buzzed. What about you?”

“The only drink I was planning on having all went to your shirt.”

Say it.

“Kuroo.”

“Yeah?”

Not yet.

“Let’s go on an adventure.”

At two AM, everything is different. The streets feel different, the villas look different, and you–– you can’t put your finger on it but Kuroo Tetsurou has changed, too. He sits behind the wheel of your father’s white 1953 Cadillac with the convertible roof down, unruly hair blown back by the breeze, a euphoric grin stretched over his face. In the passenger’s seat, you sit with an equally large beam and your hands raised into the dark sky.

“Where to, Miss?” he shouts over the wind.

“The stars,” you shout back with a laugh. Kuroo’s cat-like eyes briefly flit over to your side profile, lips curving to form a smaller, more tender smile. But you miss that–– your gaze falls on him just a second after his return to the road.

“I heard you say Jack’s,” he says, smirking.

The 24/7 diner sticks out like a sore thumb in the row of sun-baked stucco and stone buildings with its bold neon lights and shiny exterior. During the day, it seems gaudy, way too American for a small town in northern Italy. But at night, this place feels like home. You’ve been stumbling into Jack’s completely shit-faced since you were sixteen. Of course, all those other times had been with the kids of your mother’s coworkers. All those other times, you could hardly remember what you even ordered when you woke up hours later.

But this time, you walk in with Kuroo Tetsurou at half-past-two in the morning, the chemicals running through your bloodstream epinephrine and dopamine, not ethanol; if you’re drunk then it’s on a feeling and your only poison is the boy next to you. You study his face and consider that thought. No, he’s not poison. He’s the antidote.

“Y/N!” the server exclaims, rushing over with two menus. “And Kuroo! My two favourite customers, but together this time!” Giovanni ushers you two to a booth by the window and takes your orders, purely for show, of course. He knows your orders by heart: the Lorenzo for Kuroo and the Quentin for you.

“With fries on both, please,” Kuroo adds, throwing you a wink. “Aren’t I a gentleman?”

“You only did that to have more for yourself,” you reply drily. Having him over at your house for dinner every night made picking up his idiosyncrasies so unbelievably easy. You know them like they’re your own. You know him like he’s your own.

Kuroo clutches his chest and pretends to be offended, then changes the conversation to what happened at the lab today, or rather, yesterday. That your mother and the other researchers are so close to finding a cure for the strain of virus that’s recently hit crickets in southern Italy.

“You should drop by again sometime,” he says. “Last time you came around was, what, two weeks ago?”

Your face breaks in a grin. “Are you saying you’ve missed me? Chemistry getting boring?” you tease, drawing a loud laugh from him.

“Sodium hydrogen, you little shit.” Your mother’s used this one on you before, but hearing it from him makes you giggle anyway.

Giovanni comes back with two plates, each loaded with fries. You both say your thanks and he retreats to the kitchen again, but not before wiggling his eyebrows at your reddening faces. Wordlessly, you grab your fork and knife and transfer at least half of your fries onto Kuroo’s plate. Kuroo stares at you with the slightest smile. That look sends your stomach into flips.

“What?” you question nonchalantly, cutting into your burger.

“Nothing,” he says, mirroring your actions. “Nothing at all.”

It’s hard to imagine that after spending almost every day together for eight weeks straight that there’s still more to learn about each other, but there is. You tell him more about your real home. Your best friend who called you at 3 AM last night because of timezones. Stories from every summer before this one, when you were a different person in the same place you are now.

He tells you more about Kenma, his best friend from high school. How they played on one of the best volleyball teams in Japan. Stories from training camp, literature class, the metro ride home after school–– you listen to every single one in rapt attention. There’s not enough time in the world for all the things you want to know about Kuroo Tetsurou, so you take what you can get. If only you’d known him before you’d known him.

“If we’d met earlier here, do you think we would’ve been friends?” you ask after paging Giovanni for the check.

“No,” he replies, picking up a few remaining fries with his fork instead of his fingers. The corners of your mouth turn up. That’s your thing. He considers the scenario seriously. “I think we met right when we should have.”

“What about the future?” you press, leaning into the conversation. “Let’s say we meet in two years here, instead of now. Would we be friends?”

Kuroo sets his fork down, eyes you steadily. “What’s this about?”

You blink. “What?”

“What’s with all these hypotheticals today?” Perhaps worried that he came off too harshly, Kuroo adds, “I thought I was the scientist.”

“I just… it feels like I’ve known you since forever.” This feels like it was meant to be, you don’t say. And I want to know you forever.

A sigh–– fond, but still a sigh–– blows through his lips. “Don’t tell me you believe in soulmates,” he says with a wicked grin.

“Are you calling me your soulmate?” The question, shamelessly genuine, painfully hopeful, leaves your mouth without you intending it to and you regret it instantly. Because Kuroo Tetsurou has told you many times that he does not believe in soulmates.

Is it so bad to dream, though?

You watch him carefully but he doesn’t say anything, just continues smiling wryly like you’d intended to tease him. Like he knows that you know better. But you don’t.

“Are you?” he suddenly replies. Sharp eyes hold yours, daring you to respond. Do you dare?

At that moment, Giovanni returns with the check. “Who’s paying?” he asks, unaware of the tense exchange that just occurred across the table. Inaudibly, you sigh in relief. Kuroo is about to say that it’s on him when he catches himself in the middle of his sentence, looks your way, then back to Giovanni. He says you’ll go Dutch. You nod in approval.

“So,” Kuroo drawls once you’ve both paid for your meals. “Where do we go from here?”

Good question.

Kuroo Tetsurou has never been to an outdoor club period. And though he’s been clubbing, he has never once gone dancing in his lifetime. You tell him that’s about to change as he parks the car in a lot near the venue. Before him, all your summer nights were spent here.

“You’ve been here for two months and you haven’t been to an outdoor club yet?” you ask while unbuckling your seatbelt. That can’t be possible. If you’d been in his shoes… an attractive college student in a foreign country for the summer, you would have gone wild.

“Nope. I’ve been a little busy, y’know, spending my days in a lab, handling chemicals, studying viruses, washing lab equipment, writing up reports for your mother and her colleagues, working on my own research on the side… the usual.” He flashes you a bright, sarcastic smile.

“Poor baby,” you coo, ruffling his hair. Kuroo laughs while you continue messing with the dark locks. “Was your first full day here the only tourist-day you’ve had so far?” His weekends, you already know, are spent either lounging around cafés, pools, or the great outdoors with you or the interns. But you’d assumed he’d had time to do some exploring on his own.

Kuroo nods. “And my guide wasn’t even that great,” he mutters, shooting you a dark look. “She sped through every attraction and hardly spoke a word outside of the tour to me. I think she hated me.”

You giggle and open the door, letting the music from the outdoor speakers infiltrate the bubble inside your car. “Maybe she was just nervous!” you say as you get out. That’s a lie.

“About what?” Kuroo follows suit, the gravel crunching beneath his feet. “I was so friendly to you and you just brushed me off each time.” He pouts.

But you don’t reply. Instead, you just grab his hands and pull him towards the venue. As you step into the boundaries marked by fairy lights and rustic wooden fences, Kuroo stops in his tracks and tugs on your intertwined hands. You glance down before up, trying to memorise how his hand looks around yours in the few seconds you can steal.

“Y/N,” Kuroo says. The strobe lights paint his skin pink, blue, purple like it’s a canvas. “Tell me why you were nervous.” Grammatically, it’s a command. And yet it sounds like he’s begging.

“What’s it mean to you?” you ask, feeling your heartbeat speed up in your chest. So what if you just… said it? What would happen?

“Everything?” he replies with a cheeky smile. The odds that he seriously means that are slim. But… they’re there. You shake that possibility out of your mind. That’s just the hope talking.

“Depends how convincingly you say it.” You tug on his arm. “C’mon. Let’s dance.” But he doesn’t budge–– he just continues to stand by the entrance of the club with an expectant look on his face. People are starting to stare.

“Fine,” you say with an eye roll. “I’ll tell you." Kuroo smirks, something self-congratulatory ready to leave his mouth, but then you let go of his hand and dance backwards into the throng of moving bodies. “But first, you’re gonna have to dance with me!” 

You allow yourself to be swallowed by the lively music, the people, the moment. Seconds later you’re deep enough into the crowd that you lose sight of Kuroo. Something in you says that he’ll show up soon, though. For now, you let yourself breathe. Forget about the heaviness of what-if’s, the itch to confess, the dread of the aftermath. Feelings are a lot like gravity. Sometimes they keep you grounded, other times, they weigh you down. This is one of those other times.

You dance up to a friendly-looking group of teens your age. Three guys and two girls. You shout your name and follow up with how it’s nice to meet them, hoping one of them finds you nice enough to keep around. Dancing alone in a club is one of the worst things that can ever happen to someone. Luckily, one of the girls–– the one wearing a purple wig–– pulls you in for a hug, drunkenly shouting back, “Bianca!” Bianca pushes you into their circle next to one of the guys and, just like that, you two start moving to the beat, feeling it in your feet, shoulders, hips. At one point, you turn around and take a good look at his face. The guy’s cute enough, but he’s not Kuroo. Still, you say nothing as he moves closer to you and grabs your hand, lifting it up and motioning for you to twirl.

Suddenly, a pair of hands grip firmly onto your waist and pull you out of the circle. “Hey!” You look down, suddenly realising they’re Kuroo’s. A shiver runs down your spine. He spins you around to face him. His lips are set in a firm line, eyes completely devoid of humour, nostrils slightly flared.

“Hi,” you say quietly, testing the waters.

“Hi,” he replies curtly. His hands are still on your waist. Selfishly, you choose not to point that out. Instead, you try to defuse the situation with a light question. Playful tone.

“Where were you this whole time?”

“Looking for you.”

“Well… you found me.” You flash him a sheepish grin. A peace offering of some sort.

“I did.” He doesn’t take it.

“Lucky you.”

Irritation finally seeps through his features. “You just left me on the dance floor!” he snaps. “And then when I find you after searching the entire venue, you’re dancing up on some random guy!”

“It was in good fun!” you retort, wriggling out of his grip. “And I wasn’t dancing up on him.” You want to ask if he’s jealous so badly, but you take a good look at his face and decide against that.

“Fun?” he asks incredulously. “Worrying about losing you, worrying about myself getting lost, then having to worry about that guy after finding you isn’t very fucking fun to me, Y/N!” The words fly out of his mouth like daggers without pause. Once finished, he looks at you with a disappointed gaze, shaking his head lightly, chest rising and falling with each heavy breath.

“I’m sorry,” you say, looking down at your shoes. It doesn’t matter if you disagree with him–– a sort of shame drills itself so deeply into your conscience that all you can think about is making things right again. “I didn’t think my actions through.”

A second passes. You wonder what he’s thinking.

“Hey, look at me.” Kuroo lifts your chin up with an index finger. Your wide eyes meet his narrow ones. Just as a pink beam glides over his face, his gaze softens, falls down to your lips. And then you feel his thumb on your chin, barely grazing the skin of your bottom lip. His Adam’s apple bobs up and down. The revelry in the background fades to dull beats against your eardrums. Suddenly, you register that he smells of, as usual, blackcurrant and amber.

But now you also smell of blackcurrant and amber.

You’re wearing his clothes. You smell of him.

Kuroo’s eyes crawl back up to yours, wide like he’s just been caught in the middle of a crime. You blink expectantly, ignoring the furious way your heart pounds in your chest. Shallow breaths puff through your slightly parted mouth.

“I am.” It comes out barely a whisper. C’mon. Kiss me. Kiss me. Kiss me kiss me kiss me kiss me kiss me kiss me––

You gently touch the hand he has on your chin. Kuroo jolts back like he’s been burned. “I’ll, uhm, I’ll be in the car,” he stutters, looking away from your face. He pushes through the sea of people, leaving you all alone on the dance floor, body doused in blue light, fingers touching the area his thumb had been as if preserving its print.

Kuroo hardly notices you slip into the passenger’s seat minutes later. He’s got his forearms hanging over the steering wheel and gaze fixed ahead into the darkness, mind probably running off to a place he wishes his body was, too.

As soon as you’ve buckled yourself in, Kuroo starts the car.

The entire drive home is silent.

Once Kuroo pulls into your courtyard and parks, he turns off the engine, unbuckles his seatbelt, and steps out of the car. Wordlessly, you follow his actions and meet him by the stairs to your door.

“Hi,” you say quietly. He doesn’t look at you.

“Hey.”

The two of you stand outside your front door in silence as you both consider what to say next. This can’t be the way it ends.

“I shouldn’t have… done that,” Kuroo says first.

“Done what?” You choose to play dumb. Call it selfish, but you want to hear him say it. Maybe then it’ll feel as real as it had been. Kuroo sighs and leans his shoulder against the stone wall, crossing his arms over his chest. There’s no way he can dance around what happened. Perhaps the past two months can be summed up as the development of a strong friendship with skilled doublespeak and metaphors and just enough artistic licence, but this can’t. And Kuroo knows that. He can’t feed you an alternative truth like he’s done so many times before. What’s more, he can’t lie to himself anymore. So maybe it’s better just to not speak at all.

Your eyes burn holes into the side of his face. Fine. You’ll concede first. “I was never nervous.”

Kuroo blinks, turns his head around to look at you. “What?”

“I was never nervous. I was playing it cool because I didn’t want to risk befriending you and getting attached.” I’m still playing it cool, you don’t say. And I’m already attached. “Guess I just came off as a bitch instead.” You laugh. “But can you blame me? You were this cute, older guy. Smart, too, since you were interning with my mom. You were my dream guy.”

An amused breath blows out of his nose. “Were?” he questions, grinning, only remembering the fragility of your platonic relationship a second later. “Um––”

“Are.” It slips out of your mouth without you realising. Fuck. Kuroo stills. It’s too late to take back your words now, so you might as well just keep going. “You still are my dream guy.”

Seconds pass and neither of you says anything. Sweat gathers in the palms of your hands. You start to feel your heartbeat through your neck. The buzz of the cicadas grows louder. Oppressive. Behind Kuroo, the sky is starting to turn pale blue and pink in the horizon. That means it’s almost sunrise. The night is almost over, and, hopefully, so is this awful conversation.

“And… you don’t feel the same.” Funnily, you feel like you’re lying. You’re telling Kuroo how he feels and you think you’re lying. Does that make sense? None of this night even feels real. God, you hope this has all just been a dream. Mustering a soft smile, you say, “That’s okay. Thank you for the party. And the adventure.” It was fun while it lasted. You feel the house key in your pocket and turn to unlock the door. “I hope this doesn’t change anything between us, Kuroo. Can we still be friends?” The words leave your mouth feeling like barbed wire. You know damn well you can’t still be friends.

And suddenly, you feel his calloused hands around your cheeks. Suddenly, his hot breath fans over your face.

“Can I kiss you?” he murmurs.

Your eyes close instantly. “Yes, please.”

And suddenly, his soft lips are on yours.

Kuroo breaks the kiss seconds later. “Fuck,” he whispers, resting his forehead against yours, touching the tips of your noses together. “Y/N, I don’t want to be friends. Fuck.” A dry chuckle leaves his mouth. He pauses to collect his thoughts but decides that that can wait. Instead, he presses another kiss to your lips so fervently that he backs you up against the wall with no space between your bodies. You wonder if he can feel your heartbeat like this, chest to chest. Kuroo’s hands travel down your waist and rest on your hips. His tongue runs across your tongue, your teeth, the insides of your mouth. You gently suck on it, drawing a satisfied moan from him. When the kiss ends, you see that his lips are red and cheeks are swollen. A warm feeling spreads through your chest. “I thought I could be happy just being friends with you but I can’t. I want you so bad it hurts. Not to mention, when I saw you in my hoodie?” His fingers pinch the material. “I thought God was testing me or some shit.”

“Sure didn’t feel like you wanted me that way,” you retort, still breathless.

“In my defence,” Kuroo says, thumbs tracing your cheekbones, “I was very scared.”

“Of what?”

It looks like he’s about to tell you, but he changes his mind and doesn’t answer. He grabs your hand and pulls you back to the car with a cheeky grin. “I’ll tell you only if you tell me where we can watch the sunrise.”

Kuroo holds your hand, stroking your thumb the entire drive there.

After a short hike, you plop down on the grassy hillside, supporting your body with outstretched arms in the back. Kuroo sits down beside you with one of his hands covering yours, fingers intertwined like a honeysuckle vine around a hazel tree. You tell him that you grew up running along this hill with your parents. It used to be your playground. Maybe, you think, it’s time to make new memories here.

“Beautiful,” Kuroo breathes, a wonderstruck look in his eyes. The sun’s just risen halfway above the pink and blue horizon, the saturated orange casting the entire city below gold. It’s not just the city, though. He’s also gold. He’s just as beautiful. You watch him with a soft smile on your lips, noting how his wide eyes and slack jaw return to normal as he stares off into the distance. After resting your head on his shoulder, you fix your eyes on the sunrise ahead. You wonder what he’s thinking so quietly about.

“Penny for your thoughts?” you finally ask once the sun has finished revealing itself.

Kuroo blinks, returning to reality, but continues to stare straight ahead. “I was just thinking about… soulmates.”

You lift your head off his shoulder. “Don’t tell me you believe in soulmates now,” you tease.

“Hmm.” He turns to look at you, the sun turning his hazel eyes the colour of honey. That same wry smirk from Jack’s returns to his face.

“You wanna know why I was so scared?”

“Pray tell.”

“Because I’ve never felt this way towards anyone.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“No,” Kuroo laughs, laying his head down in your lap, looking up into your eyes. “I’m serious. I used to purposely stay away from girls in high school. Same in college. Same all the way until you somehow wormed your way into my life. That’s why we wouldn’t have been friends.” You cock your head to the side.

“Why?” you ask, running your fingers through his hair.

Kuroo’s eyelids flutter shut. He inhales deeply before talking. “My parents are divorced. The years before the divorce were… very ugly.” 

(He spares you the details of the midnight arguments, the smashed plates, the holes in the walls. He spares you the details of how he only ever knew how to fall asleep with his head sandwiched between two pillows, how he hasn’t seen his sister in a decade, how he’ll curse and snap but never yell because he always feels like a child again around the noise. That’s for another time, if you’ll have any.) 

“I still remember all the fighting and yelling. For the longest time, that’s all I knew about marriage and relationships.”

“Did you think all relationships were like that? Fighting and yelling?” you ask.

“For a while, yeah. I’m still a little scared of that, to be honest. Ending up in a relationship where all you do is fight.” Kuroo sighs. “But that’s not the only thing. I thought I wouldn’t know how to love someone, growing up like that.” At that, your fingers pause in his hair.

“Wait,” you say, furrowing your brows. A wave of immense sadness (not for yourself, for him) washes over you. “You think you wouldn’t know how to love someone else?”

“Thought.” Kuroo cracks open his eyes and smiles up at you. “I’m in the process of changing my mind.”

[spooks-and-tea]

Entangled (Spencer Reid x femReader) [Ch.7]

Summary: You don’t know how it happened. One moment you were watching Criminal Minds, and the next moment you were literally in the show. Can Spencer be the key to helping you find your way back home?

Warnings: minor character death, mentions of su*cide, bad explanations of quantum mechanics, bad words, sexual situations, the usual criminal minds-type content

A/N: Today I googled if “thirst trap” was a noun. Do me a favor and read this one with your favorite Spencer Reid gif in mind. I’m excited to see what you all think about this one. 

Word Count: 6,174

Chapter 1.  Chapter 2.  Chapter 3.  Chapter 4. Chapter 5.  Chapter 6.  Chapter 7. Chapter 8.  Chapter 9.  Chapter 10.  Chapter 11.

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

{smut warning for this chapter} —————————————————— 3 weeks later.

You were frustrated.

Frustrated because living with Spencer Reid was, for lack of a better term, a thirst trap. The show never even touched on this side of him, and you were sure he knew what he was doing.

For 3 weeks you shared his bed and at this point you both had decided that the left side was yours. You'd never found sharing a bed with someone as awkward, it's only awkward when one person acts like it is. Spencer left you sexually frustrated, without fail, every night; that, was awkward.

It started in the mornings when he woke you up with butterfly light kisses on your face, neck, and shoulders. He never went beyond that and if you moaned, it went ignored. You both would take turns showering. You would go first so you could have more time to do your makeup and hair. Spencer went second, and boy-oh-boy, it was a mistake to let that become a habit because he came out of that steamy hot bathroom with only a towel wrapped around his waist every. single. morning.; hair dripping wet.

You'd catch sight of him as you did your makeup, causing you to do stupid things like smearing your lipstick, drawing your eyeliner wing crooked, and poking your eye with the mascara wand. Sometimes you were doing your hair and burned yourself with a straightener, or snapped a hairband against your hand.

Spencer knew what he was doing, you saw his smirk every time he retreated to his bedroom to dress. You both alternated on who made breakfast, when you did, it was a difficult task. Spencer couldn't keep his hands to himself, holding his arms around your middle as you fried an egg, or as you toasted bread. He would only leave you to make the coffee. Mornings were when Spencer Reid was bold.

During the day, you would drive the both of you to work. He wasn't so obvious there, but somehow he knew the subtle things he did there that got your attention.

When researching, or doing paperwork at your desk, you often had to ask him for help. You weren't technically qualified to even work here. He never seemed to mind, actually he liked to help you. He would lean over your shoulder with both hands around you on the desk and point things out while dipping his head low; nearly whispering words in your ear. He knew his voice got to you. He watched you shudder.

Sometimes you got so worked up you would have to ask him to go over things again. At the roundtable meetings, he would turn to the writing board, explaining whatever about a case, and put his hands in his pockets. This sounds like his normal behavior, but when he did the pocket thing it made his pants a lot tighter and you struggled to keep your eyesight up. You swore he flexed when he did it too. Whenever the discussion would go above your level of education and you zoned out, your eyesight would lower, Spencer would turn around and ask you a question. You'd stammer out some words. Everyone would turn to look at you and away from him, which is when he would smirk mischievously at you.

Days were when Spencer Reid made you feel like working at the BAU wouldn't be so difficult.

At night, he would often order take-out. You both would wind down, sometimes with a movie, sometimes he would put a record on and teach you how to play chess, sometimes you both would sit on his couch as he talked and talked about any topic that he thought you would find interesting. You adored these nights because this is when you really had a chance to learn about Spencer Reid the person, not the character.

Sometimes he would show you an odd item he owned and go into a tangent about its history, it's history related to other history, etc. You could tell he loved it when you told him you could listen to him go on about any subject and never grow tired of it.

Knowing you had trouble sleeping, when you both retired to bed Spencer would hold you, kiss you, and read to you. He had this talent for making any story immersive with just his voice.

Nights were when Spencer Reid made you fall, impossibly, more in love with him.

And the cycle repeated. Yet, he never seemed interested in taking things further than making out on his couch.

Today, you hoped to get him back for the 3 weeks of teasing that was eventually going to leave you with a permanent blush. Of course when you say 'get him back' you don't mean you'll make him do anything he isn't ready for, you were just going to give him a little show. Give him a taste of his own medicine.

It was date night, and while you had been on a few of the basic dinner and movie dates, Spencer promised this one was going to be special and different. You weren't exactly prepared for how "different" it was going to be, but you got the picture when he blindfolded you in the car.

You wore a dress that was form fitting, short, and had a sweetheart neckline that showed off your shoulders and chest. You were pulling all the stops tonight, dark stockings and high heels included. You topped it all off with your favorite perfume.

You knew Spencer was awed as soon as you walked out of his bedroom, which you had forbidden him to enter as you got ready. You also knew he had a thing for your neck and shoulders, so the sweetheart neckline was a showstopper. You just hoped you hadn't overdressed for this surprise date. Spencer was in an outfit that was pretty much just his work clothes. You didn't think he owned much else, so you thought nothing of it.

You got out of the car and he led you through a door. You were inside of a building now, you knew because the air warmed up and your heels echoed. The place was empty and, otherwise, dead silent. You heard Spencer press a button, followed by the familiar sounds of an elevator. "Where are you taking me?" You laughed. You loved surprises and Spencer had seemed pretty excited about this one.

"You'll know in 60 seconds." He answered, helping you get inside the elevator. As you stood, waiting, he wrapped his arm around you and started to tap on your shoulder. You knew this was his nervous fidgeting.

Did he not know you would be happy no matter where he took you? Except, maybe, a large body of water. You trusted that he would never let you near one again.

The elevator chimed and you heard the doors open. Spencer helped you through, walking you through another door. This is when he stopped you. He stood behind you and gently untied the blindfold, which was actually just a tie of his. Your eyes adjusted to the lights.

"What are we doing here?" You laughed, turning around.

Poor Spencer looked beyond nervous, nearly bouncing with energy. You just didn't understand why he took you to the BAU when you were there nearly every day. This wasn't the best typical date spot in town.

"I-um." He swallowed. "When you got here you told me, in your old life, you wanted to be an actress and you were going to audition for Criminal Minds. I know it was your favorite tv show and you missed out on all of that when you woke up here." He reached down into his desk and pulled out a booklet of green papers.

"You didn't get a chance to prove yourself as an actress, so I-I thought, since we have the real thing here, and you have me-" He gave you the booklet and you flipped it open, eyes going wide. "We could act out a scene together." Spencer eyed you, waiting for a reaction.

"Spencer this is- I don't have the words. You wrote a Criminal Minds script?"

Spencer nodded, pursing his lips.

"We don't have to do it, I just thought-"

"No! No Spence, it-it's perfect." You smiled and flipped through the pages. "Tell me the synopsis."

Spencer cleared his throat. "Agent Y/N and Agent Reid have to work after hours. I think that's all you need to know; it's simple, and not very long."

"I like simple."

"Good." Spencer smiled and kissed your cheek. You blushed at his confidence.

"Don't you have a script?"

"Eidetic memory." He tapped his temple.

"Ah. Right. Shall we begin?" You bit your lip, excited.

"Sure, do you want to count down and say 'action'?"

You nodded.

"3, 2, 1, action!"

Your eyes glanced back and forth to the script as you played out the scene.

Spencer sat at his desk, shuffling through papers.

"Dr. Reid." You strolled over and sat at the edge of his desk. He looked up.

"Explain to me again how our unsub was able to pull off all of this in one night." It wasn't in the script, but you crossed your legs making the skirt of your dress pull up until it was absurdly short. You silently prayed Hotch wasn't hiding out in his office working after hours. This would look like the beginning of a fanfiction porn plot.

Spencer twirled his pencil, flicking his eyes down when he thought you were looking at the script.

"Actually I don't think our unsub was acting alone. Remember the box of ticket stubs located at the first hideout? Those were momentos; kept in pairs. I believe we're dealing with 2 unsubs, a couple."

"Star-crossed lovers- a new age Bonnie and Clyde." You pretended to think it over.

Spencer nodded and stood up, walking up to a board he must have set up before leaving work.

"Based on the geographical locations of the crime scenes and hide outs, we can see that they're making their way west."

"Will they cross state lines?" You walked up next to him.

"There's a high probability they will, yes."

"Can we confidently say that one is the aggressor and one is just tagging along?"

"Yes, in cases with couples like these, typically the male is the aggressor. For example, Bonnie and Clyde. Clyde had a history of committing crimes long before he met Bonnie. She only became a criminal after they became a couple."

"But why would the unsub's partner go along with these killings willingly?"

Spencer turned to look at you.

"Love. History says Bonnie fell in love with Clyde and that's why she stuck by him as his partner; though he was a terrible criminal. He made multiple failed attempts at robbing banks. Clyde actually wrecked their car at one point, nearly killing her with these 3rd degree burns that nearly lost her a leg. She was also struck by bullets multiple times, but still she stayed by his side. We know he loved her too because a smart, or ruthless, criminal would have left her behind after the leg injury. Clyde carried her around; sometimes she limped. She couldn't properly walk for the rest of her short life."

"Devotion, idolization, justification. These unsubs are recreating the Bonnie and Clyde crimes. I can't agree that it's love that drives them, though."

"Why is that?"

"When you love someone, you want what's best for them. You'd never put them in harms way. If Clyde really loved Bonnie, he would have never taken her along with their gang in the first place."

Spencer slowly nodded, eyes scanning the map.

"I suppose a better word for their relationship would be 'obsession.'"

"If you were in the male unsub's position, what would you do, Dr. Reid?"

"I'd protect her." He looks at you again. "I'd turn myself in, admit that everything was my wrongdoing."

"Hmm," you hummed.

"Have you ever been in love, Agent Y/N? You seem to know a lot on the subject."

"Yes, in fact. I have."

"May I ask with whom?" He smiled, slyly. Some script, he was baiting you.

"Yes. If you promise me we can take a break from this. We've been working all night. You promised me dinner, Dr. Reid." You poked his chest.

"I didn't think all this talk of murder would work up much of an appetite." He laughed.

"We've worked here long enough, catching murderers is normal. " You smoothed your hand up his chest, this action was definitely not in the script. Spencer's eyes narrowed.

"We could raid the snacks in the break room, then get right back to work." He recited.

"We could," your words and actions no longer followed the script. "-Or we can stay here."

"Why would we stay here?" That wasn't his line. He was playing along; he was intrigued.

You held up your phone and scrolled through your music until you found something old and romantic. You pressed play and set it on your desk.

"Dance with me Doctor." You held out your hand to Spencer. It was your turn to do the cheesy romantic gesture.

He blushed, taking your hand. He was trying to figure out if you were going to return to the script or not.

You wrapped your arms around his neck and he placed his hands on your waist. You made sure to press your chest closely to his. He was much taller than you and you devilishly knew, as he looked down, he would get an eyeful.

You danced through the first song. "Dr. Reid I have to admit something." You said breathily as you both swayed.

"Yes?" He swallowed, thickly.

"I've liked you for a very long time now."

"Have you?"

"Mmhmm. Do you not feel me watching you as you work across from me? Do you not hear my intake of breath every time you lean over my shoulder and whisper case information in my ear? Do you not see the way I bite my pens when I feel your eyes on me? I've wanted you for a long time now, Dr. Reid."

"Really?" His eyes trailed lower for a moment. You played with the hairs at the back of his neck.

"Yes, in fact, I'm sure that I'm in love with you."

"I-I love you too Y/N." He finally broke character.

"You do? How much? Will you show me?" You kept up the sultry act.

He nodded and drew his hand up to your cheek. He ran his thumb along your bottom lip before slowly leaning in.

Just before his lips were going to meet yours he paused, your noses barely touching. "I would, but I do owe you dinner."

You held your breath, more prepared for dessert than dinner.

He pulled away, but not before nonchalantly brushing his hand that was placed on your waist, over your ass. You bit your lip, not wanting to give away the goosebumps it gave you. He had never been so obvious.

"Dinner then, Dr. Reid?"

"Right this way, madame."

You took his hand, giggling at his courteous behavior. You expected him to lead you out, but instead he led you to the roundtable room. What else did this man have planned? And how the hell did he convince Hotch to approve of this?

"It's nothing fancy, but-" He opened the door to reveal the room dimly lit by candles. A tablecloth covered the table and two seats were placed next to each other in front of it. A bottle of wine, some glasses, and two plates sat in front of the chairs. A main dish sat in the middle, covered by a cloche.

"Spencer, how did you set this up?" You broke your sultry character.

He pulled out your chair for you before sitting in his own.

"Garcia was staying late, she practically volunteered. She left just before we arrived," he explained.

"I'm having a romantic dinner date in the roundtable room. What even is my life?" You mumbled to yourself.

Spencer laughed, uncovering the food plate. He served a spicy grilled salmon and side-salad that had Garcia's jalapeño-infused cooking written all over it. You reminded yourself to thank her at work.

As Spencer served the food, you poured the wine.

You took the first bite, moaning at the flavor. It went well with the expensive wine.

You giggled at how red Spencer's face became as he ate the spicy food.

"Thank you for this, Spence. This is honestly the best date I've ever been on." You sipped your wine.

"You've said that after all of our dates." He grinned.

"That's because you always outdo yourself, and we've only been on 4. How can you possibly top this?"

"I'll think of something."

"No, next time is my turn. I'm romancing you." You pointed.

"We'll see about that."

You both finished your food and cleaned up. Placing most of it into the break room.

You felt warm and cuddly from the wine, you hugged Spencer close to you as you made your way out of the building.

"Did you mean it?" Spencer asked as he drove you both home to his place.

"Mean what?"

"You pine for me at work." He smirked.

"I did not say that!" You blushed, furiously. "I do NOT pine for you."

"Then what would you call it?" You thought for a moment, slyly smiling to yourself as you thought of an answer.

You placed your hand on Spencer's thigh. "I crave you, I ache for you, I touch myself at the thought of you." You spoke breathily, doing your best impression of a sexy Marilyn Monroe.

Spencer nearly slammed his foot on the breaks, looking at you wide-eyed. You'd never been this bold before.

"These last 3 weeks of living with you, I've gone to sleep next to you every night thinking of what your hands, wrapped around me, would feel like if they just trailed a little bit lower." This wasn't a lie. To emphasize, you trailed your hand on him, lower, to his thigh. He gasped and gripped the wheel.

"I-I've wanted you too, Y/N," Spencer stammered; his knuckles going pale. Luckily, you had already arrived at his apartment in one piece.

"Then why don't you do something about it?" You asked, getting out of the car before he could answer. You moved your hips as you walked, smiling to yourself. You'd never felt this confident, sexy, and wanted before.

Spencer caught up with you when you reached his door, struggling to unlock it. You walked in first, stopping in front of his bedroom door and turning around.

"The first night I slept here you told me you wanted to take care of me." You said as you dropped your purse on a nearby table. You turned around to see Spencer was carefully watching your every movement; hanging on to your every word.

"Do you still want to take care of me, Spencer?" You asked. This was an invitation, he could turn you down if he wanted to.

You watched him kick off his shoes at the door and remove his jacket. He walked towards you and threw it behind you, onto the couch.

"Yes, I do." He placed his hands on your hips, lightly tracing.

Your hands roamed up his chest and over his shoulders.

"Then I'm all yours." You whispered. You were honestly curious to see if he would take initiative.

Spencer leaned in, kissing you softly. He pulled back and you felt his heavy breathes on your tingling lips.

He slowly inched his hand up your back as he chased your lips again, still keeping the pressure soft.

He trailed his tongue along your lips and you granted him access, meeting in the middle, not escalating the slow pace at all. Meanwhile, he pulled the zipper of your dress down. His slow movements made your head spin in anticipation. You couldn't hold back your soft sigh when he trailed his hand flat up your bare back.

He smoothed his hands over your shoulders, making your sleeves fall down your arms. Your dress piled to the floor.

He grew more aggressive with his kissing as he ran his hands over your body. He groaned as he lightly squeezed your ass and you yearned to hear him do it again.

You undid his tie, tossing it over your shoulder, followed by his vest. He trailed his kisses down your neck, nipping at the sensitive skin. You gasped, your eyes rolling back for a moment. The stubble on his chin and the warmth of his breath left red hot marks of desire on your skin. You somehow managed to unbutton his shirt and toss it to the floor.

You pulled him closer, wanting to feel his skin against yours. This was a far cry from the night he held you, half-nude, to save your life. Though, you felt like if he didn't touch your neglected core soon, you would die.

You lowered your arms feeling the skin of his chest. No, Spencer Reid did not have abs, but he didn't need them, he was sexy in his own way.

"Bedroom." He mumbled between wet kisses that were definitely going to leave behind marks.

You stepped out of your heels and he moved his hands behind your thighs. He coaxed you to jump and you wrapped your legs around his waist. He returned his attention to your lips, kissing you deeper. He stumbled to his room. You fought the urge to laugh at his clumsy movements. The movements of his tongue against yours made you almost instantly forget.

He tossed you onto the bed and you bounced. You giggled and bit your lip; watching him stand at the edge. He trailed his eyes over your body, licking his lips as he took off his belt and work pants.

Your heartbeat raced and your core pulsed as you anticipated his next move.

"You're beautiful, Y/N. I-I want to remember you like this." He knelt in front of your legs on the bed, taking in the image of you sprawled out and heavily breathing, wanting only for him.

"I want to remember you too." You replied, propping yourself up on your elbows to look at him. His neck and torso were a blushing rosy red, sweat was already forming. His chest rose and fell as he caught his own breath. His hair was already ruined, but you wanted to see just how ruined it could look.

"I truly think you're the most gorgeous man I've ever seen, Spencer," you sounded breathless.

His blushed skin deepened red.

Obviously, he was used to being the 'pretty boy' of the crew, but no one had called him gorgeous and looked at him like he was the statue of David come to life.

Spencer crawled up your body, you opened your legs so he could come closer.

A gasp, followed by a loud moan, escaped your lips as he leveraged more of his weight on top of you. You could feel him, hardening against your core, through the fabric that still separated you. He placed open-mouthed kisses up your neck until he reached your lips.

You honestly did not expect him to take so much initiative.

He coaxed opened your mouth and trialed the tip of his tongue under yours, oddly making you shudder. Where did he learn a sneaky move like that?

You couldn't help yourself, you pulled his hair a little; not enough to hurt. He moaned, his hips moving forward of their own accord. Your back arched and your head fell back at the contact it gave your swollen clit.

"Spencer," you grunted through your teeth, eyes squeezing shut. He must have liked your reaction, because he shifted his hips forward again. He was going to drive you insane.

"Yes?" He bit his lip.

"Please, I need you." You wanted to cry. You needed him to hold you closer. You needed him to pin you down. You needed him inside you. You needed to feel him everywhere. You needed him to love you. You needed him to stay and never leave you. You needed him in every way. His eyes glazed over your face, you felt like he could read your every thought.

"I know, I need you too. Just wait a little longer. I want to make this last." He whispered.

He reached behind you and unhooked your bra, gently bringing the straps over your shoulders. He broke eye contact and brought his right hand up; tracing over your nipple. Both of you breathed a little heavier as it peaked at his ministrations. He leaned his head down and- He's going to be the end of me. I'm actually going to implode.

His lips wrapped around your nipple. He twirled his tongue around and lightly grazed his teeth over the sensitive bud.

His other hand moved to knead and softly pinch your left breast. You felt him, warm and throbbing against your core, he was enjoying this as much as you were. He turned his attentions back and forth between each breast.

"Fuck, Spence-Spencer I- you- that feels so good." Your sentences grew incoherent. You tugged and raked your hand through his hair, your other hand grasping the bedsheets just to remind yourself that you weren't floating on a cloud or something.

The coffee and woodsy-vanilla that surrounded you made you forget your own name. Your whole body was warm and covered by Spencer's; it made you feel safe. Nothing could ever hurt you here. You wanted more. You couldn't stand any more of this torture. After 3 weeks of teasing, and many years alone, you were beyond horny, almost primally so.

He continued pinching, licking, nipping and sucking at your nipples. An excruciatingly good combination. You trailed your fingertips down his abdomen, his stomach flexing as you trailed lower. You skipped the teasing and slipped your hand under his waistband. Your fingertips stroking his softest skin.

"Mmm. I thought I said to wait," he grunted, his voice deepening as his hips bucked against your touch. He took your wandering hand and held it against your other one; holding them down over your head.

Is Spencer dominant in the bedroom? No, he couldn't be-

"Fuck. I-I can't- I can't wait. Please, Spencer." You gasped, hooking your legs around him for more contact where you needed it most. He smiled wide as if you had just complimented him.

Spencer reached his other hand down and held your hips to the bed. He kept eye contact. His eyes were dark and full of lust; something you'd never seen on him before, but he wore the look well.

He moved his hand on your hip away and your arms jerked against his hold as you felt it return, lower. His finger traced down your slit through your panties. You were soaking for him and you knew he could feel it.

He hooked his fingers over your panties and slid them off, leaving you exposed to the cold air. You hissed at the sensation.

God, will the teasing ever end?

"You should see yourself, so ready, begging for me." Spencer smirked. He was using his secret weapon, which he already knew drove you crazy. His voice.

"I wonder just how desperate I can make you become." He lowered his head to circle his tongue over your left nipple. His fingers circled and slid along your slit.

"Can I make you cum without touching you?" He stopped touching you, leaving your body buzzing with anticipation.

"Can I make you cum with just my voice?" He whispered in your ear. Your back arched, yup he could definitely pull that off.

"Answer me," he ordered, keeping his tone soft, but domineering.

"Yes!" You cried out, lost in all the senses he was assaulting. You'd never wanted someone so much in your life.

He looked in your eyes, you were almost afraid of what that genius brain of his was thinking.

"Spencer!" You screamed as he began to rub quick circles over your throbbing clit. It was too much, too fast.

"I'm going to have you tonight, don't worry, but I want to see you cum first," he whispered; moving one hand to move your hair behind your ear.

"Cum for me."

You were so close already, he didn't have to ask twice. Your body convulsed and your back arched as you cried out his name. He watched you, mouth open and breathing softly against your face. You felt hot tears well up as he didn't stop his circling motions. Wave after wave of pleasure worked up your spine. You would've been blinded by it if you didn't keep your eyes on his.

You were lost in him, everything was Spencer Reid.

Your body finally relaxed and he stopped. He moved his hand lower and dipped a single digit into you. The evidence of what he had made you do was clear.

He arched his finger, easily adding another. Your body, still sensitive, began to respond to him again. He crooked his fingers in and out, seeking out the spot he knew would make you scream his name again.

Your legs began to shake.

"Spencer. I-I'm close again. I need you please- just- please. I need to feel you inside me. I need you closer." A tear fell down your cheek. This time he listened. He removed the last piece of fabric separating you two. He held your ankle, moving your legs.

"Should I-" He began.

"I-I have an IUD and I'm clean. If you're good, then we're good," you stuttered. You weren't sure if you were even forming full sentences, but you were confident his Phd's would help him figure it out.

Spencer understood and nodded, bracing himself above you.

He suddenly stopped and leaned down to kiss you.

"I know I say it a lot, but I love you, Y/N," he spoke.

"I love you so so much, Spence."

He lined himself up and slowly pressed into you. The dull pain was practically non-existent from the amount of teasing he had just put you through.

Your legs shook as he bottomed out. Spencer groaned, dropping his forehead to rest against yours. His hair hiding your view of the outside world.

You could feel the effect you were having on his body; his arms shook on either side of you.

He gave you time to adjust and time for himself to catch his breath. Then he lifted his head and delicately kissed you.

"Fuck. You feel so good Y/N," he whispered. It was truly a rarity to hear Spencer Reid cuss, and you can't say it didn't get you going.

He slowly lifted his hips then brought them against you; filling you again. Connecting with you as close as he physically could.

He lazily thrusted as your body grew more and more welcoming to him. He filled you up so well. You tightened around him briefly to feel more.

A growl formed at the back of his throat. "If you keep doing that I'm not going to last long." He reached down to squeeze your thigh and lift your leg higher.

Your eyes rolled back as he managed to thrust deeper into you.

He picked up his speed.

At this angle, every thrust made him brush against your clit. He must've known this, he began circling his hips with each thrust inside of you.

He lay his palm flat against your pelvis, feeling himself brushing against your cervix.

You were a mess of incoherent moans at this point. He lowered his head to your neck and you heard him grunting in your ear with each thrust. You began to meet his hips with yours, making him move faster. He changed direction slightly and brushed up against your deepest bundle of nerves. Your back arched and he gasped.

He slid his arm under you, keeping you arched in that angle. He lifted his head to watch you.

"Ah. Spencer, I'm- Ah I'm close." You nearly sang his praises with your high pitched moans.

You raked your nails over his back. "Me too." He reached down and circled his thumb over your clit, applying a pulsing pressure.

Your jaw fell open and your brows furrowed as you moaned his name. He dropped his head to your neck again and you kissed his jawline. You watched his shoulders tense, loving the sight of his back arching and his muscles flexing under your hands. Someday you hoped to trace and connect all the small freckles there.

He doubled-down his efforts, jackhammering into you. Your vision blurred and the last thing you remembered was that coffee and woodsy-vanilla scent as he pushed you over the edge again. You came without warning, holding him against you like a lifeline tethering you to reality.

You felt him twitch inside of you, your body tightening around him. His hips stuttered. He came just as suddenly; coating your inner walls and moaning your name.

He thrusted a few more times, your orgasm still coming in shockwaves. He didn't stop until your body had milked him dry.

His body shook with aftershocks and he nearly collapsed all of his weight on top of you. You felt him breathing, hot, against your neck. You were in no better shape, eyes half lidded and covered in sweat. You traced your nails between Spencer's shoulder blades. His overworked muscles twitched in response.

"Wow," was all you could manage to say.

Spencer groaned and lifted his head, his hair matted, going every which way. You raked your fingers through his hair, moving it back and out of his eyes.

"Worth the wait?" He asked.

You rested your palm on his cheek and pulled him down to kiss you. He kissed you as sensually as someone out of breath and exhausted could manage, and he didn't stop kissing you. You had to pull away first, beginning to feel the mess between your legs.

"Shower?" You suggested.

Spencer swallowed and nodded. "Shower."

It was a task to get there, but you both managed, and it was worth it when the water hit you. The mess between your legs washed away. Spencer held your waist and looked at you like you were the most important thing in the world.

"I love you." He stated, as you began to wash your hair. You stilled for a moment, taking everything in. If it wasn't for Spencer's reassuring touch, this would all feel like a dream.

"I love you too." You smiled, reaching up to kiss him; he leaned down and met you halfway.

When both of you were cleaned and dried, Spencer gave you one of his shirts to wear to bed. You couldn't help how giddy the gesture made you feel. He wanted to see you in his shirt.

You joined him in bed. Tonight, you were both too exhausted for him to read to you. His post-sex voice also had the sexiest scratchiness to it and you didn't want to go to bed horny another night.

"Tonight was perfect, Spencer," you whispered against his chest, noting his uncharacteristic silence.

"It was." He agreed, playing with your hair.

"How am I supposed to keep my hands to myself at work tomorrow when I know what you're capable of?" You happily traced his skin.

Spencer laughed, his chest rumbling under you.

"Hey, at least you don't have an eidetic memory. I can picture every second, clear as day." He mumbled, brushing his fingers along your neck.

"Mmm, as long as I'm not the only one that has to suffer tomorrow." You yawned, growing tired.

"No, I promise you, we'll both have to suffer tomorrow."

You fell asleep in his arms, absolutely full of love for Spencer Reid.

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

You were exhausted, barely coming to, when you felt the bed dip. Arms slid under you and lifted you.

Spencer, ever the romantic; carrying you to the kitchen for breakfast so you wouldn't have to walk.

You felt yourself slip out of consciousness again, cuddling up to his chest. You knew you were safe in his arms. He would never drop you.

When you finally came to, you rubbed your tired eyes.

You stretched, feeling the couch cushions underneath your legs. You yawned and opened your eyes, expecting the sight of smoke as Spencer usually burned the toast.

Except the ceiling above you held cracks and lit a blue hue reflected by a television.

Your eyes widened as they landed on a television screen.

The Criminal Minds intro was playing.

You were in your old apartment.

"No." You whispered.

"No. No. No. NO." This had to be a nightmare.

You jumped up, stumbling over the coffee table legs.

You ran around your tiny apartment, looking for any sign of Spencer. Then you heard his voice.

It was him, on the tv. An episode of Criminal Minds was airing, and you felt farther away from him than you ever had before. You fell to the floor next to your coffee table.

You watched Spencer Reid on tv in tears, knowing it wasn't your Spencer Reid, and you had no idea how to get back to him.

Next Chapter

[yandere-daydreams]

A Yandere!Monika/Reader piece for a lovely anonymous commissioner, with a few unfortunate implications coming towards the end. It was nice to write something a little different from my usual style, and I almost forgot how well this game was written... my adoration of Doki Doki Literature Club is rejuvenated, to say the least.

Word Count: 4.0k

TW: Implied Stalking, Physical Threats, and (Non-Graphic) Violence. 

It was a fixation. That was the best word to describe it.

A fixation.

In itself, the game hadn’t been anything special. Shocking, sure, absolutely horrifying at points, but you were seasoned veteran when it came to horror, a connoisseur of all things dark and demented. That was the downside when it came to warnings. All those labels and reviews were necessary, especially with how a game like Doki Doki Literature Club presented itself, but it kept you on the edge of your seat. If you’re waiting for something bad to happen, you’ll never be surprised when something bad does happen. Just disappointed that it didn’t turn out to be worse.

Either way, you played through the dating-simulator, blushing when Sayori confessed and jumping in your seat when Yuri’s obsession boiled over and having all the responses you were supposed to when unfortunate things happened to people who didn’t really exist. You were painfully precise about these things, never daring to veer off the trodden path, even in a game that couldn’t really be failed, and when it came time for your fun to end, you knew what you were supposed to do. You’d delete Monika’s file, restart the game, and watch things play out. That was it. Three easy steps. Three mindless steps.

Three steps you didn’t think you’d ever actually go through with.

You knew you wouldn’t as soon as you saw it. Monika, a character you hadn’t paid any mind to, sitting right in front of the screen, taking up your monitor in her over-done, oppressive glory, the mood only made more dramatic by just how late it’d gotten, how dark your room was by now. It was a picture, you knew that, something someone had drawn and edited into a game, and yet… it wasn’t, at the same time. There was a connection, as unprecedented as it was unearned. An attraction, albeit one you couldn’t name the source of. A fixation.

There was that word again. Fixation. An undeniable, unreasonable fixation.

Monika seemed to know as well as you. The fact that you’d been staring at the same frame for far too long probably helped her to reach that conclusion, pre-scripted or not.

"Hey, have you ever heard of the term 'yandere'?"

You had, in passing. You’d never paid too much attention to it, though, not enough to be able to pick the definition out.

“It's a personality type that means someone is so obsessed with you that they'll do absolutely anything to be with you. Usually to the point of craziness..."

The idea appealed to you, interested you. Lingering on it for a moment, you let yourself fall into the word. Yandere. You liked that. Yandere.

"A lot of people are actually into the yandere type, you know? I guess they really like the idea of someone being crazy obsessed with them. People are weird! I don't judge, though!"

Well… you wouldn’t want someone to be obsessed with you, you were sure. That seemed like too much attention. It’d take too much effort to keep them interested, and it’d probably be dangerous to entertain a stalker like that… Yeah, you were sure. You didn’t want anyone to be obsessed with you.

But, Monika didn’t exist. She wasn’t dangerous. She didn’t have anyone else to give attention to, and you wouldn’t have to worry about her judging your interests. Even if someone found out, you could just blame it one a glitchy file that won’t close. There wasn’t a risk.

“It's not like I could ever actually kill a person… Just the thought of it makes me shiver. But, come on… everyone's killed people in games before. Does that make you a psychopath? Of course not."

Right. It was just a game. Liking something fictional didn’t make you weird or perverted or… a Yandere for Yanderes, you supposed. It was a dirty little secret. A guilty pleasure. It was normal. Or, it wasn’t anymore abnormal that the disgusting investment a lot of people had in blood-splatter and gore, anyway.

“But if you do happen to be into the yandere type… I can try acting a little more creepy for you. Then again, there's already nowhere else for you to go, or anyone for me to get jealous over."

She didn’t have anyone else in that isolated, tiny world of hers. It would’ve been lonely, if she was real, and for whatever reason, your empathy found that fact too heart-breaking to ignore. And you didn’t really want her to ‘act more creepy’, she was fine as she was, so… that made it a little better, didn’t it? You might’ve just liked the companionship, how close she wanted to be to you. It was an artificial intimacy, and who wouldn’t like intimacy they didn’t have to return?

“Is this a Yandere girl's dream?"

If that's a Yandere’s dream, then your situation must be a Yandere-Lover’s dream. There was no harm, no foul, very low risk and a very high reward, even if it did come in the form of a one-sided, directionless conversation. You thought about finishing the game, speeding through the process and never bothering to think about Monika or Yanderes or Doki Doki Literature Club again.

You thought about it, rolling the idea over in your mind like an antique in need of inspection. You thought about it, scanning over Monika one more time, and turned your monitor off without closing the game. You’d decide tomorrow, before class, or when you got home. A few days of self-indulgence wouldn’t hurt anyone, would it?

Least of all Monika.

Least of all you.

~

You didn’t close the game.

Not before you left, not after class, and certainly not that night, when the urge hit you to play though her dialogue until your eyes forced you to stop. You didn’t bother reading, the next morning, something you sorely came to regret as you sat in your first class of the day, little to do save for staring at the clock and wondering what you should do after school, despite already knowing what the outcome would most likely be. Your teacher was out, today, for the first time all year. She’d bragged that she never missed a day, but you didn’t care enough to raise anything more than a few curious questions. Concern was too much, considering how often accidents happen.

“Do you have a pen?”

A light voice drew you out of your thoughts, and you glanced towards the desk in front of yours, immediately meeting eyes with the girl seated there. You’d never noticed her before, not to any exceptional extent, brown hair and murky eyes making for an unremarkable combination. You simply nodded, reaching down and beginning to search through your bag, talking to fill the silence. “She didn’t leave work for us, right?” You asked, sticking your hand into a random pocket and coming up empty. It was weird, but you tried another. Monika always had a pen on her, it was part of her character design. “I think the assignment on the board was old… it was there yesterday, too.”

She chuckled, as if you’d made a joke. A funny one, judging by how long the noise lasted. “I know that, but…” She trailed off, just long enough to lean onto your desk, attempting to peer over it. “Clubs are demanding, aren’t they? I’m not even a council member, but Debate still has me doing more work than the President.” She let out a heavy sigh, as if the optional dedication had been forced onto her. “It’s all supposed to be extemporaneous -- unplanned, y’know? That’s what used to make it exciting. Everyone was speaking from the heart and everyone minded their own business. It was a competition, but it wasn’t personal.”

You hummed, lightly, closing that compartment and opening another. “And it is, now?”

“Oh, definitely.” There was a subtle emphasis on every other word, it seemed, a passion for nothing in particular breaching whatever she felt like talking about. You could see why she must’ve made a good speaker. “That’s what happens when you start thinking about things too much. They started announcing the topics ahead of time, then people started writing out their arguments, and now you can’t take a side without attacking the other.” There was a pause, a tap to her cheek. A moment to think. “You have to phrase it a certain way, or else it is personal. If you keep things objective, the other side will follow along. It’s amazing how suggestive people can be, when you make an effort to guide them.”

“I wish you would guide me in the direction of a fucking pen,” You mumbled, eliciting another giggle, the sound muffled by a palm over her mouth. “I’m sorry, it usually doesn’t take this long. It’s like they all just, I don’t know, phased out of existence or something.”

“Don’t worry about it.” The disregard came casually, without hesitation. You couldn’t help but wonder if she was as dedicated to her cause as she seemed. “Check the main pocket. You probably kept dropping them in the first place you saw without noticing.” You blinked, glancing up to frown at her, but she just shrugged. “A lot of people do it. If you haven’t caught on, I don’t have a whole much to do ‘cept watch them.”

You didn’t pry further. This was the first time you’d heard her voice, too, so it was fair to assume she wasn’t much of a socialite. “About your club,” You said, bringing the conversation back to a topic that didn’t have to do with how often she stared at your classmates. “Why don’t you quit? You don’t seem to like it very much.”

“Who knows?” She frowned, closing her eyes well she spoke. “I’d have to find another to join, and there’s no guarantee I won’t just keep running into the same problem over and over again. I think about making my own, sometimes, just because I’d be able to make rules against that kind of thing.”

Again, you brightened, and not only because your fingers found something tubular and plastic. “You want to start a club?”

“Yeah, but it’d have to be about something fun.” She rolled her wrist, not noticing when you held out a thoroughly abused pen. “Like, about music or art or…”

“Literature?” You suggested, eagerly.

She scowled, shaking her head, muttering something about her distaste. She said it’d been months since she read a book, years since she’d written something original. Even the idea was alien, to her.

And yet, you couldn’t find it in yourself to be disheartened.

She’d taken the pen, after all.

~

“Whatcha starin’ at?”

Her tone was playful, posture following in suit, the girl rocking back and forth on her heels as she waited for you to snap out of your stupor. You hadn’t meant to zone out, to stare at the dense collection of apartments and condominiums in front of you, but there was just something so familiar about the collection, something you couldn’t put your finger on. But, a hand waving in front of your eyes brought your attention back to the real world, regardless of whether or not you wanted it too.

You were still getting used to having another person around, honestly. Your new friend took a shining to you quickly, settling to let you trail after her like a lost puppy whenever you didn’t have something better to do. She’d offered to show you a shortcut to your train-stop, today, but you were having your doubts about how well she knew the route. It felt like you’d been walking down this same road for ages, now. Like it was a loading screen you didn’t have the connection to overcome.

You took a step forward, standing a little straighter. Attempting to check if the buildings would still be there when you changed perspectives. “Has this neighborhood always been here?” You asked, tilting your head. Still there. “I don’t remember seeing it, until now.”

“As long as I’ve been alive,” She replied, not seeming to take you seriously. “Besides, how would you know? You lock yourself up whenever we’re not in class.”

You huffed, sending a quick glare in her direction, the diversion taking more effort than it should’ve. “I get out occasionally, I’ve just been--”

“Busy with a new game?” She rolled her eyes, setting a swift pace and signaling for you to follow. “It’s not a ‘new game’ if you’ve been working on it for the past two weeks. I’m going to come over and finish it for you myself, one day.”

You were tempted to interrupt her, to contradict her diagnosis, but… you had been playing through Monika’s dialogue for a while. There were so many options, so many routes and monologues, but you’d exhausted most of them. She didn’t hold the same… uniqueness she once did, for lack of a better way to put it. You certainly weren’t tired of playing yet, but you were starting to realize you would be, one day, possibly sooner than you’d anticipated. You’d need something new to focus on, something new to satisfy that itch in your chest, the one that seemed to form every time you were away from your computer for too long. You wondered if there was something similar - Yandere was a genre, technically. There had to be more content, even if you had to look for it.

You resolved to do a more in-depth search once you got home.

“...I’m working on it,” You mumbled, biting the inside of your cheek. Hesitantly, you scanned over her, speeding up to stay at her side as something caught our attention. “When did that start?”

She raised a hand and ran her fingers through her hair self-consciously, already aware of what you were talking about. It was tied back, today, done up painfully tightly and secured with a white hair-band. Her hair was too short for it to come off as elegant or sophisticated, but the way it swung as she walked was cute, and the effort that’d been put into pinning each strand into submission was admirable. She caught onto your approval quickly, locking eyes with you as she spoke. “I’m trying to impress you, idiot.”  

You blinked. She blinked. You blushed, stuttering out something stupid, and she punched you in the side, laughing.

“I’m kidding, (Y/n), don’t freak out on me.” You tried, unsuccessfully, to do as she demanded, earning you another blow, this one coming in the form of an elbow thrown into your rib cage. “What? Can you only accept confessions from 2-D girls, now?”

“It’s just…” You shoved your hands in your pockets, attempting to hide your distress. “It’s just different. I wasn't expecting it!”

“Exactly, it’s different.” She smiled, throwing the offending pony-tail over her shoulder. “Little changes have been doing me a lot of good, lately.”

~

‘One day’ had come too soon.

You knew it would, eventually. You’d been expecting it, in fact. Back-ups had been prepared, a new game and an older series to watch and a few stories on the… riskier side, made by people with too much time and similar interests, and for all intents and purposes, you were ready. It was natural. People got tired of things, of characters and plots and seeing the same face every day, and you knew you would get tired of Monika too, eventually. She was wonderfully written, but no character could be entertaining for… how long had it been? A month? Two?

You needed to check the date more often. Time always seemed to get weird, slowing down and skipping ahead so awkwardly when you spent most of the day in front of a screen.

You guessed the date didn’t matter, though. You were still in the same position, either way, your head resting on one hand while the other laid over your mouse. You’d been staring down Monika’s character file for far too long, but not nearly long enough, at the same time.

It felt like this should be a bigger deal. Like there should be a ceremony, a commemoration, something to mark the occasion. Should you celebrate? Play a funeral dirge? Every action felt inappropriate, but none felt quite as inappropriate as not taking one at all. Absentmindedly, you quit the game, a reaction based on reflex alone. You had a few times, in the beginning, but you still checked Monika’s dialogue. A parting interaction, you rationalized. The final interaction.

"Okay. I'm just going to accept the fact that you need to quit the game once in a while. I'm starting to get used to it, anyway."

Oh, god, she sounded like a clingy girlfriend. You guessed that’s what she was, but she was never this… passive-aggressive.

"Besides, it makes me happy that you always come back..."

You perked up, at that, your favor easily swayed. Maybe you could wait one more day, just give this whole thing another shot--

“But I shouldn’t have to be happy when you come back.”

You hadn’t pressed anything, that time. She shouldn’t have been talking.

“I know you have your own life, and I know you need breaks, but… it’s a really horrible feeling. And since I try to make you feel the best you can feel, you should want to make me feel good, too!”

Except, you didn’t want to make her happy. She was a fictional character, one you didn’t want to be lectured by. Monika seemed to catch onto that as soon as you thought it, though.

“And since you have to want to make me happy… it must be a glitch in my character file. That makes sense. Whenever it happens, it almost feels like I've been killed or something."

It was meta, a little concerning, but your empathy had been all-but drained dry. It wasn’t like you’d felt bad for leaving Monika in the first place, honestly, but an appeal to that non-existent sympathy wouldn’t earn her many points.

"If you could figure out what's causing that, I'll love you forever~"

Yeah, right. Sure she would. Monika would absolutely love you, forever and always, to eternity and beyond. May death do you part.

You didn’t hesitate, this time, deleting her character file and exiting the game. 

You didn’t really feel like playing through the final scene. ~

How long it’d been since someone used this part of the school?

‘Empty’ didn’t quite cover the expanse of nothingness in front of you. The floor was tinted grey with scuff-marks and dirt, unused tables pushed against the walls and chairs that weren’t fit to be sat in stacked on top, forming barricades between shutter-covered windows and yourself. The door had stuck, despite the key in your hand, and everything seemed to make a truly awful creaking sound when touched. The only thing that looked new (relatively new, at least) was the teacher’s desk, dark faux-wood unscarred by whatever’d torn through the rest of the room. Even the lights seemed to feel the effect, dim and flickering, some already succumbing to the pure dullness that permeated the air. It was abandoned. Desolate.

More similar to another classroom you’d acquainted yourself with than you felt comfortable admitting.

“Some people say it’s haunted,” She started, closing the door behind her. You heard the ring of keys jingle, the lock sliding back into place, but you didn’t bother turning to face her. “A lot of people, actually. Rumor’s that a group of underclassmen girls used to sneak at night and do all sorts of satanic stuff. It’s why no one uses this building, anymore.”

“They have to be joking,” You countered, taking a step towards the teacher's desk. You ran a finger along the surface lazily, wiping the resulting dust build-up onto your shirt. “That kind of thing doesn’t happen in real life. Someone probably just thought it’d make a good campfire story.”

She approached before replying, her bag having been discarded somewhere along the way. With silence as unusual as it was between the two of you, you couldn’t help but laugh, turning and getting ready to tease her for being scared or believing in something so supernatural. You opened your mouth, but the joke died and turned to ash on your tongue before it could make it past your teeth.

There she was, like you knew she’d be. Hair up, uniform perfect, and a bright smile pulling at the edges of her lips. As cheery as it ever was. As blinding as it ever was.

The carving knife in her hand almost rivaled its shine.

She took another step towards you, and you took one back, hitting the desk abruptly. “You’re acting like you’d know anything about the real-world, (Y/n).” She was giggling, again, flexing her grip on the knife’s hold. You considered attempting to run past her, making a break for it, but the key was still in her blazer’s pocket. You glanced down, searching for your phone, but its outline was gone and its weight was equally as absent.

Like it’d disappeared into thin air.

It hadn’t, though. Your aggressor laughed one more time, holding up the device in her free hand before dropping it to the floor and crushing it under her heel, the resulting crack sending a spike of something dark into your chest.

“You don’t know shit about the real world,” She said, waving the blade around haphazardly. Another step forward, this one all-but closing the distance between the two of you. “All you think about are… games and fake girls, never what’s right in front of you. We’ve known each other for four years, but I had to hospitalize someone before you’d do so much as look at me.”

Four years. Four years. You hadn’t noticed her before a few months ago. “Listen, I just didn’t think we were that close--”

“I know.” This time, the knife came down. It missed your side, but not enough to save your shirt, a tear forming and something crimson spreading outward from the small cut. The sting came a second later. You wanted to move, to scream, to run, but it was all you could do to remember to breathe as she went on. “You didn’t think we were close. You didn’t think I was worth getting close to. That’s why I started wearing this fucking costume.” She ran a hand through her pony-tail, fingers catching on her hair-tie. The band was practically ripped from her scalp, snapping before she discarded it. “I’m not even a brunette. I thought dying my hair might get your attention, and… it did. Of course it did.” She paused, shrugging, and you remembered how to inhale. “But, that doesn’t matter now.”

You relaxed, ever so slightly. “It doesn’t?”

“It doesn’t.” Her grin was back in a moment, your hopes dropping as soon as they’d arose. “Because the two of us are going to stay here until we know each other, or… until you know me. As well as I know you, at least. Then, we’re going to leave and I’m going to be your girlfriend. It’ll be so sweet, right?” The tension in her shoulder’s lessened, dissolving. But, that edge was still there, and you doubted it’d dissipate any time soon. “You probably don’t even know my name. I’ve never heard you use it before.”

Your eyes widened, the realization hitting you later than it should’ve. “Monika?”

“No, not Monika,” She answered, softly, her smile taking on a more disappointing note. She brandished her beloved knife, and your heart dropped into your stomach. “But, you don’t have to worry about getting it wrong. We’re going to work at it until you love me just as much as you love her.”

[thecursedhellblazer-arc]

The Taste of a Promise

(( So, @sirhisslot, I saw this picture that @thedemonconstantine made for you yesterday and, since I was already planning to write a piece with John and our favourite sassy bird, I thought to uh...sort of dedicate it to you? It seemed just fair since it’s all thanks to you if I got to enjoy all the shenanigans you guys have come up with! ^^ ))

(( It’s a bit of a piece of trash and I’m so very sorry for it, but hopefully the thought will make up for its lack of super high quality! Happy delayed birthday from this random twat person! ))

John slowly blew out a mouthful of smoke, watching as it raised up towards the night sky before dispersing in the chilly air. The scratch on his cheek was still stinging like hell, even after it had been cleaned and disinfected, and so did all the other small gashes and light cuts that covered most of the skin of his arms and chest. His shirt, while not exactly torn to shreds, would have probably ended up in the trash the next morning. The time and the effort he would have to put in repairing it wouldn’t have been worth the poor results.

Sticking the cigarette back between his lips, Constantine muttered a heavy curse under his breath. Normally, he would have paid no mind to that kind of wounds, since he was used to dealing with much worse, and by now he should have made peace with the fact that his clothes got ruined more often than not. It was part of the risks of the job, something that couldn’t be helped and that he had to put up with, no matter how aggravating for both him and his wallet it could be.

However, in that particular occasion, the culprit also happened to be the source of his current bad mood and, if there was something John was good at, it was holding grudges, even, and especially if he had to be honest, for the most stupid things. The events that had taken place that night were part of an overused, bad script that, somehow, never seemed to get old and kept repeating itself over and over and over, much to the magician’s chagrin. The fact that he was to blame for all that as much as his opponent was, in his eyes, a detail of no import. It didn’t change the fact that he had been forced to flee outside and get some air, instead of being inside with the others, enjoying his drink.

“Bloody fuckin’ bird,” he muttered under his breath, moodily chewing the butt of his cigarette.

His eyes moved up towards the sky. The feathered fucker constantly glared at him, no matter what he did or said, no matter if he had been paying any sort of attention to him or not. He probably thought that John was a bad influence and that he could exert his role as such even just by existing in the same room where Tim was. And deep down, even if he wouldn’t have admitted it out aloud, the magician might have almost agreed with the owl. However, that didn’t give the bastard any right to attack him at the slightest pretext.

Constantine let out a low groan. He wasn’t even sure of how the fight had started this time. Maybe he had said a word too much, maybe he had glared at the bird for a bit too long. Or perhaps it was because he had messed a little with the winged wanker’s food. Chas had advised him against doing it, but of course he hadn’t listened. In his defence, Tim had been around for a few days and John had really tried to behave at first, but it had been impossible for him to keep the act up. The two of them just weren’t capable of getting along. Why exactly, it was a mystery and John’s guess would have been as good as any, if he had cared enough to make one. It seemed to be one of those things that simply were as they were, almost as if they had been meant to be.

Oh, he was bad at handling those. Very, very bad.

The wandering trail of his thoughts was interrupted by the light sound of wings flapping and Constantine turned his head on his side, already scowling before his eyes could properly land on the bird that had come to perch on the railing next to him. There were several feathers missing from his plumage and the magician couldn’t help smirking in smug satisfaction, knowing that he had been the one to do such damage. He might have gained his own wounds during the fight, but the bastard looked just as worse for wear as he did.

“Woh’s up now? ‘Ell, can’t a bloke ‘ave a bloody fag n’ some bloody alone time?” He grumbled under his breath, turning his head away once again. “Didn’t yeh get enough already? Sod off, yeh tosser. ‘M not in th’ mood to go again rite now.”

The sharp look that Yoyo shot him was even harsher than John’s tone had been, but then the owl seemed to choose to ignore him and instead he started to preen, trying to make up for the mess that had been made of his feathers. That moron was a jinxed menace,  a walking magnet for trouble, and he reeked of alcohol, cigarettes, bad habits,  misery and, literally, of Hell itself. He shouldn’t be allowed near anyone, especially not his human companion.

And yet, for some reason that kept evading him, Timothy seemed to have grown quite fond of Fate’s Fool, against what most people would have surely agreed was common sense and good taste.

Seeing his words falling in death ears, John rolled his eyes and went back to his cigarette, barely holding back the impulse of blowing out the next mouthful of smoke directly in the bird’s face. His gaze, however, kept darting towards the owl. He didn’t trust him not to sink his cursed claws or damned beak back in his flesh the moment he had turned away for a moment too long.

The silence stretched for a few minutes, the time that Constantine needed to finish his smoke and lit out the new one, while Yoyo kept  trying to cover the holes in his plumage, taking the time to shoot the man an outraged look every time he lifted his head to move his attention to another spot.

“Yeh know, if me presence offends yeh tha’ much, yeh can’ fuck off,” John eventually commented, after the umpteenth glare. “Christ. Yeh could even jus’… ” He waved a hand, gesturing to his unwanted guest to scoot away. “Lots of space on dis bloody railin’, innit?” 

Once again he was ignored, just as he had expected to be, and he glanced away, muttering one more curse. He didn’t know what was worse, not being able to relax and breath, which was what he had come out to do, or the sparks of irritation that kept being fed by the bird’s snobbish attitude. It was another thing that he would have never admitted out aloud, not even under torture, but the fucker and his insistent scowling managed to make him feel every bit like the piece of trash he had to be in the bird’s eyes.

Something sharp suddenly jabed him in his side and he started. “Oi! Yeh fuckin’ wanker!”

He whipped around to fully face Yoyo. He had meant it when he had stated that he wasn’t in the mood for another round, but, if the bastard wanted to go for it, he would have made him regret it. However, he paused when he found the owl with one wing extended, pointing towards the window of the balcony.

Look, you idiot.

The displeased expression didn’t abandon Constantine’s face, but he reluctantly did what he was being told, his eyes landing on the small scene that was playing inside the apartment. Tim was sitting on the couch, holding a glass that was probably being kept dutifully refilled by Chas. Tha cabbie had to be spinning one of his stories, because he was gesticulating animatedly, perhaps a bit more than it was strictly necessary, most likely in the attempt of keeping the teen as involved as possible in whatever was being told.

Despite himself, John found himself grinning slightly. Poor old Chas. He probably felt like he was failing miserably with Tim barely offering polite nods to show his participation, even if the lad had to be appreciating the snacks that kept being shoved in his way, considering how quickly they disappeared from his plate.

What a domestic scene, carrying the taste of a normalcy and of the tranquility of daily life none of them was truly used to. An old cassette playing in the background, complementing the warm lights that lit up his best friend’s flat, the lingering smell of the homemade dinner they had shared. It tasted like warmth, like safety, like home. A thin and yet sturdy shield against all the possible, ugly realities they had witnessed.

The promise of a better, brighter future.

John turned back towards Yoyo, finding that the owl was staring at him expectantly. And, hell, if he couldn’t feel the weight of those expectations. He groaned and the bird hooted at him, irritated and firmly, preventing the magician from just ignoring him as he had been tempted to do.

So? Did you get it or are you that thick?

Constantine puffed out a bit more of smoke, but then nodded, glancing briefly towards the window one more time. “…Aye, aye, got th’ fuckin’ message,” he grumbled under his breath. “Loud n’ clear, mate.”

Those words, however, didn’t seem to satisfy Yoyo because the owl pecked him once again, a bit harder than he had done to get his attention. The flash of satisfaction that touched his dark eyes when the magician winced was impossible to miss.

And?

“N’ ‘m tryin’, alrite? ‘M fuckin’ tryin’. Fuck, it ain’t easy, yeh know? N’…good t’in’s ain’t exactly me forte,” John was forced to continue, rubbing his forearm. Yet another bruise to add to the list. “But, if there’s somet’in’ I can do to stop all tha’, too keep ‘im ‘ere, wit’ us, away from…wohte’er ugly fate’s waitin’ ‘ed for us…Be bloody sure tha’ I’ll do it. N’ I’ll leave not’in’ untried. No ma’er th’ cost.”

Their gazes met for a moment and, after squinting at the man for a moment, Yoyo this time seemed pacified. His faith in John Constantine wasn’t the strongest and it would have never been, but he could recognise heartfelt sincerity when he saw it. There was no reason to believe that the magician’s attempts would have been enough, because history had often shown how useless will and good intentions could be at the end of the day, but it was a start. And it was something they could agree on. Some common ground, together with their shared despised for that filthy crow.

Fine. Truce. At least for tonight. But be ready to meet my wrath if you even just think about making a false step around Tim.

“Wohte’er,” John replied, bringing the cigarette back to his lips. Then a smirk opened on his lips. “…Fuckin’ stinky duster.”

The peck that reached his hand was strong enough to make him yell, but he found himself laughing mere second after, holding his bleeding fingers, not giving a damn about how Yoyo had puffed out his chest and his feathers, wings opened in a clear threatening pose.

His shout had been loud enough to attract Chas’s and Tim’s attention and the cabbie was already getting up from his seat, most likely to come and retrieve him, and perhaps even to give him another scolding about how he needed to stop poking the bird, but he found that he didn’t care about that either.

He grinned, widely, waving his injured hand, and damn. Behind the facade of offended anger and ruffled feather, he could have sworn that Yoyo was smirking right back at him.

[curious-minx]

Bob’s Burgers most reliable holiday  provides another lowkey enjoyable, but messy episode. Whereas the latest Simpsons strikes a really sore vocal node.

The second holiday episode of Bob’s Burgers’ 11th season, much like the previous Halloween episode, this one also fails to live up to the series’ even higher Thanksgiving standard

 That’s not to say “Diarrhea of a Poopy Kid” is not a good episode, but it does fall into the category of Bob’s Burgers episode I typically respond to the least: Character-based storytelling vignettes. The writing on these segment driven episodes tend to be looser and  playful bending the show’s reality, but much like every time the other Fox family leaves the Springfield plane of reality into a pastiche styled playground for the writers to plug the characters into.

The overall animation and visual-based gags on this episode offers some of the best moments of the season and series in general. Having the Belcher stories revolve around action movie pastiches of 90’s action movie schlock like Air Force Once, Armageddon, and late 80’s Predator  are extremely punny and really grasping hard for satire. The walk to Louise’s Breadator is succinct and makes total sense for Louise’s character to tell this kind of story, whereas Tina drawing inspiration from Air Force One for her story sags the episode down. This episode also has the gall to bring in Gayle, a character that usually elevates all of her episodes nothing much to do until the third and best segment told by Bob. Teddie is also frustratingly nowhere to be seen and Teddie is one of those characters that really only needs a small scene explaining away  his absence like in the episode “Gayle Makin’ Bob Sled,” which Variety and I consider to be among the best of Bob’s Thanksgiving episodes. 

Nitpicks and reminiscing on past glories aside, what’s most impressive about an episode as conceptual and overstuffed as this one, an episode that’s also poopy and gross-out from the very beginning, still manages to pack undeniable heart. Seeing a character as relatable and sad sack-y as Bob Belcher be passionate about his one favorite holiday reminds me of the everlasting and evergreen Ray Bradbury remark about how everyone is capable of writing poetry as long as you ask them to talk about something they are truly passionate about. Seeing how this episode climax revolves around Gene and Bob’s love of food and proves a powerful sentimental moment. Bob’s Burgers sentimentality works because the show’s core is silly absurdism, light and fluffy gross out gags and quirky twee-ness. Introducing the action movie element feels like the series trying to branch out its audience and try to catch some eyeballs of viewers looking for something more like Archer, American Dad, Rick and Morty, or even Treehouse of Horror style genre exercises.  Bob’s Burgers and action comedy feels like putting garlic pesto on cinnamon toast, but Ryan Reynolds doesn’t think so.

Yes, that’s right. The biggest news out of the Bob’s Burgers camp…probably ever…is that the Molyneux sisters, the writers of this very action packed episode, have been hand selected by Mr. Detective “VanWilder” Pickachu himself to be head writers on the upcoming third Deadpool movie. Seeing that we live in a post Russo brothers world and how Dan Harmon was conscripted to punch up Doctor Strange scripts none of this should really surprise me, but I am still very much surprised by this development. The Deadpool 3 creative team and Reynolds is still promising to deliver an R-Rated Comedy, a rating and promise that is very much why Deadpool is the sensation that it is. 

In the current media landscape the only way a big budget R-Rated comedy can get made is if it’s attached to something like a mega superhero sized brand. At this point in time Deadpool is the closest thing kids have to a Mel or Al Brooks and it is what it is. If anything Ryan Reynolds personally choosing the Molyneux sisters for a project like this makes me like Ryan Reynolds a little bit more. And he’s a man I previously had no real feelings or opinions about. The only other thing about Deadpool I know about is that the franchise has developed a particularly shitty reputation in terms of its treatment of main female characters and literally freezing them out of the plot. The future of comedy is being driven by the significant increase of women gaining these kind of writing gigs and it’s a beautiful thing to finally see witness. Especially when a company like Netflix has been really shitty to both of its own female driven comedies: Glow and Tucca and Bertie.

Sigh. I am thankful for all the sad little boys and girls wearing too much or maybe the right amount of eye shadow that will inherit this flaming Earth.

Three and half pear shaped pals out of an Oedipus Rex Complex. 

////

Nerds! Nothing but a lousy rotten sniveling dweeb! You dorkus-rex! You body pillow huffing geek get over here and let the Simpsons set some things straight for you: A Comic Book Guy driven episode of the Simpsons is often where the show goes off the rails. The Comic Book Guy marriage episode is was one of those late day Simpsons that feel like a bad piece of dreamed up fan fiction that you found on the cutting room floor. Is the show interested at all with the fact that comics and being nerdy have become as mainstream as the Bible? No? They’re still treating geek culture as some sort of low hanging piñata fruit lousy with cheap references in place of actual jokes? Good! I don’t know why I would ever allow myself to think for a second that the Simpsons would challenge its own status quo 32 seasons in, but I keep coming back. 

What I should really do is back up. The title of this episode is “Three Dreams Denied.” Ah, Dream Denial! That’s exactly what anyone watching an animated sitcom hopes for: dreams being crushed. This isn’t some kiddy Davy and Goliath feel good wholesome fable, this is the Simpsons where characters are given dreams, and those dreams get denied. The next part of the title I want to break down is the fact that there are specifically three dreams that being denied. Three! That’s a comedy number! As long as you have three of anything you’re doing comedy. Plain and simple.

During the Robert Zemeicks arc of the Blank Check podcast Griffin Newman, co-host and comedian extraordinaire and someone I generally admire a lot, has been bringing up the fact that he’s been spending a lot of his Quarantine rewatching the entirety of the Simpsons. By the episode of Used Cars Newman has already gotten past the Movie era and is in the 20th seasons. One observation he made about later day Simpsons is that these episodes have a tendency to end abruptly on a pile of unusable and reality bending plots still in the process of tying themselves up. And there’s no better/worse example of this than this episode. 

Comic Book Guy goes to a comic book convention. Bart becomes a voice actor after befriending the comic book guy’s temporary replacement. Lisa feuds over her saxophone chair in the school orchestra with a new pretty boy voiced by the underwhelming Ben Platt. One of these plots is not like the other. This used to be the signature of a quality Simpsons episode that managed to tweak and divert expectations from the typical A & B sitcom storylines. This episode fundamentally fails to deliver on any of the three storylines and what makes it worse is that it’s an intentional choice. 

Now I know I have spent this review harping on Comic Book Guy, but he’s not even why this episode for me is such an abomination. And it’s not because the cutesy, flimsy Lisa subplot either (although I do find it noxiously amusing that a week after an Yeardely Smith took issue with the Queer Interpretation of Lisa would feature her going moony eyed over a boy voiced by a defiantly queer actor), no, what tips this episode into the territory of the truly terrible for me is the Bart becomes a voice actor subplot. 

The only defining quality of season 32 that I can discern is that the flagrant trolling on behalf of the writers. Can you believe we had three vignette driven episodes of the Simpsons in a row? Can you believe we would have meta reality breaking voice actor related moments back to back? When Lisa Simpson’s voice actor Yeardley Smith voiced the real world character of herself in the previous Podcast based episode it was clumsy and awkward as hell. Having Bart become a voice actor that ends up voicing a character of the opposite gender is the sort of kind of a funny thing that resembles a joke that the latter day Simpsons revel in. The characterization of voice acting work in this episode is downright insulting and explains exactly why this show suffers. 

The character of Phil that serves as the Comic Book Guy’s replacement is a working voice actor. He let’s Bart know this by doing a series of completely basic, broad and unremarkable impersonations that Bart is seemingly impressed by. All you have to do to become a successful voice actor is do a silly voice and you’re golden. Maybe from the perspective of a series as lazy and indulgent as the Simpsons is when it comes to voice acting. The complete denial of Julie Kavner’s deteriorating voice that at this point sounds like gentle elder abuse. There are times when Kavner is downright incomprehensible at times. The other oldest member of the Simpsons voice talent, Harry Shearer was wrongheadedly trying to defend his right to voice Characters of Colors because  in his words, “the job of the voice actor is to play someone who they’re not.” Obviously these words were not spoken by someone that thinks very highly of acting either. There is no one job an actor has to do, because the job  of an actor is always changing from job to job. The character of Phil is not even attributed to anyone! I have spent over thirty minutes getting testy with IMDB search engines and reading another website’s recap and no one can tell me who did the voice of the Voice Acting Character on Simpsons. Lovely.

Much like the Comic Book Guy the Simpsons heart is in bad shape. This is a show whose entire existence seems to be made out of spite. Or to garner enough funds for Matt Groening to prevent him from ever having to serve any prison time for his exploits on the Lolita express. Great, see I’m bringing up the Lolita Express at the end of a Simpsons review. This episode really left me in a bad mood, but thankfully that’s what Bob’s Burgers is for. 

SKIP. The only people that should watch this are people teaching a screenwriting class that need examples of what happens when you break your episode by haphazardly shoving three plots into one episode. If you can’t tie up one story in a satisfying manner then you really shouldn’t be telling a story at all. There’s also one really magnificent visual joke involving Homer and beer tea that is absolutely wasted on this episode.

[katsukikitten]

Majo - Dorm fun

"What are you doing?" Katsuki asks as he flops onto one of the sofas in the common room as you sit crossed legged at the low coffee table.

"Focusing." You almost bite back as you stare into the onyx orb, jotting down movements, thoughts and feelings in your meticulous script. A snort fills the room.

"Focusing in a room that's going to be filled in less than five minutes with fuck all annoying teenagers?" He mocks, "Brilliant plan dummy."

"Yes, it is brilliant. As it will help me to learn how to block people out." You say, eyes prying into a person's life. Their deepest darkest emotions set out before you like a menu.

"Tsk." He grabs for the remote next to your notebook staring along the way, "Does All Might know you're spying on him?"

He flips through the channels idly, remote resting on his stomach while crimson eyes read your scrupulous notes.

"Does it matter?" He hears the grin in your voice without seeing it. He can't help but smirk as you've gained much more confidence since dating him. Still he can't help but tease you.

"I guess not, but be prepared to tell all of class 1A what the hell he's doing in his free time. Especially that derpy Deku."

You wave your hand as if swiping away his words.

"Not everyone has prying eyes like you, Suki." You giggle and he rolls his eyes, "Plus everyone loves the movie you've just picked. No one will be interested."

"Ah okay. If you have notes on yourself in there be sure to jot down *delusional* ."

"Ha. Ha." You say dryly as you dig deeper. All Might stands on the black back drop in his smaller form, with little to no extra aura around him like the first time you saw him. You notate it as booming voices enter the dorm.

Though you cannot see it Katsuki smiles a bit devilishly. He is ready to see exactly how this plays out but will come to your rescue should you need it.

"NO, EIJI, its MY turn to pick the movie!" Mina yells, trying to elbow Kirishima who's currently muscling his way through the group.

"No, I called the dibs after class today. A very important and educational documentary on hero history is coming on that Midoriya and I would like to watch. You guys need to watch it. It will help with exams."

"Uuughhhh that's what SCHOOL is for Ida!" Kaminari comments, "Plus and I want to watch this live concert that they are telecasting from the US."

"Its been weeks since I've had a turn!" Uraraka pouts, "Momo and I have had to stay up so late to watch our recorded shows. And someone keeps deleting them!"

"M..maybe Uraraka can have our dibs Ida?" Miydoria asks shyly.

"According to the calander it's my turn. We are watching horror." Tokoyami states, "Right Asui?"

"Right!" She croaks.

Their voices grow louder as they approach, arguing pulling you from the silence that is All Might's room.

Arguing so loud it begins to drown out All Might's thoughts, leaving you only slightly flustered. You try to focus on the visual in hopes the 'audio' will return. He sips his tea, lounging at his desk and he replies to piled up fan mail idly, neglecting his teaching plans.

Teaching for dummies and a notebook borrowed from Aizawa sit open on his cluttered desk.

"I cannot keep focusing on Midoriya, though he is my protege. Bakugou needs my attention, emotionally. While Y/N, and all the others have such great potential I cannot let my...."

"I SAID ITS MY TURN NOW WHO SELECTED THIS MOVIE?!" Mina howls as she stands in the mouth of the archway. Katsuki holds up the remote to be seen as he growls.

"OI! The rule is first come first serve. Now make the fucking snacks would ya? I've caught you watching this movie a hundred times, what are you bitching for, Pinky?"

"I...I cannot believe you!" A whine but she storms into the kitchen, she pops her pink head out of the kitchen to add, "No one take MY corner of the couch."

"Uhh Ka...kaachan."

"What is it Deku?" True venom drips from your boyfriends kissable lips as he stares up at the emerald eye boy.

"Uhh Uraraka chan would love to be able to watch her show, it starts in a few minutes and..."

"And I don't give a shit." Katsuki glares up harshly at him through thick long lashes before Midoriya guides Urakaka to their usual spot on the couch, despite neither of them admitting their feelings for the other they sure do act like a couple.

"Hey Bakugo. Buddy. I know you're trying to see this fight with me. It will be ultra manly." Kiri says leaning over the couch to try to slip the remote away from his friend's steely grip. Only to be met with a small, almost harmless explosion, "HEY! Watch the hair dude. I'm still trying to hang out with Mina tonight."

"Yea sure, that is until she hears that you didn't try to get the remote for her." Sero teases sitting beside Shoji. He launches a string of tape that evaporates in a series of explosions. He curses to himself as he watches his half baked plan go up in flames.

Your patience runs thin as you push yourself, you half hoped that at least half of them would go to their dorms considering none of them were going to get that remote.

Still they argue, so much so they barely notice what you're doing.

"Hey Bakugo. Are you at least going to sit up?" Todoroki asks, purposefully sitting next to Momo, "Its rude to make your girlfriend sit on the floor."

"What Y/N? Why are you...Oh." Mina enters the room with a variety of snacks on a tray. She sets them down at the far end, peeking over your notebook.

She gasps, drawing even more attention on you as you try to ignore her, ignore them.

Katsuki watches you with heavy eyes, gauging your reaction. He knows he needs to be protective of you. You often push yourself too far and if you had an attack in front of all of your friends you'd never forgive yourself.

"ALL MIGHT?! DOES HE KNOW?!" She snatches the notebook and you try to swipe at her using your peripheral vision but fail.

The entire class is silent, only the commercial can be heard through the entire dorm.

"Mina has a strong acid quirk but needs more mental training. Where she is strong in tenacity she lacks focus." She reads from the notebook, "Wow rude. I am great at focusing."

She unknowingly knocks over Sero's soda as she plops next to Kirishima on the couch.

"Are these his personal notes? I've noticed you kinda adapt to their hand writing when you jot down their thoughts. It's....scary cool." Mina adds, yellow eyes scanning the page. The whole class, aside from Bakugo leans forward on their seats. A few even dropping from the sofa to be closer to you.

"Y...yes." You feel their eyes, their hunger to hear about themselves from their idol. You've never felt their stares with such intensity before, almost nearing close to the weighted gaze of your boyfriend.

None weigh as heavy as his. Though Midoriya's is pretty close right now.

A shiver runs along your spine as it always does when the full twenty set of eyes is on you.

Maybe this was a bad idea? Your cheeks redden just a bit as their thoughts creep to you despite your focus on All Might.

"What does he think about me? Is he proud? Am I doing him justice? Am I doing one for all justice? Will I disappoint him? Will his notes be more negative than positive? Will.."

"Midoriya." Your voice is ever soft yet dark. Katsuki growls inwardly never liking Deku's name to leave your lips.

Those lips are for his name only.

"Midoriya." You say again, you can feel a nose bleed coming on as you fight the darker side of your power. It would be easy to slip into his skin. To flay his mind and bend it to your will through manipulation since he is leaving himself so open, "You might as well be screaming in my face with how loud you're thinking."

His face burns bright red, he goes to open his mouth to say sorry but all you hear is his mind.

"What does it say about me?!"

"He hasn't looked at your notes today for me to know." You say, finally snatching the notebook from Mina without breaking your concentration.

The class shares a look while Katsuki sits up before sliding directly next to you.

"You okay, my enchantress?" He projects the thought like you taught him and it drowns out all the backround noise. You take a sharp inhale before nodding. You smooth your notebook.

"Stop staring." You hiss, "Stop being quiet go back to talking."

But no one offers a word to one another. Bakugou begins to hand out death stares before Kiri pipes up.

"So Mina, the upcoming exams. Think you're gonna need a study partner?"

"OMFG PLEASE PLEASE SAY YOURE OFFERING YOURSELF TO ME EIJI AAAAHHH." You hear Mina scream in her mind. You push it away, leaning closer to Katsuki.

There is something about his intensity that is grounding, most likely because it is a consistent hum. His walls are always up and his will is awe worthy. A nice way of saying how stubborn he is.

All Might types a text to Azawai asking about his dinner plans. He has a lot to discuss, especially Y/N's potential.

"Its crazy she got two proheros who have great will power to lose their tempers in front of all their students. How did she evoke that intense anger? Anger I hadn't felt since..."

You stop writing, suddenly something pulls at your thoughts. At your focus on the black backdrop pulling you into the middle of conciousness. Your heart races as you follow the the sound.

A tune being whistled.

You near ever closer to a dark room as an old bed and cracked mirror begin to fill the space.

A tune you seemed to have forgotten until it dredges up bad memories.

Your rapid breathing becomes audible, you feel Katsuki's hands move to grab your face to pull you out but you hold onto his wrists with such a grip he might bruise.

You know this whistle, its haunted your deepest nightmares as you've lived it.

"Ah there you are little majo. I knew you'd come when I called like a good girl." You know that voice as you're sucked into the dimly lit room with a man much too familar. Though he seems off as his dead eyes stare into the mirror. Doing the same trick he would do while keeping you locked in the dark, seeing how far your mind could wander.

Like a fucked up game of hide and seek.

Your nose bleeds as you stare into a face you could never forget, even if you worked yourself.

You should know. You tried.

"I have a new boss now. He's a good guy pays well." He starts as if you actually give a shit, "I need you to do something for me."

"Go fuck yourself." You growl and its audible in the room you sit in.

You do not hear Katsuki yell for everyone to leave. He's never heard your voice dip so low.

So dark and threatening.

They all leave wide eyed, especially when he explodes the can of soda in Mina's hand when she refuses. Kiri practically swings her over his shoulder to high tail it to his dorm room.

"Y/N." Katsuki whispers in your ear but you do not hear and hold fast onto his wrists. He struggles to free himself from your tiny hands.

"That is not how you speak to your father little witch." A snarl so low, he jumps to stand and you flinch out of habit. Many years were spent in a dark closet, all by his threatening hands.

It is a wonder you are not blind. He laughs at your movement. Your heart pounds into your throat.

"Now listen. Stop being such a selfish bitch and help your old man out. My new boss is a powerful man. I promised him I could do some brainwashing. Some...rearranging on both human and none humans. You need to come to me now. It's going to be a great job. You'll even get to bend the mind of a student there." His smile turns manic.

"You know I can't control anyone." Voice still icy cold as you speak. Eyes beginning to fill with tears of blood as you focus on his shattered mind. One of the few you cannot work.

"Ah ah ah. I feel you poking and prodding. You have to remember that you got your power from MY WIFE." He yells slamming his fist into the mirror, blood drips from his knuckles as four sets of his eyes stare at you.

You yelp while his laugh echoes in the dingy room. You shake, scared, angry.

Broken.

How could this happen?

How could he still summon you?

But most importantly how did he get out of jail?

"Stop trying to sound so tough. I know your limitations. I know the temptation of your curse. My beautiful wife's was very similar, she told me everything. You parasite, you can worm your way into thoughts. Move something here, replace something there. Boom they've bent to your will. Just like you did to your mother and now look what's happened." He gestures to the empty room riddled with needles and rotting take out, "She's left us both to care for one another."

"Now don't let my wife's death be in vain."

"You...you're the one who..." You're shaking so hard, your quirk amplifying as you subconsciously try to force your way into his mind.

"I what? You're just as guilty. You planted the idea of a forced entry in to the very seasoned detective..." He shrugs his shoulders and you scream.

"YOU MADE ME. YOU FUCKING MADE ME." Items fly across the living room as your voice goes raw and youre hardly able to catch your breath.

Your father stands and does something he's never been able to do before, he grabs onto your throat in your conciousness. His eyes glow when before he was quirkless, only being able to summon you through fear.

He squeezes and the bruise appears on your physical body. Crimson eyes widen with worry, with furry.

"H..how?" You choke.

"I told you my new boss was a pretty good guy." He laughs, nails digging into tender flesh. Drawing scarlet half moons, you gasp, eyes watering with tears and blood.

"Y/N!" A whisper.

Seconds stretch into what feels like hours.

"You've got three days to find me." He snarls, "No hints this time either. If you don't. Well let's just say you don't want me to find you."

"Y/N!!!" Katsuki appears on the black drop beside you, eyes burning with hot rage. This is a fight of wills he may not win. Fear grips you as you watch your father look over your shoulder. You act quickly as you push yourself plucking the darling image of your Bakugou from your father's brain as you send Katsuki flying back to the living.

His eyes widen with an emotion you've never seen him wear before.

Fear.

So deeply rooted in your Father's eyes you wonder if this is all a dream. That you'll wake up any second. But as with all emotion with him, it is fleeting.

"I see you've found your soul mate." He leans in closely to add "Do not let me remember them or their death will be slower than your mother's. Three days."

With that he slams you into the floor of consciousness shoving you back in to your body as you claw at your throat.

Your eyes water as you see Katsuki. Shaking sobs rack your body as you scream into his throat.

"NEVER FOLLOW ME AGAIN!" Its hoarse and raw with emotion, so much so that Katsuki stiffens. He runs soothing circles onto your back as you come undone in front if him. Repeating over and over again into his tear soaked neck.

"I can't let him remember. I can't let him remember."

A/N Oops I dont know why I wrote this but here have it. It was originally supposed to be like a cute slice of life AU for Majo but I'm finding out I dont work that way.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Michael After Midnight: TGWTG Anniversary Crossovers

I think enough time has passed where I can talk about these films without looking like I’m jumping on a trend.

Back when it was, you know, an actual thing, Channel Awesome would every so often gather together and make a big-as anniversary film to celebrate the site. The movies would always be these massive doorstoppers where everyone would be running around in Halloween costumes of whatever character they liked the most that fit the theme and fighting some random villain. None of this ever really tied in to their work, and none of this even remotely had anything to do with reviews. It was all just hanging around with friends and having dumb fun, and when I was younger I kind of just accepted that.

But certain revelations have made that dubious. No one was having fun making these. Everyone was miserable, except perhaps Doug Walker, who was just utterly oblivious to the plight of his coworkers. There was seedy stuff going on, people were pretty much being tortured and abused, and it’s a wonder anyone was ever able to feign enjoyment in any of their scenes. And looking back on these movies I used to remember fondly, I have to say… they kind of really, legitimately suck ass. These three films – Kickassia, Suburban Knights, and To Boldly Flee – are just legitimately painful and depressing to sit through, for reasons both meta and writing-wise.

The biggest problem with all of them is their humor, which is a pretty big problem when you’re starring a bunch of comedians, some of whom can be legitimately funny. The worst bits tend to revolve around the mind-boggling number of references they cram into each script; To Boldly Flee and Suburban Knights are much worse in this regard, as they have all of the actors literally dressed up as their favorite characters, but there are two examples of this sort of thing that shine as the worst examples of all. The first is Lindsay Ellis doing a Sarah Palin impersonation in Kickassia; Palin was such a flash-in-the-pan politician that it instantly dates the whole movie, and I don’t know if it was just bad writing, lack of direction, or what, but Ellis just fails to make this joke work at all. Like I know I can’t expect this to be as funny as Iron Sky’s Palin riffing, but still, it’s just sad.

The absolute worst, however, is JO in To Boldly Flee as Ed from Cowboy Bepob… at least that’s who I think he’s supposed to be playing. I know nothing about Cowboy Bebop and have outright refused to ever watch it because if Ed is anything like how JO played her, I’m going to fucking hate the whole show, Steve Blum and Melissa Fahn be damned. JO’s portrayal is whiny, hyper, annoying, manic, obnoxious… there’s not a single positive thing that can be said. His performance of the character is pretty much the poster child for just how absolutely awful these movies could get.

There’s also a lot of jokes where the punchline is basically just “this guy’s body/genitalia is funny, teehee.” Suburban Knights and To Boldly Flee have some truly awful examples of this, such as the numerous upskirts Doug Walker gets as Link and the infamous Spoony Dune scene. But even that isn’t the worst of it. The worst of it comes from the frequent states of near-nudity that Justin “JewWario” Carmichael would find himself in throughout these films. To Boldly Flee has him channeling George Takei and fencing without his shirt on, which is bad enough, but Suburban Knights has perhaps the worst scene of all, in any of these films, though only with hindsight.

For those of you not familiar, JewWario was outed as a creepy sexual predator during the whole #ChangeTheChannel fiasco. The guy groomed young women and did god knows what else during his time on the site, with none of his coworkers any the wiser and the management doing their best to cover it up; in fact, everyone only found out because the suits who owned CA made a huge blunder during their rebuttal of the claims of its former employees. With all of that context, please try and rewatch Suburban Knights’ climax in which JewWario helps save the day by revealing his penis to everyone. This right here is Keyser Soze levels of “uncomfortable in hindsight.”

The stories aren’t much better, and often fall into the same sort of issues that The Angry Video Game Nerd movie fell into, in that nothing in these films really showcases why we love the reviewers; Kickassia infamously has the Dr. Insano twist, as one example of how they botched this. All of these movies just feel too epic in scope and don’t really try to incorporate anything that we love about these reviewers into the films. Only To Boldly Flee really does anything right in that regard, as it throws back to everything from oneshot Nostalgia Critic villains to the Todd-Lindsay-Lupa love triangle to Phelous dying… the real problem is you have to actually sit through To Boldly Flee to see that. The movies go for these epic plots where the reviewers do cool shit like take over micronations (Kickassia), quest for powerful artifacts (Suburban Knights), or deal with extremely heavy-handed and hamfisted allegories for internet privacy bills (To Boldly Flee). You’d think maybe throwing a bunch of comedians into an epic plot like any of these could lead to some funny jokes, or maybe some sort of Monty Python-esque parody, but no, instead these comedians decide to revel in melodrama and try to genuinely act, with EXTREMELY mixed results. It doesn’t help that some of these people just aren’t even remotely funny when they’re trying to be.

Here’s the thing with The Angry Video Game Nerd’s movie, in comparison to these, though: it may have had this epic, ridiculous, goofy plot involving Area 51, kaiju, aliens, and crappy Atari games buried in a landfill, but the entire plot was building up to, and ultimately delivered on, the promise of the long-awaited review of the E.T. game. For all the film’s flaws, Rolfe knew what we loved about the Nerd, he knew what the fans wanted, and by god did he give it to them in the silliest, most epic way possible. Even if I didn’t love the film, the fact Rolfe knew why we’d want to see a feature-length Nerd film in the first place speaks volumes about how he understands that he can do what will make him happy artistically and still show the fans what they want to see.

These movies from the Channel Awesome crew don’t seem to get that at all. They don’t build up to a review. They don’t build up to them discovering the worst movie or song or whatever they review. They’re all very straightforward genre comedies where they can make a bunch of shallow, Seltzer & Friedberg-esque “Look at this thing that exists! That’s a joke right?” references. Aside from seeing your favorite reviewers in a goofy plot like this, where is there any bit of the reason you watch these people in the first place? Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if they were playing characters instead of them playing themselves, in their internet reviewer personas; at least then you wouldn’t be watching Brad Jones stumbling around in a Darth Vader helmet and think to yourself miserably “God I wish that poor guy was watching another E.T. porno.”

So there are some positives in these films, shockingly enough. Brad Jones is consistently good across the entire ‘trilogy,’ especially in Kickassia where he has the good sense to walk out on all the bullshit for a while. Maybe it’s just because these films got me interested in him, but I definitely think he does a good job. The same can be said for a lot of the actors, such as the bad guy in Suburban Knights and Ma-Ti’s actor; they manage to deliver at least solid performances in spite of the films. And then there are the James Rolfe cameos, and it’s just always good to see Rolfe in general.

To Boldly Flee, despite its reputation, actually has a lot of genuinely good bits. For instance, the distraction song is actually a really solid musical number. Linkara, Doug, and Spoony actually play really well off of each other, so when they have their three idiot villains team up they at least get some decently good moments. And other reviewers I generally like such as Phelous or Todd do a solid job, and frankly in To Boldly Flee Doug Walker does show some impressive dramatic acting… but it’s in service of a character who has previously been portrayed as a petulant, whiny, self-serving, egotistical manchild, so it almost feels like he’s playing a totally different character. Still, credit where credit is due.

None of these films succeed at what they want to. Ostensibly, they are supposed to be celebrating the site and the friendship of the reviewers, but as I mentioned, there’s no reviewing, there’s nothing that indicates what the site is about, and they all just come off as ego-stroking self-congratulatory wanking. None of these films were worth the pain and suffering that the cast and crew had to go through to produce these, and watching them at all these days is especially hard knowing that a lot of these people are smiling and joking through pain, stress, and abuse. It’s sick.

Kickassia may be the most competent, but that isn’t saying much at all. Aside from the whole Palin bit, this one has a simple, straightforward plot and is relatively down-to-earth, and it almost feels like it really was just a bunch of friends making a shitty low budget action movie in the desert… something sadly undermined by reality. Suburban Knights is probably one of the most uncomfortable to sit through due to jokes like Film Brain saying he’d eat Kinley Mochrie’s “pea-ness” (this was before she came out mind you) and the numerous jokes surrounding JewWario’s junk, but it almost works, like it nearly comes close to being a dumb epic fantasy comedy, but it just frequently shoots itself in the foot with the bad writing and acting and its overreliance on references.

To Boldly Flee is, to put it absolutely simple, a hot mess. This film is an utter trainwreck from start to finish. It is the Battlefield Earth of internet review movies, a bloated, messy, overly long dumpster fire with some of the most nightmarish behind-the-scenes stories and horrendous financial mismanagement you could ever imagine. But where Battlefield Earth is at least unintentionally funny, this film… is not. This film just makes you feel bad for everyone involved, it makes your heart ache for all the poor reviewers who had to suffer under the miserable conditions, it makes you question Doug Walker’s sanity in thinking he could turn his screeching manchild of a reviewer into some tragic martyr in a total 180 from how he had always been portrayed prior. None of these three films are worth sitting through, but I think To Boldly Flee is, with hindsight, the one least worth sitting through, which is a truly incredible accomplishment.

It’s kind of tragic. I still like a lot of the reviewers who took part in these – Todd, Linkara, Phelous, Brad Jones, and even Doug to some extent (though that’s an unpopular opinion these days) – but I just can’t muster up any forgiveness for these films anymore. And I don’t blame any of the people in it (except maybe Doug); most of them were there out of obligation or friendship or what have you. These films are just a monument to hubris, ignorance, broken friendships, horrible management, and wanton cruelty to those who called you friends.

See that picture up there at the top? With all of them gathered together like friends? God, how I wish that were the reality. How I wish that picture accurately reflected life, that they were all pals having a good time and that these films were something they were proud of. But behind that picture are stories all of them could tell of hurt, betrayal, resentment, anger, contempt, and some very unspeakable things in Carmichael’s case. I wish the sort of world a surface level glance at that picture shows you existed, where the crew of TGWTG all had a blast making these shitty movies together, because at least in that case I could find a sort of ironic enjoyment in them. But reality has gone out of its way to undermine any of that. 

[salaciouscrumpet]

Whumptober Day 1

Whumptober Day 1: Prompt “Shaky Hands” + Bonus Prompt “Wake Up”

I know, I know, it’s October 4th, and that’s why this prompt fill is almost 4 pages long and I’m putting it out now with only a cursory editing job. I am not cross-posting to AO3 because I’m using my own original characters, from my own original work in progress (an urban fantasy/horror series set in northern Ontario). The prompt fills will all be original content (i.e., will not feature in the actual finished series), so you get to meet the characters and see the world in a non-canon context because ... I’m effectively writing fanfiction of ... my own ... fiction ...?

Content Warning: Reference to past torture; implications of abusive parent/child relationship; self-harm ideation (with no on-page follow-through); some F-bombs

Characters: Luke, Bear (the dog)

There was a warm, heavy weight on his legs when Luke startled back to wakefulness, and for a brief moment the panic from his nightmare bled over into reality and he thought he was still being pinned down. Before he could start fighting off his would-be attacker he heard a low whine and the weight shifted until he was able to discern individual paws. Massive, incredibly heavy paws – but familiar paws, nonetheless. 

Dazedly he threw one hand out from under the quilt until his fingers sank into Bear’s thick fur. The dog shifted again, moving off of Luke’s legs until he was lying on the bed beside him, his great big head on the pillow and a waft of deadly doggy breath right in Luke’s face. As wake-ups went Luke had had better, but he’d definitely had worse, as well, and he suspected Bear was waking him up because the massive Leonberger had heard him having a nightmare. Bear wasn’t, strictly speaking, a service dog, but he was certainly well-attuned to the humans (and cats) in his life, and whatever qualifications or certifications he lacked he made up for in sheer enthusiasm. His presence had pulled Luke back from a panic attack on more than one occasion, and he served to ground Luke now. 

“Hey, buddy,” Luke rasped out, his voice hoarse in a way that suggested he’d probably been crying out in his sleep. Bear licked his arm, his heavy, fluffy tail thudding on the quilt. Luke thought about reminding the dog that he wasn’t supposed to be up on the bed – three people in a king-sized bed was more than enough, especially considering that he and Charlie were both more than six feet tall (Kate was tiny but somehow managed to take up more than her fair share of space). Toss in three cats and a dog that weighed nearly two hundred pounds and things got a little crazy. He kept the thought to himself, however, because Charlie was picking up an emergency shift at the clinic and Kate was out on patrol, and Luke’s heart was still beating far too hard and far too fast for him to be alone in bed. 

He sat up and Bear let him, although he whined a little. Luke didn’t get out of bed, however. Instead, he shifted into a cross-legged position and cradled his head in his hands, working hard to get his breathing under control. It should have been easy: he’d been trained in focus techniques his entire life, it should have been second nature to drum up a simple breathing exercise to calm himself down. 

It wasn’t easy. He didn’t have the nightmare often, but whenever he did have it, it felt like an eternity before he calmed down. 

Of all the horrible things that had happened to him in his life – and the list was long – the thing that led to his worst nightmares was just a blip on the radar, comparatively speaking. Just one moment, out of an entire thirteen-day period, that came back to haunt his dreams. Technically speaking it wasn’t even the worst moment in that thirteen-day period. The worst moment – the most painful moment, the moment he was certain his life was over – was when his captors had used magic against him. The Scions of the Unforgiven didn’t consider blood magic taboo, unlike literally every other magic-user out there. It was perfectly acceptable to them to use their enemy’s blood against them, or to use their own blood to power their spells. It made them powerful and dangerous, and it served to reinforce to everyone else why blood magic was evil. 

As if anyone needed the reminder. 

It would have made sense, then, for Luke’s worst memory to be the moment he felt his own blood ignite in his veins as his captors used their magic to burn him from the inside-out. It was terrifying, and horrible, and he’d never experienced pain so bad before or since. And that loss of sense of self had made the experience worse, because of course the Scions had started with his right hand, his dominant hand, and along with the pain had come the knowledge that this wound could cripple him for life – assuming he even made it out of there – and then what would he do? There were no retired Knights of Oberon. You either died gloriously in battle or … Well, that was it, there really wasn’t an “or.” 

Luke let out a painful, shuddering breath, dropping his hands into his lap. Bear whined again, licking his fingers, forcing a shaky laugh out of Luke. The bedroom was dark, the blackout curtains doing their job, but he knew the shape of his own flesh well enough that he didn’t need light to know what was there. His left hand, now somewhat wet and sticky with dog spittle, a faint smattering of scars over his knuckles. His right hand, the skin silvery and tight, but the muscle and bone underneath perfectly healed: function over form, and thank all the gods that Charlie was as practical as he was talented, because that injury should have crippled Luke. Even the best surgeons in the world wouldn’t have been able to repair that damage – but Charlie, with his healing magic, had done that, and for a man he had barely known as anything more than his best friend’s mopey boyfriend. 

And thinking about Charlie and Kate in relation to his injuries and captivity brought him back to the crux of his nightmare. The moment he’d woken up bound and gagged in a musty old barn he’d known he wasn’t going home again, especially not when he’d realized who his captors were. The Scions hated the Knights; the only reason they’d taken him was so that they could torture him to death in the hopes of gaining information about his own people, or so that they could try and ransom him back to the Knights – and the Knights of Oberon did not negotiate with the Scions of the Unforgiven. The enmity between their two groups went back centuries, and the Knights were proud and firm in their beliefs. Luke had grown up hearing tales about Knights who had gone bravely to their deaths rather than spill their order’s secrets, and that was exactly what he’d expected to happen to him. 

So no, it wasn’t the mutilated horror of his right hand that kept him up at night, and it wasn’t the beatings, or the damage to his feet, or any of the other painful, humiliating indignities his captors had thought to visit upon him. What haunted his memories was the moment one of the Scions had woken him with a bucket of cold water and a folded scrap of paper. The water had been dumped over Luke’s head. He’d woken, sputtering and freezing, to an angry man urging him to “Wake up, you Fae-blooded bastard!” before thrusting the scrap of paper in Luke’s face. 

Luke’s hands had been bound behind his back – this had been before they’d used blood magic on his arm – so the paper had fluttered into his lap, where the freezing, stagnant bucketful of water made it stick to his torn and bloodied jeans. The paper had managed to land face up, and he’d immediately recognized his father’s handwriting. Of course his father had been the one to reply to the Scions’ demands: he’d been the Knight in charge while the regular commander had been away on business. Just one sentence, in Daniel Kandarian’s familiar, spiky script: There is no Knight Lukas Kandarian. 

Not only had his own people – his own family – written him off, but the Knights of Oberon had also stripped him, in absentia, of his title. He was nothing to them. 

More than a decade ago, and he still had nightmares about that fucking note and his father’s handwriting. 

“Shit,” Luke huffed out, noticing the way his hands were shaking. He was supposed to be calm. He was supposed to be strong. He wasn’t supposed to let a decade-old nightmare mess him up like this, especially when he knew how the story ended: after the Knights of Oberon had literally written him off, Kate had done what Kate does best and came after Luke herself, like the crazy badass wrecking ball she was. The Knights hadn’t wanted him but the Alliance was more than thrilled to have him, and Kate had pulled together a team to rescue him, because she wanted him and Kate just saw “impossible” as a challenge. Luke had been saved, Charlie had healed him, and the Scions of the Unforgiven could go fuck themselves and so could the Knights of Oberon. 

The knowledge that he was far happier with his life now than he ever would have been had he stayed with the Order did little to slow his racing heart or make his hands stop shaking. He kept seeing that piece of paper falling into his lap, only in his mind’s eye his father’s dismissal was written over and over again, the words overlapping until the page was completely covered in harsh, jagged lettering. 

He wasn’t going back to sleep, and he knew himself well enough to know that if he got up and wandered the house alone – even with Bear’s steady, good-natured presence by his side – his mind was going to take him someplace dark. There was an old straight razor hidden away in the bathroom that had his name on it, or failing that there were dozens of knives and other sharp things in the house. His skin crawled and his hands shook with the need to do something, anything, to carve out the pain and frustration those six words had burned into his soul years ago. 

But he’d made a promise to Charlie and Kate. 

Scrubbing his scarred hand over his face, Luke leaned over the dog – who immediately tried licking his chin – and snagged his cellphone off the bedside table. Charlie was at work and since he was covering a shift for a sick co-worker there likely wasn’t anyone else who could cover for him if he needed to get away in an emergency. Kate was out patrolling for literal monsters in the woods. Her team needed her. 

But Luke had made a promise. 

Luke pet Bear with one hand while he texted with the other, the texture of the dog’s thick fur soothing to his rattled nerves but not enough to bring him out of his spiralling headspace. 

I need you to come home. 

A few seconds later – not even a full minute – Luke’s phone buzzed in response. He lifted it to his face and saw Kate’s picture pop up on the phone’s screen. He checked, and sure enough there was a text message reply. 

On my way. 

Luke’s shaking hand clenched in Bear’s fur as he let out another ragged exhalation, the phone dropping to land facedown on his lap. He pet the dog with the hand that wasn’t gripping on to Bear like his life depended on it, and used the slow, steady movement to keep himself from going into the bathroom in search of his straight razor. Kate was on her way.

[moviegroovies]

so to me, one of the hallmarks of a good piece of media is people willingly thinking about the characters after it’s over.

obviously, this isn’t like, a 100% success rate kind of thing. there are objectively good, enjoyable pieces of media out there that have no “fandom” type presence on the internet, because, while it exhibited great worldbuilding/storytelling/framing/what have you, it just wasn’t made up of the kinds of characters that people latch on to; the joke about avatar (2009) having less than 100 fics on ao3 despite being the best selling movie of all time for a solid decade is well known because of this phenomenon exactly. amazing cgi, solid plot, but at the end of the day, not that many people cared about jake sully. even still, i think this character-imprinting thing has an important, often overlooked role in intrinsically endearing people to movies that, outside of this factor, might be easily forgettable or even outright disliked. 

case in point: my movie of the day/week/month (how often do i post on this blog, anyway?)....

that’s right, lads, today i’m going to talk about the lost boys. 

if you’ve seen the lost boys, you’ll probably know that it’s not like, objectively, a masterpiece. in fact, if i were feeling particularly uncharitable, it would be easy for me to describe it as a fairly straightforward, low-budget horror b-movie, with a aesop-heavy and simplistic plot and a penchant for cheesy special effects, saved only by its rockin’ soundtrack.

...but i won’t.

i won’t, because using that description would leave out a detail i think it’s completely unfair of me not to touch on: the characters. i love them!! i was hooked from just about the very start of the movie by david’s creepy, affably evil leadership style, sam’s dorky little brother-ness, and michael’s 3cool5school airs. each of the characters, down to the frog brothers (named edgar and allan after the esteemed mr. poe, which really tickled me), the other lost boys, grandpa, lucy, and max, have their own distinct quirkiness that makes them memorable and draws me to want to explore more of their world, more of their stories. 

not enough to watch the infamous direct-to-dvd sequels, of course, but you get what i’m saying. 

there’s an old tip in writing that says something along the lines of “good characters can save a bad plot, but a good plot can’t save bad characters,” and that pretty much sums up my thoughts exactly on this movie. like, the plot itself is pretty much the message ‘peer pressure is bad’ wrapped up in some ugly monster makeup; not exactly cult classic material. however, like i’ve said, the characters and the fact that we get genuine, endearing interactions between them outside of just furthering the plot save it from the dumpster fire and, together, put together a story greater than the sum of its parts. no, it’s not a fuckin’ cinematic masterpiece by any stretch of the words, but it’s a fun movie, and there’s a reason i’ve watched it four times in the past three days, you know? 

(a good chunk of that reason was me slowly losing my grip on my sanity as i frantically put in the dvd over and over again, desperately trying to make myself attracted to kiefer sutherland so i could enjoy the movie to the fullest extent of my ability. i’m proud to announce a perfect success rate, and a slightly degraded sense of taste in men, reflecting the completion of that goal. 

if you too want to find something to lust after beyond his objectively ugly as sin face, trust me when i say it’s all in the voice. mmmmm) 

my favorite thing that the lost boys did was the exploration of different types of friendship and familial bonds. that’s the most striking thing about the movie for me; not only are the characters individuals whom i would like to explore, their interactions with each other are touching and worth exploring in their own right. there’s definitely something about some stories that drives people to write fanfiction (or is that just me? ha ha), and imo, the lost boys totally has it. in fact, while the fandom is sitting pretty at 600+ fics on ao3 (take that, avatar), i was honestly sort of surprised there weren’t more, exploring all the interesting ‘what if’s’ the film presented, and expounding on the bonds that we got to see the effects of in the limited screentime we had. 

what i liked about those bonds was that there were such a multitude of them. there were quite a few platonic bonds making up the crux of the movie (being, in my opinion, much more interesting than the main romantic bond which was explored through star and michael, although isn’t that kind of always the case in these 80′s teen movies? i can’t think of a single designated couple i was actually invested in except for veronica sawyer and jason dean... ferris bueller and sloane peterson, maybe? but i also feel like those two were making a cameron sandwich, so idk if it counts lol), but the way they were treated was cool in that they were unique: we got to see two different kinds of sibling bonds, with michael and sam emerson joking around in an easy, teasing way that totally screamed “wow, this movie was written by someone who actually has a brother” to me (isn’t it sad that some people have clearly never so much as seen a set of siblings in their life, judging by the way they write them?) while edgar and allan frog seem to take themselves more seriously, like a pair of army buddies, we got to see the pack-like bond of the lost boys and the (mostly) good-natured way they hazed michael into their group before things went to shit with them, we got to see star (and some of the lost boys, if you pay attention) being protective and maternal around laddie, and we got to see the uneasy alliance turned nerdy friendship between the frogs and sam. there are also three parent-child bonds that get explored, between lucy and her father (it’s a pretty sweet take on the kindhearted grown child taking care of senile-ish father thing) and lucy and her boys, each of which she has a distinct relationship with: sam is the baby, while michael she seems to level with and trust more, even after he starts getting into trouble and acting up. 

then of course there are two (three, if you count the widow johnson/grandpa emerson subplot, which.... i totally do) romantic relationships: star and michael falling in a sort of love-at-first-sight passionate relationship that soon dooms mikey and eventually saves star, while lucy tries her best to get back into the dating game with max, who is nefarious, of course, but also a little bit sad. remember what i said about what-ifs? i would love to see a fic exploring what might have happened had max’s plan worked out after all, but i guess that’s neither here nor there.

not to be a blatant slash shipper jumping on any two male characters who move or anything, but i think possibly the most important/influential relationship in the whole thing was that between david and michael; michael, obviously, got drawn into the lost boys’ circle by his insta-attraction to star, but he sticks around because of david. he pretty much ignores star once they get to the cliff that night, his attention focused on david because he’s there, and he’s intense, and michael is kind of a dumb bi bitch totally captivated. he drinks max’s blood at david’s taunting, and in direct opposition to star’s advice. there’s a lot i could say on this subject but tbh i’m running out of steam, so that might be a thing for a whole different post.

basically, there are a lot of cool interactions in this movie, and i think a lot of film makers could take note of that. even critically acclaimed, award winning movies being made in today’s world tend to fail to hit that special note, that character-imprintation which makes the audience not only stay engaged to the end, but also to care. not every movie needs that, of course; not everything can launch a darkhorse fandom the way the lost boys has, and honestly, not everything should... unless it’s trying to cater to my interests, in which case, well. 

if all movies were made to cater to my interests, i would have the time of my fucking life, but it’d probably be dark days for the rest of y’all.

thinking about it now, the lack of that element is kind of what makes me wary of the horror genre in the first place; i find so many of those movies just boring as all hell, because they’re too into the “scaring” thing without any of the “caring” thing. people, if we don’t care about the characters we’re watching, then who the fuck gives a shit if they get devoured by shitsucking vampires, anyway? finding the lost boys, a “horror” (i guess i use the term loosely) movie which relied heavily on those character interactions was honestly a godsend, because THIS is what i want to see more of. going down that line of thought, i think it’s honestly a shame and a half that the sequels which joel schumacher planned never got to see the light of day (and, of course, that we were instead left with the tribe, which for the life of me i refuse to fucking watch). the interactions between the lost boys could have been the most interesting part of the movie, if only they had been spotlighted a bit more. that would have been the case in the proposed prequel, the beginning, which would see the boys start out before they became vampires at all. reading about the script for that is honestly sending me, tbh. we could have seen that, and what we got instead were “sequels” that focused mainly on the frogs, when they connected to the original movie at all? where’s the fucking justice?

whatever. that’s the one thing about this franchise i never could stomach; all the damn frog brothers.

(till next time!)

[alunclewe]

Recomputered

Well, I haven’t posted anything for a while, and as usual, I have an excuse, and it’s maybe not even quite as bad as my usual excuses.  I’d been without a laptop for more than a month; I’d posted before about the issue with my laptop, but, well, it took longer to get any sort of resolution than I had expected.

I won’t go into all the details of the reasons for the delay, but to make a long story short: The e-mail updates from Best Buy’s Geek Squad say that "It's important to us to keep you informed during every step in the repair process."  This is a lie.  The old laptop turned out to be irreparable, which didn’t come as a surprise, but which I should have been told about a lot sooner.  I’m still getting it back, though, because aside from the broken screen it’s still perfectly good, and there are still uses to which I can put it.

Anyway, I have a new laptop now, with more RAM than my old laptop, albeit a smaller hard drive, although it’s an SSD drive, which... I guess is good?  And I’ve got all the software I use the most often installed on my new laptop: the Adobe Creative Suite, Blender, Microsoft Office, Finale, Final Draft, Notepad++, browsers that aren’t Internet Explorer or Microsoft Edge...  (Not Toon Boom Harmony or Storyboard, though, because I can only have those installed on one computer at a time, and it makes the most sense to have it installed on my desktop since that’s what has the bigger monitor attached to it and, more importantly, my Wacom Cintiq.  I didn’t have it installed on my old laptop, either.)

And yeah, on the one hand you could argue that not having a laptop shouldn’t have prevented me from updating, since I still have my desktop, and I do almost all my art on my desktop anyway.  However, not having a laptop still limited my productivity for two reasons: first, that obviously I can’t take my desktop with me and work on the go on it, and second, that when I was home I had to use my desktop to do what I’d normally be using my laptop for.  Also, typing was kind of hard on my desktop because it has a cordless keyboard which has been very glitchy lately, which is probably just because its batteries are low, so I really ought to find the new batteries that I know I have around here somewhere...

So, now that I have a laptop again, I should once again be able to ramp up my productivity.  Which includes but is not limited to the following items:

Inktober.  Yes, I know October is over.  But I only got through the first five days of Inktober, and I figure I may as well eventually finish the rest.  Better late than never?  (That doesn’t mean this is going to be a high priority for me, though, so there won’t be a new drawing every day.  Maybe I’ll shoot for at least every other day, though.)

NaNoWriMo.  I have completed novels for Nanowrimo three times, I think?  Two of those times were novels that were, ah, based on existing IP so I couldn’t really publish them even if I wanted to.  The third time, though, resulted in a novel that’s in serious need of rewrites (yet another thing I really need to get around to), but that with some rewriting and polishing I think really stands a good chance of publication. But having completed NaNoWriMo three times, I decided to set myself more of a challenge now and start completely from scratch.  That is to say, the three times that I succeeded I’d had a basic outline of the plot and characters before I started, although they evolved quite a bit during the writing.  This time, I figured for a bigger challenge I’d approach it like 24-Hour Comics Day—that is, I’d go in with no idea of what I was going to write, and all the plotting and outlining would be done within the time limit (the 24 hours for 24-Hour Comics Day, the month of November for NaNoWriMo). This is not the first time I have set myself that challenge, and... I admit, I haven’t yet succeeded.  I think maybe I tend to be a little overwhelmed and sabotage myself.  But I’m going to try again and see what happens this time.  And I think what I need to do, maybe, is approach it more, again, like 24-Hour Comics Day.  On 24-Hour Comics Day, I don’t plan and thumbnail the whole comic before I start.  I plan out my general idea, maybe I plan the ending or maybe I have no idea how it’s going to end until I get there, and then I just get started and make up the details as I go... and so far, despite every year worrying that this will be the year I don’t finish, I have yet to fail to complete a comic.  I have a general idea for my NaNoWriMo novel this year now; I have names and basic concepts of the six main characters; I think it’s time to start writing.  Yeah, I’m getting a very late start on that, but I just need to write at least, let’s see.... 2,500 words a day.  Yeah, that’s definitely doable.  It should be noted that in my last successful NaNoWriMo attempt, my novel was about twice as long as the 50,000 “required” by NaNoWriMo, so I actually wrote more than three thousand words a day... so this isn’t unprecedented.

The Very High Seas.  That’s that animated pilot project (that isn’t Teras Terrace) that I’d been posting about lately.  I have plans to pitch it, but at this point realistically I think I’m shooting to have the pitch ready by January or February 2020.  Even so, I want to have a completed pitch document, a pilot script, and a complete pilot animatic (this last item is probably overkill, but eh), so if I want to get it done by then I have a lot of work ahead.

Speaking of which, I do hope to update with one new piece of art later today, so I have a recent post that isn’t just a wall of text like this one.  But it’s such a relief to finally have a laptop again...

[lucalicatteart]

Groups: the Avvi’da Vina

here’s jost a rambly little post with some random information about a vampiric organization of scholars that seeks to gain recognition in broader elven society due to their history, a bit about one of the main speakers of that group, and some elaboration on their ideas and the complications of their politics and etc.  

~ General ~

The Avvi’da Vina (which literally translates to ‘children of ancient elves’ in avirrekava) are a small group of vampires/avirre’thel who wholly embrace the fact that they’re the most direct currently living ancestors of ancient elves (unlike most avirre’thel, who usually have a complicated, slightly negative view of their elven heritage, given that shortly after their deal with the demon they were exiled from the other elves and harassed by them for thousands of years so like.. of course they don’t tend to be.. very fond lol).  Members of the Avvi’da Vina firmly believe that the avirre’thel should still have a place within elven society, sometimes even moreso than any modern day elves. Their main reasoning for this is... (continued under the read more)

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

1.  Despite species changes and cultural isolation, they really could just be considered.. a group of elves with a few species altering enchantments tacked onto them. At the end of the day, even with their modified anatomy and physical traits, they do still have elven blood and ancestry.

2. They are immortal, and thus many living vampires have more extensive knowledge/memory about the customs, culture, and lives of the ancient elven people than any modern elven society does (a few of the oldest living vampires even remember being in Fanyin before it was Fanyin, like 20,000 years ago when the first avirre’thel hadn’t even been kicked out of the area yet lol),  

3. Many ancient elven customs that have been lost to modern elves (especially those in the elven alliance that conform to the rules set by the organization) are still present in avirre’thel society today. Remnants of ancient elven culture are stronger in their society than in any other group, despite them widely not even being considered related to elves (though this is mostly due to misinformation)

and 4. Modern avirre’thel even look more similar to ancient elves and overall seem to have retained some of their most prominent features, which most modern elves have lost. Due to many factors (low fertility rates, immortality skewing the perception of time, etc.), the Avvire’thel mate and evolve much slower as a species (elves are born and then die off in a fairly stable and quick life cycle, usually only living a few hundred years, and traits can be passed on to new generations and promote an ever-changing and evolving species. The process of this for vampires is much much slower, though there are obviously new avirre’thel born every once in a while and they have been able to change some (though most of their species alterations have been deliberate through use of external magic, rather than natural change over time lol), relatively speaking they still have some pretty ancient blood, as they’re a rather stagnant population, and evolve on a much more drawn out time scale, if at all.) 

-

The Avvi’da Vina don’t necessarily look up to ancient elven society (if anything, they’re one of it’s largest critics, as one of the only groups that at least remembers it (and it’s bad sides) somewhat accurately, unaffected by the propaganda and altered visions spread by the elven alliance), but they do still take a heavy interest in all elven culture and history, since they see it as their history as well, and feel they have an obligation to document information about their people, especially since they’re in a unique position to do so with their  rare historical connections. Many of them work as scholars and historians, traveling to ancient ruins, trying to preserve the old elven customs that still exist in vampiric society, locating historical texts, learning ancient elvish as a second or third language, etc. They also keep up extensively with modern elven societies and traditions, mostly to track how things have changed over time and look at how cultural customs have evolved (especially the dramatic transformation of the elven religion), as another one of their main goals is just to keep, as accurately as possible, a record of all of elven history.

  Which is kind of odd to consider, that a group of avirre’thel/vampires, literally the species MOST widely hated by elves (at least elves in the alliance/under the influence of the Fanyiniri) are also like.. arguably the foremost experts on elven society and it’s customs, traditions, architecture, language, etc. etc. (and also the other way around like, the Fanyiniri literally almost wiped out their entire species during the many wars they had but.. Avvi’da Vina are still, just bigg ole elf nerds (which is of course because they see themselves as elves rather than anything different but still lol)).

-

Though they’ve made many attempts to gain influence in elven society and take what they see as their rightful position as members of the elven alliance or some other influential elven group**, the Avvi’da Vina haven’t made much progress in this area. They did manage once to get invited to speak briefly at an annual meeting of the alliance (despite extreme efforts by the Fanyiniri to keep them out entirely), to make a public case explaining why they should be allowed to join, but it soon became clear they were invited mostly as a joke amongst some of the higher ups, and pretty much just got mocked and threatened by the crowd, then escorted out by guards once the royals had gotten tired of trying to tease them (like it was intended to be a ‘yeah lmao lets invite them and just make fun of them until they cry and make them look really stupid and embarrass themselves while we publicly degrade them as punishment for their audacity to even think they could have a presence among us’ sort of thing, but after like.. fifteen minutes of them handling it fairly well despite being only two people standing alone in the center of a room being heckled by like hundreds of elves, staying composed and dodging trick questions and etc,  the leaders of the alliance just got agitated and had them sent away, since they were mostly failing to get the reaction they wanted out of them lol.. ).

** (despite them strongly disagreeing with like.. almost all current political ideals of countries and groups within the elven alliance, they still feel they should be a part of it, if anything especially so, to kind of reign them in and remind them of what their ancestors, which they claim to idolize so much, would have actually wanted. They still don’t support or condone the alliance at all, but do see themselves as in a unique position to appeal to them, as many elven societies (almost to an annoyingly obsessive degree) speak about the glory of the past, constantly praise and idealize elven history, etc. So they thought the alliance would be thrilled at the idea of welcoming a group with actual extensive knowledge and deeper connections to the ancient elves, but soon realized it was more complicated than that (that it may actually put them at a DISadvantage, as the alliance see them as a threat to the false version of history they’ve created, having people who can be like ‘No actually it didn’t happen like that, I was there’ is generally.. bad for their image lol) , despite these setbacks though, they still think they have some ground to stand on if they could convince the right people. Likewise, the Avvi’da Vina feel all elves should have a place at the alliance as well, not just themselves, and they usually believe that it could be reformed if an actual variety of elven voices were heard in the decisions made by the alliance (similar to the system of the vampiric council) , rather an only a select few. They feel either reforming or disbanding the alliance is absolutely necessary for the future of the elven people, and would like to be at the forefront of the efforts either way, though both options are...nearly impossibly difficult lmao)    

-

The Avvi’da Vina are most well known for their work with ancient elven texts (or, mostly their bickering with the Elven Alliance just to get their hands on them in the first place lol), and deciphering of the old language. It’s a lot of detail to go into so I’ll be brief about it here, but there were multiple forms of ancient elven writing, primarily a Fancy method, used only for important documentations (poetry, religious texts, often historical records of anything considered too significant to be written ‘simply’), and then a ‘simple’ script that was in everyday use among the people (and a few others but those were the main two). The Fancy method came first and was kind of the original writing system, the ‘simple’ form only came into use later once more of the population became literate.  For a majority of elven history, things were ONLY written down if they were really important (everything else was conveyed through song, stories, using rhymes to help remember things, etc.), and you had to ask special religious leaders/scribes to do it for you. 

( “Fancy” ancient elven is also kind of like, logographs, or more detailed lines and pictures which represent whole words/phrases/concepts, whereas the ‘simple’ writing system developed later by scribes for broader use is more of a syllabary (with characters only representing sounds), similar to what’s used in modern elven, and Avirrekava. Because it was so detailed though, it took a LOT longer to write and was kind of like an artistic labor rather than just something you could scratch down quickly.)

Additionally, the ancient elven writing system and language are, at least by modern standards, pretty vague. Much of it is context or ‘current’ culture dependent, usually possible to interpret in many different ways with various implications, where it’s kind of one of those “you just had to be there at the time” sort of things (like someone who doesn’t use tumblr looking at a vaguely phrased internet meme, and since they weren’t steeped in that culture for whatever thing is being referenced, they take the wording literally, or misunderstand it, since the underlying implications go over their heads). You just sort of had to live within the culture at the time to understand how certain words were combined and why, the tone conveyed by choosing one word over another, etc. Especially since it was often quite flowery and artistic language, as it was just as much a form of art as it was record keeping.

( Like for example, a sentence could, in a literal sense, be: ‘(word for a grouping of living beings, typically people not animals) (word for sickness/illness) (word for rain) (word for sun)’ - but then that could be translated as “Everyone was sick but then they weren’t anymore after the passing of time (as implied by rain turning to sun)”, “Everyone is sick with an illness CAUSED by the cycle of rain and sun”, “Everyone gets sick sometimes, but this will pass, as all things do, just like all rain turns to sun”, “People are sick and the way to treat it is related to weather/rain/sun”, “Everyone, if you feel sick, you should take a warm bath (water (rain) which is hot (like the sun)” , + like 10 other possible meanings lol.. )

ANYWAY, all this background to say, SINCE there are a handful of Avirre’thel still living that either were actually alive during the time that  ancient elven was still prominently used (the later end of the era at least), or their parents/grandparents were (and could teach them), older Avirre’thel are thought to have much better insight on ancient elven translation than any other group. Of course, especially with even older VERY ancient texts, the Avirre’thel don’t know everything and since stuff is so vague it can still be hard to know the true meaning, but they at least have an advantage and more personal experience with the language than others would have. While the language is.. reasonably accessible (in the sense of info about it being decently documented) and any scholar with a few years of study could translate it literally from a book or something, much of the true meanings or more subtle implications have been lost. There’s often a lot of room for misinterpretation (especially if interpreting something a certain way would suit someone’s political agenda *cough* elven alliance *cough*), or lack of general context, even if the very literal simple knowledge of it is there...

SO, part of the work the Avvi’da Vina really spend a lot of resources focusing on (as Avirre’thel who fully embrace their ancient elven ancestry and wish to engage with the old culture, share it, etc. as much as possible) is tracking down old elven texts, creating and spreading their own personal translations (using the Avirre’thel’s unique cultural knowledge of the era), attempting to interpret documents that are thought to be too vague/too old/indecipherable, etc. 

Especially since the Alliance wants to be The Number One Source Of All Things Elven, and will kind of gatekeep old texts and artifacts, hiding them away in secret libraries and only giving their own public interpretations of info, and the Avvi’da Vina are kind of focused on uniting all elves and wanting to share an accurate honest open history with everyone, they also sort of see it as a mission to steal documents from the Alliance (or just beat them to it, if some new ruin is discovered or something), translate them themselves with better background knowledge, and then publish that version for free to the people and any elf who’d like to read it (even allowing them to see the original writing for comparison), rather than them having to jump through hoops with the Alliance just to so much as gain access to their Officially Declared Interpretations, which likely are not even very accurate.

(this is part of why the Alliance has lowkey beef with them, even though the Avvi’da Vina are such a small niche group that a massive multinational organization like the Elven Alliance wouldn’t bother with them, the Avvi’da Vina do essentially just follow them around like ‘Actually, You Are Wrong! : )’. Like, the alliance will make some announcement like “New ancient religious texts have been discovered, come to your local shrine and pay a small sum of money to gain access to our Official Translations of what they say!”,  etc.. then like a week and a half later the Avvi’da Vina are like “what’s up everyone, we hired a shapeshifting jhevona spy to steal the documents and have translated them ourselves, as usual the alliance are WRONG as hellll lmaooooo, here’s what it actually says and we’re going to mass print our translations, give them out for free, go to local elven cities and spread the word, and also just hmu if you want to see the original texts in person because we have them now LOL” . 

So though the Alliance has a policy to (at least publicly) ignore their existence, you can still tell the Avvi’da Vina have gotten under their skin, since they keep putting new measures in place to prevent them from sharing information with the public, ban suspected Avvi’da Vina members from openly traveling to Alliance countries (not directly of course, since they won’t openly acknowledge the group, but the guards of cities have certain ~~suspicious things~~ to look for (like arresting any Avirre’thel seen distributing pamphlets, or speaking anything that sounds like  ancient elvish, or talking to groups of interested looking elves as if they’re explaining something to them, etc..  but then they’d tell them like “Oh, we just arrested you for uh.. like.. um... you know.. loitering? yeah... anyway please get out of the city.”) , etc. etc.

  Luckily, they are received much better by their own government.  The council of Navyete sees them as very useful and various higher ranking (which really just means they’ve studied more) members of the Avvi’da Vina regularly serve as advisors to council members any time a law or issue relevant to the elves is being discussed, due to their expertise in the area, and especially their ability to translate both ancient and modern elvish texts. In return for assisting the council, they often just ask for.. nerd stuff.. like access to connections in foreign governments so they can gain passage into old ruins, or allowances of money they’ll put towards research, etc. Which of course, the council is happy to oblige. Though most avirre’thel are less enthusiastic about their connections to the elves, they at least are genuinely curious about history, and politically often promote the pursuit of any new knowledge, since it’s something that is generally valued in their culture, even if it’s knowledge that happens to be about something most people wouldn’t be invested in lol. 

--

~ Idanya ~ 

Idanya Vashesi (person in all the images above since.. I needed something to draw so this isn’t just a plain wall of text, so I thought a minor focus on a prominent member of the Avvi’da Vina would be something quick to sketch lol) isn’t the leader of the group, nor the one who originally founded it, but she is currently seen kind of as the face of the organization. On top of being a high ranking expert in a broad range of elven studies, she specializes in communication, and serves as their primary representative and speaker (she’s one of the two members who had the pleasure of standing in front of the elven alliance and getting mocked that one time). She overall has the most outside interactions with alliance elves, and is quite persistent in always trying to get them to hear her out or have her group invited to things, even if 99.9% of the time she’s just rudely refused or harassed. 

She has however made many strong connections with the scattered groups of elves that exist outside of the alliance, and is one of the Avvi’da Vina members that most regularly travels to speak with them about elven things. Though sometimes she faces hostilities from them (usually over them having different sets of information, like her telling them something about ancient elves that they refuse could ever be true, etc.), most elven cities and groups outside of the alliance find it refreshing to have a source of more accurate information about their history and culture that hasn’t been tainted by the influence of the alliance (though they obviously may be initially skeptical about what they perceive as an outsider coming in claiming to have information about them, after a while of speaking they usually can tell it’s legit and not just some random weirdo showing up who doesn’t know what they’re talking about lol) . Many non-allied elves are somewhat separated from broader elven society and have had certain  information hidden from them by the Main Alliance Elves Who Try To Control All Elven Stuff, so they usually welcome Idanya and the other Avvi’da Vina as allies. There have even been many discussions about the Avvi’da Vina and other various non-alliance elven groups starting an alliance of their own, rather than merely trying to gain recognition from the main alliance to reform them from within, but currently the main elven alliance holds too much power and many fear this would be immediately seen as a threat, which would likely start wars and other conflicts that none of them would be prepared to handle. 

Thus, she’s still never going to give up trying to get into the main elven alliance and have her people recognized officially as fellow elves lol.. it’s like.. her life’s challenge at this point. She’s such a good speaker she could convince just about anyone of anything, so the fact that the alliance elves just dismiss her and never listen to her is like.. One Day.. It Will Be Over For You Silly Bastards.. she WILL continue nagging you until she meets her goals and has her opinions heard and respected.. she is immortal.. she will outlive all of you.. generations of elven royalty will come and go and there she will be.. showing up to the same damn place for the 6,000th time, as perky and suave and well spoken as ever like “Hey! Ready to let me in yet? ; ) " lmao

--

~ Controversy among their fellow Avirre’thel ~

Like mentioned, most Avirre’thel don’t see themselves as elven, and have developed a strong sense of pride as a distinct species ( if your own people cast you out and reject you, one common response is ‘allright fuck you then, we’ll do our own thing.. die mad about it bitch’, which is certainly the position that the avirre’thel took in their early days as a newly formed society lol) , but they also don’t make much attempt to refute the efforts of the Avvi’da Vina, since like.. everything they claim is still.. technically factually valid so... Most avirre’thel’s view of the organizations’ philosophy is basically just:  “Well... you’re not WRONG.. I guess.. I personally wouldn’t interpret it that way though, but like.. do your thing I suppose, you funky little elf nerds”. 

The main arguments that other avirre’thel raise against the Avvi’da Vina’s views are probably - 

1. Obviously the Avirre’thel, despite maybe technically yes being the closest living descendants to the ancient elves, can’t actually BE elves, since they can’t mate with elves and are very obviously and scientifically classified as a separate species, and thus don’t need to be a part of broader elven society.

(which the Avvi’da Vina counter with  the fact that there are some subspecies of elves that are considered elves but have evolved to no longer be able to mate with certain types of elves, yet they haven’t had their classification as elves revoked. Their species is going to be a bit more complicated, since avirre’thel were created by magical interference by an ancient jhevona rather than evolving naturally, of course they’re going to be in a unique situation genetically, but in every other sense (culturally, etc.) should be considered elven. (and also: maybe they can’t mate with CURRENT evolution of elves, but could the mate with ANCIENT elves if they were still around?? Because of how genetically similar they still are to them? Perhaps. Maybe they could still mate with certain types of elves, it’s just that currently they’re the only “ancient elven blood” still around))

and 2.  The Avvire’thel are a historically extremely isolated species (mostly due to becoming more reclusive after aggression from the elves),  their societies have developed so separately, it doesn’t make any sense to attempt to “rejoin” them now, after 20,000 years of little contact and both becoming extremely different groups, even if they share the same origins. 

( which the Avvi’da Vina counter with the position that,  if anything, the fact that both cultures have evolved so separately is more of a reason to be welcome amongst elves, as with their immortality,  vampiric society is basically an ancient elven society almost frozen in time, and that it would be best to cooperate and learn from each other, and for elves to be able to connect with parts of their history and tradition which were assumed lost but have been preserved within the small isolated species of the Avirre’thel. )

They face some other points of opposition, but those are the main issues people usually take. But again, generally most people view them as strange and a bit odd for being so interested in elven stuff, but not harmful. The only groups of  avirre’thel that have ever been aggressive towards the Avvi’da Vina are like.. small fringe anti-elf groups, mostly the occasional older vampires who lived way back when avirre’thel would still traditionally cut the points of their ears off just to remove association with the elves and etc., which usually is a pretty rare viewpoint in modern day, even for elders. 

Though Avirre’thel society has made a lot of efforts to have a nuanced view on elves (especially in situations like with the Fanyniri, where it’s largely the government committing terrible acts and not the population (who mostly live in prisons and have no rights so like.. not much say at all in what their government does), thus the people themselves shouldn’t be hated/punished), due to the history of mistreatment and the sheer amount of anti-vampiric propaganda that’s pervasively spread throughout allied elves (and reached even some groups outside of the main alliance), many Avirre’thel are  understandably skeptical about attempting to forge any sort of relationship with broader elven society, especially those in the alliance. But the Avvi’da Vina have very strongly assured the council that the organization’s efforts to be accepted as elven and have a say in elven politics won’t interfere with the Avvire’thel species as a whole. They basically just want to have a seat on the alliance, and enough respect to share their knowledge and have their ideas heard, but they’re not attempting to literally integrate their societies together or speak on behalf of the citizens of Navyete and make huge international deals with elven nations or anything like that.  They really just want to represent themselves and have their species be respected for what they are. So for now at least, their group is seen as harmless to most avirre’thel and they’re allowed to continue seeking alliance with the elves and etc., since the people of Navyete and the council don’t see their actions as really bringing any risk or consequences against the species**. (and again, even if other Avirre’thel disagree with their overall philosophy, they are still widely respected as historical experts and etc., so the public’s view of them  isn’t that negative).

(** however, if the Avvi’da Vina did ever like.. follow through with some of the talk about allying with non-alliance elves and starting an alliance of their own that stands in opposition to the main elven alliance, the vampiric council and citizens of Navyete may have to sever ties with them, or even actively step in to try to stop them, because that would very very likely start some type of war, and with Fanyin (one of the overall most powerful elven countries in the alliance) being right next to Navyete, they would absolutely not be comfortable with possibly having a repeat of the old conflicts with the elves. Especially if their own people were involved in starting this alliance (thus provoking the main allied elves), it’s almost certain that even if the non-alliance elven groups were the main ones leading the idea, the avirre’thel would get the brunt of the damage and would immediately become the main target, at least of the Fanyiniri, since they.. would never miss a chance to randomly scapegoat the avirre’thel and find any reason to try to wipe them out again. So depending on their next moves, the Avvi’da Vina do have the potential to be significantly more controversial, and possibly lose all support they’ve had from their own species, but for now, it still stands that most avirre’thel are cool with the little group of elf nerds lol

Also idk where to fit this into the text so I’ll just put it here lol. There are about 250 members of the Avvi’da Vina currently. They are a reasonably well known group and there would probably be more members, if it weren’t for the contentious nature of the idea that the Avirre’thel should be recognized as elves. Because of their culture’s focus on stuff like history and education, there are probably a lot of fellow Nerds out there in the general vampiric population that would love to join the group and get to do stuff like visit old elven ruins and learn alongside experts of ancient elven knowledge and etc., but most probably can’t reconcile the organization’s broader goals, and reject it respectfully on principle. If they ever dropped the whole ‘we believe we should be recognized as elves and are actually elves not our own distinct species’ thing though and just became like, an elven historical and modern cultural studies society, their member numbers would dramatically rise lmao. Most avirre’thel just aren’t comfortable calling themselves elven though. 

-

and that’s all for this.. random topic I woke up at like 5am to write about. I tried to organize this so it’s not as rambly stream of consciousness but bhbbb.. hopefully it’s comprehensible 

[scripttorture]

Effective investigation: strategies that actually work

In modern popular culture torture is consistently linked to interrogation: to getting information from a prisoner.

 Now I’ve written several times why this trope is not only wrong but also harmful and is used in the real world to justify torture. O’Mara and Rejali also cover this in depth over several hundred pages for anyone who wants more information.

 I often get asked for realistic alternatives: what does actually work? How can characters, bad or good, actually go about gaining information in a realistic way?

 This isn’t going to be an exhaustive list, and I feel I should state that I have no practical experience of interrogation. Hopefully though it can serve as a starting point that will help you think about how characters come by information in your stories.

 The first important point is that interrogation generally isn’t very effective.

 Very little useful information comes from interrogation of suspects when compared to all the other sources of information police and intelligence agencies draw on.

 There are a several reasons interrogation isn’t hugely useful including:

·         Human memory isn’t that good. Even well meaning people who want to help forget important details.

·         People are much better at lying than detecting lies. Even people who describe themselves as good at detecting when someone is lying do a very poor job.

·         Memories are easily modified in stressful situations. Even someone who isn’t trying to can plant suggestions leading to false memories, directing the interrogation in a particular direction without even realising it.

 Some useful information does come from interrogation (and I’ll come back to how to handle it in a moment) but, realistically the following are more important sources of information in any investigation:

 Physical forensic evidence

 This doesn’t just mean things like hair samples and DNA. Computer records, credit card bills, surveillance camera footage, library records and letters can tell you an awful lot about a person. Reading a character’s emails or letters and keeping track of their bills can reveal a lot of plot relevant information such as whether two characters are in contact or why a character might be desperate for money.

 Gathering this sort of information takes a lot of time and hard work. It’s not as simple as collecting evidence, such as a piece of hair or a computer hard drive, the information has to be analysed and interpreted correctly.

 The hair could be DNA tested and cross referenced with a database or simply identified as human and of a particular type and colour. (Identifying it as human is important, I know at least one forensic tech who was handed cow hair and told it was definitely from a suspect)

 The computer hard drive would need to be poured over file by file. It’s not quite enough to suppose character A could access character B’s emails, A has to have the time and inclination to read the damn things.

 An important point to consider is how dedicated your characters are. Careful collection and examination of evidence is probably the best way of finding something out. But it requires patience, hard work and a lot of time.

 There’s a reason police work is a full time job and there’s a reason a lot of people in professions like policing might think torture is easier. Gathering and analysing evidence is hard.

 It’s worth considering whether your character has the resources and inclination to go down this route before you decide to use it.

 Observation

 This is the stake-out scene from every police movie and tv show. It’s having one character physically following and watching another character for as long as humanly possible, recording everywhere they go and everything they do.

 It means finding out where a character lives, watching them at work, noting where they eat lunch and who with. Finding out where they go in their free time and how often. When they go to bed. Who they visit. How long they do it for. The minute detail of everything someone does in their day recorded for a period of weeks or months to build up a picture of the person.

 If that sounds creepy that’s because it is.

 This is a very time consuming strategy. It requires a lot of focus and patience and dedication or the ability to hire someone who has those qualities. It’s simpler than systematically gathering physical evidence and it’s easier to do discretely.

 Informants

 This is probably the simplest major method of gathering information. It can be as complicated as the Soviet Union network of paid informants or as straight-forward as people coming forward and volunteering information.

 This is incredibly important to police investigations. Information from voluntary informants led to the capture of the London tube bombers in 2005. The suspects were identified by their family and neighbours who went to the police.

 This sort of informal reporting doesn’t just occur in police contexts. From a writing perspective the way I tend to think about it is in terms of crossing societal lines.

 Every culture and subculture has ideas about what is and what is not acceptable. Every group has an idea of what’s ‘going too far’.

 You might be writing a story set around a violent, criminal subculture where theft and murder of other adults are the norm. But the same characters who wouldn’t dream of reporting an enemy for killing another adult might feel differently about the murder of a child.

 A religious character might excuse their priest’s affairs, but report anything they’d see as desecration or blasphemy.

 A scientist might ignore a colleague harassing their lab assistants but report data fraud.

 Think about what matters to the characters and you’ll be able to tell when they’d freely volunteer information.

 If you can’t think of anything emotional that would cause them to inform remember that your characters could pay informants. And then consider how many people who really need some cash might be in a position to watch or steal from other characters.

 Cleaners, drivers, people who deliver supplies- anyone who would be on a low wage, have regular contact with the character but only a superficial relationship could be a very valuable informant.

 Interrogation

 At the time of writing there is really not enough systematic research on effective interrogation. As a result I’m going to try and concentrate on things we’re reasonably sure help rather than getting bogged down in academic discussions about what might be useful. Those discussions are interesting but not much help to writers.

 1)      The first important point is that interrogation takes time.

 If a character is volunteering information that probably won’t take as long but somewhere in the region of 3-6 hours would still be reasonable. A witness to a crime or victim would probably need time and reassurance in order to tell the authorities what they know to the best of their ability.

 Someone who isn’t really willing to talk (for whatever reason) will need much longer. A day is actually unusually short. Weeks or even up to a month is not unreasonable. Timeframes are going to vary depending on the characters and the situation the plot has put them in but I think it’s important to remember that interrogation isn’t quick and it isn’t simple.

 2)      Interrogators and characters being interrogated should speak a common language.

 It sounds simple and obvious but if the characters can’t communicate effectively interrogation is almost certainly going to fail.

 Using translators does not seem to be as effective as using people who speak the language but there haven’t been systematic studies of speakers vs interpreters as far as I know.

 3)      Good record keeping is essential for effective interrogation.

 That’s straightforward in a modern setting with recording equipment but less so in a historical one.

 Having a record of everything the suspect character says when interviewed means that everything they say can be analysed by multiple people, can be cross checked against what they said previously and can be stored in a legible format in case it’s needed later.

 Checking what a suspect character said today against what they said yesterday or even last week helps investigators to tell the difference between fact and fiction. Lies are difficult to keep consistent, especially over longer periods of time. Inconsistencies can be helpful and consistencies can help highlight areas investigators should look into in greater depth.

 Having multiple people able to analyse information also helps hugely, each individual brings their own specialist knowledge to the investigation. Which can be as simple as recognising a local’s nickname (and so correctly identifying them later) or as complex as analysing how a suspect claims they made a bomb and recognising that that process wouldn’t work.

 4)      Even someone who genuinely wants to help will forget details and get things wrong.

 That isn’t unusual and it certainly isn’t a sign that the character is unwilling or being deliberately unhelpful. In fact a story that sounds too detailed and too precise might well be a sign of a pre-scripted and pre-rehearsed lie.

 5)      Very very few people refuse to talk.

 Whether they talk about anything helpful is of course another matter but the stereotype of a tough criminal sitting completely silently and staring down a cop is incredibly rare in reality.

 A smart interrogator will try to get their suspect chatting in the hope that some useful information will come out.

 Let’s say one of our characters is suspected of being part of a larger conspiracy of some kind. And he won’t chat about any of the ‘interesting’ material the cops have found in his house, but he’s happy to talk to the interrogator about the local football team.

 The interrogator might notice that he seems to go to watch the local team regularly and that he goes with the same set of friends. Friends who might not be part of this conspiracy but might have heard something useful from the suspect.

 A smart suspect will try to keep up a conversation peppered with misleading hints and misinformation.

 6)      Have the interrogating character establish a friendly rapport with their interviewee.

It is easier to talk to someone who comes across as friendly, interested in what you have to say and broadly sympathetic to your position.

 It is much more difficult to talk to someone who shouts, screams and acts in an aggressive and confrontational manner.

 The interrogator’s job is primarily to make it easy for the suspect to talk. Everything else follows from that.

 A polite, engaging, sociable character who can keep calm under pressure would be a good pick. Someone who can be ‘friends’ with anybody.

 Let me stress that this can be extremely difficult. We’re talking about a character who can walk into a room with the worst possible criminals and try to make friends with them; a character who is successful at doing so. Don’t be afraid to show the kind of toll that takes on the character.

 7)      Don’t let suspects talk to each other before hand.

 I’ve discussed elsewhere why solitary confinement is harmful- keeping characters completely isolated might well impair their memory of events.

 But allowing characters to talk to each other before their interrogated also affects memory both for characters who want to mislead interrogators and for characters who want to help.

 Essentially we edit our memories all the time. Discussion of shared experiences with other people is a major trigger for natural alternation of memories.

 Four witnesses of the same events who don’t talk to each other in advance will give four different but broadly similar accounts.

 If the same witnesses talk to each other before they’re interviewed they might well all report the same inaccuracies.

 8)      Have interviewed characters tell their story backwards.

 This is a pretty simple memory aid that makes it easier for interrogators to spot inconsistencies in a story. These inconsistencies don’t necessarily indicate a lie but they highlight areas a character might be unsure of or might have inaccurate memories of.

 For instance if a character witnessed a car crash they might be instructed to start their account from the moment the ambulances arrived at the scene and work backwards from there until they reach the moments just before the crash.

 This technique can also help remind characters of additional details as they tell the story.

 9)      There is no reliable way to tell if someone is lying by looking at them.

 Even people who judge themselves as ‘good’ at detecting lies perform poorly in tests.

 There are no reliable ‘tests’ for lying. There are no working lie detector tests and based on how complex an action lying is short of literally reading minds I don’t think it would be possible.

 The only reliable way to tell if someone lied is to double check everything they said.

 10)  Body language is not a reliable indicator of a character’s guilt or innocence.

 A lot of people still believe that it is and there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with your characters believing that- but I’d advise caution.

 An interrogator character might recognise that a suspect character is nervous, but to instantly ‘know’ why they’d need to be psychic.

  The vast majority of people who conduct interrogations in real life have little to no formal training. In the USA (2013) the average was between 8-15 hours of the full training program. Consider how many hours you’d spend on a year long full time education course and you’ll get an idea of how little training that is.

 We are what fills in the gap.

 People with almost no training look to our portrayals of tough, aggressive interrogators who ‘always’ get results and, consciously or not, those portrayals influence them.

 The truth is interrogation isn’t a great way of getting information and interrogators are only human: they don’t have a supernatural insight into the suspect or crime.

 But we tend to write them as if they do. Personally I think that’s part of the problem- We focus on interrogation because of its dramatic potential. That focus warps how both the public and people involved in investigations view interrogation. It places too much focus on a comparatively poor information gathering technique and leads to assumptions that interrogators are capable of more than they realistically are.

 Trust, human interaction and treating other people as human is important. Anything that undermines that undermines interrogation.

Edit: Since I’m seeing some response in the comments from people who don’t quite see how bad portrayals of torture in fiction can affect real life, I’m linking back to this older Masterpost-  Accurate Portrayals of Torture in Fiction are Important

Disclaimer

[Sources: Why Torture Doesn’t Work: The Neuroscience of Interrogation. Harvard University Press, S O’Mara

Torture and Democracy, Princeton, D Rejali

The work of E Alison and L Alison, discussed in this newspaper article and listed here on their University home page papers are behind a pay wall (one specific to interviewing terrorists can be found here).

New Scientist 2015, article on evidence based policing]

[hollygopossumlovesj2]

Jackson, Wyoming

Characters: Jensen Ackles x Reader;

Rating/Warnings: NC-17; Explicit sexual content; There’s detail of what a migraine feels like. (Some of it. Definitely not ALL symptoms) Also, I was in dire need of some hurt/comfort and fluff. So, there’s that too.

Word Count: 3,422

Summary: Jensen plans a getaway for he and his long time girlfriend (Y/N) He chooses Jackson, Wyoming for its seclusion.Y/N is not aware of how much Jensen is struggling, but she’ll soon find out. (This is also in the same verse as Hunting Island)

A/N: I’ll be honest, I started out writing this with a lot more in mind but I ran out of time. Its kind of a miracle that I was able to put myself together long enough to write this. Its basically a case of too much personal shit and not enough brain cells to handle it. But I do hope you enjoy this. Also, there will be a part 2) I also neglected to say that this was part of Lau’s Summer Escape Challenge put together by the awesome @dancingalone21! Thank you for having such a fun challenge!

Also, @tas898, thank you for reading over this and telling me that it wasn’t crap. I appreciate it more than you know, twinsie!

Hollygopossum’s Masterlist

The trip to Jackson, Wyoming had been set and organized for months ahead of time, but because of Jensen’s schedule, it had also been rescheduled more than once.

His ‘time off’ for hiatus was variable at best. There were always script readings and conventions to attend. It was still incredibly rare that he had a long stretch of time to spend doing ‘nothing’.

  Jensen had been the one to choose the location this time. You’d been glad to let him since you’d been the sole focus of the last vacation at Hunting Island. It took some of the focus off of you, and for that you were grateful.

To be honest, you didn’t really care where you stayed, as long as Jensen was with you. It sounded a little stupid when you said that out loud, but you’d been with Jensen for just over 2 years now. It wasn’t hard to admit that you were still absolutely stupid over the man.

  Which was probably why you were being a little anxious. Jensen had convinced you to fly up ahead of time. He’d promised to meet you that evening, but his flight had been delayed because of stormy weather in Vancouver and wouldn’t be lifting off until late that night.

  As much as you tried to stay calm, to watch out for trigger foods and take all of your preventative medication, your worst fear was coming true.

  You’d been dealing with migraines ever since you were a child and they were considered well controlled. That was, until the drive through the mountains (and the pressure changes) made your ears pop. Add to that the massive thunder storms that had been brewing all day… You were instantly fucked.

  You’d listened to some meditation music on the way up and practiced your breathing techniques. You’d given yourself a shot of Imitrex, a vasoconstrictor that was supposed to stop a migraine before it had a chance to wind up. (The bastard injection apparatus stabbed into your skin like it was meant to power through to the other side. It left bruises on your skin for weeks) Fuck, you’d done everything to keep a migraine from ruining this trip.

  However, here you were. You’d barely been able to pull the shades closed to block out what little light the dark clouds allowed in before you collapsed on the bed.

  There had been no time to explore the beautiful cabin that Jensen had gone through great lengths to pick out. You know he’d made sure your requests to have a fire place and a hot tub were met. He was just incredibly thoughtful like that.

  The pain creeping up your shoulder, tensing the muscles along your neck and throbbing heavily into your left temple made you dizzy and each time you tried to move you felt like you might puke. You took a few deep, slow breaths, telling yourself that you’d get up in a minute to unpack.

  You tried to think about anything else other than the burgeoning pain that bordered on extreme. Like a lot of times like this, you thought of Jensen and your life together. Of how he never thought a dream was too big or unattainable. Of how he’d filled you with the hope and confidence that anything in this life was possible, if you truly wanted it.

  You thought of his excitement about the arrangement to stay in a cabin, secluded away from almost anything for two weeks. It had seemed like an awful lot of time to spend in one place for Jensen, but he’d been excited, so you’d been excited, too.

  Then, the thunder started and you felt each vibration of each thunderous clap like the storm was actually happening inside your skull. Your ears popped with the dropping barometric pressure and you willed the muscles that were painfully bunching together with tension to relax.

  Visiting Jackson, Wyoming in the middle of summer wouldn’t have been your first choice because of this reason alone. Unpredictable weather.

  You’d dated a few guys that couldn’t handle the ‘surprise’ migraines that inevitably showed up from time to time. But, as with most things, Jensen was very different.

  He’d blown you away with his compassion, his need to be helpful in some way. Unlike those other guys, Jensen never made you feel like it was your fault.

  And how did you repay him? By getting a migraine during one of his very few escapes. Your only hope now was that it would be gone by the time he got to the cabin.

  By this stage, you’d already done everything possible to stop it or at least shorten the duration. So, you closed your eyes against the bright lightening bouncing around the room and tried not to feel like your head was caving in.

  *^*^*^*

It took you a few fuzzy moments to register that you weren’t alone, because the rescue drugs you’d used were no joke. They were only meant to be taken when everything else failed because there was a big chance of getting a rebound headache because of them. They often made you loopy and knocked your ass out. The room was still as dark as you’d made it before falling asleep, except for the faint strip of light that poured in beneath the door. Even that little bit of light still burned your eyes.

  The migraine had been taken back a few notches, but you were still only able to squint into the darkness and realize you’d ended up laying on your stomach with the side of your face mushed into the pillow.

  The hand on your back was wide and warm as it rubbed in gentle swaths across your back. “Hey, darlin.” His voice was pitched low and quiet and his body moved to block the light leaking into the room. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

  “Mmm…” You felt very slow but relieved that your migraine was just an annoying hum as compared to the murderous, stabbing ice pick of earlier. When you spoke, it felt like your lips were twice their normal size. “S’ok.”

  When you finally dragged yourself into a sitting position, with your legs hanging off the side of the bed, Jensen’s hands were pushing the hair from your eyes and cradling your face. “Looks like you had a bad one, huh? I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”

  You’d scoff or roll your eyes, if it wasn’t for the fact that extra expressions just weren’t in the cards and it just felt too damn good to have his hands on your face. In fact, finally having Jensen back in your orbit was almost enough to keep your sarcasm at bay. “You didn’t miss much.”

  Almost.

  You heard the smile in his voice as he settled between your legs and pulled you into his arms, his chin coming to rest lightly on the top of your head. “Always such a brat.” One of his warm hands found your neck, his fingers digging into the tight muscles, causing you to tip forward and groan appreciatively into his shoulder.

  God, you could just stay here in this exact spot for the rest of your damn life, cradled in Jensen’s arms while he rubbed your tension away. You were like a marionette with its strings cut when he was finished with you.

  “How about,” he began in barely above a whisper, like he was afraid to disturb the peace himself. “I’ll make us some lavender tea, we’ll get you another dose of meds and maybe read a little?”

  The lavender tea was something that Jensen used himself to help with his anxiety and trouble sleeping at night and you loved that he would use the same things to take care of you when he could. The entire offer of comfort sounded fantastic, and you were already picturing how you’d get comfortable.

  Jensen would likely be sitting up and you’d find yourself tucked up close, your head on his warm thigh, listening while he read to you. If it wasn’t a heavy book, he’d run his fingers through your hair and lightly massage your scalp. There were times that your head hurt too bad for any of this to feel nice, but luckily tonight was not one of them.

  It was a tradition that he’d started at the very beginning of the relationship and you’d be lying if you said you didn’t enjoy hearing the gravely cadence of his voice. You’d often buy two of the same book so that you could read over the phone, if time permitted in the evening before bed.

  “Aren’t you sleepy?” You reluctantly pulled back so that you could see his face, worry and guilt pulling at you because it was Jensen who’d had to work all day. It was Jensen who’d had to wait in the airport for his delayed flight. This was his vacation, too. However, due to the limited light in the room, you were only able to see the outline of his mussed hair.

  “Nah, to be honest I’m still a little wired. I can just let you sleep if you-.”

  “No.” Jensen might have chuckled at your enthusiastic answer as you tucked yourself back into his arms, your face buried in his chest. However, as the faded scent of his aftershave and the warm, suffuse scent of his skin filled your nose, you couldn’t bring yourself to be embarrassed in the slightest.

  ^*^*^*^*^

When you woke up the next day, you weren’t exactly sure what time or even what year it was, to be honest. The shades were still drawn, letting the slightest bit of light in the room, giving soft shadows to Jensen’s face.

  There was a warm ache spreading pleasantly in your chest, like you’d just sipped the smoothest cognac, as you watched him sleep. You loved this man, so much.

  He was in a deep sleep, his mouth opened slightly as he curled on his side, facing you. One hand was tucked beneath the pillow, while the other was stretched out towards you. Like he might’ve reached out to touch your face while you slept.

  Yeah, you were still hung over from the migraine, your brain synapses seeming sluggish and a little befuddled. But, damn if Jensen laying there, open and soft, didn’t get to you.

  You settled on your side to face him, your noses only inches apart, and took a moment to just take him in. It was a little silly, how you felt this way each time you were reunited with him. How you had to acclimate yourself to being in his gravitational field again.

  You noticed how his long eye lashes etched perfectly symmetrical lines on his cheek. With fondness, you noted how the way his face was smashed into the pillow made his lips into an exaggerated pout. You couldn’t help but to reach out a couple of fingers to push the few wayward hairs off of his forehead. Just for an excuse to touch him.

  A memory of visiting him on set for the first time lazily wove its way into your conscious thought and brought a smile to your face. He’d been like an excited kid, dragging you to the different parts of set and introducing you to the crew.

  You’d never forget how he’d complained about the cowlick on his forehead with an adorably scrunched nose, like you would ever think he had any imperfections. It was clear, while one of the makeup girls sprayed intense amounts of hair spray to keep it spiked, that she was thinking the same thing.

    You happened to love that little cowlick he loathed so much. You liked what it represented now. That when he was home, his cowlick wasn’t ever entirely tamed. It usually meant he was product free and relaxed, here with you.

  “It’s not polite to stare.” Came his groggy voice, his fingers stretched out to play with your bottom lip.

  “Can’t help it.” You answered, unabashedly. There was no use in denying how you felt about him, you knew you were extremely transparent. “If you could tone down the handsome just a little, I might still be able to function around you.”

  “Mmm…” You think he may have meant the noise to be ascent, but it came out as nearly a growl as he rooted against the pillow for a moment as if he could wipe the grogginess from his face.

  “I didn’t mean to wake you up. Go back to sleep.” You let your hand migrate over his shoulder and down his arm in a soothing cadence. When he turned to face you with a raised eyebrow, his hair was a complete ruffled, fucking adorable mess.

  “You’re just saying that so you can keep me in bed all day.” The deep, gritty resonance of his voice shouldn’t have been able to affect you with the amount of residual medication still in your system. However, the challenging look in his eyes paired with that middle of the night, sex voice?

  “Guilty.”

  His smile was dazzling, or what you saw of it before he couldn’t keep his hands to himself anymore and pulled you into his bubble of personal space.

  You couldn’t help the way your body scooted in even closer so that you could rest your lips against the skin of his freckled chest. How any space left between the two of you was the enemy and needed to be vanquished by any means necessary as he held you even tighter.

  He hummed, his appreciation of your proximity a rumble in his chest and beginning to swell against your thigh, blood warm and inviting. “Your plan is working.” He mumbled before he ducked down to take your lips in a lazy but incendiary kiss.

  For a moment you were swept up in the feeling of his lush mouth and the way your bodies moved even closer together. Like melting scoops of ice cream, you merged into one ubiquitous puddle of goo.

  His palm and fingers were flat against you, sliding reverently from your shoulders and downward, creating a pleasant thrill as his guitar callouses consecrated your skin like a holy man’s most sacred text.

    His moan of pleasure was a quiet sigh, received in your mouth like communion when you bent your leg to rest up and over his hip, to hold him closer to where you wanted him. His fingers flexed against the small of your back to hold you to him.

  He was nearly breathless when he broke away, only separating far enough to rest his forehead on yours. His lips continued to feather against your face in soft, barely there kisses between catching his breath. “I missed you. I missed you so much.”

  Your hand was immediately running through the hair on the back of his neck, holding him close as he buried his face in the crook of your neck and shoulder. It would tickle, the way he was breathing you in, if you weren’t instantly concerned by his tone of voice, by the way he wouldn’t let any space between you. “Jay…”

  He took a moment and continued to breathe, his hands still unable to hold you and touch you enough. It was almost like he was embarrassed and hiding his face from you.

  He took one last deep breath, the feel of it breezing past your heat flushed skin caused goose bumps to pop up all over before he pulled away only far enough to be able to speak. You were resting cheek to cheek now, his eyelashes brushing softly against your skin with his every blink.

  “I’m sorry.” He pulled in another deep, cleansing breath, but continued to speak barely above whisper before you could ask him why. “I know it’s my fault that we’re separated all the time. It’s my career and it’s my commitments and I have no right to feel this way. And you…” He nuzzled the sensitive skin right below your ear. “You’re fine. You’re so independent and you don’t even need me, but I… I need you. It’s harder and harder to leave you, every time I have to do it.”

  The warm, smooth ache you’d been carrying in your chest since you’d woken up burst into something sharp with jagged edges at the sound of his distress. You urged him away from his hiding spot, your hands on either side of his face. You swore there was a loud, physical crack in your heart as you saw the pain mirrored in his eyes.

  “I know you can’t put your life on hold for me. I don’t want you to be stuck just following me around from place to place, but maybe we could try. Just something different from this? I need more of you in my life. I want it to be our life, not just mine and yours every couple of weeks and a summer break. I want to m-.”

  It could’ve been ‘I want to marry you’ or ‘I want to murder you.’ It’s possible he might’ve said ‘I want to make a fucking decoupage’, but you couldn’t hold back from trying to soothe the pain he’d just cracked open between you as you kissed the words right out of his mouth.

  You’d always been wary of the constitution of marriage. You’d seen it more as a type of restraint, like a literal ball and chain would be weighing you down for eternity. Restriction from being able to do your own thing, to make your own life and be your own person. But over the two years you’d spent with Jensen, he’d turned every assumption you’d ever had about it on its head.

  He rolled you both over in a quick move, propped up by his elbows to hover over you as you spread your thighs for him without a second thought. You couldn’t see the flush of his skin or the dark pink of his blood filled cock as it seared like a brand against your skin. The room was too dark for that still, but you could see the outline of what your fingers had done to his hair. You could see how his body moved with each breath, more labored than the one before.

  You couldn’t look away from the broken open, honest look on his face when he slowly, but insistently slotted inside you. His eyes were wide and bright, his lips slightly parted as he refused to look away.

  This time, it wasn’t about how many orgasms you could have or how hard you could make him come. His thrusts were sure and deep as he gathered you up in his arms.

  This was about connection and reassurance and finally having what you had waited weeks to have. What your hand and all the sex toys in the world couldn’t bring you.

  You lost yourself in the slow burn of it, in the way he moved on top of you. Your hands on his back felt every twitch and bunch of muscle under sweaty skin. You tasted the salt of him on your lips and inhaled the musky scent of your bodies joined together in the humid air between you.

  You were already on edge, already so close before he thread his sweaty, shaking fingers through yours beside your head on the pillow. It was being fully connected from head to toe, paired with Jensen’s unerring ability to hit your sweet spot like a bullseye in the dark, that flooded you with the pleasure of orgasm.

  It was the sound of your name gasped on his lips, the way his breath caught in his throat and the way he squeezed your hand with his as he pulsed and shivered inside you that drove the ecstasy even higher.

  When you finally came back to yourself, feeling hazy with satisfaction, you couldn’t have moved even if you had wanted to.

  Jensen hadn’t moved an inch, still shivering, his muscles still twitching after a very satisfying orgasm. He pressed his lips softly along your throat before he buried his face in your neck with a deeply satisfied sigh.

  Could your migraine be triggered because of your extraordinary pleasure? Absolutely. Could you bring yourself to care at all? It was safe to say that zero fucks were given.

  At that moment you knew that no matter what came in the next hour, the next week or even the next year that you could handle it as long as Jensen was by your side.

However, as you fell asleep again later with Jensen’s warm body holding you from behind, you had plenty to think about. Like, if you hadn’t jumped the gun, out of terror or enthusiasm about whatever ‘M’ word was about to tumble out of his beautiful mouth, what would he have said? Were you really at that point in the relationship?  Was Jensen serious about wanting to start a life with you?

 More importantly, were you marriage material? What, with your migraines and your propensity to run at any sign of commitment above shacking up together?

 You sighed, burying your face in the soft, down pillow that Jensen had probably gone great lengths to make sure were provided and took a really long, hard look at your life. Could you really do this? Above that, was it possible that you were obsessing about something that wasn’t even a real possibility?

Tagging Forevers: @perpetualabsurdity, @maileann, @daydreamingintheimpala, @gecko9596, @gemini75eeyore, @jotink78, @dancingalone21, @winchesterprincessbride, @sandlee44, @exploratiionist, @arryn-nyx, @littledarlinhavefaithinme, @tiffanycaruso, @boredoutofmymindstuff, @feelmyroarrrr, @raeganr99, @ruprecht0420, @anokhi07, @letsgetyourdeanon, @sis-tafics, @jensen-gal, @theoneandonlysaucymo, @27bmm, @callmesatansprincess, @hbenth, @atc74, @ryansgirl5509, @mysteriouslyme82, @notnaturalanahi, @keepcalmandcarryondean, @sea040561, @just-another-busy-fangirl, @spn67-sister, @uniquewerewolfsuit, @ria132love, @mrswhozeewhatsis, @pretty-fortune, @butiaintgonnaloveem, @justanotherdeangirl, @weasleywinchester, @tas898, @mandymoiselle1970, @glendagiggles, @pansexualmeteorite

[moreinterestingonline]

Old Blogs

5/11/20If I was pressed, truly reamed and grilled, for the location of where the last five days went, I would not be able to produce a satisfactory answer. It seems like they just flew by with neither rhyme nor reason.What I’ve been thinking about during these past five days wouldn’t fit in a blog post, but I can highlight one central topic: world building. I’ve been trying to write three novels this year. I often get asked if it’s difficult to keep the worlds separate from one another. I usually answer with a “It’s really not that difficult” or segue into a cute anecdote about my dog, since most people aren’t interested in an actual answer. To those prepared to listen, I hand them a “yes and no.”No, it’s not as hard as it seems because I use one to escape the others. The worlds must be different, unique, and distinctive because any bleeding through wouldn’t offer me the complete new reality I crave when I am struck with writer’s block. I try to think of it as preparing for a triathlon. Sure, you use similar muscle groups to run, bike, and swim, but you don’t show up to the pool in track cleats because the detail would be identified as alien immediately.Yes, it is hard because the same overarching themes will appear as they will in an work of mortals. What kind of story would it be if there isn’t a struggle of good and evil? Would it be listed with the best sellers if there wasn’t an endearing mentor who gets killed at the beginning of the adventure? Oh? Too far? Even so, the themes that have defined my life will more than likely pop up in more than one of my books. I will have to work then even harder on my characters and their environments.These considerations are important to my approach to world building. I must carefully paint with three different pallets the physical attributes of each of my worlds. I must be cautious of what the careful reader might notice. I do not reuse sets or scripts. Still, as I compose three separate works, the ideas I believe in will show up in these different colors. I am only one writer with one perception of reality. I am extremely limited in my quest to entertain masses. All I can do is work and revise and work again, and hope that there are other people willing to step into my shoes.Personally, not a lot has been going on. Today was the first day in I don’t know how long that I did all the hygiene an average person would do in one day. I’ve started bullet journaling again and texted my goals to my best friend so I have accountability. My project right now is to make looking and feeling good my job for one month. My personal hygiene has become so neglected as I have sunk deeper and deeper into my depression. The other day, I just woke up with the motivation to turn that part of my life around.I know it’s only been one day, but it’s been so long since I actually achieved something in this area and I’ve been so sad that I thought I should celebrate this step.I’m so tired, but I wanted to get one more thing checked off my list tonight before I go to sleep.Sometimes I wonder if it’s time to learn another language. I feel like most people my age have at least two languages under their belt where I have just the one. I want to be considered bright and I feel like this is the next step.Here is the point again where I consider sleep less important than the things I could be doing instead of sleeping. Where is this little voice coming from? What is so dark inside us that wants us to fail? How can you ride a ship you’re preparing to sink? Is it fear that wants to personify it? Make it a separate entity so I can’t be to blame for my own bad habits? Who knows.I’m beginning to enjoy television, which is sort of new for me. I wonder if it means my attention span has finally reached null. Sure, there have been very well done productions I’ve been a fanatic for in the past, but I’ve never been able to turn on a random show and just enjoy. I’ve almost finished watching all the Storage Wars available on Netflix. I never thought I’d be the kind of person that turns to reality television, but here we are. Maybe this is how quarantine truly breaks me. If I don’t have focus, I don’t have anything. I’m beginning to nod off. I really want to reach a thousand words before I go to sleep. That means no editing whatsoever, just stream of consciousness. It’s been feeling more like a dry creek bed lately. I could stare at the ceiling for hours. I could sleep all day and not be bored. I know that’s concerning. I’ve already made an appointment with my doctor about switching my medications. I just want to feel like I did when I was in second grade, seventh grade, ninth grade. There is so much left for me to do here that it feels overwhelming.Nearly there. That gibberish sure helped. Take this as an example, kind reader, of what I usually cut out for your benefit and mine. It’s okay, I know no one is reading this. I just need to allow the chance for someone to hear what the people in my life can’t hear for themselves. I’m so scared of being a burden that I don’t know how to open up to people I meet in real life. It’s either I don’t want them to know my middle name to “What’s your mother like and how did that affect your psychological development?” That’s it, thanks.

5/6/20

Alas, another day has passed and! I’m still depressed. How did that happen? Did I make zero changes and expect something to happen? Maybe. But I did wish for it really really hard. (I know, in THIS economy??)

Silliness and vague misdirection aside, today sucked. I spent the morning in a weird, unawake haze because I hadn’t slept. The afternoon dragged on as I crammed for my Modern Grammar which (and now here’s the real kicker) kicked me good in the pants. Lastly, I told my roommates that I plan on moving out and they did not take it well. All this contributed to a day ill spent.

I don’t know where my weird relationship with sleep came from. Logically, I know that I need sleep. I know that sleep will do me well and allow my body to get ready for another day. One day, a little voice crept into my mind and told me that sleep was optional. I haven’t been able to shut it off since. Need extra time to study? Want to get to the next level? Only another hour before your friend in another timezone wakes up? Might as well pull an all-nighter. Objects in motion, after all.

I’m also out of my sleeping medication. And I haven’t been taking my medication. I’m struggling and I’m lacking the discipline to push myself the extra mile to potentially getting better. I think what I need are some small victories. Already, I am writing. I am journaling. I am crossing small things off my list in a desperate attempt for dopamine. Desperate, yes, but shameful? Absolutely not. It feels like I’m running a marathon underwater, but I still intend to finish. It’s just going to take me a little longer.

At one point and time, I was filming taking my medication every day and posting a little mental check on Youtube. That was good, until I missed one day, and then three days, and now it’s been almost a month. I just feel so guilty over any reveal of failure or shortcoming. How am I supposed to come back from showing that I’m not perfect?

I don’t know if this needs to be said, but if I were talking to my friend in the same situation, I would reassure them 1000% that I would love them no matter what, especially through their imperfections. It’s not that I set the bar lower for my friends than I do for myself, but I am a lot harder on me when I don’t meet my expectations. I guess that comes with being a wild romantic, right? Reality is that blinding white light that pierces through daydream. The clear solution is to have more realistic daydreams, but those aren’t nearly as fun.

Small victories, eh? What goals can I set for myself?

It’s late. I should go to bed. Today was rough and on top of everything I’m dehydrated. I hate complainers and hypocrites. I shall bless your feed with another rambling posthaste, rest allowing.

5/5/20

I’m going to pretend I didn’t see the clock strike midnight and write this from the perspective of today, May the 5th. A good, round-numbered day to start something new. I’ve always been fond of round numbers. I’ve always been fond of clean slates.

My central problem in life right now is that I’m depressed. I don’t like myself. I don’t like what I do with my time. Everything seems pointless. I lack purpose, direction, inspiration. I love the world and find myself submerged in curiosity often enough, but I don’t apply myself towards meaningful goals. My lack of application is the root of my unhappiness. If I wasn’t me, I wouldn’t want to be friends with me. And that invokes a whole other can of worms; namely insecurity, impostor syndrome, and low standards. But I digress.

I. Want. To. Be. Happy. I want to feel like I am making progress. I don’t want to feel vaguely ill anymore. I don’t think I should have to live with boredom as my default emotion. I don’t want to have to repress anything anymore.

How can I be happy? Well, isn’t that the age-old question. If there was a simple, clear-cut answer, I would bottle it and become a billionaire. Instead of a product, though, I have the following goals.

In order to be happy, I need to take care of my body. I need to be kinder to the vessel through which I experience all happiness, through which I enact all acts of generosity. What will this look like? For one, I would like to have a “glow-up”. I would like to have a before and after photo-set that I can look at and be proud of. This will mean skincare, daily showering, healthy eating, and regular exercise. I can’t expect myself to be happy in an unkempt body.

I am going to execute this goal by applying a hygiene routine, researching daily workouts, and keeping track of what goes into my body. I will also take the time to do silly, frivolous things like put on eyeliner and curl my hair simply because it makes me happy. I will have a more coordinated plan by tomorrow. For now, I research.

In order to be happy, I need to take care of my brain. Practice makes perfect and no practice makes mush. I don’t want a pile of mush directing the rest of my life. I want a clean, sharp machine dictating my every move. I want the gears to shift as smoothly as a well-oiled watch. I want to feel as efficient as I did in high school, when I was taking college courses and researching off-curriculum subjects just to ease my questioning mind.

I am going to execute this goal by finishing my semester strong, spending dedicated time each day towards active learning, and planning monthly projects. I will also find ways to implement healthy curiosity in my daily conversations. I was a “why” child. Why is the sky blue? Why is the grass green? Why do we have ten fingers and ten toes but only two ears? Why? Why? Why? I want to transition back to that motivated, inquisitive mindset. As with taking care of my body, I will have a more decisive plan for this goal tomorrow.

In order to be happy, I need to take care of my soul. One of the biggest reasons I’ve been increasingly unhappy these past months (or even years, you could argue) is because I am simply not creating more than I am consuming. A great joy that is allowed us is pure creation. I am tired of sitting passively while muses give up on me, moving onto to the next open mind. I want to build up my patience for writer’s block, to give in to the urge to write badly rather than not write at all.

I am going to execute this goal by setting word counts for myself daily depending on my schedule, setting due dates for my projects, and holding myself accountable with creative partners. I know I have stories to tell, characters to illustrate, worlds to discover. I have always felt that within myself. “I contain multitudes.” There is opportunity here, if I am only willing to open the door. I’m a firm believer that nothing worth having comes without effort, but I’ve been sitting idly anyways. What hypocrisy.

Those are my main goals. This slate is no longer clean. I have marked it with intent.

I’ve always like clean slates because it feels better to start something new rather than digging yourself out of a hole of failure. Let me acknowledge, I am buried deep under years and years of bad habits and ill-fated mindsets. I have allowed myself to sink to this depth. It is no one’s fault but my own. I am not trying to say anything different that, nor will I ever attempt to blame someone other than myself for my circumstances. This has been my doing and my doing alone. So, when I say clean slate, you know that I know that there is no such thing as a clear state. I am merely marking a line in the sand to cross over and become a different person. Hopefully.

This has gone on for too long. I sent a goal of 1000 words per day. Initially, I was wondering if that would be enough, or if it would be too little. Would I be boring whoever came across my articles of dis-wisdom? Would I be leaving them without adequate information to ever bother reading something of mine again? We don’t really know the fate of our goals when we set them. We pin our hopes to them like ribbons, we shower them with expectations, but we can’t ever really know how things will turn out. I can’t say for certain that i will ever complete these goals, but I cannot let that discourage me. After all, this has been 1000 words.