#it felt fucking terrible and I don’t give a shit reporting that player who went afk

[jpasionr]

I had one player who used the dynamo roller, not doing anything during the first wave then disconnect into the second wave

if you’re gonna do this shit in freelance, DON’T bother playing this month’s eggstra work!!!

[feistypaants-archived]

Between The Pipes [Chapter 7]

Rating: M Words: 2060 Pairing: Kristanna Summary: When a new owner takes over the Arendelle Ice Breakers, Kristoff isn’t sure about his future with the team. That is, until a PR nightmare throws the newest member of the media team, who also just so happens to be the daughter of the new owner, right into his arms. Kristoff and Anna can’t even stand the interviews they have to do together… how on earth are they going to fix this mess? Hockey!AU.

[Chapter Index]

Where To Read: [AO3]

Notes: hopefully kristoff is a bit more sympathetic in this one lmao. He was a massive dick in the last chapter, but he just is dumb and doesn’t know how to handle himself. Sooooo anyway. :^) 

Enjoy!

Why couldn’t he stop doing that?

Kristoff sat for almost two hours, wondering if she would come back, and not wanting to be the dick who left her stranded if she did. He figured it was the least he could do, considering how he spoke to her. 

Why couldn’t he stop doing that?

It wasn’t like she had done anything, and he had genuinely gone into this lunch with the mindset to be nice . But he didn’t expect her to start trying to get to know him or put him on the spot. He felt his whole body tense with the desire to stay hidden, stay secretive, to make sure that she knew as little about him as possible. Something deep inside of him was wailing to get out and open up. He let something slip. He mentioned his father . The only person who knew about his father was Sven. 

Sven and his real parents. The ones who took him in when his father was too busy playing hockey to care about his young son.

He wasn’t ready for her to know about it. He wasn’t ready for the media to know about it.

He wasn’t ready for the media to know that he was the son of Leif Sørensen, a powerful defenseman in the Super League who was more focused on making it to the NHL than caring about his family. Leif Sørensen, who wanted nothing more than to be the best player in the world and didn’t care when his wife left him and his newborn baby. Leif Sørensen, who would leave his son alone for weeks on end and didn’t even seem to mind when his child got taken away and was sent to live with a new family.

Leif Sørensen, who died young from a heart attack, who never made it where he wanted to, who practically sighed with relief when his son was adopted officially and moved to America.

Kristoff wished every day that his father could see him now - wished that his father knew that his son accomplished what he couldn’t.

But he didn’t want anyone else to know about it.

So when he slipped, mentioned the tiniest little thing about it, he panicked. He threw on the worst attitude he could muster and shut her down. 

But she kept poking at him, wiggling her way into the tiniest crack he had shown, getting deeper and deeper under his skin. That was when he had to shut it down. He had learned from the best how to drive people away. As much as it panicked him, it helped that she did what he suspected she would and threatened to tell her father about it.

Spoiled little rich girl.

He sighed and finally stood, checking how much Anna had left and decided it was only right to try and give it back to her. It wasn’t her fault that this went to shit.

Sven was going to have his head.

—

“What the hell is wrong with you!?”

Kristoff tried his best not to wince when Sven actually punched him in the arm. He deserved it, he knew, and just let Sven continue on his rampage. His cheeks were red, brows low and eyes narrowed as he practically bared his teeth, ready to attack. “She was just trying to get to know you, was just trying to be nice and what did you do? You’re a complete asshole .” 

Sven leaned back, arms crossed over his chest as Kristoff tensed under his glare. He mumbled out something that he knew his captain wouldn’t hear, and grimaced when he felt Sven’s fist collide with his shoulder again. “I’m sorry!”

“No use in telling me that.”

“Look! She…” Kristoff threw his arms above his head with a groan and slumped further. “Something about her makes my stupid head want to open up and I can’t , okay? I’m not…”

Sven softened for just a moment. Kristoff struggled to find his words, mumbling a few non-starts before he finally came up with something he knew would convey all that Sven needed to know.

“She got me to mention my dad. No one knows about my dad.”

“ Dude ,” Sven whined, clapping his hands on top of the slightly taller man’s shoulders. “Isn’t that a sign, though? Your subconscious is literally screaming at you to let her in.”

“I don’t know her… I don’t trust her.”

A scoff, a quiet “you’re an idiot,” and then his hand was practically cupping Kristoff’s cheek, an action he wasn’t sure he was so comfortable with. Then he patted it hard enough to almost be classified as a smack, and Kristoff felt himself relax.

“You can’t get to know her if you keep treating her like this.”

Why was Sven always right?

He swore that he’d apologize the next time he saw her. Sven nodded as if it were good enough, and left him alone. 

Unfortunately, Anna hadn’t shown up to the rink in a few days, and Kristoff could feel the panic rising in his chest like acid with every passing moment. Had he been bad enough that she quit? Or, worse, was she going back to see her father and make him do something about the disrespectful goalie? She had threatened it… but was she really that kind of person?

It would be easier, he thought, if she were. 

He went through the practices, jumping at every person or sound that he thought could possibly be her, frowning when she didn’t come around the corner. He wanted to apologize, genuinely, but her not showing up was making that rather difficult .

But it was a Monday and it was still early, and he hoped that maybe there was a chance of her still showing today. He jumped at the puck that hit the glass behind him, and looked up just in time to see Mattias stalking towards the ice. 

“Bjorgman, my office, please.”

Oh god damn it fucking shit no.

—

Coach wasn’t patient today, so Kristoff just stripped off his padding and jersey before heading to the office. Walking around in compression shorts and a tee-shirt weren’t out of the ordinary, so he hurried onward and hoped it was good enough. He had gotten a low chorus of Oooo ’s as he skated off the ice, and when Coach silenced them with a loud bark of a shut up and practice , Kristoff knew it was serious. 

So he moved quickly, padding down the halls, and frowned when he heard multiple voices coming through the closed door. Knocking tentatively, Kristoff pushed open the door and felt his heart start beating faster when he saw a familiar head of red hair, neatly arranged into two braids, her cheeks red and expression shameful.

She fucking didn’t.

“Kristoff,” another voice said, pulling his attention away from her. Gerda, he thought he remembered her name being, the head of Public Relationships and Media, was standing in front of him, her hand extended. When he shook it, she gestured at the empty chair beside Anna and smiled. “Please, sit.”

He felt like a school kid again, getting scolded for cheating off an exam. 

Kristoff forgot his size for a moment and frowned when Anna’s arm retreated to her lap after his own brushed against it. Was she really that repulsed by him? Was he really that terrible of a person that just his arm brushing against hers made her recoil like that? 

There was an unfamiliar itch on the back of his neck, one he rolled his head to try and get rid of, frustration growing as it just got worse and worse . “What’s going on?” He started, lifting a hand to scratch at the back of his head. It didn’t help.

Mattias sat at his desk as Gerda lowered herself to perch on the edge, arms crossing over her chest. 

Now he really felt like a school kid again. Come on.

“I’m sorry, did…” her voice was meek as her eyes glanced to him for just a second before focusing on the gray carpet beneath their feet. “Is something wrong?”

Gerda smiled and shook her head, and Kristoff almost laughed as he and Anna breathed out a simultaneous sigh of relief. This still didn’t make sense, though. He leaned forward, bracing one hand on his knee as he did, elbow popping out to the side. “So what’s going on, then?”

“Well.” Mattias’ voice was powerful as ever, as he leaned forward on his arms and sighed. “Kristoff… It’s come to my attention that… you haven’t been doing so well with the media side of things over these last couple of seasons.”

What ?

“We’d really like it if you could make an effort to stick around for interviews, and show up to all of the charity events…” He shrugged. “And the fan events.”

Kristoff stiffened, frowning deeply. “I’m here to play hockey , coach.”

Mattias gave him a nod, but shrugged. “Well, unfortunately… part of being in the NHL is giving back, and part of being on this team , is participating in these events.”

He was balking now, his eyes wide and his hands gripping the edge of the desk as he leaned forward. “Come on .”

“This is non-negotiable, Bjorgman.”

He threw himself back into the chair with a groan, arms crossing tightly over his chest. He was too busy pouting to notice Anna sit further forward in her own seat, hand meekly raised in the air. 

“So… why am I here?”

Gerda dropped her hands into her lap with a nod. “We’d like you to be the primary reporter in charge of covering and interviewing him. 

And, in sync, “ What ?”

She let out a soft laugh and sat up straighter. “Anna, I’ve been impressed with how much effort you’ve put into just your first two weeks, and I’d like for you to have a chance to make a name for yourself. Richard quit, and we need an on-the-ice interviewer… so I would like for you to give it a try.” 

Kristoff tried not to be distracted by the movement of her throat as she swallowed, and turned his attention back to the two sitting in front of them. “There’s no wiggle room here?”

Mattias shook his head. “None. You do this, or you’re benched.”

Shit.

Anna still seemed to be processing the information when they were excused, and Kristoff had to slow down his steps to stay in stride with her. “Hey,” he started, trying not to laugh when she jumped as if she hadn’t even noticed he was walking beside her. “I…”

She stopped, looking up at him with those pretty blue eyes, and Kristoff felt his face flush. “I wanted to apologize for the other day.”

He saw a change in her, when she stopped being overwhelmed by the news and was back to hating his guts. Anna crossed her arms and looked up and down his body, her hip cocking to the side. “Go ahead.”

“What?”

“Apologize.”

Kristoff’s eyebrows furrowed, his shoulders rising with confusion as he continued to stare her down. “I did .”

“No,” she dragged out, her lips forming a perfect o as she leaned slightly forward. “You said you wanted to apologize.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?”

“No!” Her arms dropped to her sides, tense and frustrated as she turned and continued to walk off. “You’re unbelievable!”

He was genuinely confused, tripping over his feet as he spun quickly to keep up with her long, angry strides. “Okay, okay! I’m sorry!” She stopped suddenly and he almost ran her over as he did his best to halt his steps. Kristoff took in a deep breath, blowing it out in one slow sigh. “I’m sorry.”

“All right.” Her voice was softer now, as if that was all he had to do to make her give him another chance. She looked down at her feet, suddenly bashful as he towered over her, arms braced on his hips. “Well,” she risked a glance up at him and scrunched her lips to one side. “If we’re going to have to work together, we… should probably figure out how to be civil.”

Kristoff felt a weight lift from his chest as he nodded. 

“I can be civil.”

She laughed, and he flushed again. Even her laugh was pretty. 

“I doubt it, but I guess we should give it a try.”

[freddiesaysalright]

I Don’t Like You or Your Band

John Deacon x Reader

Summary: Reader is a music journalist, and a very popular one at that. She knew Deaky when they were teenagers. She’s written a pretty harsh piece about Queen.

Word Count: 10K

Tag List:  @someone-get-a-medic @deakysgurl, @polarcrystall, @queer-heart-attack, @dewdarkdemon, @qweenly, @smittyjaws, @caborhapch, @amelialio, @flyawayhay, @hannahfuckingsucks, @hotspacedeaky, @julessbrown, @reavenedges-lies, @simmisblog, @anna-1946, @ziggymay, @retromusicsalad, @catch-a-deak, @winterssoldierrs, @casafrass, @cranberribread, @strawberry-lemonade0, @ilovetacos1267

A/N: This gets very smutty at the end, but that was the whole point! Also, this fic was inspired by the song, “I Don’t Like You or Your Band” by Kate Rhudy. Go check her out on Spotify, her whole album is awesome :)

Your cigarettes, your leather shoes You, your friends, and your middle class white boy blues You’ve become something I can’t stand Don’t even miss holdin’ your hand And I don’t like you or your band

Monday I was in love with a good, good man 

He was kissing you. Shy and sloppy, reflecting the innocence of the moment. You reached for the buttons of his shirt, hands shaking. He went to do the same, his fingers tracing the hem of your sweater. It was soft and pink, as virginal as you were. 

Your eyes snapped open. A tear leaked out and slid down your cheek. Why were you dreaming this now? Then you remembered. The Queen article was going out today. It was scathing. The thought made you nervous. Would the band see it? Would he see it? Did you care if he did?

You wiped your face and got up. You put on a simple dress and heels, pushing all thoughts of your past to the back of your mind. You didn’t want to think about him now. You didn’t want to think about him at all, really. 

As you walked into you office, you said hello to the receptionist as you made your way to your empty desk. You usually had a copy of the week’s issue waiting for you, before they hit the shelves. Your brow furrowed.

“Y/N,” said your editor, Charles, as he sauntered over to you. “You ready for today’s issue?”

He waved the magazine in front of you before letting it fall onto your desk with a slap. Queen was spread across the front page. You looked away.

You nodded at Charles, resolving yourself to your pride in your work. Your history with John Deacon was irrelevant. In fact, you had not even disclosed it to Charles - or anyone - because you felt that it mattered that little. 

“Hey, you’re from the same town as the bass player, right?” Charles asked.

A nervous twinge went through you. “Um, yeah.”

“Did you know him?” 

“No,” you lied. “No, not really.”

***

“This is shit!” Roger cried, throwing down the magazine as he entered the studio. “Have you all read this review?”

“Oh, God, what is it now?” Freddie wondered, rolling his eyes. 

“Listen,” Roger said irritably. “‘Queen is a band with talent that could best be described as above average. Their most redeeming quality is their frontman, Freddie Mercury, but even his eccentric style and quality vocals can’t make up for the fact that they’re just another wannabe Zeppelin. Only they don’t have half the lyrical depth or musical skill.’ What the fuck?!”

“Who’s the author?” Brian wondered.

“She’s a really well-known reporter,” Roger said. “She did that whole profile on Elton John last year that everyone loved. Y/N Y/L/N.”

John choked on the sip of water he was taking, and the other three turned eyes on him.

“Do you know her?” Freddie asked.

John coughed for a moment and had to catch his breath. “Yes.”

They all still stared at him. He cleared his throat. “What?”

“How do you know her?” Roger asked.

“We sort of went out when we were in school,” John explained. “I guess you could say she was my first real girlfriend.”

“Well - Christ, Deaks, what’d you do to her?” Roger wondered.

“Nothing!” John insisted. “I mean - I suppose we - well, it wasn’t that big of a deal.”

“Could you speak in complete sentences?” Brian asked cheekily. “So the rest of us might keep up?”

John ran a hand down his face and groaned. He mumbled something that the others couldn’t hear.

“Deaky, just tell us!” Roger cried.

“We were each other’s first times!” he finally came out with. “We were seventeen and it was weird and then I fucked off to London shortly after.”

Freddie burst into giggles. Roger sighed and Brian rolled his eyes.

“Why don’t you just ring her and apologize?” Roger suggested. “Maybe she’ll take back what she said.”

“Oh, come on,” John returned. “That article couldn’t possibly be a reaction to something that happened years ago. It’s probably just her honest opinion.”

“There’s no way that’s her opinion because the album isn’t shit and we’re not Zeppelin wannabes,” Roger insisted. “If anything, we also have an influence from Yes.”

“Which she also mentions,” Brian interjected, looking at the article again. “She really knows her stuff. Even if she is wrong about us.”

“If she really knew her stuff, she wouldn’t be wrong about us,” Roger said stubbornly. 

“That gives me an idea,” Freddie said.

They all looked curiously at him.

“What is it?” Brian asked.

“Let’s invite her here,” Freddie said. “Let her see how our work comes together and how original we are. That is, if it isn’t too uncomfortable for you, Deaky, dear.”

“Look, it wasn’t like I left without saying anything,” John further explained. “We had a normal breakup, I thought.”

“Great!” Freddie said with an excited clap. “It’s decided! She’ll join us for the week!”

“Hold on, nothing is decided!” Roger argued, but Freddie was already gone to use the phone. “Well, I’m not going to be nice to her.”

“She wasn’t very nice to us first,” Brian said as if that settled the matter.

***

You were going through some papers on your desk as preliminary work for your next article. Your phone rang and you picked it up lazily.

“Y/N Y/L/N,” you answered.

“Ah, Miss Y/L/N,” said a strangely familiar voice on the other end. “This is Freddie Mercury.”

A chill ran down your spine and your heart nearly stopped. “What?”

“We’ve read your piece on our music, and I must say, darling, we believe you’re mistaken,” he said. “I have a proposition for you.”

“Look, Mr. Mercury,” you said, finding your voice again. “I was just doing my job. If you don’t like what I say, that’s your problem. At this point, Queen should be used to bad press.”

It was a low blow, but you didn’t care. Freddie only snickered.

“I like you, darling,” he said. “You’re feisty. But I’m about to make you an exclusive offer.”

“I’m listening.”

He arranged to meet you at a cafe between your office and their studio. You told Charles about the call.

“Y/N, are you serious?” he gasped.

“Do you want me to cancel?” you asked, concerned by his tone.

“Hello no!” he cried. “Take the meeting, and whatever exclusive they’re offering you. Find out everything you can about them. Dig up the dirt. Find me something we can use to take them down.”

“Take them down?” you wondered. “I don’t want to make shit up about them.”

“You won’t have to,” he said. “But get me something.”

“I’ll do my best,” you said warily.

“That’s a good girl.”

You clenched your teeth as you left the office. You hated when men talked to you like that. You were a grown woman, out on her own. You were not a little girl who needed the approval of anyone, especially not a man. 

You went to the cafe where Freddie asked to meet. You spotted the band right away. Brian’s fluffy curls gave them away, but you first noticed John. He looked quite different with his long hair and fancy clothes. But he was still John. Whether or not that was a good thing remained to be seen. You loved the John you knew dearly. But he also hurt you. 

“You must be Y/N Y/L/N,” Freddie said, getting to his feet and shaking your hand. The others offered you no such courtesy. 

“I am,” you said. “Obviously, I know who all of your are.”

“Obviously,” Freddie said slowly, with a mischievous grin. “We wanted to talk to you about your article and offer an opportunity to...correct it.”

You frowned. “It doesn’t need correcting. The appeal of music is entirely subjective. Not everyone is going to think you’re the greatest band to walk the earth.”

“There’s no need to get defensive,” he said. “Especially since you haven’t heard our offer.”

“Well, make it then,” you said, crossing your arms over your chest. 

“She’s right to business,” he remarked. “I like it.”

“You wanna make an arrangement or do you wanna fuck around?”

He laughed. It was charming in its own way. You tried not to let it infect you, but you felt the corners of your mouth nearly twitch. It didn’t help that you were ignoring John’s intense gaze. 

“Spend the week in the studio with us,” he said. “See what we do. How we put our unique sound together. I guarantee you’ll change your mind.”

You cocked an eyebrow at him and then gestured to the rest of the band. “And you’re all on board with this?”

You scanned them. Roger glowered at the ground and didn’t answer. Brian nodded stiffly. Finally, you met John’s eyes. It took him a moment to respond, but when he opened his mouth, Freddie spoke. 

“Deaky told us you’re old friends,” he said. 

You weren’t looking at him, but you could feel his smirk. You continued to look at John and your gaze hardened. 

“Oh?” you said coldly. “I don’t recall.”

You cut away from his stare, but you saw his mouth drop a little before he quickly closed it again. Your eyes found Freddie’s, and laughter danced behind them. 

“What do you say?” he asked, ignoring his clear urge to take a dig at his friend. “One full week behind the scenes with Queen. And you’ll write a new story.”

“What if my opinion stays the same?” you challenged. 

“You write it exactly how you see it,” he said. “If you don’t change your mind - although I’m sure you will, darling - you can write even more about how terrible we are.”

“You’re awfully confident,” you replied. 

He shrugged. “Take it or leave it, love.”

“I’ll take it,” you said. “But just so you know, everything is on the record.”

“We wouldn’t have it any other way.”

With the deal in place, you went with them to the studio. You walked there right from the cafe since you had your notepad in your bag. You followed behind them, but John dropped back to walk beside you. You resisted rolling your eyes. 

“Y/N,” he said. “It’s - uh - good to see you.”

“Wish I could say the same,” you returned, not looking at him. 

He grabbed your arm and yanked you to a stop. You glared at him and wrenched yourself free. 

“What’s up with you?” he demanded quietly so the other guys wouldn’t hear. “I thought our relationship was meaningful...that we still cared about each other.”

“You did?” you spat. “Well, imagine my surprise.”

He blinked. “What did I do?”

“It’s what you didn’t do,” you said. “Everything you fucking forgot when you left home, including me.”

“I never forgot you,” he insisted. 

“You could have fooled me,” you bit back. 

He looked away, clearly stung. You didn’t feel the least bit sorry for him. 

“Is that why you wrote those things about Queen?” he asked. 

You laughed humorlessly. “Oh, please. You’re not important enough to be my reason to write anything.”

With that, you jogged ahead, away from him. You made a silent vow to yourself that you would not go there again with him. That from here on out, you would keep everything professional. There was no need to face what had happened. That was behind you. And you weren’t going that way. 

The first day with the band went smoothly. You didn’t interact very much with them, just quietly observing them from the booth. You had to admit they worked hard, overcame small disputes, and were experimental. 

You noticed your eyes lingering on John throughout rehearsal. His face looked the same as it used to when he was concentrating on learning a new line for a song. He looked natural behind the bass, and for a moment, you forgot you were angry at him. It was like the old days, when he was with The Opposition, and you were just a young girl with doe eyes, and he was the rock star of your heart. 

You shook your head to clear it. No. It would never be that way again. You knew only too well how that story ended. 

Tuesday You left me unamused and unimpressed 

The next day, you skipped going to your office entirely. You had called Charles from the studio and explained what they had offered, and you were pretty sure you heard him cry on the other end of the line. He again reminded you to find something “juicy” while you insisted you would still only report the truth. You could picture the way he rolled his eyes when he sighed at you. 

“Must you be so annoyingly ethical?” he wondered.

“I’m a journalist, Charles, not a gossip columnist,” you returned, and hung up the phone.

So on Tuesday morning, you came straight into the studio. You heard voices in the booth. Knowing them to be the band’s, you stopped and listened. Since they didn’t know you were there, this was obviously off the record, but you were just curious.

“Honestly, I don’t know what you ever saw in her,” Roger said.

“She didn’t used to be…” John trailed off.

“Such a bitch?” Roger finished.

“I guess so,” John agreed. “When I knew her she was honestly the sweetest person I’d ever met. A really lovely girl.”

“Are sure it’s the same Y/N Y/L/N?” Brian joked.

They all snickered. 

“Well, she mostly looks the same,” John said.

“I will give you that she’s a looker,” Roger said. “But it’s hard to believe that woman was ever a ‘really lovely girl.’” 

“She was,” John insisted. “Really, she was. Her nickname in school was Judy because she reminded everyone of Judy Garland.”

Just hearing that endearment again - especially from John’s lips - drove a knife through your heart and twisted it.

“Judy Garland?” Roger returned, incredulous. “Are you joking?”

You decided to walk in now, lest this conversation go further into John’s memory of a girl that no longer existed. 

“Morning, gents,” you said coolly. 

Roger groaned, departed to the studio, and started fiddling with his drum set. He left the door open, but the rest of the band did not follow him just yet. Freddie looked at you.

“Sorry about him,” he said.

You shrugged. “I don’t care that he doesn’t like me. I don’t need anyone’s approval. Especially not some Cornish pixie drummer boy.”

Roger froze, dropping a drumstick, and scowled at you. Freddie cackled. John clapped his hand over his mouth to stifle his laughter. Even Brian let out a small chuckle. You just stared Roger down, cocking a challenging eyebrow at him. He said nothing, but he did flip you off through the window. You rolled your eyes and took a seat on the couch.

Brian joined Roger in the studio, picking up his guitar and slinging it across his body as he began tuning it. You watched how careful he was. Roger was too. They were meticulous about sounding exactly right. You observed this the previous day as well but thought they were just doing that because you were there. Clearly, this was their normal routine. You were just barely impressed. 

They started playing through a song, but quickly began bickering about tempo. Roger accused Brian of going too slow, whereas Brian thought that was appropriate for the song. Voices were raised, insults were tossed, glares were exchanged. Freddie was giggling as he watched from the booth. John kept glancing at you, but you resolutely ignored him. 

“Darlings, darlings,” Freddie said to Roger and Brian. “Please. We can settle this. Deaky, what do you think? Roger’s tempo or Brian’s?”

“Roger,” John said. 

“Of course you side with him,” Brian snapped, rolling his eyes. 

“Christ, Brian, it’s not personal,” John argued. 

“Yeah, it’s because I’m right,” Roger added.

“I happen to side with you, Brian, dear,” Freddie interjected before it could escalate again. “So it’s a tie.”

“We don’t have a tie breaker,” John said. 

Freddie smirked. “Sure we do. Y/N.”

Your eyes snapped to his. “What?”

“What do you think, darling?” he asked. “Brian or Roger?”

“I have no opinion,” you said flatly. 

“We all know that’s not true,” he returned. 

“This is all very democratic of you,” you said with a sigh. “But if I participated in the making of the music I’m supposed to be evaluating, wouldn’t that create a conflict of interest?” 

“Don’t be difficult, Y/N, just tell us what you think,” John said shortly. 

You shot him a glare. “No.”

“Why should she decide?” Roger chimed in. “She doesn’t even like our music.”

“All the more reason to believe she’s being honest,” Freddie pointed out. 

“Or just petty,” Roger muttered. 

“Did you even hear what she just said?” Freddie said. “She’s got principles.”

“I have been described as annoyingly ethical,” you said. 

“Principles be damned, I don’t give a shit what she thinks,” Roger said. 

You shrugged.

Freddie turned to you. “Just for fun. Off the record. Who do you think is right?”

“Off the record,” you repeated firmly. “Roger is right.” 

Roger threw you a surprised look before a smug smile claimed his face. He looked triumphantly at Brian. 

“What happened to not giving a shit what she thinks?” Brian spat. 

“My opinion doesn’t count,” you reminded them. “It’s still a tie.”

Roger frowned. “Who was it that described you as annoyingly ethical?”

“My boss.”

“Smart man.”

“Look, let’s just count Y/N’s vote so we can move on,” John suggested. 

“No,” you said. “You can’t.”

“Don’t worry, it was off the record,” Freddie said. “No one will know.” 

“We’ll know,” you argued. 

“And we shall all take it to the grave with us,” John said sarcastically. “Lest you be known as a music reviewer with a bloody opinion.”

“Oh, fuck y-” you began, but Freddie cut you off. 

“Roger wins the popular vote,” he said. “Deaky, get in there and help them out.”

Your eyes bored hatred into John’s back as he entered the studio. You slumped back onto the couch, feeling a bit like a pouting child as you continued to observe them. John’s mouth was drawn downward as he grabbed his bass roughly. He licked his fingers before plucking at the strings. A motion that almost made you gasp. It was...sexy. You shook your head and crossed your legs with a huff. 

You spent the rest of the day scratching your notes down harshly, lips pressed together with irritation. As they finished up, you started to put away your pen and paper. You slung your purse onto your shoulder and started to head out when your pocket knife slipped out of your bag and onto the floor. You reached down to pick it up, but John beat you to it. You snatched it out of his hand without even thanking him and stuffed it into your bag. 

“Why are you carrying that?” he asked. 

“Experience taught me I had to,” you replied. 

“Experience?”

“I got fucking robbed, John, what do you want from me?”

“When?!” he wondered, eyes going wide. 

“My first day in London,” you told him, unsure where this honesty was coming from. 

You didn’t tell him that they man who did it made you strip, taking everything you had on you including your address book and money, so you shivered naked in an alley until a kind restaurant owner came out, saw the pathetic state you were in, and took you inside. She gave you a spare uniform and then offered you a job and a place at her flat until you could pay her back. Which you did in full. You also didn’t tell him you had only come to London looking for him.

His eyes searched yours. He found a hurt there that was bone deep. You were like a wounded dog, whimpering for a helping hand but prepared to bite the first one that touched you. Your glare was like bared fangs. Still, a part of him ached to reach out and risk you sinking your teeth in. 

“That’s terrible,” he said, knowing exactly how lame it sounded. 

You held his gaze. “I’ve been through worse.”

With that, you left the studio. John sighed and looked at the floor.

“She’s awfully cryptic, isn’t she?” Brian remarked.

“She’s so angry,” John said, half to himself. 

“Forget about her,” Roger said, clapping John’s shoulder. “Let’s get a drink, yeah?”

“Yeah, okay,” he agreed.

Meanwhile, you walked to the pub you usually patronized in the evenings after work. It was actually the place you had worked after that first horrific night. The owner was still there and tended the bar on weeknights, so you went to see her. She always offered you a drink for free, but you never took it. She had already done too much for you.

“Y/N!” she called as you came through the door.

You beamed at her. “Cora!” You came around the bar to embrace her. “How are you?”

“I’m just fine for an old lady,” she replied. “How are you, my dear?”

You sighed, unsure how to answer her.

“I know that face,” she said. “You’re in need of a drink and conversation.”

“The drink I could use,” you replied. “The conversation, I’m not so sure about.”

She poured you your favorite, gin and tonic. You took a sip and thanked her.

“I’ll be right back, darlin’, just gotta pop in the back and get some wine glasses,” she said.

You stood up. “I’ll get them, Cora.”

“You don’t work here anymore, love,” she said with a grateful laugh.

“I’ll always take care of you,” you returned. “Besides, the doctor said you shouldn’t strain your back.”

You set your drink on the bar and then headed into the dish pit. 

While you were in the back, Freddie, Brian, Roger, and John walked in. They took seats at the bar, leaving a few chairs between themselves and where your bag and drink sat. John thought it was yours, but wasn’t quite sure. Cora walked over to them and took their drink orders. You emerged again, carrying the rack of glasses and groaned when you spotted the band. Still, you brought the dishes behind the bar.

“Oh, Y/N,” said Freddie. “Do you work here too?”

“What, writing rubbish about music not paying the bills?” Roger jabbed.

“Piss of, Roger,” you snapped. “I don’t work here, but I used to.”

“Are these friends of yours, Y/N?” Cora wondered, eyes flickering between you and the band.

“Cora, this is Queen,” you said gently. “I’m re-evaluating them.”

She released a delighted giggle and clapped her hands. “Oh, my! Well, it’s not every day we have real rock stars in our little pub! Welcome, lads!”

“Thank you, darling,” said Freddie.

Cora just grinned widely at him. A warm smile danced across your lips as you took in her excitement. John’s eyes landed on you and he saw, for a fleeting moment, the girl he knew. But at that moment, a man approached you and asked you to join him at his table. You agreed, wiggling your fingers at Cora as she watched you cross the room. 

“You two seem very close,” Brian said casually. “How long did she work here?”

“Just over a year, actually,” Cora said. “But she lived with me too.”

“How did that happen?” John wondered.

“Well, I found her right outside this building,” she explained. She told them all how she found you, to their shock. Even Roger felt pretty sorry for you.

“I couldn’t just leave her out there, shivering and alone,” she continued. “My Christian heart wouldn’t let me. So I took her in. But she took care of herself really once she started to make some money. I know she did some...unsavory things to earn the extra. I offered to help her, but she refused to take even one penny from me.” 

“Why didn’t she just go home?” Roger asked.

Cora shrugged. “She said - and I’ll never forget the words she used - ‘I came to London looking for someone. He’s lost, so I’ll find myself instead.’ Seemed quite poetic to me. I knew from there she’d be a writer.”

“Did she ever tell you who it was she was looking for?” Freddie asked, glancing at John.

“No,” she answered, shaking her head. “She refused to speak of him. Some chap from her hometown, though, that’s all I knew.”

At that moment, you came back over to tell Cora goodbye, since you were leaving with the man from before. You kissed her cheek before turning to the band.

“See you lot in the morning, I suppose,” you said.

They gave you odd looks, but you pushed your confusion away. You left with David, heading back to your flat, which wasn’t far from the bar. But as you took David up the stairs to your front door, the look in John’s eyes haunted you. Something like pity swam behind them. Pity mixed with guilt. It infuriated you.

Then David’s chapped lips were on yours, cracked and unpleasant. He shoved his talentless tongue into your mouth as he pushed you gently onto your bed. You bunched your skirt up to your hips so he could tug your panties off, but he stopped.

“Would you suck me off first?” he asked.

You smirked. “You wanna keep your cock?”

“W-what?”

“If you wanna keep your cock, keep it the fuck out of my face,” you warned.

“Shit, alright,” he gasped.

“Now take my knickers off and fuck me.”

He obeyed, pulling his pants down to his ankles. You weren’t quite wet enough so it stung a little when he pushed into you, but you bit your lip through it. Only, his fucking was as awkward as his kissing. His thrusts were sloppy, and he failed to even graze your g-spot. Your clit, he completely ignored. He clearly thought he was doing great from the noises coming out of his mouth. Gasps and groans, and some semblance of dirty talk that you didn’t even hear. You sighed, exasperated, and pushed him off of you.

“You’re shit,” you said. “Get out.”

“What the fuck?!” he cried breathlessly.

“Get your pants on and get out of my house,” you ordered. 

“I’m still hard,” he complained.

“That’s not my problem,” you returned. 

He narrowed his eyes at you and scrambled off the bed. He tucked himself into his trousers and glared at you as he put his shoes back on.

“You’re a real bitch, you know that?”

You grimaced at him. “So I’ve heard. Bye now.”

He muttered under his breath some more as he left, slamming the door behind him. You got up and followed, locking the door just in case. Then you returned to your bed. Flopping onto your back, your mind showed you John’s eyes again. You remembered kissing John all those years ago. The ways his eyes looked the first time you’d kissed him. 

You pictured John now. Different, but much the same. More talented, less awkward. You remembered him licking those fingers of his before playing his bass. His mouth in a slight pout as he focused. Your skin felt hot. Your lower stomach churned with desire. You dipped your finger between your thighs and pressed onto your clit.

“John…” you sighed.

Wednesday What a shame it is that the rock I thought you were turned out to be sand

You arrived to the studio early the next morning. It was raining heavily as thunder rolled in the distance. Cosmically, John was the only other person there. You didn’t let the fact that you’d gotten off to the thought of him throw you. You just took your seat on the couch, ringing out your hair, and waited in silence with him. You pulled out the book you were reading and dove in. The only sound was the patter of the rain on the roof.

“Why didn’t you tell me what happened to you when you came to London?” he asked suddenly.

You snapped the book shut and looked at him icily. “I didn’t realize that was any of your business.”

“I know you’re not this person,” he said. “When you looked at Cora yesterday, you were yourself again.”

“You don’t know anything about who I am, John Deacon,” you said. “A lot has changed since we left Oadby.” 

“You’re avoiding my question.”

“You’re assuming you have a right to an answer.”

“I think I do have a right,” he said hotly. “A lot of this anger you’ve got is clearly directed at me. Maybe if you stopped biting everyone’s head off and talked about it, you wouldn’t be so pissed off.”

There was that look again. The pity guilt combination that made your stomach roil. 

“Fine,” you snipped. “You wanna know what happened to me? Yes, I got robbed and left naked behind a building. I took a job as a waitress to scrape by and pay back a fraction of debt I owed Cora. And there were a few regulars at the bar who I fucked for money. Anything else?”

“How’d you get a writing position?” he asked levelly.

“One of the regulars introduced me to an editor friend of his,” you said. “I submitted my first article to him, and he took me on. I got better and was eventually offered the job I’ve got now.”

“Okay, how is any of this my fault?” 

“Is that what you think?” you laughed. “I don’t blame you for any of that shit. You weren’t even in my life anymore.”

“Then why are you so angry at me?!” he demanded, getting to his feet.

You jumped up too. “I’m angry at you because you lied to me!”

“What?!”

“You did!” you cried. “You broke up with me, and it broke my heart. But it was okay because we were supposed to be friends. And yet I was the only one who made any effort. Then suddenly you were off to London and then I never heard a thing from you! And I wrote you every day! Every day until I came here looking for you! And you promised you’d write to me, John!” You choked on his name as your throat got thick with the old wound. 

“You promised,” you repeated with childish stubbornness. 

“I’m sorry,” he said earnestly. 

You rolled your eyes. “What do you want from me, John? My forgiveness?”

“Well, it was only letters,” he said.

“Only letters?” you repeated quietly. “John, it’s not about the letters. It’s the fact that you didn’t give enough of a shit about me to pick up a goddamn pen. Our relationship meant that little to you. I meant that little to you.”

You had scarcely gotten the words out when Roger and Brian walked in, both rain soaked, and flicking water off their coats. They were already quarrelling about something regarding the song again. You and John turned eyes on them.

“Y/N, what do you think, off the record -” Roger began, but you cut him off.

“Oh, no,” you said. “I’m not falling for that again.”

“Damn, I don’t know how else I’m gonna win this one,” he muttered.

You giggled. All eyes fell on you as you clapped a hand over your mouth.

“Y/N, did you just laugh?” Roger asked, a smile on his face.

“No,” you insisted, but the corners of your mouth were still turned slightly up. 

“I think she did,” Brian added. 

“Could it be that there’s a real, human heart in that chest?” Roger continued. “I thought it was just a hunk of ice.”

“Shut up,” you said through another laugh, but they let you have that one. 

“Is Fred here yet?” Brian asked John.

John shook his head. “Late, as usual.”

You and John locked eyes briefly before you started getting out your pen and paper again. Freddie arrived within a few minutes, and they got right to work. You did actually admire their focus and professionalism. They took their craft seriously. More seriously than most musicians you had met. And you had met a great deal of them.

Today they had fewer arguments. It seemed that the rain was making everyone too tired to fight. That was more than okay with you. You couldn’t stand the bickering, especially between Brian and Roger. You wondered how they were the founders of the band since they rarely seemed to agree on a concept for a song. It was maddening to listen to.

John was stuck somewhere between staring intensely at you or avoiding you like the plague. The conversation from before was not a comfortable one, and it was so clearly unfinished. Unsaid words hung between you like clothes on a line. When your eyes did meet, it was like stepping onto a balance beam. You were unsteady and wobbly, but clinging to the very thing that put you there.

By the afternoon, you heard a rough run through of a new song. You would never, ever tell them this, but you liked it.

When the day was over, you packed up your things and for the first time, the band said goodbye to you. Roger only offered a wave, while Brian and Freddie said the words. John actually asked if he could walk you out.

“I can get to the door myself, thanks,” you said.

You weren’t sure where you two stood after the morning’s conversation. You feared another emotional line of questioning. 

“Please,” he said.

You rolled your eyes. “Alright, then.”

You walked down the hall together, but he was behaving strangely. He kept glancing into every doorway you passed, and would sigh when there were people inside. When you reached the end of the corridor, he pulled open the door to what appeared to be a closet. He took another quick look around before pushing you inside.

“John, what the hell?!” you demanded as he shut the door.

“I want to speak in private,” he said.

He reached up and pulled the string to turn the light on. It was a tight space. Your bodies were pressed together, chest to chest. It made heat rise in your cheeks to be so close to him. You looked up to meet his eyes. When had he gotten so tall?

John swallowed as he looked down at you. The feeling of your breasts against him was enough to drive him crazy.

“I still feel like there’s something you’re not telling me,” he said, focusing on your face.

He was so close you could feel his breath on your face.

“I don’t have to tell you everything,” you returned.

“Y/N, please,” he groaned. “We were going so well this morning.”

“Well?” you questioned. 

“Yes, you were opening up,” he said. “You’d softened to the point where you laughed.”

You sighed. “That was a fluke.”

“Come on, Y/N,” he said. “Tell me one thing.”

“What do you want to know?”

“After you had some money, why didn’t you go back home?” he wondered. “Why put yourself through all of this? You could have been back with you mum -”

“She left, John,” you said. “She left me in the middle of the night.”

John knew already that your father was not in your life. You and your mother were on your own back in Oadby. She had made quite a life for herself and seemed devoted to you. This revelation clearly shocked John, as he would have stumbled backward had there been space to do so.

“She left you?” 

You nodded. “Yes. She left a note that said she couldn’t do ‘this’ anymore and she was leaving, but she knew I would be okay. I started to write you, but you hadn’t been answering my letters, so I took the money she left me and came looking for you. Because I needed my friend. I needed you, John.”

Emotion threatened to overwhelm you again. This was something you had never told anyone. Not even Cora. 

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I left you in the dark...I’m so, so sorry.”

“Just tell me why,” you breathed back.

“Because I missed you so much,” he told you. 

“That doesn’t make any sense,” you said, narrowing your eyes at him. “If you missed me, why would you ignore me?”

“I couldn’t ask you to be with me again,” he said. “It wasn’t fair.”

“Elaborate on that.”

“I wasn’t sure that I was going to be successful,” he said. “I didn’t know if I wanted to have a career in electronics, and music was still something so unsteady. All I wanted was to be with you again, but I didn’t want you to give up home and security. I didn’t think I was worth it.”

“So you thought the solution was to just shut me out?” you said. “Without even telling me why?”

A tear slid down your cheek, catching you by surprise. Gently, John brought his thumb to your face and wiped it away. The feeling of his touch made goosebumps erupt over your skin and sent a shiver down your spine. And yet, anger sat on your stomach. 

“That is a piss poor excuse, John,” you spat.

“I was a kid,” he argued.

“We’re the same age, and I knew better,” you said. 

“I said I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what else I can do.”

You held his gaze for a moment. You didn’t know what else he could do either. Your feelings weren’t clear to yourself. You weren’t sure you were at a place where you could forgive him. As you looked into his eyes, you wanted to. You desperately wanted to. His eyes flicked down to your lips. Slowly, he began to lean forward. Your heart hammered against your chest and cheeks warmed as he inched closer. You were suddenly absurdly aware of his hand on your face. His eyes began to close and you pressed your hand to his chest.

“John, wait,” you said, sounding even less sure than you felt. 

He opened his eyes and looked at you questioningly.

“I can’t do this,” you told him. “I don’t know how I feel about you.”

His hand trailed down to your neck, his fingers grazing your sensitive skin. You sucked in a breath. He noticed, but he let you off the hook.

“I know how I feel about you,” he said. “I don’t like the ice queen we met earlier this week. But the woman you are beneath that is someone I’d like to know again.”

He pressed his lips to your cheek and you closed your eyes at the contact. When you opened them again, he was pushed the door to the closet open. He offered his hand so he could help you out. You accepted, needing the balance to step over all the items on the floor. As you headed to the front of the building, you said nothing else to each other. When you reached the door, you faced him again.

“Have a good evening, John,” you said.

“You too, Y/N,” he replied.

He gave you hand a small squeeze and then left. You took a deep breath and went out the door. The sun shone. The sky had cleared.

Thursday Maybe you should get your shit together

You sat in the studio taking notes, your eyes flicking between your notebook and John. He occasionally looked back at you, in which case you would look sharply away. You had to bite your lip to keep from smirking. You couldn’t tell if he noticed or not. 

You were a little embarrassed at how quickly the band hand begun to sway your opinion. You usually considered your opinion resolute. Perhaps it was growth that you could change your mind. About Queen, and the desires of your own heart.

Suddenly, Charles walked in. He was carrying your notepads from the last three days and looking livid. He waved them in your face. You shot him a confused and offended look. 

“What?” you snapped. “Is there a problem?”

“You’re damn right there’s a problem!” he cried. “Is this really all you’ve got from the last three days?”

“That’s three notepads full,” you replied. “You really think I’m keeping stuff from you?”

“Do not sass me, girl!” he shouted. 

Quietly, the band came into the room, though neither you nor Charles noticed, too caught up in the argument to see. 

“Don’t call me girl!” you retorted, getting to your feet. 

“Look, I didn’t give you this assignment so you could give me this choir boy version of the band!” he continued. 

“Roger literally does coke on the second day, but yeah, I got choir boys,” you spat. “I’m writing the truth -”

“LISTEN!” he bellowed. “I told you I needed an exposure! Something to fill the headlines! A take down piece! So unless you wanna put some heels on and fuck me for an hour, you better stop acting like a little bitch!”

It was like all the air was sucked out of the room. The words had hardly left his mouth when John tackled him to the ground. He drilled his fist into Charles’s face repeatedly. You watched through teary eyes as John defended you. Blood burst from Charles’s nose as John’s fist made hard contact, over and over again. Charles was resisting weakly, blindsided by this attack. 

“John!” you cried, reaching for him. “Stop! Stop it!”

Brian grabbed your arm to keep you out of it. Freddie and Roger stepped in to drag John off, but he struggled against them. You stared at him, amazed and horrified. Charles got slowly to his feet, shaking as he peeled himself off the floor. He glowered at John, breathing heavily. Then he wiped his bloody face with the sleeve of his shirt. 

“You will be hearing from my lawyer,” he growled. He rounded on you. “And you, little groupie whore, are fired.”

You blinked, letting a tear fall down your cheek, and bit your lip to hold back the sob threatening to escape from your throat. Charles spat on the floor before limping out of the room. Roger flipped him off as he held John back. Freddie just sighed. Brian turned eyes on you.

“Are you alright, Y/N?” he asked.

“Yeah,” you choked out. Then you looked at John. “Let him go, guys. I need to speak to him.”

Freddie and Roger released John’s arms. He shrugged them off and followed you out of the booth and down the hall to an unoccupied office. John looked expectantly at you as you turned to face him.

“Close the door, please,” you requested. 

He did. As soon as it clicked shut, you flared up.

“What the hell is wrong with you?!” you demanded. “We’ve spent all week despising each other and now you’re fighting some guy because he insulted me?! Who are you?! I don’t know where your head is at at any given time! How can you -”

He cut you off with a searing kiss. Your eyes fell shut as his lips moved against yours and you plunged your hands into his hair. It was frenzied and needy, all teeth and tongue. His hands slid over your shoulders before he grabbed your breasts and squeezed. You moaned into his mouth, feeling like you might faint.

He pulled back from your lips to pepper kisses down your neck. He nipped at your soft skin before swirling his tongue around the same spot to soothe it. High, breathy moans fell from your lips as he went. You pressed yourself closer to him and you could feel his hardening cock against your stomach. It sent a powerful jolt of arousal to your core. Your panties dampened.

“Mmm, John,” you sighed.

When you said his name, it fanned the fire in him. He grabbed you roughly, turned you around, and pushed you against the desk. You let out a small squeak of surprise as he bent you over. He yanked your skirt up around your waist, revealing your legs and thong to him. You shivered as the air hit your warm skin. John ran a hand up the back of your thigh, making you tremble with anticipation. He moved his hand away only to bring it back down sharply on your ass. The sound cracked like a whip in the empty room and a guttural moan tore from your throat. It only made you that much wetter. 

“So damn strong willed, Y/N,” John growled into your ear, rubbing your stinging skin. “But this is what you really want, isn’t it? Someone to take care of you?”

You judged yourself a little for the pathetic whine that came out of your mouth. He wrapped his arm around you and dipped his hand into your underwear. Quickly, he ran his fingers up and down your slit, coating them in your wetness. 

“Oh, God,” you moaned as his pointer finger found your clit. 

You took hold of his arm, gripping it tight as the pleasure built. He made light circles on your clit, picking up speed with each rotation. 

“F-fuck, John!” you cried. “Feels so good!”

“I see the way you watch me play,” he teased. “How badly you want these fingers inside you, princess, huh?

“Please, please, please,” you begged. 

His middle finger nudged your entrance. “Fuck, you’re so sexy begging for me.”

Finally, he sank it into you. You groaned and your head slumped forward, lost in the feeling of it. He pumped in and out of you, slowly at first as he curled his finger into your g-spot. The heel of his hand put pressure on your clit and you saw stars. 

“So bloody proud,” he said, kissing your shoulder softly. “But so needy.”

You couldn’t answer him. Your brain couldn’t even form words. His hand was working you right up to your orgasm. When he added a second finger you nearly screamed. 

“M’close,” you mewled. “So close, John - fuck!”

You were clenching around his fingers, hurtling toward the edge. He sped up. You were grateful for the desk beneath you because your legs completely gave out. 

“Go on then,” he encouraged. “Cum for me, princess.”

His permission was all you needed. You came completely undone with a choked cry of his name, riding out your high on his hand. As you came down, your whole body shook. He kept his hand at your center, lazily stroking your folds. 

“Ready for my cock?” he asked, grazing your clit again and making your hips twitch. 

You nodded. 

“Need to hear you say it,” he urged. 

“Yes, please, John,” you whined. “Want you to fuck me…”

You caught your breath as he unzipped his trousers and pulled your thong down to your ankles. You moaned when he pressed his tip against your entrance. All your senses were heightened by the pleasure coursing through you. The head of his cock right at your core, the silky feeling of his shirt against your back, the tickle of the ends of his hair on your cheek. All of it was just John. 

He pushed slowly into you. He was quite big, but you were so wet, he met little resistance. You groaned as he entered. He filled you up, bottoming out inside you and he stopped so you could adjust. 

“You’re so tight,” he hissed. “Fuck.”

“Move, please,” you told him. 

He didn’t need to be told twice. He started at an easy pace, but quickly picked up. He must have been needier than you realized because his cock twitched inside you. So he was close. His finger found your clit again, circling it to the rhythm of his hips. His free hand gripped one of yours, interlocking your fingers. He pounded into you, his tip hitting your g-spot and making you whimper with every thrust. 

“Can I - hng, fuck - can I cum inside you?” he asked breathlessly. 

Just the thought of it made you squeeze around him and he let out the filthiest groan. 

“Yes - oh, God - yes,” you practically sobbed. 

One, two, three more thrusts, and you finished together, his hot cum coating your pulsing walls as he collapsed above you. You were shivering from the intensity of two such rapid orgasms, so his weight warmed and stilled you. He pressed his lips to your shoulders and neck, easing you down before he pulled out. You whimpered at the empty feeling. Then he pulled your underwear back up and readjusted your skirt. There was something touching about him redressing you before tucking himself back into his pants. 

You just barely managed to push yourself off the desk. “John...that was…”

“Sorry I just pounced on you,” he said, looking at the floor. 

“No, don’t apologize,” you said. “You were...you were incredible.”

“I just had to have you,” he replied bashfully. 

You smiled. “John, I’ve never…”

His brow furrowed. “What?”

“I’ve never orgasmed from a partner before,” you admitted. 

“What?!” he gasped. “Never?!”

“That’s what I said,” you replied. 

“Even when we - y’know - before?”

You laughed. “John, we were teenagers. No, I didn’t fucking cum. But you certainly made up for it now.”

It was his turn to smile. Then, he took your hand and pulled you close to kiss him. He was softer now. All anger and frustration gone. He rubbed your sides before wrapping his arms around you and just holding you close. 

“Next time, we’ll make love properly,” he said into your hair. 

“There’s going to be a next time?” you questioned. 

“If you’ll let me,” he returned with a smirk. “You proud little thing.”

“I’m not so proud,” you said. “I did just let you bend me over a desk and fuck me.”

He chuckled. You returned to a comfortable silence and holding each other. You dug your fingers into his shirt as he embraced you. You buried your face in his chest. The girl you were - one who was hopeful, sweet, and romantic - was clawing her way out to meet the stronger woman you became. John’s return to your life showed you that they could exist together. His arms around you reminded you that she was a part of you and though you had changed - you both had - she was a remarkable and formative part of your story. 

“I’m sorry again,” he said, pulling away to look in your eyes. “For letting you feel like I didn’t care about you. I thought about you all the time. And when your letters stopped, I hoped that you had found something that made you happy. I have only ever wanted that for you.”

You cupped his face in your hand. “I know that, John. I forgive you.”

“I like this woman, Y/N,” he said. “Who you are. Can we get reacquainted some more over dinner?”

“I would like that very much,” you said with a smile. “And I suppose it’s not a conflict of interest anymore since I’ve been fired.”

“Oh, shit.”

You shrugged. “It’s alright. I’m a good enough writer that I’ll get another job. Plus, I was going to have to eat my words and I really didn’t want to.”

“You were?!”

You nodded. “So thank you, John. You spared me that.”

He only laughed. You kissed him again. 

“Actually, I think I will write the story,” you said. “We had an agreement. I’ll sell the story to another magazine. When the public eats it up, Charles will be sorry.”

He grinned, kissing your forehead. Then you left to go to your dinner date.

Friday I look pretty, I’m lookin’ pretty in my dress

The next morning, you woke up next to John. Your dinner date went well, and you brought him back to your apartment for more of what you called “making up for lost time.” You gazed at his sleeping face and wondered at your own heart. How quickly this man had softened you. You couldn’t help pressing your lips to his chest. But when you got close to him, you noticed that he was hard. You stifled a giggle and then gently nudged his chest. 

“John,” you said. “John, wake up.”

“Ugh,” he groaned. “What is it, love?”

“Can I touch you?” you asked sweetly. 

“Fuck, yeah, of course,” he said. 

You sat up, straddling him across his legs. You brought your hand to his cock and just stroked it with your finger, looking up at him through heavily lidded eyes. You kissed his chest again. Softly, you nipped at his collar bone before trailing down to his tummy. Your tongue flicked out at the places that made him moan. When you reached his hips, you wrapped your hand around his shaft and he arched up with a soft gasp. 

You never understood what men loved so much about fucking a woman’s mouth. You understood even less why women willingly gave men head. It brought them no pleasure. For the first time in your life, you willingly took a man’s tip past your lips. The beautiful little whine that came out of John’s mouth made it make sense. The knowledge that you made him feel this good was incredibly hot. You rubbed your thighs together for some friction. 

You lowered your mouth onto him, taking him all the way down until his tip hit the back of your throat. You hummed around him and he whined, holding himself back from bucking up. He had no idea how grateful you were for his allowing you control in this situation. You bobbed up and down, taking his cock as deep as possible with every stroke. 

“Fucking Christ, Y/N,” he sighed. “Your mouth is incredible.”

You didn’t answer, but kept going. You couldn’t believe what giving him this kind of pleasure was also doing to you. The sounds me made, the way he looked with his head thrown back and mouth hanging open...it was sexy as hell. 

You reached up to massage his balls and he couldn’t stop his hips from jumping at the contact. He apologized, but you waved him down. You continued. He finally pulled you off him because he was so close. 

“S’okay,” you said. “I want to finish you off with my mouth.”

“Fuuuuck,” he groaned. 

You smirked before taking him down again. You went a little faster now, eager to get him there. His chest became as flushed as his cheeks. 

“Ah - Y/N - I’m -” 

He didn’t need to finish his sentence, as he released inside you. You swallowed as you worked his cock through his high. He panted beneath you. You came up with a soft pop and showed him your empty mouth. 

“Oh, God,” he shuddered. “You’re so sexy.”

“That was fun,” you said with a smile. “You got so worked up.”

“It felt good,” he returned simply. 

“I never understood before why blowjobs were fun,” you told him.

He just looked quizzically up at you. 

“Never mind,” you said, shaking your head. 

He didn’t press you, which you appreciated. You didn’t want to talk about that now anyway. Without warning, he gripped you by the hips and flipped you over. You yelped with surprise. 

“What are you doing?” you wondered. 

“Returning the favor,” he said. 

He kissed your lower tummy, exploring your skin and making you giggle. Then he turned his attention to your thighs. You rocked your hips up toward him impatiently. 

“Relax,” he said. 

“I didn’t tease you like that,” you reminded him. 

“Never said I was playing far,” he shot back. 

Even so, he finally licked a stripe up your slit, making your hand jump to his hair. He swirled his tongue around your clit and you sucked in a breath. Your heels dug into the mattress as he built up speed. Then he lined up his fingers with your entrance. 

“So wet already,” he said. “You enjoyed sucking me off that much?”

“Shut up,” you groaned. 

He chuckled and returned his mouth to your throbbing clit. He pushed two fingers inside of you and curled them perfectly. It was almost overwhelming how good he made you feel. No one had ever gotten you this aroused before. You couldn’t even get this hot on your own. John brought out something primal in you that made you just melt to his touch. He knew what the fuck he was doing and did it well. Your toes curled as heat spread through you. 

“You’re so beautiful,” he said. 

You looked down and met his gaze. His pupils were blown wide with lust, but adoration lingered behind it. He kissed your clit as he maintained eye contact and you nearly finished from that.

“John, please,” you whined. 

“Don’t hold back for me, Y/N,” he said. “Fucking cum if you need to.”

“Faster,” you instructed. 

He obeyed. He devoured you like a starved man as his fingers pumped in and out at an almost brutal pace. Your mouth fell open and you began writhing beneath him. 

“John - John - oh - fuck!” you cried. 

“Like I said, cum when you’re ready,” he told you again. 

“Close,” you sobbed. 

Your orgasm washed over you, your body jerking as is wracked through your muscles. John let you ride it out on his face. When you stilled, he crawled back over you, kissing you deeply. You tasted yourself on him. 

“You want to keep going?” he asked. “I could get it up again if you want.”

You shook your head. “After yesterday, last night, and now I can’t take anymore.”

“Alright, love,” he said, settling beside you and pulling you under his arm to spoon. 

“Don’t you have to be at the studio?” you wondered. 

“We can lay here a while longer,” he assured you. “I don’t…” he trailed off.

You turned your head to look at him. “What?”

“I don’t want you to ever again feel like I’m abandoning you,” he said sheepishly. “Even for the small stuff.”

“Oh, John,” you sighed. “Thank you.”

When you did go to the studio, you arrived together, hand in hand. Roger, Brian, and Freddie looked at your hands, then your faces, and back again. 

“What’s this?” Freddie asked. 

“We got reacquainted,” John said. 

You beamed. 

“Who is this?” Roger questioned, looking at you. “A smile? Who are you and what have you done with the real Y/N Y/L/N?” 

“The real Y/N Y/L/N is whoever I want her to be,” you said. “I’ll still call you a pixie, Taylor. I’ll just smile while I do it.”

“That sounds more like it,” he returned with a smirk. 

“Well, Y/N, what are you doing here?” Brian asked. “I mean, you were fired.”

You explained to them what you told John. You were going to write the article as a freelance writer. You were certain another magazine would be interested. 

“And what is this article going to say?” Freddie wondered. 

“You’ll have to wait and find out,” you said. “It’s not ethical to let your subjects read the piece before it’s published.”

“It’s also not ethical to fuck your sources,” Roger pointed out, grinning. 

You and John exchanged shocked looks. 

“You weren’t exactly quiet,” Brian said. 

Your face went bright red as Freddie laughed. Before long, you were all laughing with him. It was rather funny. 

As they prepared for their day, you took out your paper and pen again. You weren’t sure exactly what you were going to say about Queen after seeing what they did. You weren’t sure how you could convey their style and friendship. You weren’t sure you could get it all in one article. But you knew you would somehow. There had to be words to describe Queen. 

That night, Freddie hosted a party at his house and invited you to attend. You told John you would meet him there, since you weren’t sure who else was going to be there and you still had to pitch the article. 

As you got ready in your room, throwing on a beautiful red dress with some strappy heels, you became a bit nervous. You wondered if Charles had told others in the industry about what happened. But you didn’t know how you came out of it looking like the bad guy if he told the truth. That was the hang up. Had he told the truth?

You decided firmly to forget about that and just have a good time tonight. What would come, would come. You had faced much worse and stayed strong. You could do so now.

When you arrived at Freddie’s, he answered the door. He greeted you with a kiss on the cheek before leading you inside to meet some of his other friends. It was crowded, which made you nervous, but you kept your eyes peeled for John. When you entered the living room, you spotted him. His smile faltered as he saw you in your dress. You couldn’t help but smirk.

He walked over, a hungry look in his eye. “You look incredible.”

“Thank you,” you said with a grin.

He kissed your cheek. Your skin lit up at his touch.

“The dress looks great, but I really can’t wait to take it off you,” he whispered in your ear.

You shivered as you took his hand. Roger approached, so John just slipped an arm around your waist and faced his friend.

“Wow, Y/N,” Roger said. “You clean up nice.”

“You too, Rog,” you returned. 

You chatted and mingled for the night. The whole time, John was at your side, with a hand on you. Whether it was your waist, your back, your arm - it didn’t matter. You felt him there with you. Reassuring and safe.

You went back to your place afterward, unable to keep your hands off of each other. By the time you were through the door, your dress was halfway off and John’s shirt was undone. Your mouths crashed together as your hands roamed each other’s bodies. Then he pulled away.

“Y/N, hold on,” he said. “I want to talk to you about something.”

Your brow furrowed as you looked at him. “What is it?”

“What do you want from this?” he asked.

“What?”

“I love what we’re doing,” he said. “I’m just wondering if it’s...more than it is.”

“You’re not making any sense.”

“Are we in a relationship?” he asked outright.

He was suddenly the John from home. Unsure, but hopeful. You vividly recalled the day he first asked you to be his girlfriend. He was so shy and a bit awkward. You were so endeared by him. You felt that again as he looked at you now. Overwhelmingly, you wanted to be his again. 

“I know I hurt you before,” he said. “So I understand if you’re hesitant, but -”

You cut him off with a sweet kiss. 

“John, if I didn’t want to be with you, I wouldn’t,” you said. “As it is, I do. So, if a relationship is what you want, then that’s what I want too.”

His smile was like sunshine. You could have melted into a puddle right there. Then, of course, he absolutely ravished you.

Two Weeks Later

“Have you all seen this?” Roger wondered as he entered the studio, carrying a fresh magazine.

“Y/N’s article came out?” Brian asked.

Roger nodded.

“How’d she do?” Freddie questioned.

“Listen,” Roger began. “‘Queen is a unique band made up of unique individuals. Their differences work together to create some of the most cohesive work in rock music. No matter the year or the style, Queen sounds like Queen. And not just because of frontman Freddie Mercury’s unmistakable and outstanding voice. The work of guitarist Brian May, drummer Roger Taylor, and bassist John Deacon are vital parts a body of work that is more than signature. It’s a fingerprint. All of this is made possible by the professionalism and hard work of one of the greatest rock bands I have had the pleasure of seeing in action.’ She goes on, of course.”

Brian took the article and scanned it. “She really is a great writer.”

“I’m just glad she’s on our side now,” Freddie said. “What do you think, Deaky?”

John shrugged. “What can I say, I’m proud of her. That’s my girl.”

[blessuswithblogs]

Video Games are a God Damned Mess: Bad Business Practices, Unsustainability, and the Fidelity Plateau

(shoutouts to the anon rando in my inbox for telling me about the read more button you were kind of rude about it but i don’t use this website so i legit didn’t know)

The video game industry has always been a bit wild and wooly compared to its older contemporaries. The emergence of a new medium is always rife with upheaval as paradigms shift and people discover that the old rules don't necessarily apply all of the time. That said, the past three months have been filled with what I can really only describe as catastrophes for many disparate publishers and development studios.

 You may recall I talked a bit about this during my game of the year list and Fallout 76 analysis, but to recap: with Telltale shutting its doors and shafting its workers, the writing was on the wall for the same thing to happen again as the intrinsically unsustainable boom and bust cycle began the less glamorous stage. It turns out I was correct in my predictions but congratulating myself for seeing this coming is not unlike congratulating myself for accurately predicting that tomorrow will be Tuesday. Or. Whatever day it will be when I post this. fuck i dated the lp thread ruined LOOK the point is that this was really obviously going to happen and that nobody felt the need to prepare for it or try to stop it before 10% of Activision-Blizzard's workforce got canned is a major failure of the industry at large.

So let's talk a bit about what's happened since then. There's been a lot, so forgive me if I miss your favorite corporate implosion. First, at Blizzcon, Diablo Immortal was revealed to what actually might have been the most actively hostile reception of a game in history. This has less to do with the more financial aspects of the ongoing Videocon Crisis and more just kind of served as an ill omen and an example of Blizzard's worrying descent into... wherever it is they're going. If gross incompetence was a place, they would be descending into it. On paper, a Diablo mobile game is a money-printing proposition. When all is said and done Immortal will still probably make them gobs of cash. In practice, however, they fucked the landing so hard they probably lost potential sales. The kind of folks who go to Blizzcon and get omegahype for a new diablo game are not the kind of folks who play mobile games. Mobile games have a Stigma among the hardcore crowd, and also the Ethical Business Practices in Video Games crowd (which as of this writing appears to be me, Jim Sterling, and the Warframe devteam). For a lot of braindead gamerbros, mobile games are synonymous with things like Candy Crush and Peggle, which are perfectly fine games honestly but they're For Girls or some shit so mobile games are bad and for casuals. More pertinently, mobile games are also a ferocious jungle of microtransactions, pay2win mechanics, and generally shoddy design. Command and Conquer and Dungeon Keeper, beloved franchises that have been ripe for revisiting for years now, both found mobile games and they were both utterly terrible. These games make a great deal of their money by exploiting "whales", or in actual human being language, vulnerable people with disposable income and difficulties with impulse control or addictive personalities. Or kids who know their mom's creditcard number. Kids play video games. Now that we are no longer kids (theoretically, anyway) it can be easy to forget that. I'm not the pearl-clutching type, but I think that stigmatizing a genre of games that proudly touts an exploitative-of-children business model is probably okay.

So there are lots of reasons to be skeptical of Diablo Immortal right out of the gate, and quite frankly whoever thought that just pushing that out there with literally no other Diablo related news items (like any whispers of the long coveted hd remaster of diablo the second) was either transferred in from another company the day before or had some kind of unspeakable grudge against the scheduled presenters, to whom my heart goes out to. There is also some undeniable precedent that Blizzard-Activision will, in all likelihood, monetize the everloving daylights out of it. Both Hearthstone and Overwatch have more or less become nicely polished vehicles with which to deliver lootboxes to players for a nominal fee. If this hadn't been followed by a seemingly unceasing calvacade of disasters, the whole debacle would have been really funny to point and laugh at. It's still pretty funny to point and laugh at, but it also has some less amusing implications. Blizzard in particular has been up to a lot of no good lately. Let's talk a little bit about their recent one-two punch.

First up, we have the complete and sudden abandonment of competitive support for Heroes of the Storm. Heroes of the Storm was essentially Blizzard's seething regret and resentment for letting Valve snatch up the whole Defense of the Ancients thing put into code and unleashed upon an unwitting populace. It had actually been gaining some renewed interest over the past year or so due to the developers putting in some elbow grease and making the game both more accessible and just. More better. HotS has also had a modest but respectable eSports scene since the game's launch, with a variety of professional players, shoutcasters, tournament organizers and emergency bugfixers employed. Many of them were anxious about their jobs for months in advance with no word from the higher ups about who would still be employed by 2019. Sometimes, companies have to make difficult decisions and let people go to keep operating. Even my communist ass reluctantly accepts this as a reality of the system we live in. However, there is a protocol about this kind of thing. Giving notice. Giving, you know, severance pay. Stuff like that. And of course this presupposes that this sort of cut to the workforce is actually necessary in the first place. Given that AB subsequently reported record profits for the year of 2018, I have some doubts. Completely dropping support for a game out of the blue is a scummy thing to do to your playerbase. When it is also directly impacting the livelihood of hundreds of people in your employ, it goes beyond scummy and turns right into Unacceptable.

But "unacceptable" is Bobby Kotick's favorite word in the English language so while shoving hundred dollar bills from his latest corporate bonus up his butt he and his friends in the boardroom decided that the HotS esports people might get lonely, so they had better go and fire another 10% of the workforce too. Just because. Like literally just because. His company is doing fine - better than fine! They are at record levels of better than fine. But the shareholders demand more and more exponential growth, so to cut costs that really didn't need cutting, away goes 10%. Will game quality suffer because of this? Undoubtedly. More work being piled on fewer people who are also living in mortal fear of losing their jobs Just Because is not a recipe for success. People are mad about this, much like people were/are mad about Fallout 76 - players of games, industry wonks, and iconic voice actresses alike are no longer tolerating this kind of thing in Two Thousand and Nineteen, Common Era. Nor should they!

Elsewhere in the Game-o-sphere, similar developments are brewing. ArenaNet, the folks wot do Guildwars, went through another round of mass layoffs. EA's stocks have plummeted and Battlefield V "failed to meet expectations" because it only sold A Ton and not A Fuckin Shit Ton, and Anthem is not really lighting the world on fire. After Mass Effect Andromeda's... curious debut, Bioware has probably been feeling the heat and a lot of people are concerned that it too will suffer the ultimate fate of all studios acquired by Electronic Arts: joining Visceral Games in a broken heap at the bottom of the garbage chute. Bring back Dead Space you motherfuckers. Bethesda continues to, improbably, suffer through PR disaster after PR disaster with Fallout 76, a game that seemingly cannot stop fucking up. Ubisoft has received some positive attention for vowing to NOT lay off hundreds of employees for no discernible reason, which leads me to believe that our standards for praiseworthy behavior have dropped alarmingly low. Even 2K Games in all of its monolithic glory seems to be feeling a bit of a Stock Price Squeeze. Honestly by the time I get this done and posted it's entirely possible that somebody else will fuck something up. I'm still kind of waiting on the fallout from Randy Pitchford's porn thumbdrive, but I'm also a little bit pleased that Actual Money Crimes are getting more traction in the news cycle.

So, returning to the main point: the industry is in a bad situation of its own making. It's a scene that's almost always been defined by trend-chasing. For a while, that meant that we would just have to suffer through an endless glut of EXTREME SPORTS GAMES SPONSORED BY A DUDE or a barrage of samey console shooters desperately trying to be Halo every once in a while. Unfortunately, the trend-chasing now extends not only to the games themselves, but to the methods by which they are monetized. Ever since DLC became a mainstream thing, the brightest minds of the boardrooms have been working tirelessly to deduce which method of fleecing players will scientifically speaking get them the most money. Inevitably, when some enterprising little weasel develops a new and improved monetization scheme, the rest of the little weasels will immediately latch on to that scheme and that's how you end up with Battlefront 2's ridiculous lootbox grind and Shadow of War's ludicrous inclusion of randomized lootboxes in a singleplayer action-adventure game. While I'm certain that the platonic ideal of the lootbox has existed in some form or another for decades now, I think that we can squarely lay the blame for the Great Lootbox Plague of the Twenty-Tens at the feet of Valve.

Valve has been known for questionable business practices for a while now (albeit in a more lowkey way than We Fired 800 People So Bobby Kotick Could Buy a New Yacht), largely getting away with it because Steam has been more or less unchallenged as the premier digital distribution service for video games. This might be changing soon, as Epic Games is going straight for the jugular with a number of aggressive moves with its own fledgling platform, but historically, Valve has faced very few consequences for just kind of being petulantly antagonistic towards its userbase because said userbase is easily mollified by steam sales and Gaben memes. When people think lootboxes in 2019, they probably think of games like Overwatch or Battlefront 2 or basically any contemporary multiplayer game. I certainly do, but a bit of fact finding allowed me to remember that Valve has been doing this shit since Counterstrike and Team Fortress 2, and Dota 2's byzantine cosmetics market can't be overlooked either. All three of these games are or were at one point genre leaders and made Valve so much money they basically decided that they didn't really need to make games anymore. A reasonable conclusion to draw, given the fact all three of these games are inextricably linked to their history as very popular mods. Valve just outsources a great deal of its labor to dedicated, naive fans and gives them a pittance of the huge mounds of dollars they make from their hard work. It's a good racket, but it has set an alarmingly poor example to the rest of the gaming world.

Games as a service, in concept, is fine for games that lend themselves well to the idea. MMOs have been using a variation of the model for decades now and that genre is actually like, Perplexingly Healthy. Free to play games like League of Legends and Warframe have also had success with a service model. The problem comes from the AAA Game industry's pathological insistence on shoving square pegs into things that don't even have holes to begin with. Shadow of War, or Assassin's Creed, or any other major singleplayer offering, has no business whatsoever being a Live Service. They are finite experiences by design and that's completely fucking fine and normal. Appending microtransactions and lootboxes to them is a transparent attempt to just suck up a little bit more money from players in the most unsustainable way possible. Here is a small hint if some WB Games bigwig stumbles upon this: first of all, I'm building a guillotine, so you better watch your ass. Second, how dare you fucking make Shelob a sexy lady. Third, (this is the one that is probably most relevant): People are willing to pay as they go for cosmetics and timesavers for games that they like and want to support. I've dumped a lot of money into League over the years because there was a period of time where I was playing it nonstop and having a wonderful time for quite literally no cost to myself, so I felt like buying the cute Panda Annie Skin was a good compromise. Regrettably I would later learn that there are aspects of Riot Games I'm not super okay with giving money to but at the time they seemed agreeable and my friends who work there gotta get payed somehow. This whole dynamic of wanting to support a video game goes out the damn window when you are already charging a $60 entry fee, plus whatever highway robbery pricing you put on the inevitable DLC. In this case, the onus is squarely upon the publisher to provide an experience and content one would reasonably expect of the pricetag. Putting in microtransactions for cosmetics is galling. Putting in microtransactions for actual game progression, like in Battlefront 2 or Shadow of War, is outright insulting.

Many will leap to the defense of these publishers and developers, saying that these measures are necessary to make these ludicrously expensive and lavish AAA games that all look suspiciously like one another. For the time being, let's accept this as a true statement. If this is, in fact, the state of affairs in the industry, then the industry needs to change to a more sustainable business model. When playing Destiny 2, during a big space cutscene, the cute pilot lady ferrying me to The Large Molerat Man's Murderboat had beautifully rendered skin where you could see the pores and the little wispy cheek hairs that swayed to the momentum of the space plane's movements. It was very nice but then the next year or so I heard nothing but people pointing out "hey this game has no content you dipshits" or "the devteam is actually scamming people with the experience system to wring more playtime out of them". The cheek hairs affair succeeded in making me want the pilot to buy me dinner and regail me with stories of her space adventures as I batted my lashes at her in romantic admiration, but also: stop it. You do not need to do this. This is strictly unnecessary. The graphics arms race of yesteryear is over. Nobody cares anymore. Fidelity is plateauing harder and harder, to the point where games running properly on console without having to settle for 30FPS is becoming very difficult. There is an Earth B somewhere out there where Bloodborne was not a sony exclusive and got a PC release with 60FPS support and loading times for humans and on Earth B I am still playing that game for the forseeable future because it is the best game ever. We are far past the paradigm where we are making Tremendous Graphical Leaps with each successive generation. Right now, as of this writing, games look jawdroppingly good. Just ludicrously pretty and grandiose. Continuing to push the graphical envelope for Every Damn Annual Release is a waste of resources: monetary resources, labor resources, system resources. As of March, 2019, what people really want is stability and functionality. Something that runs nice and smooth at 60FPS and doesn't turn its characters randomly into nightmare inverse-Rayman beasts. I think the huge success of the Nintendo Switch, a console with relatively modest hardware but superb functionality, portability, and a surprisingly full featured library of both massive first party titles, like Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey (which honestly look better than a lot of games on more robust hardware because of wonderful art direction) and smaller indie games, is testament to this line of thinking.

Maybe that's too bold of a statement. Maybe there's this huge swath of the gaming public that is just clamoring for more cheek hairs. If there are I think they're fucking out of their minds but who am I to judge. As long as games like that werewolf game The Order exist, where the universal reaction is "this is so pretty!!! ...wait there's nothing in here." I think that there is a serious responsibility to push back against that because evidently it's bankrupting the game industry and forcing them to violate international gambling laws to stay afloat. Except it's fucking not, actually. Many publishers are claiming record profits, upward trends, and are in a spot to have the raw nerve to say "well this game that sold 7 million copies didn't sell 8 million copies so it failed to meet expectations". They are doing ludicrously well for themselves in terms of generating revenue from sales. Where these highly successful corporations are running into problems is satisfying the almighty Shareholders. Shareholders are sort of like. Imagine if you got a job where you had to keep a large committee of actual babies happy, except the babies don't know shit about fuck about anything and demand that you routinely break all reasonable laws of sustainability and keep bringing in exponentially higher profits or they will take their ball and go home. There is still, evidently, money enough to give newly hired executives million dollar signing bonuses, but when it comes to just making a game that doesn't fall back on exploiting people with gambling addictions, we're suddenly dealing with an outfit of noble, longsuffering churchmice just trying to make ends meet. People are rapidly getting fed up with this blatant hypocrisy and dishonesty. Sales from Hearthstone card packs alone could fund a robust HotS esports scene for eternity if properly apportioned. This money is not properly apportioned. It is thrown into a gigantic incinerator so Kotick can get high on the fumes.

You might be wondering what this girls' deal is with Blizzard. Surely there are more egregious offenders? Firstly, Blizzard is very relevant at the moment because they are one of the highest profile publishers to recently Do A Business Oopsie. Secondly, I live in Irvine, California. Blizzard HQ is a ten minute drive from where I live. It's a local company to me, and it's legitimately kind of hard to see it continue to go down this path because I've had friends and neighbors who have worked there and enthusiastically described the experience right up until the very moment they get canned for no reason. My alma mater, UC Irvine, is one of the leading schools in the nation on adopting eSports into their collegiate athlete program. I understand, to a lot of people, Electronic Sports (please support them) are a big joke silly thing, but to me and my family who work in the UC system, they're actually like a huge and pertinent part of professional life. I'm literally being consulted by my mom's co-workers for advice and insight on how to minimize the abusive and toxic behavior that has become synonymous with streaming and professional gaming because campus now has a huge eSports center with rows on rows of gaming computers for students to use. Games Are Big. They are a powerful cultural and economic force in the lives of millions of people and denying that because of "haha nerds" is the same shortsighted, utterly-lacking-in-self-awareness wanking that resulted in the stupendously destructive "its just the internet, it doesnt matter lol" attitude that has caused the world so much grief. That said Bart Simpson becoming an esports legend sponsored by Riot Games is still pretty lame don't @ me.

What it comes down to is this: the games industry has grown into a hugely influential and powerful institution that affects the lives of more and more people every day. However, the appropriate growth in regulation, oversight, and worker protection has not occurred and has honestly shrunk. People love to talk up Satoru Iwata because when the Wii U was floundering he took a massive pay cut and refused to lay off any staff, reasoning that "it will be very difficult for our teams to create software that will impress the world when they are constantly worrying about losing their jobs." It's a little incredible that The Baseline Reasonable Thing To Do has elicited such effusive praise, but that's the world we live in and Iwata-san was pretty alright so I'm okay with it. Both his conduct and reasoning are both solidly above reproach in this case: it is really hard to be creative when the Sword of Damocles is hanging over your head! That’s 500% true! This goes for game developers, community managers, eSports staff, support staff, literally every part of the process that matters, even the totally unrelated clerks and communications people who are still completely necessary for creating games. The only people who don't suffer are the dipshits on top who don't actually contribute to the creation of games in any way. They're still fine. Better than fine, really. That's why people are mad. That's why people SHOULD be mad. Don't stand for this anymore.

[devilsknotrp]

Congratulations, M! You have been accepted for the role of Sandy Silverman (FC:Nicole Kidman). As Mandy’s player, I was understandably anxious to find a player who could articulate the muddy depths of Sandy Silverman... I shouldn’t have even worried. Your application is absolutely incredible. Your writing sample alone made us both so excited, because something as simple as ringing the hotline for Brian is loaded with meaning and intent. We have to spotlight your headcanons. Fleshing out her backstory allowed us to see how much has happened to Sandy. The glimpses of Phillip (putting out a cigarette in his food: oh, God) were painful reminders of how complex domestic power structures can be. You have given Sandy such life. It will be truly wonderful to see her develop in game. Please have a look at this page prior to sending in your account.

OUT OF CHARACTER

Name: M Age: 24 Pronouns: She/her Timezone: GMT-5 Activity estimation: I have a full time job and other commitments but I’ll try to reply a couple times a week! Triggers: REDACTED

IN CHARACTER

Full name: Sandra Kathleen Silverman, née Moore Age (DD/MM/YYYY): Fifty five (08/04/41) – Leo Gender: Cisgender woman Pronouns: She/her Sexuality: Lesbian (closeted, even to herself) Occupation: Real Estate Agent, Great Lake Homes Connection to Victim: Sandy sold Linda the home in which the Goode family currently resides. She also sees Linda from time to time at PTA meetings – when Sandy manages to show up, that is – since they both have children in high school. And since Brian’s disappearance bears a resemblance to Pete’s disappearance years ago, Sandy feels an unusual connection with Linda. Alibi: Sandy reluctantly took Pete shopping in the morning, and dropped him off at home afterwards. She headed to the office to grab a few papers for a client and spent the afternoon preparing a house for its viewing scheduled for the following day. Faceclaim: Nicole Kidman

WRITING SAMPLE

The line rang three times before someone picked up. “You’ve reached the Brian Goode tip-line,” a man said, voice crackling through the phone line like crumpled paper. The voice was monotone. Sandy had clearly not been the first person to call this morning. She hitched her shoulder up, using the bony part at the top to press the receiver against her ear so she could take a sip from her coffee mug. A Michigan Nip, of course. 

“Hi, good morning, I’ve been meaning to call you,” she said. One week had passed and Brian Goode was still a ghost. 

Sandy’s eyes were focused on the phone keypad. If she looked hard enough, she’d swear that some of the numbers had been worn down just a bit more than the rest. All those calls, back and forth, twelve years ago. She practically had the department’s number memorized at this point. “It’s just terrible, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but we’re doing the best we can right now, ma’am,” the man said, and Sandy couldn’t contain the snort of laughter that came flying out. She was standing in very spot where she’d learned that her son was alive, and that her husband was dead. She’d never felt that the Devil’s Knot Police Department had done their best at just about anything. “Do you have any information to report?” he asked.

“Oh, yes, certainly. I was just calling to ask about the case, though. Do you have any leads yet?” Sandy asked the question matter-of-factly, and took another sip. After how long it had taken Charlie Taylor to botch everything last time, she figured the department owed her some goddamned information. 

There was a pause. “Ma’am, this is a tip line,” he said. The pitch of his voice rose at the end like he wasn’t sure if he should be asking or telling.

“I know,” Sandy said. “I thought the main line would be busy, and maybe I could get some information from you instead.” She heard shuffling behind her and turned over her shoulder to make eye contact with her son. “Just tell the Sheriff that it’s Sandy, he’ll understand,” she said, eyebrows raised, and shooed Peter away with a quick wave of her hand. The last thing she needed was for him to get re-traumatized, or whatever Dr. Shah had called it. She’d written some psychology buzzwords down a few years ago in case Sandy ever wanted to go to the public library and check a book out. In all likelihood, the piece of paper had gone through the wash in one of her pants pockets and disappeared entirely. 

There was another pause. Longer this time. He gave a sigh that crackled in her ear. “Mrs. Silverman, I – “

“Officer, come on,” Sandy interrupted, “Don’t you know what happened to my family?” Of course he did. Everyone did. 

“Yes, and I’m very sorry, but it’s ongoing investigation. If you have any information that you think could be helpful, please let us know.”

Twelve years later and apparently the department hadn’t gotten any better since Charlie Taylor resigned in disgrace. Sandy tipped the mug back and took a large gulp. The splash of whisky burned in her throat. “Let’s just hope you’re doing a better job this time around.” She looked down at her empty mug. The spiral cord trailed behind her as she took a few steps toward the counter to put it in the sink. “It didn’t take you a week to find my son in ’84. Do your fucking job. Good day,” Sandy said, and hung up.

ANYTHING ELSE?

Here is my Pinterest board for Sandy! 

Sandy grew up in a very traditional family. Her father was a physician, her mother a homemaker. She watched from a young age how the men in her life took up space; how they showed cruelty in the way they spoke loudly, making rules that only they were allowed to break. Irene, Sandy’s mother, taught her how to make herself pretty and small, so boys would like her. Her older brother was the pride of the family; all chiseled jaw and boyish charm, just handsome enough to get away with anything. The pedestal he lived on was so high she could barely see the bottom of it. She was just a girl, raised in chains, her parent’s Little Darling, unobtrusive and accommodating. Never enough, because she was never allowed to be. This disconnect deepened as she grew older – but if her parents wanted her to be a young lady, Sandy would be the best young lady in all of Indiana. She’d perform perfectly.

She was always good at getting people to like her. In high school, all it took was becoming cheer captain and giving out blowjobs after school in the parking lot. She was a good girl. Sloppy Sandy, they called her. It didn’t matter. They all cheered when she became prom queen, anyway. She went on to study sculpture at Moore College of Art and Design, and told the other girls that her family had been the one to give the school its name. Just to see their faces light up. Sculpting gave her permission, for once in her life, to stick her hands in the mud. When her mother referred to sculpture as a fine hobby, Sandy knew it was code for a pit stop on your way to marriage.

Phillip and Sandy met on a blind date. Irene introduced the idea during one of their mother-daughter dates at the beauty parlor. She waited until Sandy’s fingers were in the manicurist’s hands to inform her that Phillip Silverman would be picking her up that evening. Seven o’clock, sharp. Good genes, she said. Handsome. His mother had been crowned Miss Indiana in ‘22, after all. Irene had just been runner-up. Sandy agreed, of course, because she had to.

The following year, they were married. Phillip was a kind man, and everyone loved him, so Sandy did too. The word wife felt funny in her mouth when she said it out loud, so she put on an apron and shopped at Macy’s and picked up pilates. If she shaped herself into Woman incarnate, it made it all better, somehow. When she gave birth at twenty-five, the post-partum depression swallowed her whole. It left the dishes unwashed, diapers unchanged, and to-do list unchecked. She spent more time in bed than her infant daughter did. Phillip learned to bring the baby to their bedroom to breastfeed. More often than not, when she cradled their daughter in her arms, Sandy would start to cry. Bad mother, bad bad bad, she thought. Phillip seemed to think so too. It didn’t take long for the GP to write her a prescription for Valium. It helped. She started drinking more, and that helped too.

As Amanda grew, Sandy drank. Post post-partum depression, maybe. She didn’t have an excuse then; she just gave up. Sandy tried to fashion her daughter into a reflection of herself – dressing her in pink, putting her in cheerleading, teaching her to smile – but the connection felt irreparable. Thankfully, Phillip took over the bulk of the parental duties. He never let her forget it. At least the resentment was mutual; at family dinner, Sandy put her cigarettes out in Phillip’s food to let him know he’d eaten enough. No one was going to be fat in her family. Another child was out of the question, but sometimes, when Sandy was drunk, she forgot to take her birth control. The post-partum depression knocked her on her feet so badly the second time around that she got her tubes tied. After the procedure, she drove down to the beauty parlor for a manicure.

Sandy remembers very little of the two days her husband and son were missing. The panic was paralyzing. She was drunk when she got the call that Peter had been found; she drove to the hospital and took out two bushes in the parking lot with Mandy in the passenger seat. Her boy was alive! Later, when they found Phillip, grief was quickly washed out by rage. Why had he done this to them – to her? Everyone who’d called her the bad parent could kiss her well-toned ass. And they did. For a while, at least, when the frenzy was still about the poor Silverman family. A small part of her liked the attention. Finally, someone in Devil’s Knot gave a shit about Sandy Silverman when she was sober.

The rumors were relentless. Soon enough, the town was going to swallow itself whole. One morning, their dog Bonnie turned up dead in the front yard, blood pooling on the overgrown grass. Sandy got in the car in her silk pajamas, went down to the police department, and told Charlie Taylor just how badly he was fucking the whole thing sideways. Three months was too long. When they finally arrested Max Acosta, Sandy didn’t even care if he was guilty. She was tired. They asked her to corroborate the argument between Max and Phillip. She remembered the incident in a half-hazy way, but it must’ve been Fourth of July because she’d been drinking watermelon punch. Phillip must’ve started the argument, the bonehead. I have a sense about these things, trust me.

After the trial, she set Peter up with a psychologist because God knows she wasn’t equipped to deal with that. The children still felt far away, somewhere inaccessible to her, even after all that happened. Sandy tried joining the PTA, but that required sobriety on a Wednesday night, which meant her attendance was sparse. She got a real job, finally. Sandy Silverman, Real Estate Agent, Great Lake Homes. With a card and everything. Being a salesman is like being a woman: a test of how much you can endure. All the happy wives and mothers must be lying to themselves too, right? It’s just contest to see who can keep the smile pasted on her face the longest. Well, Sandy Silverman’s a professional, and she’s good at that too. She’s the best at it. And she’ll show you!

[sevenfists]

drawerfic #2: hockey hugs

I wrote this for @werebeary more than a year ago; we were very emotional about all of Sid and Geno’s bench hugs during the 2017 Cup run. I think I might have cannibalized parts of this for “All the Way Through” if anything seems oddly familiar. 3.5k, there’s some hanky-panky in here but nothing explicit.

1. February 19

Sid wasn’t an emotional guy, but all the business with his thousandth point was getting him pretty worked up: the crowd screaming, his parents crying—his dad crying. All of the stuff his teammates said about him to reporters. It was just a lot to deal with. And then, when he thought it was mostly finished, there was a pre-game ceremony in the locker room, the team core waiting to present him with a golden stick.

Fuck. He was definitely going to get choked up, and someone was definitely going to catch it on film.

He hugged Kuni and Tanger, who he had known for so long that they were basically family, and Flower, who was family, and who Sid was going to lose. He was so distracted by that thought that he forgot about Geno.

“Hey! Give me a hug,” Geno said, joking but also not.

Well: okay.

In hockey, a hug meant nothing.

No, that wasn’t true: it meant you were teammates, and you liked and trusted each other. You shared big joys and big sorrows. You were friends, or at least you got along well enough and maybe went to each other’s houses from time to time for a cookout or to watch football. You hugged on the ice, shamelessly; you hugged in the locker room, but those hugs were more reserved, a quick arm around the shoulders and a pat on the back, or a clasp of the hands and a bump of the shoulders. There were rules about all of this, even though nobody ever talked about them. During games, all bets were off, but the rest of the time, you still had to act like men.

Geno knew the rules, but he liked to bend them. Everyone let him get away with it, because who knew what kind of weird shit they got up to in Russia? And Geno had a special talent for making everything seem like a joke.

But it was still weird when he asked Sid for a hug.

Not weird: awkward. The hug itself was awkward, and that was weird. Sid had been hugging Geno for a decade. They’d had plenty of practice. There was no reason for it be awkward, but—it was.

Geno hugged him again in the locker room after the game. They had lost, which usually put a damper on things, but Geno approached Sid anyway, shirtless and sweaty, and wrapped him in a bear hug.

“G, you smell terrible,” Sid said, his words muffled against Geno’s shoulder.

“You’re best,” Geno said. His lips brushed Sid’s ear. He squeezed hard, and Sid laughed breathlessly and tried to break out of his grasp, but Geno held him firm. “Best,” Geno said again, and then he released Sid and stepped away with a swat to his ass.

Later that night, Sid curled up in bed with his tablet and watched the video again, the one with current and former players congratulating him. Horny was wearing a Penguins workout shirt, Kuni had actual sweat dripping down his neck post-practice, and Geno was inexplicably in a suit and tie, his hair combed. Sid watched that part a few times, listening to Geno’s familiar accent, his wholly familiar teasing.

Maybe there had been signs before then, and Sid just hadn’t noticed. But looking back, that was when he first started to wonder.

2. March 25

In Buffalo, the Penguins clinched their playoff spot, and Sid lost a few teeth. It wasn’t a big deal; they were fake anyway. An hour after the game, he was good as new.

Geno was out after blocking a shot with his shoulder and hadn’t traveled with the team, but when Sid checked his phone back at the hotel, Geno had texted him: Sid not pretty((((

Sid rolled his eyes. Pretty wasn’t in his job description. My teeth are fine. Thanks for the concern

Geno sent him a penguin emoji. best goal, and playoffs!! celebrate when u home

For sure, Sid replied, the way he agreed with most of Geno’s schemes, never really expecting them to get off the ground.

But when they were back in town a few days later, on a rare day off between playing the Islanders and playing the Flyers, Geno texted him mid-morning: come for dinner, I cook!!

Sid regarded his phone dubiously. He and Geno weren’t on casual dinner invitation terms, and he also didn’t really want to eat Geno’s cooking, which could most kindly be described as edible. Is this a prank?

Geno texted a string of eye-roll emojis, and then, no prank, want celebrate!!! I make freezer pelmeni

The infamous freezer pelmeni were made by Geno’s mom, and lovingly hoarded. Nealsy was the only non-Russian who had ever been permitted to eat them, and Sid still heard about it every time they played the Preds. Geno was pulling out all the stops.

Okay, dinner sounds good, Sid replied, mostly because he wanted to be able to take the wind out of Nealsy’s sails.

He drove to Geno’s that evening. Geno was waiting for him on the front step. He was dressed up, a little, in nice jeans and a collared shirt, one that Sid vaguely remembered complimenting when Geno had first worn it. Sid looked down at his own T-shirt and well-worn jeans and felt distinctly under-dressed, which wasn’t a feeling he had ever thought he would associate with Geno.

“Uh, I brought wine,” he said, and offered Geno the bottle.

“Sid! Don’t have to bring,” Geno said, as if Trina Crosby would ever raise a son who showed up empty-handed. But Geno smiled, and accepted the bottle, and guided Sid into the house with one hand resting lightly on his back.

Dinner was ready, even though Sid was exactly on time and had sort of expected that Geno wouldn’t have even started. There were flowers on the table, a nice seasonal arrangement. Geno opened the wine and took off his apron.  

“Bon appetit,” Geno said, and Sid grinned at how good his pronunciation was: too much exposure to French Canadians.

They ate. The dumplings were good, and Geno told a series of very funny stories, about a friend who fell overboard during a fishing trip, and three baby raccoons breaking in to a neighbor’s house. Sid realized after a while that Geno was exerting himself to be charming. Well, Geno was charming all the time, casually, incidentally, to everyone around him; but he didn’t usually expend any particular effort on Sid.

“Nice out,” Geno said, when the meal was done. “We go sit outside?”

“Sure,” Sid said. He was having a nice time. He wasn’t ready for the evening to be over.

Geno emptied the rest of the wine bottle into Sid’s glass, ignoring Sid’s protests, and took him outside to the swinging bench set up in the yard behind the house. It was nice out, mild still even with the sun sinking behind the trees. Geno stretched one long arm along the back of the bench, stretched his long legs out across the grass. The bench creaked gently as Geno used his feet to rock them back and forth.

Sid felt warm from the wine, and from the way Geno was studying his face, close and fond. Geno wasn’t telling any stories now, and Sid found that he couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

“Thanks for having me over,” he said finally, unable to bear the silence any longer.

“Thanks for come,” Geno said. His fingers skimmed along the slope of Sid’s shoulder and then away.

When Sid went home, Geno hugged him: not a locker room hug, but an on-ice hug, a celly hug, both of his arms around Sid’s shoulders. Sid closed his eyes and pressed his face against Geno’s neck for one sweet moment, breathing in Geno’s musky cologne.

3. April 9

The evidence piled up. Sid considered keeping a list, but that would mean he was taking it seriously; so instead he kept a mental list. The cologne was on there, because why was Geno wearing cologne to have dinner at home with Sid? And the hug was on there, and the swing. The way Geno started lingering in the locker room to talk with Sid before practice, not about hockey business, but about—nothing, really. He just seemed to want to make Sid laugh. And the way he started texting a lot, like every day, sometimes more than once. There was even another dinner invitation, a week after the first, and another careful, enveloping hug, and that was the point at which Sid had to admit to himself that something was pretty obviously going on.

It wasn’t like he was surprised that Geno liked men—that Geno maybe preferred men. It was an open secret in the organization. He even had a boyfriend for a while, a Russian grad student at Pitt who came to a few team events—always introduced as ‘my good friend,’ but everyone knew. Geno was discreet, but he didn’t hide it. Sid had seen him pick up more times than he could count. He was good at it, confident without being pushy. Geno liked dark-haired men, smaller than he was, out of his league looks-wise. He rarely struck out.

Somehow it had never occurred to Sid before that he was exactly Geno’s type.

He talked to Flower about it, finally, because he didn’t necessarily trust his own perceptions. They went for lunch after practice, and Sid picked at his food until Flower set down his fork with a sigh and said, “What’s on your mind, Sid?”

This conversation had been a lot less awkward when Sid mentally rehearsed it in the shower. “I wanted to, uh. Talk to you about Geno.”

“Yes?” Flower said.

Sid really wanted this to be one of the times that Flower read his mind and spared him the agony of having to spell things out, but the universe wasn’t going to be that kind to him. “Have you noticed, lately—it seems like he’s been kind of, uh. Maybe I’m just imagining things, but I think maybe he’s, um.”

Flower’s eyebrows went up. “Yes?”

“God damn it, Flower, you know what I’m trying to say,” Sid said.

“I really have no idea,” Flower said.

For Christ’s sake. “I feel like maybe he’s been flirting with me,” Sid ground out.

“Oh, that,” Flower said. “Yes, I agree, he’s absolutely flirting with you.”

Sid wanted to kill Flower and then himself. “So what do you think I should do about it?”

“How should I know?” Flower said, and then his face softened, and he said, “You know you don’t need anyone’s permission, right?”

“Sure, I know that,” Sid said.

“Okay,” Flower said. He gave Sid a long hard look. “You have my permission, though, if you need it.”

“Thanks, Flower,” Sid said. He knew he didn’t need permission, but—it was a big step, and if Flower thought he was crazy, maybe he wouldn’t do it.

But Flower didn’t think he was crazy.

They closed out the season with a final road trip, Newark to Toronto to New York. In New York, Sid went down the hall and knocked on Geno’s door, his palms a little sweaty even though he didn’t think there was anything to worry about, not really.

Sid was maybe not entirely straight, and Geno maybe knew it. Sid hadn’t acted on it since some ill-advised experimentation in his early twenties, but Geno had been around for that, and—well, he probably knew. And he knew Sid knew about him, and so—it wasn’t innocent, all of that stuff on Sid’s list. Geno meant something by it.

Geno opened the door. He grinned widely when he saw Sid standing there, but then his smile faded.

“Sid,” he said.

Sid drew in a breath. “Let me take you out to lunch. I—on a date. If you want.”

Geno’s face shifted through confusion and into cautious joy. “When?”

“Now,” Sid said. “If you’re ready.”

“Yes,” Geno said, and Sid waited while he found his wallet and his sunglasses, and then they went down to the lobby to catch a cab.

Sid could never remember much about that meal. It blurred into a golden haze. He remembered laughing a lot, and Geno’s feet bumping against his beneath the very small table. He didn’t have any idea what he ate. He remembered Geno leaning back in his chair and smiling and holding his water glass in front of his mouth like his smile was a secret that he wasn’t ready to share. Sid hadn’t felt like this in a long time. Maybe not ever, not exactly like this.

It was a nice day, and the hotel was only a half-hour walk away. They strolled back slowly, their shoulders bumping, their hands brushing until Sid stuffed his in the pockets of his jacket to remove the temptation. Geno cast him a sly glance and nudged him so hard that he had to grab Sid’s elbow to keep him from tipping off the curb.

“Trying to kill me already, eh,” Sid said.

“Sorry, sorry,” Geno said, patting Sid’s shoulder. “I’m too big, don’t know my own strength.”

“Yeah, that’s definitely it,” Sid said.

Geno bumped him again, more gently. “Surprise you ask me.”

“Oh, uh. Should I not have?” Sid asked.

“No, no,” Geno said. “Very happy you do. Only, I don’t expect. First, it’s fun, you know? Have crush, think about, flirt a little bit. I don’t think you notice. Then—” He glanced at Sid. “Then maybe it’s not so fun. Maybe I start want for real, ask you come over, but still you don’t notice.”

“I noticed,” Sid said, and got to watch Geno duck his head and smile down at his shoes.

Back at the hotel, Sid walked Geno to his door, and then things got kind of awkward, both of them shuffling their feet uncertainly and making eye contact that probably qualified as bashful. It was ridiculous. Sid was too old for this.

Geno sighed, rolled his eyes, and said, “Come in for one minute. Okay?”

“Okay,” Sid said, and when the door closed behind them, Geno pressed Sid against the wall and folded him into a hug.

It was warm and close, and Sid wrapped his arms around Geno’s waist and held on, certain now that it was okay. He turned his head to rest his cheek on Geno’s shoulder.

He felt Geno press a few gentle kisses along his hairline. “Maybe we go slow, okay? I know you kiss boys, but—maybe only kissing?”

“Yeah,” Sid said. “I never—you know.”

“Okay,” Geno said. He made a soft, amused noise, and Sid didn’t have to look at his face to know he was grinning. “Only kiss boys, maybe it’s big change for you to kiss man.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Sid said. He pulled back and gave Geno his best unimpressed look.

Geno was grinning. He stroked a thumb along Sid’s cheekbone and said, “After Blue Jackets, then I kiss you.”

Sid narrowed his eyes. He wondered if they could manage a sweep.

4. May 10

The trouble with playoffs was that there was never enough time: not for sleeping, not for practicing or recovering, and certainly not for starting a secret relationship with your alternate. They had a few days after the series against Columbus—not a sweep, but five games was close enough. Geno came over for dinner the day after they closed out that series and kissed Sid for the first time, leaning against the kitchen counter with his hands cupping Sid’s face, their mouths moving together so slow and hot.

Sid drew back at last and licked his lips. “What do I get after the Capitals?”

“Think you get something? You greedy,” Geno said. “Kissing not enough for you?”

“Uh, no,” Sid said.

Geno grinned. “Let me think about.”

What Sid got was a concussion, and Geno pale and worried at his house first thing the next morning, with a bag of Sid’s favorite breakfast pastries; and then he got to lie on the couch with his head in Geno’s lap, and Geno endlessly kissing his forehead and face and murmuring, “Sid, poor head,” and then going off darkly into Russian.

The Capitals took seven hard-fought games. During the final game, Horny scored a clutch backhander for a 2-0 lead early in the third. When the puck went into the net, Geno turned immediately to Sid and opened his arms.

It was an on-ice hug: a hockey hug. But it was also just a hug with Geno, the type of fond embrace Sid could have now whenever he wanted and craved constantly, like now that he had that option he wanted to be wrapped in Geno’s arms at all times. He thought about Geno nonstop, at the grocery store when he saw Geno’s preferred brand of bread on the shelf, at home when he looked again at the fifteen heart emojis Geno had texted him the night before. And it was so easy now to lean against Geno’s chest for just a moment and be close to him, even through all their gear.

Geno leaned over to him afterward, when everyone had settled down on the bench once more, and said, quietly, “I think we win this game.”

They did.

What he got was Geno in his hotel room that night, after they won, and Geno’s hand on his dick, and his on Geno’s, half out of their clothes on the bed and kissing and laughing, giddy with winning and with having each other. Geno went blotchily pink all over before he came, his chest and shoulders all mottled with it, and Sid sat up toward the end, amazed, so he could watch Geno’s eyes squeeze shut and his mouth fall open.

“Stay the night,” he said, when they were cleaning up, and Geno did.

5. May 29

The series against the Senators was a long, boring grind, but somehow they won that one, too, and then it was on to the Predators.

They won the first game. Bones capped it off with an empty netter at the end of the third, and when Sid turned toward Geno on the bench, he knew for sure that Geno would be turning toward him.

Geno yelled something incoherent and pulled Sid against him, sitting on the boards to straddle Sid’s hips and squeeze him close. Sid couldn’t believe how lucky he was, to get to play good hockey with this man beside him, always ready for the next pass, always waiting for Sid to call to him or to lead him out onto the ice.

He went to Geno’s house the next afternoon: not for lunch, not for dinner, but just to hang out. Geno made a pitcher of water with lime slices and spread a blanket on the grass in the back yard, under the shade of a tree. They sprawled together and watched game tape on Sid’s tablet until Geno, predictably, fell asleep. And then Sid just watched him sleep for a while, feeling a little creepy but not enough to deter him from it. Geno’s face was so animated when he was awake, constantly shifting from one expression to the next, but in sleep he was peaceful. He looked younger. He looked tired, but they were all tired, this deep into the playoffs.

He looked like someone Sid wanted to keep beside him for a long time.

1. June 8

Game 5 was a 6-0 blowout. Sid got three points; Geno got a Gordie Howe hat trick.

“You’re a fucking menace,” Sid told him in the locker room afterward.

“Me?” Geno asked, all innocence. “What I do? Get two points, score goal—”

“Fight Josi,” Sid said.

“Only roughing!” Geno said. “Everyone fight, Haggy, Dales—”

“Don’t bring me into this,” Daley said.

“Fight Josi,” Geno muttered to himself, and stomped off to the shower.

Sid grinned. Geno was way too easy to rile up.

He riled him up even more in the parking deck. It was late and dark, they were two of the last people at the arena, and Geno only put up a token protest when Sid shoved him up against the driver’s side door of his stupid sports car and kissed him. Geno spread his legs and slouched down and Sid could feel him getting hard inside his suit pants, and they were being really dumb and Sid didn’t want to stop.

“You turn me on so much,” he said, kissing frantically at Geno’s neck, sucking kisses above the collar of his shirt. “You were so good tonight, you—”

“You first star,” Geno said, his voice rough, and he used his grip on Sid’s ass to pull him in a little tighter.

“Okay,” Sid said at last, tearing himself away. “Okay. Fuck. Okay. Let’s get out of here. Let’s go back to my place.”

“What I get?” Geno asked. His eyes were half-lidded. His mouth was wet and swollen. His ugly mustache was wet with spit.

“I bet I can think of something,” Sid said.

[tinyfierce]

"Honestly, just stop it," for Evfra/Ryder. Or "We really need better people," for Jaal/Ryder. Thank you for all the ficlets, they are really awesome!

[Prompts from thispost. Still open!]

(Glad you’re enjoying these!

The first timeGil was on extended shore leave, the rest of the Tempest crew tookadvantage of his absence to have Poker Night on something resemblinga level playing field. Vetra, the only experienced bartender onboard, ran the whole thing like they were in a seedy off-strip bar onOmega -

-complete withabsolutely terrible alcohol.

“Addsto the ambience,” she said, and Drack let out a booming laugh.

“Damnright,” he said. “If your cup’s clean, you’re not on Omega.”

“Whatis Omega,” Jaal asked as his glass was refilled, “and why is itterrible?”

“Oh,let me.” Liam raked in the chips and started sorting them back intothe holding rack. “So, picture Kadara, except a tenth the size withtwice the people. Every type of crime you can imagine, and some youcan’t. No government and no rules.”

“Itwas great,” Drackinsisted.

“Itwas a pit,” Cora corrected him, “and the source of a lot ofproblems. Drugs, weapons, bribes, you name it – it could all betraced back there at some point.”

“Hadthe best strippers, though.”

“Drack.”

Rydersnickered as she listened to the banter around the table. They sorarely got to relax like this together, especially so informally. Thesmack talk that had been encouraged over the game – Cora cleanedthem all out, naturally – had made Liam practically vibratewith happiness. They were just coming off of a big win, too, havingKadara back in (at least for appearances’ sake) Angaran hands. Theywere salty, they were drunk, and they were bonding.

“We’vestill got hours in the night and a lotmore booze,” Peebee pointed out from her seat. Though the game wasover, no one had left the table. “And I’m not leavingempty-handed.”

“Iturn this over to our social coordinator,” Ryder said, sippingsomething god-awful with a curl of some mystery fruit wedged on therim. “Liam?”

Hethought a moment, flipping a poker chip between a few fingers.Suddenly, his eyes lit up, and he palmed it on the table. “Got it.‘Never have I ever,’ no limits.”

Theother humans at the table groaned, but Peebee leaned in. “Ooh, youhad me at ‘no limits.’ Rules?”

“Itgoes like this,” he explained, pulling the lowest-level chips outfrom their bay. “We go round in a circle, each person making a‘never have I ever’ statement, anywhere from 'never have I everbroken a bone’ to 'never have I ever had sex in zero-g.'”

Peebeetook a drink. “Oh, I am gonna lose this game.”

“Ifyou match,” he continued, “you’re safe. But if you have done it,you take a chip. Person with the least at the end wins.”

“Sowhat are the stakes?” Drack pulled over a bottle with scribbledKrogan writing on it and popped the cap.

Amoment of silence passed before a suitable prize occurred to Ryder.

“Ihave a photo of Director Tann faceplanting on his office stairs,”she said. “I framed it. Win and it’s yours.”

Judgingfrom the enthusiastic reactions thatgot, things were about to get fun. As everyone got up for last-minuterefills, Jaal leaned over.

“Areyou sure, taoshay? Youlove that picture.”

Rydersmiled over the rim of her glass. “SAM was taking video. I canreplay it in my visor whenever I feel down.”

Hechuckled and squeezed her thigh affectionately, straightening as theothers began to return. When the last butt was in the last seat, thegame was on.

“I’llstart,” Liam said, clearing his throat. “Never have I ever…tried Ryncol.”

Halfof the hands around the table went up, though no one was surprised.Drack, Vetra, Peebee, and Ryder all took chips.

“Iwas a bartender,” Vetra said. “What’s your excuse, Ryder?”

“Mybrother dared me,” she offered, and Drack snorted.

“Therest of you idiots don’t know what you’re missing.”

Liam folded hisarms. “Your liver, your baddecisions. You’re up, Drack.”

“Right,”he rumbled. “Never have I ever gotten my hand stuck in a vendingmachine trying to steal a copy of Fornax.”

Everyonelaughed as Peebee was the only one to take a chip, angrily snatchingit from the center of the table. “Damnit, Drack! I told you thatstory in confidence.”

Coraleaned back. “Oh, I want to hear this.”

“Iwas young and curious!”

“Howold were you,” Jaal asked, and Peebee looked sheepish.

“Fifty?”

“Speaking ofyoung and stupid,” Vetra interrupted, “never have I ever punchedmy sibling in the junk.”

Ryder, Jaal, andDrack all raised their hands, the latter most enthusiastically ofall.

“Par for thecourse,” he declared. “You only really need three balls, anyway.”

Jaal took his chip,chuckling at what clearly was a fond memory. “Does it still countif it was an accident?”

“Depends,”Vetra said. “Was it actually an accident?”

Jaal smirked. “No.But that was what I told our mothers.”

“That’s going inmy next e-mail to your mom,” Ryder threatened, and Jaal cleared histhroat as he pointedly tapped the chip she had alsotaken that round.

“Ibelieve it is my turn,” he said, leaning his elbows on the table.“Very well. Never have I ever… run about naked after drinking.”

Peebeelet loose a string of colorful swears as she took yet another chip,joined by both Liam and Drack.

“Tooktwo dozen C-sec officers to take me down,” Drack boasted. “Hellof a Monday.”

Liamlaughed. “Wish I’d been there. My bit’s boring – got overheatedand didn’t think I needed clothes, I guess. Even went for a swimin the Academy fountain and started a tradition.”

“Wereally need better people on the Tempest,” Ryder muttered into herdrink with a smile, and her second-in-command apparently agreed.

“I am institutingan at-least-pants rule on the ship, with the Pathfinder’spermission,” Cora announced, and Ryder toasted her assent, much tothe chagrin of the other players.

“Aw, don’t besuch a wet blanket.” Peebee pointed to Cora’s nonexistent pile.“Either you’re hiding something, or you are the most boringperson-who-decided-to-jump-into-deep-space ever.”

Cora said nothing,only smiled and drank, earning her a frustrated groan from the Asari.

“I told youI would lose. All right, who’s next?”

“I’m up. Neverhave I ever…” Ryder considered her statement, given theincreasingly risque turn they had each been taking. “Never have Iever had sex with someone of the same gender.”

Jaal, Vetra, andPeebee all took chips, prompting some murmurs around the table.

Vetra studied theAngara through her visor, mandibles flaring in amusement.“Interesting, Jaal.”

“Imake no effort to hide it.” Smirking, he seemed almost boastful ashe crossed his arms. “You’ve met my former commander, and have seenfor yourself how attractive he is.”

“Seriously,”Liam managed, “you’re telling me that you slept with yourC.O.? While still in the ranks?”

“Givesa whole new meaning to 'serving under’ someone,” Peebee joked, andJaal tilted his head.

“Youassume too much about the roles in our relationship,” he countered,and Liam choked on his drink.

“Jaal,”he coughed, “have I told you lately that I love you?”

Jaalrumbled a laugh. “I love you too, Liam.”“Don’tsee what the issue is,” Drack said, pouring himself another.“Krogan do it all the time. Fighting’s a hell of an aphrodisiac.That, and blood.”

“Was with you upuntil that last part,” Peebee said. “Going to have to callbullshit on Cora, though.”

Cora frowned.“What? I didn’t take one.”

“I know!”Peebee leaned over the table, practically crawling over the stack ofchips in the middle. “And I’m calling. You. Out.”

“All that time inclose with the Asari commandos,” Liam added, “and you never?”

“No.”

“Noteven once. Trapped in a cave or a safehouse, alone -”

“No,Liam.”

Vetragestured with the hand holding a glass. “And your hair.”

“Ohmy god,” Cora said, exasperated. “A Turiandoes not get to lecture me on my undercut.”

“Andif we’re all female, technically Asari are genderless, so…” Peebeeshrugged innocently. “She could technically still notbe lying.”

“That’s it, I’mending this right now.” Cora set her drink down and pointed to thechips. “Never have I ever slept with anyone outside my own race.”

This time, it wasPeebee, Vetra, Ryder, and Jaal who took chips.

“All right,fair,” Peebee muttered.

“Dated a Drellfor six months,” Vetra said, brandishing her chip. “Beats anyhigh on the market.”

That garnered someprobing discussion, cut short when Peebee took count.

“Wait,” shesaid, frowning. “Jaal, I thought that aside from the Kett, we werethe first outsiders to Heleus.”

Ryder tensed, andshe saw him do the same.

“You were,” hesaid plainly.

All eyes turned tohim, except for Cora - who nonchalantly sipped her drink and shotRyder a meaningful sideways glance.

Well?their silence asked, and Ryder could see Jaal hesitate.

Fuckit, she thought as she finished her drink and set it down on thetable. She raised her empty hand, waving it to catch their attentionand rescue her lover.

“Pathfinder,reporting for duty.”

Corasmiled, and Ryder felt Jaal’s hand seek hers under the table.

Silence,then an explosion.

“Holyshit, since when -”

“Iknew it! Ha! I told you, I knew somethingwas going on -”

“Spirits, just tell me not on the common room couch-”

“Heh.Must be nice to be young.”

“Whomade the first move, then?”

“Well,he was already okay with sleeping with his commander, so -”

“Thisis legitimately historical and important-”

“Andnot in our showers, right?”

“Whoelse knows?”

Despitethe feeling of an onslaught, Ryder could see that Jaal was as pleasedby the attention as he was embarrassed, attempting to answer whateverquestions he could. For her part, the Pathfinder was surprised tofind herself rather nonplussed by the entire thing, almost relievedthat there was no need for some sort of grand announcement. She’d hadnightmares about the latter. But here, over drinking games and pokerand good-natured barbs, it felt as right as it was going to get.

“Details,Ryder,” Peebee pleaded from her left, and Ryder snickered.

“Oneword,” she said, pausing for dramatic effect. “Bioelectricity.”

Thatearned her some laughs, Peebee dragging her palms down her face.

“Ryder,I am literally so jealous of you right now that I could die.”

“Youcan’t die yet – it’s your turn.”

“Oh,shit. Right. Ahem.” She straightened, folding her hands neatly infront of her. “Never have I ever… seen a Blasto vid.”

Acollective gasp came up from the rest of the table, and she backedaway defensively. “What? They’re total trash.”

“You’rewrong,” Vetra toldher, and Liam stood up from his seat.

“Youneed to be educated,” he said, “and I have Blasto One througheight on my drive, including the holiday special.”

“Noo,”Peebee whined, but it was too late. Bottles were grabbed, arms weretaken prisoner, and the group was on the move to the bridge to hijackthe projector. Jaal hung back, waiting for Ryder to join him.

“I…”he began as they walked. “Was that… all right?”

“Yeah.It’s good.”

Hesmiled, lifting his arm to invite her beneath it. She accepted,draping her arm lazily about his waist.

“Iwas surprised,” he admitted. “You prefer to… discuss suchthings, and we never had the chance.”

“True.”She laughed. “I don’t know if it’s because I’m that drunk or I loveyou that much, but it worked out.”

Atthe word 'love,’ the hand on her shoulder squeezed warmly. He alwaysreacted when she said it aloud.

“So,”he prompted. “What is a Blasto?”

[ofstarsandvibranium]

Fashion Baby

Fandom: Star Wars (Model AU??)

Pairing: Poe Dameron x Reader

Summary: You’re going to walk in the Galaxy Fashion Show and you’re excited because your boyfriend, Poe, will be performing for it. 

A/N: I was inspired after I watched videos of Bruno Mars performing at the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show 2016. And y’all know that I thoroughly believe that Bruno Mars is Poe’s favorite singer.

Poe was hounded by paparazzi as he arrived to the venue where the fashion show was being held.

“Poe! Poe! Are you excited to perform for the show tonight?” 

“How proud are you of Y/N for being able to walk in the fashion show?”

“Are you gonna be able to keep your eyes on Y/N while there’s other women around?”

That last question made Poe’s ears perk up. He stopped and turned to the reporter who asked that question, “Yes, I’m gonna be able to keep my eyes on Y/N because I love her and she’s a goddess. I’m proud of her no matter what she does and I’m very excited to see her on the runway while I perform.” Without another word, Poe turned on his heel and went through the backdoor to the venue. 

His manager and friend, Temmin “Snap” Wexley patted him on the back, “You handled that well.”

Poe shook his head, his jaw clenched, “I hate when they say stuff like that. I’m a loyal boyfriend. I love Y/N. Why can’t people understand that? I’d never cheat on her.”

Snap rested his hands on Poe’s shoulders, “Hey, I know this. Y/N knows this. Relax. Don’t let it get to you.”

“I know, it’s just-”

“Poe!” Poe’s ear perked at the sound of your voice. He looked behind Snap to see you strutting towards them. Your hair and makeup done, but you wore a silk pink robe around you and gold heels.

Poe smiled as he met you half way, “Hey, baby. Lookin’ stunning as usual.” He kissed your cheek knowing you’d scold him if he messed up your lipstick.

You smiled, “Thank you, handsome.” you straightened the bow tie that he wore, “You prepared for tonight?”

“Not really.”

You looked at him confused, “Why? You were pumped at rehearsal yesterday.”

Poe gave you a sheepish grin, “Because I know once I see you out there I’m gonna get distracted and forget the lyrics.”

You rolled your eyes and swatted his chest, “You’re such a flirt.” You looked behind Poe to see Snap looking down at his phone, “Lighten up a bit, Snap!”

Snap’s head shot up and he gave you a smile, “Fight me, Y/N.”

“Gimme the time and place, Wexley.”

Poe chuckled, “Alright, get your beautiful butt back to work. I’ll see you in a couple of hours, ‘kay?”

You nodded and kissed his cheek, “Bye, babe. Love you.”

“Love you too, gorgeous!”

Poe and Snap then walked to Poe’s own dressing room. Snap kept his voice hushed, “So, you gonna ask her tonight?”

Poe shrugged, “Maybe. If I find the perfect moment.”

Snap nodded, “I have faith in you, Poe.”

The fashion show was in full swing already. You’ve walked up and down the runway several times now. Every once in a while, you’d hear Poe from the audience yell, “WOOHOO! THAT’S MY BABY! THAT’S MY BEAUTIFUL GIRLFRIEND!” and you couldn’t help but smile wide every time you were out there.

Now, it was time for Poe to perform. You sent him a good luck text before he appeared onstage to which he replied with a thanks and the kissy face emoji. 

Poe was now onstage donning a gold suit with black lapels. The lights reflecting off his suit and making him shimmer. He held the mic to his mouth and yelled, “How you doin’ Galaxy Fashion Show?!” the huge audience broke out into cheers and screams. Poe smiled and then nodded to his band and the music started playing.

Hey, hey, hey I got a condo in Manhattan Baby girl, what's hatnin'? You and your ass invited So gon' and get to clappin' Go pop it for a player, pop-pop it for me Turn around and drop it for a player, drop-drop it for me I'll rent a beach house in Miami Wake up with no jammies (nope) Lobster tail for dinner Julio, serve that scampi You got it if you want it, got, got it if you want it Said you got it if you want it, take my wallet if you want it, now

Your friend and fellow model Rose came up next to you watching Poe on the screen backstage, “He looks amazing!” Poe walked up the runway as he sang, models walking around him and posing at the end of the strip.

“Y/N! You’re almost up!” You slipped off your zip-up hoodie and tossed it onto your chair. You raced into line behind your other friend and fellow model, Gwen Phasma. 

Jump in the Cadillac (Girl, let's put some miles on it) Anything you want (Just to put a smile on you) You deserve it baby, you deserve it all And I'm gonna give it to you

You then started walking onto the runway. You fashioned a red lace dress that fanned down into a beige tulle skirt. You walked along to the music, your hips swaying left and right. You had a big smile on your face. 

Poe turned around just in time to see you strutting towards him. He broke out into a huge grin. His eyes shined with so much love and pride. When you neared him, he took your hand and kissed it. 

Cool jewelry shining so bright Strawberry champagne on ice Lucky for you, that's what I like, that's what I like Lucky for you, that's what I like, that's what I like Sex by the fire at night Silk sheets and diamonds all white Lucky for you, that's what I like, that's what I like Lucky for you, that's what I like, that's what I like

You continued to walk with him as he sang and you sang along with him. The audience and photographers were loving it. Poe let go of your hand so you could pose at the end of walkway. You gave the crowd a wink and then went strutting towards backstage. On your way, you blew Poe a kiss and he received it with a smile.

I'm talkin' trips to Puerto Rico Say the word and we go You can be my fleeka Girl, I'll be a fleeko, mamacita I will never make a promise that I can't keep I promise that your smile ain't gon' never leave Shopping sprees in Paris Everything twenty-four karats Take a look in that mirror (take a look) Now tell me who's the fairest Is it you? (is it you?) is it me? (is it me?) Say it's us (say it's us) and I'll agree, baby

For the rest of the song, you and the other models changed into your other outfits and walked back out. Poe always walked beside you as he sang. He would wink and send you kisses. All of which made you smile wide and blush.

Finally his song ended and you were the first one to walk onto stage for his next song. When you were walking onstage, he came up to you and wrapped an arm around your waist.

Ooh, don't we look good together? There's a reason why they watch all night long Yeah, know we'll turn heads forever So tonight I'm gonna show you off

When I'm walkin' with you I watch the whole room change Baby, that's what you do No, my baby, don't play Blame it on my confidence Oh, blame it on your measurements Shut that shit down on sight That's right

Poe joined you at the end of the runway. As you posed, so did he...terribly. He mocked every angle and pose you gave. You broke your facade and started laughing you ass off. Poe had to stop singing for a little bit because he started laughing too.

We out here drippin' in finesse It don't make no sense Out here drippin' in finesse You know it, you know it We out here drippin' in finesse It don't make no sense Out here drippin' in finesse You know it, you know it

Now slow it down for me baby 'Cause I love the way it feels when we grind Yeah, our connection's so magnetic on the floor Nothing can stop us tonight

Eventually, the song came to an end and you were done walking for the night. You collapsed with a comfortable sigh into your makeup chair. 

“You did great out there, Y/N!” Rose exclaimed as she ran up to you and hugged you with delight. 

“Thank you! So did you!”

“You and Poe were so cuuute! You’re all over instagram and snapchat! Look!” Rose tapped on several icons on snapchat and they all showed pictures and videos of you and Poe. Many of the captions were “SO. CUTE!” and “RELATIONSHIP GOALS!” 

“We do look pretty cute,” you said with a smile.

“Hell yeah we do.” Poe said as he appeared by your side. 

You jumped and held your hand to your chest, “Oh shit! Babe! Don’t do that!”

Poe giggled and kissed your cheek, “Sorry. Hiya, Rose.”

“Hey, Poe! Great performance!”

“Thanks! You guys looked so beautiful out there.”

“Not as beautiful as this one though,” Rose said with a teasing smirk.

You rolled your eyes, “Get outta here, Tico.”

Rose laughed, “Alright. See you at the after party!” 

Poe moved so that he stood in front of you. He leaned forward and captured your lips, “You really were beautiful out there. Fucking gorgeous.”

“So were you, Poe. You did amazing out there.”

“Really? ‘Cause I was freaking out. I only felt better when you’d be up there with me.”

You giggled and smoothed down Poe’s hair, “You’re such a softie, Poe Dameron.”

[lodelss]

The Law Enforcement Violence Trump Won’t Talk About

Day after day, night after night, protesters have been taking to the streets since the police killing of George Floyd. Led by local Black activists and grassroots groups, they’re chanting, singing, shouting, kneeling, marching, and even laying on the ground to demand justice for the many Black lives that have been taken by police. Everyone — from parents, grandparents, kids, and more — are showing up. But Donald Trump from day one has expressed extreme hostility towards the Black Lives Matter movement. He has called on NFL owners to retaliate against players who dared to kneel in protest, said it was “terrible” to ask why Black Americans are still dying at the hands of law enforcement in this country, compared police killing and injuring Black people to golfers who “choke,” and has called for law enforcement to “dominate” protesters demanding that our legal system value Black lives. He has even encouraged police to abuse people in their custody. As the movement and calls for change gain broader support from more Americans and people around the world, protesters are being met by even more brutality — in many cases by the same police departments whose racism and brutality they are protesting. Police and federal agents are spreading fear and panic in communities, threatening lives, and relentlessly attacking people simply exercising their First Amendment right to protest police racism and brutality. Law enforcement at all levels haven’t even spared U.S. military veterans, journalists, legal observers, and medics. This assault on the First Amendment has only escalated tensions, and emboldened white supremacists to spread terror and hate on our streets. The ACLU is taking to the streets, legislatures and courts nationwide to demand an end to police violence and accountability for rights violations. Here is just a partial running list of federal and local law enforcement abuses against individuals exercising their First Amendment rights in Portland, Oregon:

Federal agents with the U.S. Marshals Service brutally attacked and gassed U.S. Navy veteran Christopher David, who went to the protest to oppose police brutality and ask federal agents why they weren’t upholding their oath to the Constitution. The ACLU of Oregon is now suing on his behalf.

https://twitter.com/ACLU/statuses/1299896621711454208

Unidentified federal agents in military-style uniforms abducted ACLU of Oregon client Mark Pettibone from a sidewalk, then forced him into an unmarked minivan and drove him away for no apparent reason. The agents were later identified as belonging to Trump’s Department of Homeland Security. Pettibone explains how he “still [hasn’t] fully come to terms with what it means that I was kidnapped by [his] government.”

DHS officers violently attacked Nichol Denison, a U.S. Air Force veteran and member of the Portland “Wall of Moms,” while she was attending a Black Lives Matter protest. Without any warning, officers began launching cans of tear gas at her and other women beside her through gaps in the fence. Denison was hit repeatedly and was then struck far more forcefully in the head by a tear gas cannister that appeared to have been thrown from in front of her. She suffered a three-inch gash that was gushing blood, had to be taken to the VA hospital, where she received 11 stitches.

Without warning and for no reason whatsoever, federal officers shot James McNulty, who was attending a protest for the first time, four times: three times with rubber bullets and one time with a pepper ball. At the emergency room, McNulty learned that one of the munitions that struck him in the back had not only gone through his clothes, but pieced his skin, fat layer, and at least one layer of muscle.

James McNulty sustains deep wound after federal officers fire munitions at him at a protest in Portland, Oregon.

Maureen Healy was attending a Black Lives Matter protest with her child when, without warning, federal officers began firing flash bangs, impact munitions, and tear gas cannisters into the crowd. Healy began to turn and run, but was hit in the head with a projectile that felt metallic and the size of a small can. She started bleeding profusely and called for help. While some volunteer medics attended to her injuries, federal officers continued to fire tear gas into the area, forcing them all to move.

Federal officers shot Donovan LaBella, a 26-year-old protester, in the head with impact munitions. At the time LaBella was shot, he was standing across the street from the Hatfield Courthouse protesting while holding a music speaker above his head. He suffered severe injuries, arriving at the hospital in critical condition with a skull fracture. He subsequently underwent facial reconstruction surgery for his injuries. 

Mac Smiff was attending a Black Lives Matter protest when federal officers shot him on the right side of his face with an indelible hard-cap paintball, just below the line of his helmet and just above a face mask he was wearing. The impact of the shot and resulting shock caused Smiff to fall to the ground. Smiff was partly blinded by the paint in his face and had a large contusion on his head. He received treatment from the volunteer medics, who told him that he may have suffered a concussion. 

Duston Obermeyer, a decorated USMC veteran with combat experience in Iraq and Afghanistan and a co-founder of the “Wall of Vets,” was attending the Portland protests for the first time when, for no reason, a federal officer tried to strike Obermeyer. An officer pointed an automatic weapon in Obermeyer’s face while another officer shot him at point-blank range with an orange chemical irritant. One of the officers also struck Obermeyer in the face and chest with a baton. The gas was severely debilitating, and it took Duston days to recover from the gassing.

Portland police tear-gassed reporters Alex Zielinski and Blair Stenvick of the Portland Mercury, many other journalists and legal observers, and physically assaulted and arrested KBOO reporter Cory Elia, even though he identified himself as press.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/im0l3HuYgNw

Police hit freelance journalist Sergio Olmos with a truncheon and threatened to tear gas him because he was recording them. His press pass was clearly visible. Police also attacked journalist Donovan Farley with a wooden bat and sprayed him in the face with tear gas or pepper spray while he was trying to walk away from them. He had identified himself as press and was filming several police officers kneeling on a protester’s neck, Derek Chauvin-style. 

Portland police slammed reporter Beth Nakamura of The Oregonian in the back with a truncheon. She had her hands up, press pass in hand, and was saying “press, press.” The officer responded: “I don’t give a fuck.” The same day, police ordered reporter Zane Sparling of The Portland Tribune to leave an area where they were enforcing a dispersal order against protesters. Sparling responded that he was media. The officer responded: “I don’t give a shit! Go!” He then shoved Sparling into a wall, and another officer shot a crowd-control munition at his heel.

When the police noticed journalist Brian Conley using his camera to record their action, officers launched at least one flash-bang grenade directly at him. He was nowhere near any protesters and there was no other target at which the police could have been aiming. The police later charged at him after telling him that it did not matter if he was media. Conley fell over while running away and only narrowly avoided a traumatic head injury.

Portland police repeatedly sprayed large groups of protesters with tear gas from all sides in what is known as a “kettling” or “killbox” military strategy. Killboxing protesters cannot disperse them. Its sole purpose is to inflict pain and suffering.

Portland police have bull-rushed crowds of people, shoving protesters to the ground, and hitting them with clubs and other instruments. They continue to do this night-after-night.

https://twitter.com/MrOlmos/statuses/1300682200082345985

Federal agents too have been deliberately attacking journalists and legal observers at protests, even after a court issued a temporary restraining order barring them from such unconstitutional attacks. A federal agent shot reporter Jonathan Levinson while he was trying to take a photo. As Levinson looked back and forth between his camera and the agent, trying to focus his lens, he saw the agent raise his weapon, deliberately point it at him, and fire several rounds. Levinson was wearing an OPB press pass with his name, his photograph, the OPB logo, and the word “MEDIA.” He was also wearing a helmet that said “PRESS” in large letters on the front and back and carrying two professional cameras with large, bulky lenses. 

A federal agent also shot journalist Brian Conley when he was trying to video an arrest. Conley yelled that he was press, over and over. Suddenly, without warning, federal agents shot him multiple times with impact munitions in his chest and his foot. An agent also threw a tear-gas canister directly at Conley, where it exploded above his head.  He was carrying a large Micro Four Thirds camera with a telephoto lens and external 20W LED light mounted on it and was wearing a photographer’s vest that said “PRESS” on it as well as a helmet that said “PRESS.” 

Federal agents shot clearly-marked reporter Rebecca Ellis and separately prevented her from documenting their dispersal of protesters. 

Federal agents shot clearly-marked legal observer Haley Nicholson in her chest, just above her heart, from four feet away. Impact munitions should not be used at distances of less than 15 feet or above the waist. 

Federal agents deliberately sprayed toxic chemicals into the faces of multiple clearly-marked legal observers, including Bruce Knivlia and Kat Mahoney, at point blank range. They were all clearly identified in blue ACLU vests and green NLG hats. They also shot photojournalist Kathryn Elsesser, who was also clearly marked with “PRESS” on her helmet. 

Daniel Hollis, a videographer for VICE News, was wearing a helmet with the word “PRESS” on it and operating large, professional video-recording equipment when federal agents launched a barrage of munitions at Hollis and the members of the press around him, hitting Hollis near his groin and in his lower back. 

Federal agents and Portland police have also brutally attacked protest medics treating injured protesters and individuals. ACLU of Oregon clients Christopher Wise, Savannah Guest, and others have suffered numerous injuries from law enforcement deliberately firing rubber bullets, tear-gas, pepper spray, batons, and flash bangs at protest medics providing aid.

https://twitter.com/ACLU/statuses/1287019018147237891

We’re witnessing similarly alarming and dangerous tactics being deployed in Kenosha, Wisconsin as people take to the streets to demand accountability and transformational change within the police and sheriff’s departments. This comes after police attempted to murder Jacob Blake by shooting him seven times in the back, fraternized with heavily-armed white supremacist militias during protests, and then let a white man who shot and killed two protesters walk away from the scene of the shooting.  There are multiple reports of law enforcement in unmarked vehicles with tinted windows and officers making arrests in Kenosha without identifying themselves or wearing insignia to identify their law enforcement agency. Kenosha police have also indiscriminately fired chemical and other weapons, including tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, and pepper balls at protesters. We’re also receiving reports of protesters being arrested for violating curfew, and having possessions, like their cell phones, confiscated and not returned to them.  Notably, all of this is taking place in a county that has a history of severe racial disparities in policing; Black people in Kenosha County are 6.9 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white people — almost double the national racial disparity in such arrests.

This is a fight for our democracy. The answer to protests over police brutality cannot be more brutality. We are unleashing the full firepower of the ACLU to defend our rights — in Portland, in Kenosha, and nationwide. We won’t be silenced.

Published September 2, 2020 at 12:59AM via ACLU https://ift.tt/34T4MZe

[nancydhooper]

The Law Enforcement Violence Trump Won’t Talk About

Day after day, night after night, protesters have been taking to the streets since the police killing of George Floyd. Led by local Black activists and grassroots groups, they’re chanting, singing, shouting, kneeling, marching, and even laying on the ground to demand justice for the many Black lives that have been taken by police. Everyone — from parents, grandparents, kids, and more — are showing up. But Donald Trump from day one has expressed extreme hostility towards the Black Lives Matter movement. He has called on NFL owners to retaliate against players who dared to kneel in protest, said it was “terrible” to ask why Black Americans are still dying at the hands of law enforcement in this country, compared police killing and injuring Black people to golfers who “choke,” and has called for law enforcement to “dominate” protesters demanding that our legal system value Black lives. He has even encouraged police to abuse people in their custody. As the movement and calls for change gain broader support from more Americans and people around the world, protesters are being met by even more brutality — in many cases by the same police departments whose racism and brutality they are protesting. Police and federal agents are spreading fear and panic in communities, threatening lives, and relentlessly attacking people simply exercising their First Amendment right to protest police racism and brutality. Law enforcement at all levels haven’t even spared U.S. military veterans, journalists, legal observers, and medics. This assault on the First Amendment has only escalated tensions, and emboldened white supremacists to spread terror and hate on our streets. The ACLU is taking to the streets, legislatures and courts nationwide to demand an end to police violence and accountability for rights violations. Here is just a partial running list of federal and local law enforcement abuses against individuals exercising their First Amendment rights in Portland, Oregon:

Federal agents with the U.S. Marshals Service brutally attacked and gassed U.S. Navy veteran Christopher David, who went to the protest to oppose police brutality and ask federal agents why they weren’t upholding their oath to the Constitution. The ACLU of Oregon is now suing on his behalf.

https://twitter.com/ACLU/statuses/1299896621711454208

Unidentified federal agents in military-style uniforms abducted ACLU of Oregon client Mark Pettibone from a sidewalk, then forced him into an unmarked minivan and drove him away for no apparent reason. The agents were later identified as belonging to Trump’s Department of Homeland Security. Pettibone explains how he “still [hasn’t] fully come to terms with what it means that I was kidnapped by [his] government.”

DHS officers violently attacked Nichol Denison, a U.S. Air Force veteran and member of the Portland “Wall of Moms,” while she was attending a Black Lives Matter protest. Without any warning, officers began launching cans of tear gas at her and other women beside her through gaps in the fence. Denison was hit repeatedly and was then struck far more forcefully in the head by a tear gas cannister that appeared to have been thrown from in front of her. She suffered a three-inch gash that was gushing blood, had to be taken to the VA hospital, where she received 11 stitches.

Without warning and for no reason whatsoever, federal officers shot James McNulty, who was attending a protest for the first time, four times: three times with rubber bullets and one time with a pepper ball. At the emergency room, McNulty learned that one of the munitions that struck him in the back had not only gone through his clothes, but pieced his skin, fat layer, and at least one layer of muscle.

James McNulty sustains deep wound after federal officers fire munitions at him at a protest in Portland, Oregon.

Maureen Healy was attending a Black Lives Matter protest with her child when, without warning, federal officers began firing flash bangs, impact munitions, and tear gas cannisters into the crowd. Healy began to turn and run, but was hit in the head with a projectile that felt metallic and the size of a small can. She started bleeding profusely and called for help. While some volunteer medics attended to her injuries, federal officers continued to fire tear gas into the area, forcing them all to move.

Federal officers shot Donovan LaBella, a 26-year-old protester, in the head with impact munitions. At the time LaBella was shot, he was standing across the street from the Hatfield Courthouse protesting while holding a music speaker above his head. He suffered severe injuries, arriving at the hospital in critical condition with a skull fracture. He subsequently underwent facial reconstruction surgery for his injuries. 

Mac Smiff was attending a Black Lives Matter protest when federal officers shot him on the right side of his face with an indelible hard-cap paintball, just below the line of his helmet and just above a face mask he was wearing. The impact of the shot and resulting shock caused Smiff to fall to the ground. Smiff was partly blinded by the paint in his face and had a large contusion on his head. He received treatment from the volunteer medics, who told him that he may have suffered a concussion. 

Duston Obermeyer, a decorated USMC veteran with combat experience in Iraq and Afghanistan and a co-founder of the “Wall of Vets,” was attending the Portland protests for the first time when, for no reason, a federal officer tried to strike Obermeyer. An officer pointed an automatic weapon in Obermeyer’s face while another officer shot him at point-blank range with an orange chemical irritant. One of the officers also struck Obermeyer in the face and chest with a baton. The gas was severely debilitating, and it took Duston days to recover from the gassing.

Portland police tear-gassed reporters Alex Zielinski and Blair Stenvick of the Portland Mercury, many other journalists and legal observers, and physically assaulted and arrested KBOO reporter Cory Elia, even though he identified himself as press.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/im0l3HuYgNw

Police hit freelance journalist Sergio Olmos with a truncheon and threatened to tear gas him because he was recording them. His press pass was clearly visible. Police also attacked journalist Donovan Farley with a wooden bat and sprayed him in the face with tear gas or pepper spray while he was trying to walk away from them. He had identified himself as press and was filming several police officers kneeling on a protester’s neck, Derek Chauvin-style. 

Portland police slammed reporter Beth Nakamura of The Oregonian in the back with a truncheon. She had her hands up, press pass in hand, and was saying “press, press.” The officer responded: “I don’t give a fuck.” The same day, police ordered reporter Zane Sparling of The Portland Tribune to leave an area where they were enforcing a dispersal order against protesters. Sparling responded that he was media. The officer responded: “I don’t give a shit! Go!” He then shoved Sparling into a wall, and another officer shot a crowd-control munition at his heel.

When the police noticed journalist Brian Conley using his camera to record their action, officers launched at least one flash-bang grenade directly at him. He was nowhere near any protesters and there was no other target at which the police could have been aiming. The police later charged at him after telling him that it did not matter if he was media. Conley fell over while running away and only narrowly avoided a traumatic head injury.

Portland police repeatedly sprayed large groups of protesters with tear gas from all sides in what is known as a “kettling” or “killbox” military strategy. Killboxing protesters cannot disperse them. Its sole purpose is to inflict pain and suffering.

Portland police have bull-rushed crowds of people, shoving protesters to the ground, and hitting them with clubs and other instruments. They continue to do this night-after-night.

https://twitter.com/MrOlmos/statuses/1300682200082345985

Federal agents too have been deliberately attacking journalists and legal observers at protests, even after a court issued a temporary restraining order barring them from such unconstitutional attacks. A federal agent shot reporter Jonathan Levinson while he was trying to take a photo. As Levinson looked back and forth between his camera and the agent, trying to focus his lens, he saw the agent raise his weapon, deliberately point it at him, and fire several rounds. Levinson was wearing an OPB press pass with his name, his photograph, the OPB logo, and the word “MEDIA.” He was also wearing a helmet that said “PRESS” in large letters on the front and back and carrying two professional cameras with large, bulky lenses. 

A federal agent also shot journalist Brian Conley when he was trying to video an arrest. Conley yelled that he was press, over and over. Suddenly, without warning, federal agents shot him multiple times with impact munitions in his chest and his foot. An agent also threw a tear-gas canister directly at Conley, where it exploded above his head.  He was carrying a large Micro Four Thirds camera with a telephoto lens and external 20W LED light mounted on it and was wearing a photographer’s vest that said “PRESS” on it as well as a helmet that said “PRESS.” 

Federal agents shot clearly-marked reporter Rebecca Ellis and separately prevented her from documenting their dispersal of protesters. 

Federal agents shot clearly-marked legal observer Haley Nicholson in her chest, just above her heart, from four feet away. Impact munitions should not be used at distances of less than 15 feet or above the waist. 

Federal agents deliberately sprayed toxic chemicals into the faces of multiple clearly-marked legal observers, including Bruce Knivlia and Kat Mahoney, at point blank range. They were all clearly identified in blue ACLU vests and green NLG hats. They also shot photojournalist Kathryn Elsesser, who was also clearly marked with “PRESS” on her helmet. 

Daniel Hollis, a videographer for VICE News, was wearing a helmet with the word “PRESS” on it and operating large, professional video-recording equipment when federal agents launched a barrage of munitions at Hollis and the members of the press around him, hitting Hollis near his groin and in his lower back. 

Federal agents and Portland police have also brutally attacked protest medics treating injured protesters and individuals. ACLU of Oregon clients Christopher Wise, Savannah Guest, and others have suffered numerous injuries from law enforcement deliberately firing rubber bullets, tear-gas, pepper spray, batons, and flash bangs at protest medics providing aid.

https://twitter.com/ACLU/statuses/1287019018147237891

We’re witnessing similarly alarming and dangerous tactics being deployed in Kenosha, Wisconsin as people take to the streets to demand accountability and transformational change within the police and sheriff’s departments. This comes after police attempted to murder Jacob Blake by shooting him seven times in the back, fraternized with heavily-armed white supremacist militias during protests, and then let a white man who shot and killed two protesters walk away from the scene of the shooting.  There are multiple reports of law enforcement in unmarked vehicles with tinted windows and officers making arrests in Kenosha without identifying themselves or wearing insignia to identify their law enforcement agency. Kenosha police have also indiscriminately fired chemical and other weapons, including tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, and pepper balls at protesters. We’re also receiving reports of protesters being arrested for violating curfew, and having possessions, like their cell phones, confiscated and not returned to them.  Notably, all of this is taking place in a county that has a history of severe racial disparities in policing; Black people in Kenosha County are 6.9 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white people — almost double the national racial disparity in such arrests.

This is a fight for our democracy. The answer to protests over police brutality cannot be more brutality. We are unleashing the full firepower of the ACLU to defend our rights — in Portland, in Kenosha, and nationwide. We won’t be silenced.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8247012 https://www.aclu.org/news/criminal-law-reform/the-law-enforcement-violence-trump-wont-talk-about via http://www.rssmix.com/

[ruzhansky]

i pray this will never end, i have my heart open wide

This report is not going to cover my teams, spreads and so on, as it was in 2015. I even don’t know if I should call it a ‘report’, I just want to slop down some thoughts about 2017. Have a nice read.

Why did I return to vgc? I DONT KNOW. As you might remember, I was a tryharder in 2015, but Nats loss and Autumn Series event loss completely broke me. 2016 season wasn’t a thing I’d like to try out (especially with the 2015 wounds) and I got some serious mental health problems in 2016. New pokemon game was a thing that could possibly make my days a bit brighter, and yea, I liked the game, the tapus, the ultra beasts and I became curious about the new format. The first russian tournament was announced to be held in late December, but I was busy with exams prep and haven’t even completed the main story. Though the tournament was tempting. I tested my first ideas on PS which included Instruct spam xd, but Nihilego with proper support showed a real potential at our early days of metagame. I could make it to the tournament (MSS Q1, wow Russia got midseasons...) and somehow won it. It’s like WHATTT how could i... but still. This thing lit something inside me and I decided to give that season a chance.

this is a very bad and old drawing of my mss q1 team xd sorry

January brought the first meta shift, and I started struggling with the team I had. I accidentally joined a random coversation on twitter and then I texted PephanVGC something like hey, did you remember we wanted to talk about teams. And he was very nice to me right from the start, he helped me out with the team and then we started to chat about everything. About friends, life, our past, loneliness and other troubles, and I thought I’ve found a real soulmate. We started to chat every day, but some days ago we were complete strangers to each other. This is so great.

Pephan shared a team with me I instantly fell in love with. It was Winter, so yeah Hail was cool to use, and that was the warmest winter I have :3 though Arcanines already were everywhere, and I removed Life Orb from his Koko to make it Electrium Z Koko AND IT BECAME MY MASCOT FOR THE WHOLE SEASON (i thought so before specs has come to mind...)  Also I played the same team with Pephan at Melbourne Challenge, and I got paired with him on r2... I lost in a close set and got broken so much, but he still helped me a lot with that and taught me how to treat losses less painfully. I love Pephan.

February IC poster with @Elveman yeah we had fun once

Then I built an AFK team too but with fucked item choices (firium arcanine just why), but I also had Scarf Porygon-Z and it was amazing to use. 

I brought Hail team to St Peter (yeah I travelled to St Petersburg) and Moscow PCs, got 1st and 2nd, AFK PZ team - to MSS Q2 AND I WON AGAIN. I was wondering why my enemies rivals didn’t visit our events, but ok, it was not my problem. Especially when our 2016 nats champion became my main enemy.

This was my season flow. I traveled, I played, I was studying at university and it was my graduation year, I had a job and tried to combine it with studying and pokemon, sometimes it affected my results. I was invited to represent Pokemon at Hinode 2017, the huge annual Japanese event in Moscow, with my main rival, famous russian pokemon community moderator and some TCG guys. It was definitely a nice experience. I got money from that just because I told people how amazing pokemon is, I teached them how to battle and showed that there’s much more than Pokemon Go. Yes, I don’t like Go. All pokemon players don’t like Go here.

b-but they’re so young!!! pic from Hinode.

Well, I thought season should have something else besides MSS and PCs, and hell yes, 8 Russian Special Events at 8 different cities were announced in May. Moar travelling! We(my rival, me and our tcg frens) decided to go to St Peter (again), Perm, Astrakhan and Ufa. Someone decided to go to all 8 SE because he wanted to.

The big-big drama started at our community but I don’t wanna share it here.

I graduated, traveled and played, and since my rival missed 2 Specials due to his own graduation and some other issues, my invite made a bit more real. Wait. THE DREAM OF MAKING WORLDS BECAME REAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But I still needed to put a lot ot work into it. Top 1 vgc gets paid invite, I was 1st, but tcg guy with a good amount of vgc points was second (because he always played vgc after tcg at special events). I thought he will play TCG after all and he won’t interfere with my road to worlds, but I found out that he is going to the city we’re all decided not to go, to grind some tcg AND vgc points. I got angry as a rival and made an impulsive decision to go to Irkutsk Special before Moscow Special. And I went. And got some important points. And pretty locked up my invite. But I said to myself that I shouldn’t sсream it out loud and dance in the shower before the official ceremony in the end of the season. I still had Moscow event.

Huh. Our system this year allowed travelling, and 8 Special Events were held in June and July. Because I had the will and money to travel, because I got a job and combined it with studying at university and somehow haven’t lost it, I visited 6 Special Events. People started to shittalk me. I am wallet warrior, I am noob, I am not worlds caliber, I bought an invite and so on. I even partly agree. At that point winning russian events isn’t close to winning or doing well at EU/US events. Not every SE at regions gave us a strong competition. I am deadly far from WolfeyNails/Markus/etc level. But even with that, should I leave my spot and act like a fucking noble idiot? ‘Oh I am bad and not worlds caliber, guess I should give up now’. Yes. Definitely. Absolutely. It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? I have a game I love, a desire to travel, a job and money for that, so why not. If you don’t play and try, you can never ‘get good’. Sitting on a sofa and thinking ‘oh I will never be good enough so I better don’t play’ is a shitty mindset as well. And then twitter drama about ‘free worlds not being elitist’ happened, I’ve become so sick of that.  

Moscow Special. The long-awaited end of the season. Really long-awaited because I felt like every day had 48 hours. I didn’t have special plans for Moscow. I didn’t want win it out as hell, I just wanted everything to end. And it ended. 

the event

party after d1

i remember how to draw

the main scene

turn your main enemies to judges lol

#lifegoals

<3

Despite tons of personal shit happened to me this season, apparently I found myself a better person. i don’t know if this is growing up, I am already 21 and difference between 19 and 21 doesn’t seem too big, though my mind and attitude to some things have noticeably changed.

Got rid of fake elitism, as it was in my early days of competitive and my -most famous year- (2015). I can’t even imagine now but then I thought that competitive is the BEST part we can have about pokemon, and everyone else who likes casual playing or anime are absolute losers and can never be as cool as us. Your dream is completing dex? Breeding a shiny? You love some anime characters and wanna watch fuckin dummies’ anime forever? Uh, dream of becoming a xXxWORLDCHAMPIONxXx just disparages your shitty life goals. I laughed at people i don’t know in person and who didn’t do anything bad to me.

I don’t know what changed my mind in particular. It’s like I just woke up with thoughts “why should I do this”. I saw that people who are not only about competitive can have and reach their own pokemon dreams, they’re valuable too. They can travel not only for competitive. For love to the franchise all of us are fond of. I am sorry for being an asshole :)

Got some skills of loving myself. Yup, y’all might know it was a big problem. Tl,dr: I haven’t a reason to. My only ray of light was being successful enough in vgc and when I wasn’t it became a catastrophe. Bad runs at IC, losses at regionals stages, bad BS sessions? Oh god, i am so shitty, i hate myself - and it was the softest thing I said. It was a mix of hatred and sadness and absolutely wasn’t a great thing to feel.  It cost me a real depression in 2016 - though I didn’t even play that season, it hit me hard. I let it happen, I let myself think and treat the game that way. Now it is slightly better, and it also feels so new. It’s like WOAH you actually may not hate yourself for a loss? In 2015 I had my Nats spot already reserved, but every mediocre regionals stage run made me feel terrible. This season I was fighting for the Worlds (Worlds > Rus Nats) right from the start with no ‘safe options’, I was losing too, but I could cope with that. Though losing is always sad. The difference is in being frustrated and hating yourself for days or week and being frustrated and hating yourself for an evening, and then you’re saying something like enough, it won’t make me better, learning and practice will make me better, so let’s play tomorrow. Pephan helped me out a lot with this. Tons of love to Pephan.

Well, also I reached a dream. When I was 17, I watched 2013 Worlds with excitement, though I understood nothing because I was an OU child. New format? Big event? That was very unfamiliar but holy crap so breathtaking! Two guys were fighting for the honourable title with some beautiful teams and strategies, I felt their drive even when I was so far away. That blew my mind. I told myself that I want to visit Pokemon World Championships too. The long way of getting better started in 2013 and will never end. I won Russian VGC 2014 big event and got closer to my dream. I qualified to Russian National Championships in 2015 and almost made my dream real, finishing 2nd. I got broken and gave up because sometimes it was too hard to keep up. I remembered how I sang lyrics from “Wavin Flag”: ‘when I get older, I will be stronger’. The dream wasn’t dead.  And I tried again. And I did it. The most trivial thing I can say now is do not give up and fight for your dreams, but this is really true!

Every Trainer has a choice To listen to that voice inside. I know the battle may be long, Winners may have come and gone I will carry on! Yeah, this dream will last forever, And this dream will never die, We will rise to meet the challenge every time. (Advanced Challenge) Yeah, this dream keeps us together, This shows that you and I Will be the best that the world's ever seen, Cause we always will follow this dream!

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

Nothing can be perfect in one second. I still have issues with rivalry and with the community, though I wonder how we will do in 2018.

Thanks for reading and, finally I can say it, see you at Worlds!

Shout-outs to: PurpurVGC, Loui, PephanVGC, Elveman, Sergey, Annet Ilvers, unhealthy rivalry and Havkai for making this season amazing.

[bitter-ramblings]

Tw: rape, sexual abuse

Pretty heavy stuff, major viewers discretion advised. 

I’ve been sexually abused for as long as I can remember. Boom, that’s a fucking bombshell.

As with a lot of people who were abused young, my abuser was a family member, my cousin in fact. He’d got only one year on me, but that year was enough. I don’t remember a time when we weren’t playing with each other, every Sunday we’d be locked in the back kitchen after dinner and be left to our own devices. I remember one time we were caught naked covering each other in ink stamps.

Of course, as he got older he learned more and wanted to explore more, and I didn’t know enough that I needed to stop him. Not till I was 11 and received sex education from a shitty video at primary school, prior to that I had no idea about anything. After that, I became a lot more wary, fearful of pregnancy (hadn’t begun menstruating at that time but I was scared all the same). He wanted to have sex properly, but I was scared of the pain, so his answer to that was anal.

In order to alleviate my fear of losing my virginity (an outdated concept I fucking loathe) I broke my own hymen using a fragrance bottle, hurt like a bitch but I didn’t bleed. I kind of felt a surge of pride that no one would ever be able to hurt me like that. By the time we were 16 this behaviour had dwindled practically into nothingness, he visited less and less and we both moved on. He got himself a girlfriend, and I… Was terrified of everyone. I very rarely see him these days, only at family gatherings and then he refuses to be alone with me.

When I was 14 in high school there was a boy I talked to called Carl, again he was a year older than me. Carl was previously in a relationship with my friend Mousey, and he pined over them something terrible and decided that he’d try and worm his way back in by taking advantage of me. Me, being the naive kid that I was. He invited me over to his house to meet his dog, who he punched and abused, he does not deserve a dog so sweet and loving at all.

He’d just come back from holiday and had brought back some absinthe, which I then foolishly drank and it put me on my arse. I remember him pulling me upstairs and pushing me onto the bed. I was unable to speak coherently, so I put my hands over myself. He flipped me over and had his way with my backside. It was quick at least. Afterwards, I staggered to the bathroom and cleaned myself up, he followed me and laughed when he saw he’d made me bleed. He then left me where I was and went downstairs to watch Scrubs. I fucking hate that show. I had to walk home.

I wasn’t sexually active again until I was 18 and going to Reaseheath College, studying to be a zoologist. It strange I used to have ambition, but that was squashed pretty quickly. I wasn’t friends with anyone (had a really bad time, more on that another story), I was just wandering aimlessly around the campus in the cold, trying not to cry because of how fucking miserable I was. I was approached by Dei, a welsh farming student at the college, 1-3 years older than me. He approached me and asked me if I was okay. I was in such a bad place that I actually just tried to sidestep him. He persisted and introduced himself, asking if I needed a friend and somewhere to go. He told me he’d find me later as he had class.

Soon I was invited back to his room and we spent out time together watching Eddsworld and Tomska, at first. He was pursuing a girl called Becky but somehow deluded himself that he thought I liked him. I liked him as a friend, but he’d always say “don’t fall in love with me okay?” And it pissed me off to no end. For someone so interested in someone else he was eager to stick his cock in my mouth. He’d frequently urge me to do things because he wanted to help me ‘learn’. He frequently treated me like a child because of my inexperience and would talk down to me. 

I’d go to his room for a nap, or just to get away from the hell I was already putting up with at college. I started just blanking him out, letting him go about his business, just focusing on the videos. Ironically Darksquidges sex education is one I remember watching. (Funnily enough, Tom Ridgewell, the owner of both Darksquidge and Tomska, his videos are a good coping mechanism for me, both he and Edd from Eddsworld were very dear to me growing up, and I managed to regain joy in watching them.) Dei bit my ear so hard he damaged the cartilage. He never knew when to stop.

At the same time, this was happening I met Tyler, also at Reasheath, also 1-3 years older than me. (Not Tyler Durden, but close.) The first time I ever met Tyler I was in the library doing some work, he approached me and told me I sit funny. He then sat beside me and started telling me his life story of being born in Malaysia and how evil his parents are. He also hated Dei, and was friends with the aforementioned Becky. He told me he wanted to save me from Dei, which I thought was complete bullshit.

After meeting me twice he declared himself my boyfriend. He’d frequently touch me in public, and once I got him off in the library. He’d frequently drag me into the disabled toilets. The first time we went in there, he made me give him a blowjob and he came in my mouth, which I specifically asked him not to do. His cum was gross, and he started doing it regularly. He’d buy me a strawberry YOP as an 'apology’. He told me he loved me and it made me feel sick, but what was worse was that he seemed to genuinely believe that he did.

Once I reported him for assaulting me. Do you know what they said to me? “Are you sure? He’s such a nice boy. Did you lead him on? Maybe you misunderstood.” That made me feel like absolute shit and nothing was ever followed up with it. I eventually left Reaseheath with no qualifications because of all the distress I was in.

When I was 20, I’d gone back to my local college and was once again studying animal management. And I was so happy. It was the first time I was openly trans, and I was accepted and validated by my classmates every day. They were false friends and I couldn’t stand any of them, but they made me feel good about myself. One person, in particular, was a lad named Reece.

We had a lot in common and I liked him, but he wasn’t into guys and was pining after the resident pretty girl of the class. She made it pretty clear he’d got no chance and he took it really hard, I supported him throughout. One time we were watching Full Metal Alchemist brotherhood on his bed and he turned to me and kissed me. I was understandably thrilled and soon had his shirt off. Everything was all well and good as he undressed me, except for the fact that I actually neglected to tell him I don’t have a penis. Him being a straight guy you’d think this would be a good thing but apparently not. He went down on me, but soon just straightened up and announced: “this is wrong.” And stomped away. He actually left the house, leaving me in his bedroom naked. I got dressed and went down, asked his mum to keep an eye on him because “I think I made a mistake” and then walked home. He refused to talk to me or even look at me for the rest of the academic year, and still to his day ignores me if he sees me walking by.

That same year, Tyler was in Stoke and invited me out for drinks, I foolishly agreed because apparently I never fucking learn. I went to Wetherspoons with him and his friend James. They got me drunk, drove me to the local park and they took turns with me. This was the first instance of vaginal penetration via a penis I’d encountered, so by conventional standards, I lost my virginity at the age of 20, in a threesome whilst being guilty as all fuck over Reece.

My asexual pal Mousey got sick of people saying “you can’t be asexual if you’ve never had sex” and I was chosen as tribute. It was quite an honour to be honest, that they trusted me with their body in this way. They came and offered to reciprocate, but I declined the offer. I didn’t want them to do something they’d regret. This happened a few times but they are most definitely comfortable in their asexuality.

For my 21st birthday, I went on a tinder date with someone who became very dear to me. Sex with him was easy and passionate, I wasn’t afraid, I trusted him so easily. What I wasn’t aware of was that he was in a relationship at the time (shit was really fucked up and it’s not my business to go into details or judge), and his having sex with me brought an end to the relationship. He taught me the poly ways and introduced me to his other partners.

I was so happy, I felt included and cared about for the first time. We got together officially after Halloween, with some very passionate hotel sex as a celebration. Things were good, he introduced me to his friends and I went to the pub quiz with them. I felt like I’d found my place. But then as so often happens with me, shit got fucked real quick.

He had to break up with one of his partners due to issues they were having, he got together in a neat little triad (like holy shit they are so cute), but his mental health took a dive so badly, he couldn’t spend any time with me. At that time I was going through some bad shit myself, in fact, I attempted suicide. I started drinking too much and making a nuisance of myself. I didn’t feel appreciated, called him pompous. He always felt he knew best and treated me like a child. Probably because I was acting like it, but I’ve never liked ‘holier than thou’ attitudes. 

I started to feel that he didn’t want me to be part of his world anymore. The invitations to go places with him stopped, the kisses and the murmured 'i love you’s. He outright refused to take me to kink events, “it’s too much for you” “you don’t have to get into kink” without any regard to the fact that I wanted to explore who I am. He labelled me a “blue player” meaning I can't reach orgasm with another person. Maybe that’s true, but I didn’t appreciate him not trying very hard.

Because of my past history, he wouldn’t treat me roughly, he wouldn’t hold me down and take me. I think he choked me twice and that was more to show that he could after I goaded him for being a chicken. He always treated me like I was delicate, and I ended up resenting him for it. The roughest thing he ever did, he did when drunk and can’t remember it. (A lot of the sex we had was when we were drunk, maybe that says something) He held my head and throat fucked me then came on my face… Then fell asleep. And they say romance is dead.

There was one time I really needed him with me, and he physically could not get out of bed to help me, utterly crippled by the weight of his own depression. I didn’t blame him, I know how he feels. That’s when I knew I needed to let him go. He didn’t need me, we couldn’t help each other the way we were now.

I let him go on valentine’s day. I miss the time I used to spend with him, but we weren’t doing each other any favours towards the end, I think I made the right decision for the both of us. He is happy with his partners, and it brings me joy to see them so happy together.

Last time I had sex was January 25th, at a cuddle and play party. There were so many lovely people there and it was such a lovely environment. Curse my shyness. But I did meet up with the two people I’d been most eager to meet. Now that was a good night. Lots of exploration and good times, it was very playful. (Best dick I’ve ever had was attached to a woman) I was fucking baffled when I was asked what I like and how I like it. I was never really given many options previously. But after all was said and done, my mental state just crashed and I froze, I went to sit under a table away from other guests because I was so overwhelmed by everything. Both of them were so understanding, and I managed to talk to a few more people before the night was through.

The thing that fucks me up most in regards to sex is that I can have someone completely at my mercy, pinned under me and begging for me… And then I look down… And I don’t have a penis. The shock and horror I feel is incomparable to anything else. The fact that I will never be able to feel myself sliding into someone and fucking them senseless is honestly something that brings me great distress.

Maybe that’s why I like Doggystyle so much, my eyes are facing forward, I don’t look down and see what I’m missing. It’s such a headfuck to just not see a penis there, I cannot explain the bizarreness of it. Mostly just rambling. At some point, I’ll be doing a post about kinks as I’ve been specifically asked about what they are and where they stem from.

[bushleaguefpl-blog]

ROLLING THUNDER: BUSH LEAGUE HEATS UP THROUGH ROUNDS TWO AND THREE.

If anything, the last two rounds of The Bush have showed managers that no two weeks can be the same. Harrison “Is Don is Good” Kennedy and Ben “sit on my face” Petersen are the two managers alone at the top much to the dislike of the inconsistent fellow managers. MASSIVE scores in round 2 all around the table were snuffed out by a terrible average in week 3. From a BIG statement in Logan’s 105 point scoring thrashing over Brody, to the high score of 64 of Chris and his BBB’s this week, let alone 4 Wildcards dropped - the last two rounds have set the stage for a sensational, theatrical year of The Bush.

Let’s start with the elephant in the room, Logan “Where’s the weekly” McIndoe’s massive, and quite clearly gratifying domination over GW2 and Brody “must.beat.logan.” Felgate. 105 to 64. A waste of a triple captain some may say this early, or the fact that he would have won regardless without it. Nonetheless, a victory where you take the other players chip and shove it up his clack is about as good as it gets. Well played Logan, we’re talking to ourselves as you don’t read these but troll when they’re not done (logic), regardless, well played.

That happiness will last all season with bragging rights no doubt, though Logan’s top dog status didn’t last long. Opting for an Aguero captain let him and many FPL managers down in a controversial draw over the Wolves, ultimately giving Chris “Hayne is our best player kill me” Kennedy and Salah a bit of revenge from last weeks captain battle.

Quiet underachiever since his debut in the Bush, Chris “former Vinny D” Keen has picked up we believe his second TOTW in his teams short history. The Big Booty Bitches, Big, Big Booty Bitches, we want Big Booty Bitches (had to) - scored the highest points in GW3 sitting at 64 to get his season off the mark. Some outstanding selections made hopefully a rise from the dark for Chris.

Historically the Bush is a place for excitement and a lot of the time, excessive excitement (*cough* Brody *cough*). This becomes ever so clear in the case of wildcards. In the past few seasons, many managers have decided to fall on the sword of the early wildcard in fits of frustration and sadness following early week results. This trend hath continued this week; Rowan, Tim, Morgan and Danny all felt the pressure enough to completely change their team ahead of GW3 after tumultuous starts to their campaigns. It only paid off for two teams, leaving Tim and Rowan without a win, without a wildcard and sadly, without hope. The Bush community is here for anyone suffering selection depression, your fellow managers are here for you lads, onwards and upwards.

Rowan “domesticated” Flanagan, a former Bush champ, thought he’d do a cheeky one for the CSKA derby, great tactic, then comes the team selection... absolute trash. Flanagan and his Doumbia’s went from a 67 scoring team to a 31 scoring team with some questionable transfers. For example getting rid of Tripper (22 points last two) for the likes of a three man defence that scored 9. Loyalty to United obviously masked the stupidity of such decisions and fair enough the post wildcard team is good on paper. It just doesn’t justify such drastic decisions this early when the GW2 team wasn’t bad at all. The Dons came through on the back of Liverpool and Captain “safe” Salah, a decision Harry has finally learnt is a smart one after avoiding Salah for 25 Game weeks last year. Don’s are 3/3 so far and may just get his first ever MOTM nomination since the introduction in BUSH 3.

Sitting on top with The Dons is everyone’s fan favourite Ben Petersen. Ben gave it to the critics after ‘easy’ wins against Blake and Chris to go on to beat struggling former champ Brock Lamont. The Mooys struggled up front unlike Harry “tap, tap, tap it in” Kane did not. To make it 4/4, the Bigotes are taking on Kirby’s Loftus-Cheeks which will be no easy task after a strong week from them. Kirby did everyone a favour and silenced James “Posting gifs of city is banter right?” McIndoe this week with a solid win, thank-you kind sir.

“I’ll crack the tonne this week” - Tim Sheehan, before realising he will indeed, not even crack half a tonne.

Tim isn’t mad he’s just disappointed in himself and his team after their performance against The Coach, Danny Cotton. Both managers opted for their wildcard with Danny prevailing sending Tim to the shadow realm (the realm of no wins - ask Riley Guest, he lives there). The real shocker here is that... 3 weeks in, Danny has used his FREE HIT and his WILDCARD. After losing by 2 points in the first round Danny must have been LIVID at his team and went nah fuck this, all chips a go let’s get it. Strange tactics, how many chips left? 32 rounds left? Do the math boys, it doesn’t add up but we’re rooting for you Coach.

Phenomenons happen every now and then in sport, much to the favour of punters (you know who you are), sometimes they pay off, sometimes you’re sitting there wondering why you’ve spent your last dollar on a Japanese badminton heat. Nobody could have predicted Mitch “no.1 ticket holder to Rowan’s live show ‘If there’s grass on the pitch play cricket’” Keen, who this week pulled off a SECOND draw in a row. Frustrating, though competitive, if he gets a third he should 100% buy a lottery ticket.

It’s not very often in the Bush that a risk pays off dividends. It’s what keeps us at the times in business...reporting on the failure in a terrific fashion. This week however the exception has been filed. Take a bow Mr. Blake “I Shit You Not” Hands for what is the managerial manoeuvre of the decade. A -16 POINT HIT LEADING TO A “GOOD OLD FASHIONED GEORGE W”. Mr Hands said it best in the post match presser saying “it’s like playing with 10 men against Wolves and still winning the game”. We bow to you sir for your brilliant win and for defying the system during a week where early wildcards are the object of criticism. Congratulations...we’re getting used to this winner in our midst (Even if he’s a fucking choker). Kudos. 

A congratulations is in order to Morgan Witts and the Hurrikanes - a very first Bush win. A momentous occasion for any manager and one that will live with him forever. A win over the GC tigers thanks to solid selections in defence and dark horse Pereyra has him on the board and now optimistic with what’s to come. He joins 11 other teams on 3 points in what we like to call the ‘Danger Zone’. A win here would catapult any team into mid table success, a loss would hurt them tremendously.

Speaking of the Daaaanger Zooooone (Sung like Archer, if you don’t get it i hate you), let’s take a look at the members and their situations.

Brody - GW1, got TOTW. Since then used Triple Captain and lost twice.

Madde - Won his first with big score, lost two in a row

Reid - Finally sorted his bench and has won first game of season.

Brock - Has 1 win 2 losses, only win against wooden spooner Guy.

David - First win of the season this week.

Max - 1 from 3, questionable captaincy to only united players so far...

Blake - Very lucky to get a win this week, 1/3 and one of lowest scoring starts in Bush history.

Bush GW4 is underway this weekend lads - go make bad decisions and most of all, stay classy.

[lodelss]

ACLU: The Law Enforcement Violence Trump Won’t Talk About

The Law Enforcement Violence Trump Won’t Talk About

Day after day, night after night, protesters have been taking to the streets since the police killing of George Floyd. Led by local Black activists and grassroots groups, they’re chanting, singing, shouting, kneeling, marching, and even laying on the ground to demand justice for the many Black lives that have been taken by police. Everyone — from parents, grandparents, kids, and more — are showing up. But Donald Trump from day one has expressed extreme hostility towards the Black Lives Matter movement. He has called on NFL owners to retaliate against players who dared to kneel in protest, said it was “terrible” to ask why Black Americans are still dying at the hands of law enforcement in this country, compared police killing and injuring Black people to golfers who “choke,” and has called for law enforcement to “dominate” protesters demanding that our legal system value Black lives. He has even encouraged police to abuse people in their custody. As the movement and calls for change gain broader support from more Americans and people around the world, protesters are being met by even more brutality — in many cases by the same police departments whose racism and brutality they are protesting. Police and federal agents are spreading fear and panic in communities, threatening lives, and relentlessly attacking people simply exercising their First Amendment right to protest police racism and brutality. Law enforcement at all levels haven’t even spared U.S. military veterans, journalists, legal observers, and medics. This assault on the First Amendment has only escalated tensions, and emboldened white supremacists to spread terror and hate on our streets. The ACLU is taking to the streets, legislatures and courts nationwide to demand an end to police violence and accountability for rights violations. Here is just a partial running list of federal and local law enforcement abuses against individuals exercising their First Amendment rights in Portland, Oregon:

Federal agents with the U.S. Marshals Service brutally attacked and gassed U.S. Navy veteran Christopher David, who went to the protest to oppose police brutality and ask federal agents why they weren’t upholding their oath to the Constitution. The ACLU of Oregon is now suing on his behalf.

https://twitter.com/ACLU/statuses/1299896621711454208

Unidentified federal agents in military-style uniforms abducted ACLU of Oregon client Mark Pettibone from a sidewalk, then forced him into an unmarked minivan and drove him away for no apparent reason. The agents were later identified as belonging to Trump’s Department of Homeland Security. Pettibone explains how he “still [hasn’t] fully come to terms with what it means that I was kidnapped by [his] government.”

DHS officers violently attacked Nichol Denison, a U.S. Air Force veteran and member of the Portland “Wall of Moms,” while she was attending a Black Lives Matter protest. Without any warning, officers began launching cans of tear gas at her and other women beside her through gaps in the fence. Denison was hit repeatedly and was then struck far more forcefully in the head by a tear gas cannister that appeared to have been thrown from in front of her. She suffered a three-inch gash that was gushing blood, had to be taken to the VA hospital, where she received 11 stitches.

Without warning and for no reason whatsoever, federal officers shot James McNulty, who was attending a protest for the first time, four times: three times with rubber bullets and one time with a pepper ball. At the emergency room, McNulty learned that one of the munitions that struck him in the back had not only gone through his clothes, but pieced his skin, fat layer, and at least one layer of muscle.

James McNulty sustains deep wound after federal officers fire munitions at him at a protest in Portland, Oregon.

Maureen Healy was attending a Black Lives Matter protest with her child when, without warning, federal officers began firing flash bangs, impact munitions, and tear gas cannisters into the crowd. Healy began to turn and run, but was hit in the head with a projectile that felt metallic and the size of a small can. She started bleeding profusely and called for help. While some volunteer medics attended to her injuries, federal officers continued to fire tear gas into the area, forcing them all to move.

Federal officers shot Donovan LaBella, a 26-year-old protester, in the head with impact munitions. At the time LaBella was shot, he was standing across the street from the Hatfield Courthouse protesting while holding a music speaker above his head. He suffered severe injuries, arriving at the hospital in critical condition with a skull fracture. He subsequently underwent facial reconstruction surgery for his injuries. 

Mac Smiff was attending a Black Lives Matter protest when federal officers shot him on the right side of his face with an indelible hard-cap paintball, just below the line of his helmet and just above a face mask he was wearing. The impact of the shot and resulting shock caused Smiff to fall to the ground. Smiff was partly blinded by the paint in his face and had a large contusion on his head. He received treatment from the volunteer medics, who told him that he may have suffered a concussion. 

Duston Obermeyer, a decorated USMC veteran with combat experience in Iraq and Afghanistan and a co-founder of the “Wall of Vets,” was attending the Portland protests for the first time when, for no reason, a federal officer tried to strike Obermeyer. An officer pointed an automatic weapon in Obermeyer’s face while another officer shot him at point-blank range with an orange chemical irritant. One of the officers also struck Obermeyer in the face and chest with a baton. The gas was severely debilitating, and it took Duston days to recover from the gassing.

Portland police tear-gassed reporters Alex Zielinski and Blair Stenvick of the Portland Mercury, many other journalists and legal observers, and physically assaulted and arrested KBOO reporter Cory Elia, even though he identified himself as press.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/im0l3HuYgNw

Police hit freelance journalist Sergio Olmos with a truncheon and threatened to tear gas him because he was recording them. His press pass was clearly visible. Police also attacked journalist Donovan Farley with a wooden bat and sprayed him in the face with tear gas or pepper spray while he was trying to walk away from them. He had identified himself as press and was filming several police officers kneeling on a protester’s neck, Derek Chauvin-style. 

Portland police slammed reporter Beth Nakamura of The Oregonian in the back with a truncheon. She had her hands up, press pass in hand, and was saying “press, press.” The officer responded: “I don’t give a fuck.” The same day, police ordered reporter Zane Sparling of The Portland Tribune to leave an area where they were enforcing a dispersal order against protesters. Sparling responded that he was media. The officer responded: “I don’t give a shit! Go!” He then shoved Sparling into a wall, and another officer shot a crowd-control munition at his heel.

When the police noticed journalist Brian Conley using his camera to record their action, officers launched at least one flash-bang grenade directly at him. He was nowhere near any protesters and there was no other target at which the police could have been aiming. The police later charged at him after telling him that it did not matter if he was media. Conley fell over while running away and only narrowly avoided a traumatic head injury.

Portland police repeatedly sprayed large groups of protesters with tear gas from all sides in what is known as a “kettling” or “killbox” military strategy. Killboxing protesters cannot disperse them. Its sole purpose is to inflict pain and suffering.

Portland police have bull-rushed crowds of people, shoving protesters to the ground, and hitting them with clubs and other instruments. They continue to do this night-after-night.

https://twitter.com/MrOlmos/statuses/1300682200082345985

Federal agents too have been deliberately attacking journalists and legal observers at protests, even after a court issued a temporary restraining order barring them from such unconstitutional attacks. A federal agent shot reporter Jonathan Levinson while he was trying to take a photo. As Levinson looked back and forth between his camera and the agent, trying to focus his lens, he saw the agent raise his weapon, deliberately point it at him, and fire several rounds. Levinson was wearing an OPB press pass with his name, his photograph, the OPB logo, and the word “MEDIA.” He was also wearing a helmet that said “PRESS” in large letters on the front and back and carrying two professional cameras with large, bulky lenses. 

A federal agent also shot journalist Brian Conley when he was trying to video an arrest. Conley yelled that he was press, over and over. Suddenly, without warning, federal agents shot him multiple times with impact munitions in his chest and his foot. An agent also threw a tear-gas canister directly at Conley, where it exploded above his head.  He was carrying a large Micro Four Thirds camera with a telephoto lens and external 20W LED light mounted on it and was wearing a photographer’s vest that said “PRESS” on it as well as a helmet that said “PRESS.” 

Federal agents shot clearly-marked reporter Rebecca Ellis and separately prevented her from documenting their dispersal of protesters. 

Federal agents shot clearly-marked legal observer Haley Nicholson in her chest, just above her heart, from four feet away. Impact munitions should not be used at distances of less than 15 feet or above the waist. 

Federal agents deliberately sprayed toxic chemicals into the faces of multiple clearly-marked legal observers, including Bruce Knivlia and Kat Mahoney, at point blank range. They were all clearly identified in blue ACLU vests and green NLG hats. They also shot photojournalist Kathryn Elsesser, who was also clearly marked with “PRESS” on her helmet. 

Daniel Hollis, a videographer for VICE News, was wearing a helmet with the word “PRESS” on it and operating large, professional video-recording equipment when federal agents launched a barrage of munitions at Hollis and the members of the press around him, hitting Hollis near his groin and in his lower back. 

Federal agents and Portland police have also brutally attacked protest medics treating injured protesters and individuals. ACLU of Oregon clients Christopher Wise, Savannah Guest, and others have suffered numerous injuries from law enforcement deliberately firing rubber bullets, tear-gas, pepper spray, batons, and flash bangs at protest medics providing aid.

https://twitter.com/ACLU/statuses/1287019018147237891

We’re witnessing similarly alarming and dangerous tactics being deployed in Kenosha, Wisconsin as people take to the streets to demand accountability and transformational change within the police and sheriff’s departments. This comes after police attempted to murder Jacob Blake by shooting him seven times in the back, fraternized with heavily-armed white supremacist militias during protests, and then let a white man who shot and killed two protesters walk away from the scene of the shooting.  There are multiple reports of law enforcement in unmarked vehicles with tinted windows and officers making arrests in Kenosha without identifying themselves or wearing insignia to identify their law enforcement agency. Kenosha police have also indiscriminately fired chemical and other weapons, including tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, and pepper balls at protesters. We’re also receiving reports of protesters being arrested for violating curfew, and having possessions, like their cell phones, confiscated and not returned to them.  Notably, all of this is taking place in a county that has a history of severe racial disparities in policing; Black people in Kenosha County are 6.9 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white people — almost double the national racial disparity in such arrests.

This is a fight for our democracy. The answer to protests over police brutality cannot be more brutality. We are unleashing the full firepower of the ACLU to defend our rights — in Portland, in Kenosha, and nationwide. We won’t be silenced.

Published September 2, 2020 at 12:59AM via ACLU https://ift.tt/34T4MZe from Blogger https://ift.tt/2DiHG2M via IFTTT