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anne-i-write · 3 years

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moriarty the patriot headcannons pt. 1

| requested by anon: Can you write about all male characters in moriarty has a same look of their children and hpw many children they want? |

william x reader; louis x reader; albert x reader; sebastian x reader; fred x reader

word count: 2397

pt. 2: 221b boys

a/n: I DONT KNOW WHY I DIDNT WRITE THIS EARLIER IM SO SORRY THIS REQUEST HAS LITERALLY BEEN IN MY INBOX FOR SO LONG I AM SO SORRY I HOPE YOU ENJOY THIS

william: 487 words

with his whole plan to clean the world of the filthy nobles, william never really stopped to think about having children

well, until he met you

you both were in town one day and he saw you fondly watching a child speak with her mother

“i think two children would be nice”

“i didn’t even ask”

“i know, but the look you gave that mother was telling enough”

n e ways he is a simp and he did eventually give you what you wanted

fast forward a few years, you have two children: a boy and a girl

and they look exactly like their father

like,, it lowkey pains you how much they physically take after their father

you wanted to be like “oh they have your personality, but they look just like me!”

granted, your son took after you in an emotional sense but your daughter was a daddy’s girl through and through

like she looks like him, she acts like him, speaks like him, she even EATS like him

ok but the men w your children

fred is a freaking sweetheart ok

like he’ll watch over the kids when no one has the time and they love him too so they’ll help out in the garden which you are SO thankful for

tbh they only like uncle albert bc he brings them lil trinkets from when he gets back from london LMAO

louis doesn’t show it, but he absolutely adores your children and makes extra snacks for them at tea time

you caught onto this at one point bc for some REASON your kids would not stop bouncing off of the walls before bed and they told you uncle louis gave them chocolate

and sebastian loves messing w your kids bc,,, sebastian

but he accidentally made your son cry ONCE and he was at the mercy of every adult in the moriarty estate including the boy’s younger sister

needless to say, he watched his actions and words around your children after that

now, william

i’m just gonna say this straight out: most of the men never really thought about having kids (save john and albert)

but when you finally had kids, william had a different outlook on life

like fr,, this man works overtime now trying to get rid of the filth that is called nobles

he doesn’t want his kids to be raised in a world where just because you have more money than another means you get to look down on them

you still instill in them those good morals ofc

he also tries to be very present in their lives since he and his brother were raised as orphans

when he was younger, he didn’t mind it all much

but now that he had this small family and a brighter future, he did everything in his power to make sure they’re happy and grow up in a cleaner and kinder world

louis: 320 words

it took you a week to get him to at LEAST humor you

“if you could, how many kids do you want?”

“none”

like, this guy is so dedicated to his brother and his cause it is a WONDER you somehow wormed your way into his heart

but you did and honestly, the brothers are actually very happy that you’re with them

william especially

louis rarely emotes but when you came into their lives, you got louis pissed at one point and everyone was like,,,, wtf?? he has emotions???

anyways, his answer is one kid LMAO

and when you get that one kid, he looks just like louis

yall already KNOW that he’s ready to die for that child as soon as louis holds him in his arms

the only kid sebastian wouldnt even try to mess with

he can deal with william’s albert’s or fred’s kids but louis lowkey intimidates him so he’s as nice as he can be

that being said, louis teaches his kid how to properly handle stuff around the house

you want to cry bc ur son is just so??? the little kid just loves helping out no matter how small the task and he’s just so cute it hurts

even sebastian’s kinda like,, “aight he’s the only kid i will tolerate”

louis grew up with only his brothers so he also wants to give his son a shot at a normal family

is actually aware at how he thinks he’s indispensable for william’s cause and he doesn’t want his son to end up like him

he also teaches his son some badass fighting moves

oh and louis smiles a lot more too

cried bc his son saw the scar he got on his cheek, rubbed some dirt on his lil face and said “i have daddy’s cool scar now”

all in all his son is the best thing to happen to all of you

albert: 505 words

same as louis in the fact that it takes him a week to answer

“you know you haven’t even answered my question”

“i’m sorry, what did you say?”

“how many kids do you want?”

genuinely takes time to ponder that question

he hadn’t thought of that since his family adopted william and louis

but with you?

“i think two darling girls who take after their mother is enough for me”

pls he’d be so sweet 🥺🥺🥺

you two end up having a girl and a boy, who look just like their father

and tbh, you’re not even mad

you love them so much so when albert comes back north, the three of you are ecstatic

the happiness was short lived for albert tho

he found his son spending time with william and there’s nothing bad right????

“where’s your sister?”

“she’s with mr. moran”

his heart DROPPED

out of all the people in the manor

HIM

he sees the two running around the garden

it all happened as soon as albert’s daughter went up to sebastian and said “you’re very pretty! you’re my knight now!”

he decided to “adopt” the little girl and now he’s lowkey whipped

you found albert staring at sebastian playing with his daughter and updated him about everything going on

“but him??”

“he’s just a big softie for her let it go”

isn’t really surprised when he finds out they can fight a little

actually glad that they can hold their own, God forbid anything happens to them

otherwise mi6 has to deal w family matters lmao

“albert, she only tripped”

“you shouldve seen the fear in her eyes as she fell”

“IT WAS A STRAY COBBLESTONE”

would raise hell if anyone even THOUGHT ill of his kids

william and louis are the doting uncles

william more so than louis bc your kids have never seen louis smile

now they’re on a mission to make uncle louis smile

louis was on child duty one day and they managed to slip away

omyGOD he was stressed but also,, extremely worried

so when he found them he had the most genuine smile on his face

your daughter was like (・∀・)

she loves uncle louis

ofc your son adores his dad like,,, who else wouldn't feel awesome at the age of 10 if you found out your dad was a high ranking general

feels superior to sebastian bc of his dad

lmao this 4’5 kid thinks he can rule sebastian for some odd reason

the house is always dirty bc him and sebastian always prank each other

your daughter is trying to catch a butterfly but she can’t so fred helps

instantly loves fred

“is that what heartbreak is”

“i guess that’s what happens when you try to get close to my kids colonel”

albert is kind of afraid of turning into his dad but he has you and everyone else to remind him that: no you are not your father, you are so much better than him

loves your family with his entire being

sebastian: 844 words

“i see you looking at those kids and the answer is none”

lmao you’ll get so pouty around him bc you want kids dammit

that and he spoils you to no end so that's why you’re pouty lol

“fine we’ll only do one kid and bc one kid is all i can tolerate”

bruh

this man gives you three in four years LMFAO

two boys a year apart and a girl in the fourth year

you wanted to smack sebastian

when the two boys grew up, it was obvious they were already taking after their father in the physical sense

it was terrifying

they genuinely look like mini sebastians and you know everyone in the manor is afraid that you two birthed satan

and the satan was your eldest one

he’s just a feral sebastian moran in a tiny body

your second son, god bless him, looked just like his father but with fred’s temperament

and see, you were fine with your sons looking like their father

it was FINE right

you prayed to God that your third child would have at least some physical resemblance to you

your daughter was birthed, she grew up

and you cried

“HOW DO THEY ALL LOOK LIKE YOU”

“i’ve got some strong genetics, baby”

you sulk for a lil bit

but you accept it anyway because you love your goddamn kids

thankfully, your second and youngest child are both soft spoken and it's only your husband and his tiny clone bringing hell to earth

smacking sebastian bc all of your children suddenly started swearing up a storm at each other

“WHYD YOU HIT ME”

“YOURE THE ONLY ONE WHO SWEARS AROUND THE KIDS”

finally sitting down and trying to convince them to stop swearing

“father does it!”

“your father’s stupid”

speaking of your daughter

she’s his little princess and no he will not take criticism

spoils her more than he spoils you

did she glance at a toy at a passing store?

he buys more toys than he should from said store

you have to physically hide some of his money bc there is only so much you can buy

and her older brothers are so caring you want to sob

if a person accidentally shoved her over bc she was tiny and they couldn’t see her

oh boy

get ready to restrain them like chihuahuas

“little sister will be protected at all costs”

since his second son is so different from him, sebastian actively makes time to talk about what the little boy is doing and what he’s getting from it

doesn’t want to be pushy and suffocating like his dad was so when his younger kid does want to be left alone to his devices, sebastian does so

but honestly loves that your second son is so literate

lddhsajdsfk what yall dont know is that they’re all in cahoots

kinda funny to see them all together bc they all take after their father so much it's like having three tiny sebastians go around town

anyways,,,, yall know the promised neverland right

you got ray, norman, and emma

granted one of them wasn’t as smart as ray but he definitely knew what stealth was

regular sibling rivalry was still a thing but if they could smell the pudding from the kitchen, they know they have to work together

sebastian caught his eldest smuggling biscuits into a small bag

he had half a mind to scold him

but then he ended up giving tips TO ALL HIS CHILDREN on how not to get caught next time—

bc of this they beg him to tell them some stories from afghanistan bc “there’s no way a man as old as dad knows this many stealth tactics”

louis is so fed up lmao

albert is in london most of the time so he just thanks the lord that he doesn’t have to deal w the propaganda that sebastian feeds his children about how “mr. albert is a bad man”

william is fine w it as long as they don’t trash the library

your younger ones love the library so they would cry at the thought of one of the books losing any of the pages

your second and your daughter are definitely the moriartys’ favorites

they don’t show it, but you just KNOW

your eldest could care less about that though

as long as you and his father still love him

and of course you both do

and fred is definitely your youngers favorite

they like to hang out in the garden

ok they still fight all the time though

just because your second child is soft spoken doesn't mean he’s afraid to throw hands

their sister likes to join in for the hell of it

but if someone wrongs any of the children

just because the younger ones are the moriartys’ favorite, doesn’t mean that they’re not gonna hunt someone down if they even think about trying to hurt the eldest too

yeah,,, good luck to them and their families

they got the entire moriarty estate coming after them

fred: 241 words

cmon yall are like,, young

but you did ask him bc you were curious if he thought about it

he wants one

and when yall do have the kid, you guys actually do have one kid and its a girl

since you both are young, you can immediately see a resemblance between her and her father

everyone who meets her would die for her

ABSOLUTE CUTIE

especially when she walks around the garden w her hand in her dad’s and he’s showing her all the plants and telling her how to take care of them

needless to say she grows up loving plants

any type of plant

the boys love giving her flowers or anything from bc she has the biggest smile every single time

no matter if it’s just a single rose or a rock

this was found out one time when sebastian gave her a rock bc everyone else had given her like,, two roses each

was afraid she was gonna cry

“thank you so much mr. moran! i will treasure this until i get old!”

she was like 4 at the time

and had the widest smile you’ve ever seen on her

guys u don’t understand she smiles a lot but this was like,, genuine happiness

but everyone was just,, i will destroy the world and myself if anything happens to her

fr it’s just sunshines and rainbows every single time she’s around

everyone just loves her ok

moriarty the patriot general taglist: @zoehanji

#moriarty the patriot #moriarty the patriot x reader #yuukoku no moriarty #yuukoku no moriarty x reader #william james moriarty #william moriarty #william james moriarty x reader #william moriarty x reader #louis james moriarty #louis moriarty #louis james moriarty x reader #louis moriarty x reader #albert james moriarty #albert moriarty #albert james moriarty x reader #albert moriarty x reader #sebastian moran #sebastian moran x reader #fred porlock

2K notes · View notes

cooloddball · 3 years

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JIB9 (JIBCON, 2018) ANYALYSIS-PART 1

I never know how to begin these things so let’s just dive in.

Jensen and Misha enter the stage as Alex is leaving. Jensen commends Alex and Misha whistles and Jensen says don’t hurt my ears or something. And so it begin. Misha says he regretted it [whistling] immediately.

I’m hard of hearing you know why because I whistled. This joke didn’t land Misha. Sorry.

Jensen says “Hey” like he wants to say something to the audience but Misha does this weird thing where he runs his index finger down his nose and touches his chin.

I think this was Misha trying to communicate his disappointment that Jensen didn’t get the joke. He wanted him to get the joke. Misha e tries to find his seat so he could sit but Jensen catches on that Misha needs him so he says, “Hey what? I’m sorry I didn’t hear you.” Aww :)

Misha leans his ear closer to Jensen and says, and Jensen leans even closer and they have this back and forth banter about not hearing what the other is saying.

To mention something personal, I am usually very uncomfortable when people lean into me, I like my personal space unless it’s someone I’m really close to and even then not always will be with them getting up close and personal.. They seem okay with it so good for them I guess. Personal space who?

“I don’t understand your accent” Misha says. I don’t know if this is an inside joke because Jensen says “shut up,” playfully and they sit down.

Jensen applauds Alex and Misha whistles again and Jensen has to look away faux disappointed because they just talked about whistling. Misha!!! Stop being naughty.

Jensen even rubs his ears to show that he can’t hear properly. LOL.

That’s like super loud dude.

I actually find it really weird when Misha and Jensen call each other dude. It sounds unnatural because Jensen often calls other men-pal, bud, or man and Misha usually uses people’s names or says my friend so and so. So maybe this is what they call each other? I know when I talk to my bf or my friends I call them dude (gn) especially when I’m shocked about something. So, it’s not a biggie. Just noting this because they do this a lot with each other.

Misha does this super cute shoulder shrug with the biggest grin on his face. How can a grown ass man be that adorable. I don’t know how he does it but well he did it and it’s adorable. No wonder Jensen wants to put him in his pocket and take him home.

“I’m compensating.” And he looks at Jensen with this shit eating grin on his face as if challenging him and it’s like Jensen looks like he can’t breathe for a second it was literally three seconds.

“[compensating] For a lot of things that’s wow.” Jensen says. Misha keeps grinning. Of course Jensen would know what Misha is compensating for wouldn’t he?

Should we talk about Alex?” Jensen asks looking at Misha.

Loudly “Yeah.”

“No I don’t think so.”

What did you ask how was the pantheon?

Jesus I love their madness. They play off each other so well.

They say they are working on teaching alex to talk about inappropriate things. Side note: It’s funny though because Alex looks like their love child. He looks like Misha, and to some extent Jensen, his hair, sense of style and even the way he carries himself is all Jensen. So weird. What if –What if---nvm.

Jensen mentions he remembers his first season of spn. Misha looks at Jensen and says no you don’t [remember] and Jensen agrees that he doesn’t. Yes finish each other’s sentences why don’t you? He says he doesn’t remember that far back and Misha has this far away look as if he is trying to remember something and starts laughing and Jensen has this smirk on his face. IDK what is going on but these are moments I wish I could read minds.

The way Jensen is looking at Misha though.

So Misha mentions how Jared pranked Alex during the tattoo scene of s13x02. The moment Misha mentions Jared, Jensen stops smiling.

Knowing what we know now about the fallout I want to mention something. When Misha talks about Jared and his prank on Alex Jensen doesn’t seem too enthusiastic about that. Hmm and he circles back to talk about Alex then he calls Jared a toddler? But Misha makes it sound like Jensen was referring to Alex by saying easy prey .

Misha shows the face Alex makes when they are on set together because of the pranks and the jokes.

Jensen adds, “Do you know how many times I’ve seen you do that?”+ Jensen is so excited. I mean anyone who says this is PR then they are crazy. You can’t fake emotions like that no matter how good of an actor you are.

‘The way Jensen calls Misha ‘this one’ It sounds so couply. Like when one half of a couple says, “this one is always a crying mess when we watch the notebook” or something akin to that. Any that’s just how I interpreted it, I could be wrong.

And this is how Misha is looking at Jensen when he says “this one”

That moment when Misha touches the back of Jensen’s neck and Jensen touches his thigh and they think it’s too gay because because Jensen acts like he just touched dirt and Misha brushes off his thigh and smells it. Now that’s acting.

Jensen checks Misha out (he specifically looks at Misha’s arms) and then asks “how’re you doing bud?”

Misha says good and that cringe moment about clothes sharing starts and oh I can’t look…okay I had to look because cringe. But the way Jensen is looking at Misha is giving me the courage to and also I had to for the sake of this analysis I had to look.

“This morning Jensen was like, ‘hey, here’s that shirt you wanna borrow that shirt to wear to the convention today and I was like ‘no dude I’m not wearing your shirt to the convention to the convention’ and he’s [Jensen] like don’t worry it still has tags on it it’s fine. And I’m like no thanks , I’m not gonna wear your fucking shirt to the convention. And then at lunch I spilled salad dressing all over my shirt like sweet so thanks for the shirt.”

The whole time Misha is telling the story he’s not looking at Jensen he’s looking at the crowd. Jensen on the other hand is checking Misha out while biting his bottom lip. There’s a lot to unpack here.

Jensen: ‘I knew. Umm..”

Misha: “You are like Misha didn’t bring his bib today so…”

Jensen: “He didn’t bring his bib? We are probably having you know some pretty----no I was literally have a shirt that I brought that…cause I try to wear something new for every time there are pictures being taken of me just cause that’s the culture we live in now…”

Interrupting moose enters.

*I will do a comprehensive analysis on the clothes sharing confessions, lies and half truths in another post. Boy (gn) do I have tea.”

I think when Jared is giving Jensen the balloons Jensen asks him if Daniela or someone else sent him to join them but I think he came of his own volition.

Jared is asking Jensen to untie a balloon for him but Jensen doesn’t look too thrilled

Misha must’ve noticed the tension between those two so he asks, “how good a knot did you tie?”

Jensen’s like, “You know what? I tie a knot that a professional knows how to tie.” Okay kinky, tell us more about knots Jensen. (Sorry for this but knowing the A/B/O or rather the Omegaverse was started because of Jensen and now he’s talking about tying a knot and…you know what nvm)

Misha pretends that what Jensen is saying is sus so he and Jared have a back and forth wondering what Jensen is talking about as Jensen unties the balloons. Yeah sure Misha like he hasn’t tied …you know what? This is getting uncomfortable even for me. Can we move on?

But Jensen won’t let me move on because he’s like, “seriously that’s how you tie a knot.” Of course you’d know sir

Jared adds, “Or it’s not” can someone shut this man up, please.

Jensen doesn’t like his friend’s joke and he has something to say about it, “Did he have to join us?” Was this a joke? Was it serious? Who knows but recent events seem to suggest that he might’ve been serious but made it look like a joke.

Jared asks for one balloon and Misha tries to reach for one but Jensen keeps pulling them away so Misha can’t reach. This is so playful and adorable. Misha snags one finally then gives it to Jared. One flies away and he tries to reach for it but he’s not tall enough.

“Do you want some help?” Jared asks and laughs then Misha gives him the finger.

Jensen gets grumpy after Daniela brings Misha a colourless balloon so he hits it with his microphone then he hits his and sits on it and pops it. Fuck that was hot for some weird reason. I could watch him pop balloons all day.

Misha and Jared’s reaction when Jensen sits on the balloon.

Misha tries Miserably to pop his, Jared can’t look, Jensen is still grumpy but the more Misha struggles the happier Jensen gets and he even manages a smile.

This was hilarious though. Their face journeys.

Jared brings a watermelon and gives it to Misha but Jensen slaps it out of his hands and shows he doesn’t want him to do it from the way he’s waving his hand.

The only thing Jensen wants Misha to wrap his legs around is his waist, or his neck or shoulders or whatever. I don’t know which method of wrestling they prefer, I’m not a professional wrestler I mean I’ve watched WWE a few times but-

Jensen seems happy, I don’t know what Misha says to him before he sits but Jensen seems okay until…

Jared hands Misha the pink balloon holder and says, “You gonna want this for later,”

Misha doesn’t look too happy about it either but he’s always a good sport. Poor guy, so he plays a long and looks at the holder which interestingly is pink and phallic. I know Jared was joking and yeah the joke wasn’t that funny but Jensen is super pissed because he asks, “Is he?” looking at the balloon holder.

Jesus Jensen wtf? But I honestly understand him, I mean why would Misha need that weird cheap plastic thing when there was the real thing waiting someone in a pair of Levis.

Jensen says, “well… some parts of this” I can’t quite make out what he says.

Misha tries to make it a light moment by saying it looks like something horrible happened and that gets Jensen to laugh and then Misha bends over to uh..to drop the melon and the phallic object and Jensen’s eyes shoot right down the citrusy-juicy stone fruit goodness. He catches himself looks away and then looks at the crowd while chewing on his bottom lip.

Okay sexual jokes are fun but not every time Jared. I mean c’mon, not everything is a gay sex joke. This is the one thing that sells him out as a straight dude. He makes way too many gay sex jokes it’s not even funny.

They have this weird back and forth about Jared having some notes. Argh. It’s weird. It’s like they are fighting. You see how girls fight and act like like they aren’t fighting but you can sense the seething anger in the undertones of their voices? That’s the vibe I get here. Even Misha is confused because he keeps looking between the two wondering why notes are so important of a discussion that warrants a back and forth. Or maybe it’s just me. IDK.

Misha has to jump in and save the day “He’s [Jared] is just looking through for pictures] Misha explaining to Jensen why Jared has to read the script forty times while Jensen only reads it once. WTF is going on boys? You were doing so well before and now things seem totally awkward *cough*fallout*cough*

Jensen looks totally done like he wants to be anywhere but here, seriously look at him.

It gets so awkward so much so that Misha has to prompt a fan to ask a question. As I said earlier, no one is such a great actor to fake emotions. Jensen keeps proving my theory. Something was going on with j/2 that day and no matter how hard they tried to mask it, it came out and it wasn’t pretty. Then again, maybe it’s just me and nothing was going on.

A fan asks how they like stories to end and before he can answer, Misha quickly glances at Jensen then goes ahead and explains how he likes the story to leave him on a cliffhanger.

Misha has barely finished talking before Jensen chimes in with a “I Do NOT!” Look at Jared’s and Misha’s faces. Something was clearly going on and I think it had something to do with the show because Jensen didn’t seem okay since Jared came on stage. He says how he wants a finality to things otherwise jerks. They were clearly talking about the show, Jensen, for a good actor you are acting really weird. It is about the show because he says, “we are just dead” Something very weird was going on. Maybe at this time they already had had their meeting with TPTB in LA and he was told to take it or leave it and Jared and Kripke didn’t even hear him out. My poor baby, Do all the spin offs King and you should star in all of them like you deserve.

He even says that spn dying is not a finality. He looks super pissed. What did these people (Jared and tptb) do to him? They broke him. He was doing so well.

Luckily a fan asks them if they can dance so Jensen goes to the wheel and Misha gets up. I think he knows Jensen is angry and he has to try to make his man happy the best way he can. Jared is suffering from second hand embarrassment as am I. Jared can’t look, same Jared this is so cringe. But Jensen can’t help himself, as he is coming back from spinning the wheel he checks out Misha’s citrusy-juicy goodness again 🍑

Misha please stop. I love you but this is embarrassing. Okay so let me look at Jensen instead. He looks like those gentlemen waiting for the debutantes at a debutante ball because of the way he’s standing looking at Misha dance. Subtle sir. Very subtle. I mean if my friend was dancing like that I’d be laughing at them not watching longingly. Just saying, but that’s just me.

The way Misha looks at Jensen and starts rolling his hips. Sirs, can you not do your mating dance in public? There are children in the audience.

Even the way Jensen cues in the music so he can dance looks like he’s in the Victorian era asking the music master to play the song he asked to be cued in so he could dance with his sweetheart or something. Am I going crazy? I’m going crazy.

The whole dancing scene was just cringe.

Mish explaining what Castiel does when the boys go to sleep

Hold on, when Jensen asks what Castiel does when the Sam and Dean are asleep in their respective bedrooms, he made sure to emphasize respective bedrooms and we all know the reason why. Stay speaking facts king.

Anyway, when he asks Misha to demonstrate for us what Cas does, did he expect that Cas stands there peeping into Dean’s room and wanks or what did he expect? Honestly I’m just curious, what did he want Misha to demonstrate exactly.

Then he gets up to demonstrate it himself .

When Misha says that the episode will be called ‘I’ll just wait here ten” Jensen unicorn laughs and when he realizes he was laughing to hard at Misha’s joke he says, ”I don’t get it.” Yeah sure Jensen it was clear from how hard you laughing to the point where we could see your tonsils that you didn’t get it. Good one. Misha maintains a serious face and even shakes his head.

A fan asks Misha what Castiel would have in his room. Misha says just a bunch of catnip. I don’t know what is so funny again that it warrants Jensen to hide his face because he’s trying not to laugh too hard. Does the word catnip or Cas being a cat mean something to you? Is it because Misha is cute like a kitten? Do love to rub his tum and hear him purr? Does he rub his nose along your beard like a cat would? What is so funny?

Then Jensen adds, “and kitty litter.” So adorable. I want in on the inside joke.

Misha says that he would have a poster of a cat hanging from a tree that says, “Hey it’s Monday” and Jensen laughs so hard. Then Jensen makes sure to add, “he has that poster in his trailer.” How do you know?

Why are these two dorks so happy about the mention of AU Cas?

Then the way Jensen is excited about asking Misha for a demonstration of AU Cas

WTF am I watching? Help. But the eye fuck and the way the laugh.

Look how hard Jensen is laughing when Misha says what went through his head is that “they met at a club.” Pray for Jensen. He needs help. Serious help because no one is ever that funny all the time Jensen.

You can see how Jensen’s mood changed after Jared said that is the best acting he has ever seen Misha do. Jared seriously read the room. That part of the video has been discussed before so I won’t get into that.

The way Jensen’s eyes widen when Jared says Misha really wants to answer the who is your rock question. It is subtle but it happens. He also raises his eyebrows as if to say “really? leave my husband alone.”

Okay did Jared expect Misha to say Jensen was his rock or??

Jensen is acting weird through Misha’s answer. He’s mostly stoic, like he’s holding his breath? Can I also mention how handsome Misha looks? But I like Misha’s answer and it’s so beautiful that he married his best friend. Everyone who wants to get married should marry their best friend. What do I know though? Marriage is a foreign concept to me.

Jensen asks how many mothers there are in the audience.

Jared carries on with “how many of us have mothers?

Misha: That’s quite an impressive turn out. So many people didn’t raise their hands.

“They are like no I was genetically engineered in a lab.” Okay hear me out. Jensen knows what you know who believe that his kids and Jared’s kids were made in a lab because they couldn’t stand to copulate with their wives because of how much they hate them because Jared is his on true love. If you didn’t know this I’m sorry to divulge this disgusting piece of information to you but you can’t unsee it now so you are welcome. I swear I think this was a jab at them, no one can convince me otherwise.

Even Jared and Misha’s reaction to that is pretty telling. Then Jensen adds “And some of you probably were” I think he means those soulless fans who send their wives and kids threats and also hate on Misha every chance they get. Go off king.

He talks about how his wife is also his rock aww Jensen

Remember how Jensen was being weird during Misha’s answer? Misha is being weird as well, mostly stoic and looking at a fixed spot on the ground. I want to know what was so interesting.

Oh that micro expression from Jared, his right eye widens the moment Jensen says “I have some amazing pebbles in my life.” Did he think Jensen was going to out himself? He was like oh shit oh sit it’s happening.

The glee on Misha’s face when when Jensen calls him a pebble aww Jensen.

I know what I’m about to say is controversial but I think that by pebbles Jensen meant Misha. It doesn’t make sense that he was comparing his wife and his friends. The only person he would relate his wife to is his husband. I know this sounds crazy and people will definitely not be happy about this but that’s my opinion.I I know he loves Jared and he is his bro for life so if he was referring to them both wouldn’t he have pointed to them both?

Jared talks about how sometimes he doesn’t want to burden the people he really loves with what’s on his mind all the time and Jensen points to himself in a very aggressive way. Jesus Jensen way to be subtle. Fuck. Also Jensen nods vigorously when Jared says look for your pebbles because sometimes pebbles are what you need to get back to your rock.

It’s time to sing a hbd song and when Misha asks Jared “did you volunteer for this?” That’s when Jensen places his hand on Misha’s knee and says “I got it” He’s like, babe seriously? You are gonna ask Jared to sing when you know I got the voice for it? Seriously? I’m right here babe. I sing to you every night and you gonna do me like this? I got this and you are mine.

He caresses that leg and gets very comfortable on it, draping his arm from the elbow down on it. Possessive much? It’s clearly not the first time he has parched on that leg. The hand was on that leg for 1 minute and 15 seconds. Yes, I counted.

The intimate way in which Jensen and Misha they are seated is so awkward that Jared scoots away from them.

Damn, son. Jensen’s vocals are out of this world. So good.

Jesus Jared “Deeper, deeper feel it” Is that what they were screaming through the hotel walls last night? Tell us more.

Misha is so uncomfortable and Jensen is so done.

So overall this part was basically cockles being cockles, Jensen being possessive of Misha, Jared being Jared, Jensen being done, the girls are fighting and Misha is the referee.

That’s the end of part 1.

Part 2

#cockles #j2m #cokles jib9 panel #jib9 #jibcon 2018

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sazandorable · 4 years

Text

About moderating and banning content on AO3!

Okay so! I haven’t had the spoons to do this for a while but I cracked and ranted about it on twitter which is... not... conducive to long rants, so!

This is a h u g e discussion part of the l o n g history that led to the creation of AO3, which older, more informed, and more articulate people have talked about at length and can be found around if you look (I reblog some of it in my AO3 and fandom history tags for the curious). So I won’t go into that here, nor into the practical reasons why it’s not even possible to put that system in place anyway.

Arbitrarily, or the purpose of this post, because it’s the biggest topic I’ve seen brought up lately, I’ll be talking about fic depicting underage characters in se*ual situations, but honestly I could hold the exact same conversation on literally any controversial content.

This is about why you, specifically, if you are a content creator and especially if you are marginalised and especially if you are queer and especially especially if you are sensitive to fiction depicting certain things... do not, actually, want a banning system on AO3.

What? Of course we do. There’s a lot of p*do shit on AO3 and p*do shit is gross. No one should condone that, wtf? It would be easy to do — just periodically delete the entire Underage tag!

What will happen if that is done is that people will re-upload and continue to write it, they’ll just stop tagging and you will run into it with zero warning nor ability to filter it out. Again, this is not a theoretical — we know this is what happens. When I was a teen, adult content (all adult content) was not allowed on FF.NET; it was everywhere regardless, and without tags. The exact same thing happened on tumblr when adult content was banned as well. It’s not a matter of “staff not handling it well” — it just doesn’t work.

To keep safe the people who need to be able to exclude that tag, that tag needs to exist and be used.

Well, shucks. A reporting system then?

A reporting system would operate in one of two ways:

-an algorithm, which would delete a lot of stuff we wouldn’t want it to delete.

-humans, which is... the bigger problem.

An algorithm sounds great. We do want it to delete everything.

Okay. What about the daddy k*nk fics between consenting adult characters? What about the fics featuring characters that are children in the canon but are adults in the fic? What about the fics about teenagers exploring their se*uality together, written by adults about the experiences they remember having or wish they could have had? What about the thousands of SasuNaru and Drarry and other shounen and YA fics that will get written, by teens or by people who remember being teens? What about the se*ually explicit fic written by teens who are se*ually active in real life? What about the fics about CSA as trauma, about healing from it? What about the fics written by survivors of CSA to cope about their trauma? What about the fics that clearly show that it’s evil and traumatic? What about the super dark, harrowing, but beautiful and artistic that I’m glad I read even though it fucked me up for days? What about the ones that were really shitty but also horribly hot?

Well, some of these are still not okay, but maybe some might be. It depends on how it’s written. We’ll have humans moderating content and deciding, then.

Okay.

The thing is, I don’t know which of the things I just listed were okay for you to be depicted in fiction and which were too much. Odds are I don’t agree with you. Odds are if I asked 10 people randomly picked off the street, not everyone would agree.

Odds are, even if AO3 arbitrarily decided on which of those are allowed and which are not, you would not agree with their choice, and you would still be unhappy with the decision. (Or you would be happy, but your friends wouldn’t.)

Odds are, different AO3 content moderators might not agree on whether a given fic qualifies or not — is it artistic enough? Does it show enough that these actions are evil and wrong? Can the author prove they’re a teenager? Can the author prove they are a CSA victim? Can the author prove that this is to help them cope with their trauma? The author seem to be functioning alright, they mustn’t really be traumatised!

You know what I mean! There’s absolute, objectively gross shit out there that is not artistic and should not be published.

I agree that there’s vile stuff out there that makes me sick and that I think is very clearly just ped*philic trash. But there is no way to, 1) stop those from getting published anyway, 2) take those down and preserve the safety of everything else.

If we start forbidding some things, there’s two ways to go about it.

One single, clear, arbitrary rule — for instance, absolutely no adult content featuring characters under 18 (leaving aside the fact that this would not even work for the reason cited above). So we lose all the stuff from teenagers, all the coming of age stories about adolescence, all the stuff from CSA survivors; people who need to write it can’t publish it anymore, and people who need to read it can’t anymore either (and as a cool bonus, they’re told it’s wrong and made to feel bad about it). Depending on whether the rules applies to characters that are under 18 in the canon, we lose entire fandoms.

Or, subjective moderation by humans, according to what they estimate to be gross.

Let’s assume all moderators can agree on what’s gross or not.

If there is a system in place to ban some underage works because “gross shit”, then that means other gross stuff can be taken down on account of being gross and harmful.

Yeah! Gross stuff should be taken down! Come on, surely everyone agrees on what’s gross and harmful.

Ah.

But the problem is.

Here is a list of things I have seen — with my eyes seen — called harmful to be depicted in fiction:

Murder

Non-con

Inc*st

Cannibalism

Torture

Self-harm

Mental illness

Drugs

Racism

K*nk

Non-negotiated k*nk, but healthy k*nk is ok

Spanking k*nk

BDSM where the woman is a bottom, but woman top is ok

Healthy depictions of BDSM

Unhealthy depictions of BDSM

Queer people doing bad things

Abusive relationships

Rival/Enemies to lovers

Redemption stories

A happy relationship between a 17 yo and an 18 yo

A happy relationship between a 20 yo and a 60 yo

A happy relationship between a boss and their employee, or a college teacher and a student

A happy relationship between a 14 yo boy and an older teenage boy, because that’s reminiscent of older men preying on younger gay boys IRL

Se*ual content featuring a character whose age is unclear in canon and some people headcanon them as being underage, some as being a young adult

Loving, consensual fluff between characters that are evil villains, because it romanticises them and their actions

Dark content shipping female characters

Fluffy content shipping female characters, because it’s misogynistic to act like lesbians are only soft all the time

Consensual s*x featuring a canonically asexual character, because it implies that all aces can and should still have se*

Fics about the same canonically asexual character hating s*x, because that erases the experience of s*x-positive aces

Shipping a character who is perceived by some fans as queer-coded with a character of a different s*x

The tendency to ship a black character with white characters

Fluffy drunk s*x, because that’s not actually consensual

Sleep s*x, because that’s not actually consensual

Trans characters not experiencing dysphoria, because that idealises the trans experience

Consensual s*x between adults that are not married

LGBT+ content, because kids shouldn’t see that.

I guarantee you: you, I, and 10 random people plucked from the street will not agree on what, in that list, is and isn’t okay to publish and consume fiction of.

So why should your taste be the one followed? Why should it be the taste of mods you don’t know? Why should anyone get to dictate? What if the mods think your OTP is gross and your NOTP is fine?

This is the slippery slope argument.

Yes, it is the slippery slope argument. Because we know it happens. Because we’ve been there, because I’ve seen it happen myself twice already and I’m not even thirty. Because we know people do complain loudly about all of these things.

And because the second there is a banning system in place, assholes will use the system to abuse it and get stuff they just don’t like taken down using the “it is gross” argument, and one day you’ll wake up and the beautiful fic that helped you come to terms with your abuse/trauma/identity/orientation/k*nk for feet will be taken down and wonderful vulnerable creative people will have been harassed out of fandom because they argued with 1 person who didn’t like their foot k*nk fic that happened to also feature, for instance, a CSA trauma backstory.

Again: not exaggerating. Not theoretical. It happens, we know it happens, AO3 was created literally because it happens.

I still fucking hate that stuff.

That is completely fine and normal. No one likes everything. Me too! Most of the dark stuff is niche and the creators know only few people will like it the same way they do.

(For the record, I get grossed out and triggered by fics about an asexual character who does not like s*x having s*x with their partner to make them happy. Deep in my gut everything screams that that’s fucked up, terrifying and harmful, how can people write that. But I recognise that there are people who love and need that, and I leave those people and their content alone.

OTOH, I read a lot of otherwise dark shit and I enjoy it in the same way I enjoyed, say, Hannibal, in the same way some people enjoy true crime documentaries, horror movies or r*pe fantasy k*nk. It helps me explore stuff that I like to see in fiction, in a safe, controlled way. I’m also asexual, 90% s*x-repulsed IRL, and, obviously, I would never abuse a child. For that matter, I wouldn’t kill and eat people, either, nor would I do 90% of the tamer k*nky stuff I read.

Of course, Hannibal was fucked up and lots of people probably think Hannibal was gross and should not have been aired — but as exemplified by the fact that it was created, aired and watched, lots of people thought it was fine, interesting and even fun to watch.)

You can and should curate your experience and protect yourself. The AO3 website now allows you to exclude certain tags, and people have developed tools to help with that such as plugins that save your filters or hide fics that contain certain words.

But no, it isn’t going to, and it shouldn’t, get banned.

#ao3 #fandom history #aaaaand that's all im going to tag

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gpsoftun · 3 years

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Awww, see Logan? Kids aren't so bad ☺

The time has come again for me to rain on fandom fun. Although, considering how many times Fox has violated everybody, most should be numb at this point.

Like dofp, people see X2 as a worthwhile sequel. I mostly liked it at first and though it's way better than dofp, I'll take X-Men 2000 over it any day.

There are good elements in it. Kurt/Nightcrawler is really great and unlike his mother, he stays fully clothed. He has significant moments with his sister Rogue and their sleazy mutual mother. The relationships are never referenced specifically but get the frick out of here with that. Not one of Erik's multiple, well-known children show up until four movies later. With Raven, half these flicks might as well be called Tyler Perry's Mystique's Family Reunion. Shoot, they should've let Perry direct. At least he attempts human emotion and relationships.

Rogue's excitement over Logan coming home was so heartfelt. As was Logan's continued affection for her and initial gruffness with Bobby. Scott was too wonderful for this series. Logan jacked his motorcycle, but the first thing Scott asks him is if he found what he was looking for. Logan's conversation with Professor X and Prof being playful/fatherly toward him was sweet. Logan agrees to watch the kids- back before he decided he loathed children. Magneto teaming up with them provided some cherished moments of him taking the wind out of Logan's overrated sails. And Pyro joining Magneto actually made sense. To think, the old man didn't even have to prey on him sexually- no matter how much McKellen likely wanted that in his contract. My goodness, the male actors in these movies. They actually come in to work. It's a good thing most of Rogue's scenes are with them. Don't need those X-women bringing her down.

Blah, blah, blah let's get to the bad.

For some random loner they've known less than two weeks, Logan is made too important among the X-Men. Professor X treats him like a son, Jean is all girly blushing at the mere sight of him; the kids all have such reverence for him, and Stryker is stalking him for his alleged greatness. If not for Magneto dissing him and Hugh Jackman's fine acting, Logan would be a collosal gary stu.

Speaking of Magneto, wtf was wrong with him in this movie?! This was seriously his descension into one-dimensional villainy. WHY didn't Magneto immediately tell Charles about the threat on the school?! WHY was he so remorseful towards Rogue in the last movie but mocking his near homicide of her- an innocent mutant child- in this one?! WHY would he be stupid enough to try to commit global genocide against every homo sapien?! Forget the ethics. That would wipe out most of the population and cause immeasurable destruction and chaos across the.globe. WHY did he leave his 'best friend' and only prison visitor to die?! WHY is this genetic scientist who can mutate regular humans still trapped in McKellen's wrinkled, prehistoric empty sack of a body?!

WHY didn't Mystique anonymously contact Prof X about the raid?! WHY did she openly laugh at her daughter's trauma?! WHY is she running around naked in front of her son?! WHY is she trying to risk procreation with Logan when she can't be bothered with the kids she already has?! WHY does fandom pretend she's beautiful when she's really a hideous animalistic pet wench?!

WHY is Jean such a gullible, naive tramp?! WHY is she cheating on her kidnapped boyfriend with a lustful, unreliable hobo?! WHY did she leave the house with that haircut? WHY couldn't she just stay dead?! WHY does Fox do good female mutants dirty yet put the evil ones on a pedestal?!

I'll complain about Scott later.

Why is this thing even called X-Men United when most of it has them scattered from each other? To this day, X-Men 2000 is the only X-Men movie with the X-Men as a functional team!

And oh boy, we need to talk about *that* scene. You know which one i mean Yeah, buckle in for this bull, boys and girls 😠

After the mansion invasion, Bobby brought Rogue, Pyro, and Logan to his family's Boston house. The Drakes come home suddenly and Bobby 'comes out' about being a mutant..........

Ooooooookay... hey, gays, c'mere. Come, come. I get it. Singer got you- not to mention McKellen- reeled in with this transparent pride pandering. Now, look, I acknowledge that a number of you can relate to Bobby here. Being altogether exiled from family or them never accepting who you're going out with. I'm sure there have been violent and cruel reactions as well.

That being said, this scene is terrible! Bobby's parents being troubled by his mutation I can buy. His mother ready to scream because he chilled her tea, no. Bobby's *little* brother being so utterly repulsed- seriously, even this kid emotes better than Jean and Storm- that he runs upstairs and calls 911 was unforgivably exaggerated and stupid! Then, the Drakes just completely abandon Bobby when he and his friends are being rounded up by law enforcement.

I know to people like Singer wholesome, two-parent suburban families are really a front for kkk headquarters. One of those bigoted assumptions that no one points out. But no way do I buy that Bobby's parents could have and love their firstborn for almost twenty years, only to throw him to the wolves because he can generate snow cones. For pete's sake, there are parents willing to alibi their known serial killer-rapists, drug dealing, school shooting, bomb building children! I can't even call it a cartoony reaction because the actual animated adaptations weren't nearly so spoon-feeding.

On the 90s show, did Christopher Summers treat Scott like this? No! When they met, Christopher already had a team made up of intergalactic weirdos, including a white cat lady who inspired one of my characters. Did Jean's parents react badly? Before the stupid phoenix movie, she had the most stable family in every adaptation. Gambit's little bayou swamp family of thieves reacted to meeting the X-Men with such nonchalance that they had to be okay with mutation. Hank distanced himself from his family but only because he had such a physical mutation and didn't want to make trouble for them. Professor X couldn't tell about his mutation because during his era, he would have been institutionalized for hearing voices. Rogue's father threw her away, but that evil redneck was probably just mad he couldn't molest her. Even Jubilee's foster parents loved her. They just didn't know how to help her.

On X-Men Evolution, Evan's parents were too cool with his and Storm's mutations. So were Kurt's adopted parents. In fact, most of the students went home for the holidays. Ironically, the most negligent parents were flippin mutants, Mystique and Magneto.

I don't know what is with these movies and reducing the world to black and white caricatures. It's especially bothersome since the only really innocent mutants across the films are Rogue, Kitty, Jubilee, Kurt, and Scott. The rest go insane with power, join cults or other nefarious organizations, go on killing sprees, cause billions of dollars in property damage with their ridiculous inter-mutant tiffs. Oh wow, I just realized that these movies make mutation an allegory for urban gangs(Erik) vs. youth outreach programs (Charles).

Anyway, Rogue flies a plane to keep them from crashing, despite being a terrified young girl with no mary sue magic like her mother. Jean dies for stupid reasons but we still get a brief peace before the wet rag demon reemerges. Rogue is finally given a proper uniform and joins the team alongside her brother Kurt and Sc- SCOTT? W- b huh?! Kurt and Scott are right there when the Professor so properly but ominously tells the president to leave his babies alone. That wet rag drowning in water didn't prevent Scott from leading the X-Men. Kurt never left. What happened?!!!!!

.... Wait. Is x3 like the first Power Rangers movie- non-canon? So that means Jean really is dead and everything from last stand to logan is just a nightmarish alter-Earth.

Also meaning.....

-Scott got over the wet rag and dedicated himself to his students.

-Kurt stayed to get to know his sister.

-Logan and Scott developed a genuine friendship with no hootchie in the middle.

-Scott retained his place as Professor X's rightful heir.

-Charles and Erik really did meet as teenagers. They did have a long friendship at one point. Erik never paralyzed Charles!

-Rogue and Kurt eventually tracked Mystique down for child support

-Charles IS the hero!!!!!

I knew x2 was better than dofp 😄

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anonil88 · 3 years

Text

Malcolm and Marie live blog

I don't usually do liveblogs for movies but yea.

Spoilers ahead!!

I love that its modern timed but very 70s stylized.

A tune indeed.

When you are high and drunk on success and

How the white critic reacts is why I feel like gatekeeping my scripts. At the same time some things I do make are about race or involve.

Marie sitting on the patio smoking is a mood whenever men are talking.

So he's pretentious and unaware.

Whoever chose the music for this, I feel like we would be Spotify mutuals.

Can this nigga stop pacing.

Also can he stop talking;

Marie is so tired and unimpressed.

Also little booties matter and are to be bitten.

Oooo the tension and the jazz.

Title Card over mac and cheese.

Shitty boxes mac and cheese but still mac and cheese.

Tbh i always wonder if spouses/significant others get upset when their spouses don't acknowledge them during speeches.

John sounds so much like his dad but I really hope his acting style differs from his dad a lot.

Guilty confession?

He did not profit off of his partners backstory and then not even acknowledge her.....I.....

If that ever happened to me catch me cussing my partner out during the beginning credits, the end credits, in the car, and at home.

GASLIGHTER!

The way I'm excited for Zendaya to give me some, oooo can she work with Regina King. Please on my knees I pray.

Um no that's not your job to coddle your lead.

He's a dick and the type of dick who makes himself look like a good person around other people.

If Sam Levinson is trying to make his viewers more of misandrist, it's working.

I feel like Marie has her flaws probably a lot of them and we will surely see as this continues, but Malcolm needs to learn how to apologize sincerely.

70s vibes! 70s vibes!

Them kissing and talking about criticism and dreams makes me miss a partner. A partner that I've had and haven't had.

Women really are behind every great man.

Yea sir you fucked a happy moment.

Oh visual allegories for looking in from the outside and cat and mouse chasing and looking from the outside in.

She's saying she doesn't feel noticed by you.

Gas lighter :0 he called her an emotional support dog, bruh.

I would LOVE to co-write or take a writing class held by Sam Levinson. The fights i write are very much in this same realm of reflection and anger and monologue.

Sam.....sam.....are all the sides inside of you doing okay sir?

The ugly side of dating and being in a relationship with someone who struggles with their own demons.

Honestly I could close my eyes and listen to this script being read without seeing these characters visually. Just close my eyes and get a sense of these characters like it was a radio story.

Oh. Oh this is a new wheelhouse of Zendaya acting; a different voice is like breaking through here and her expressions aren't the same we are used to. You can literally hear another character in there....hmm.

Mans is outside really fighting with his invisible demons lmfao.

Selfish ass, how after everything she said you came out of it thinking about your own craft and self instead of how you hurt her.

So she's conditional.

Me: did sam (a white man) say nigga this many times in his script or are the actors adding their own inflections. Not just the lingo used but the topic of race and directing etc. being written by a white writer about black characters is always gonna be a critique when you're writer is a white person.

Alexa play Broken Girls by Saba

He is so hurtful.

A clown nigga a clown look in the fucking mirror you bozo head ass looking like you need some Mehron clown white and a size 16 in clown shoes.

John is doing a really swell performance and reading of these lines.

He is reading her for her insecurities by bringing up his experiences with other women and that.....is yikes.

Arguments can get messy like this in real life but it takes a lot of maturity and control to either not let it get to this point or have a healthy conversation afterwards.

This film is really shot on some very crisp lenses.

They sitting there like 🚬🧍‍♀️🧍‍♂️.

Leftover Mac and Cheese and unfinished cigarettes.

The nyt etc. pay walls are so annoying, but there is a work around look at the articles on incognito or add a period at the end of the url.

He sounds like his daddy so much here, weird, this is the only part I'm eh on the dialogue it feels real but a bit out of pace in how they are bouncing off one another.

Nail scissors? So the end is not the only part he based off of Marie. 🙄

ITS A GOOD REVIEW YOU DINGUS but also its a full review they are going to critique things. She isn't wrong though he did profit off of a woman's story that was not his own to profit from.

Yes Malcolm because unfortunately all marginalized people look through a lens of life that is inherently political because of the world they live in.

He is so mad and upset and had a lot on his chest. But I think he Malcolm and Sam are talking about something thats an issue and a non issue. Being critiqued for you art is hard but also Malcolm is not super self aware. He's like a stand in figure of for example rich depop sellers who wanna be oppressed so badly they yell at others instead of examining their own personal behaviors and ethics.

Oh Marie, when you know the spark is gone and you pick fights because.

He ain't even ask her to read?

One critic I have for most of hollywood actors is they learn their cry and that is it. A change from this is Margot Robbie, I adore her fluctuations of crying being similar but the crying is carried differently for each character. If I had to say any actor that does a cry scene amazing its this woman right here (Amy Adams)

You stole her story from her and gave it away, she has a right to be upset and angry and a rubber band ball of emotions.

Citizen Kane, not the cinematography, but the story is it even that good? (Unpopular opinion but meh, maybe in my rewatch it will be better.)

But that is what people want authenticity and whatever authenticity means to them. What is real for one is false for another.

To be honest look at the criticism of Euphoria, well earned, but a lot of people were like this isn't real even though he literally wrote about his own life. People said it was inauthentic like....wtf.

Ahh the smoking is just a habit, he quit and she didn't.

CAST ZENDAYA IN A HORROR MOVIE PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING. Get Lupita and Zendaya and some more black actors preferably less known ones in a horror movie. One with a interesting script and story, directed by Regina King. Please and thankyou.

I love Marie yep that was amazing.

Behind every great man is a greater woman, one that deserves her credit for how she has stood behind. I wonder the stories of those women, what they have sacrificed or not sacrificed. Their thoughts and feelings when the world is surrounding their partner and views them as a plus one. (I'd write a short script about this but I think do I have the time, can I, or am I equipped ?)

He is a shitty person for bringing up his exes, like she even said I don't wanna know any of that.

Imagine being on anti depressents and rarely having a sex drive and then when you do your partner starts talking about their exes and tearing you apart for all your faults.

I love when you see peaks of Zendaya's cadence in roles.

Tension, what if's and he didn't even bring her up in his speech.

Marie to herself and the audience:

He is not afraid that he will loose her but as my character says in my unreleased story, "i can't wait til you give me a fucking reason to leave your ass." Malcolm expects everything in order for not even doing the bare minimum and she is only asking him for something as simple as consideration. She just wants him to be considerate. He wants to get married and considers their relationship like rolling down a hill at full speed and he cannot apologize, he cannot be considerate, and he cannot admit his wrongs. He can only offer her I love yous that he probably does mean but he does not back up outside of what he's done for her in the past. The past which was more of her experience than his and he sees his part in it as a burden. He doesn't use his own vantage point of the past to further his career he uses her. He does all of these things without a real apology or thankyou because he is not afraid to loose her.

The restrictions of quarantine and the panorama have made Sam's writing very no frills. I wonder how other films from other directors and writers that are filmed in small contained crews like this will be structured. But this was a very good movie gonna add to my letter box 3.3-3.5

Oh shit this is my song,

Ratings/overall thoughts:

Script is like a C+, B- : I could go into my heavier big brain thoughts on the script but I don't feel like it. You catch hints of it above it centers conversation on race and privilege, mainly the writers and questions i have that won't be answered but Sam did make me grow disdain for Malcolm over a short time. Which is sometimes hard to do because im one sympathetic person but the sympathy i have for Malcolm is at 0. Maybe a 2 at some scenes but then it quickly goes back to 0. Some parts of the dialogue miss the mark or hit the are off balanced. While some of it like Malcolm's bathroom speech albeit mean is really strong or their conversation when he comes back from peeing really shines for me.

Performances: B+ to A- because they carried the script further than it could of gone with less talented actors. The monologues do well to showcase their current skill levels which are already high af and leave room for anticipation in where these actors go next.

Zendaya holding a knife: A+ with a gold star. That switch on and off and on is delectable.

John being a shitty boyfriend but following Marie like a lost puppy: B+ with a good job written at the bottom of the paper, Malcolm being nervous a frantic dialed up with more realistic nervousness would have sold me completely on Malcolm's anxious waiting.

Cinematography: A and a participation award.

The mac and cheese: A+ for the easy mac. Wish it was like Annie's or Velveeta.

Cigarettes: Participation award and their picture hung up for student of the month. Why the grill lighter? Everytime Malcolm opened up his mouth Marie was like sparks fly.

The music: A++ with a prize. Whoever picked the music probably makes good Spotify playlists.

#Malcolm & Marie #malcolm and marie #zendaya coleman #zendaya #john david washington #liveblog #mine

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whomst-art-thou-whomst-whomst · 3 years

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Texts from the Lost Tomb, part 5.2

Also yes this is a 5 part story arc, why do you ask, no I’m not “avoiding real life work”

Main Chat

Wang Pangzi: YOU KNOW THERE ARE THOSE WHO WOULD COMPLAIN ABOUT BEING DRAGGED OUT OF BED AT AN UNGODLY HOUR FOR THE SAKE OF SOME JEWELRY AND FORCED INTO AN ADVENTURE

Wu Xie: And we are just so grateful you are above all that.

Zhang Qiling: You were fully awake and insisted we pack and go as soon as possible in case there was, and I quote, “more weird shit happening we can cash in on.”

Wu Xie: I mean it’s kind of interesting that the Zhang family sent a car for us. We could have driven. So what is going on there, I wonder?

Wang Pangzi: YOU KNOW FOR A PARANOID AND CONNIVING LITTLE SHIT YOU STILL RADIATE OBLIVIOUS BAMBI ENERGY

HATE TO BE THE ADMIRAL ACKBAR HERE BUT ITS DEF A TRAP MY BOY

WHY DO U THINK WE ARE MESSAGING AND NOT TALKING DUMMY

WERE YOU IN A TOMB ON THE DAY THEY TAUGHT PPL STRANGER DANGER

BUT NO NO YOU WERE ALL “LETS GET IN THE VAN WITH THE FREE CANDY AND PUPPIES I BET WE’RE GOING TO THE CIRCUS”

THIS IS THE LAST STRAW IM LOJACKING YOU FOR REAL THIS TIME, SHOULDVE DONE THIS YEARS AGO

Zhang Qiling: I agree, in this particular case, with Pangzi. You should not have gotten in their vehicle while we were still inside the house. It forced us to follow you into the van to prevent separation, and they seemed to be expecting that. I don’t know whether Zhang Rishan intended this, but I don’t trust him.

Wu Xie: :( I got excited and didn’t think it through. I’m sorry.

Wang Pangzi: DONT YOU GIVE US THE BIG EYES WE ARE IMMUNE

MOSTLY

SPEAKING OF IMMUNE ITS REALLY FUCKIN COLD IN HERE AND UR STILL SICK, PUT YOUR JACKET ON STUPID

Wu Xie: oh relax, I’m fine. No fever at all today, remember? I feel a lot better, too.

Wang Pangzi: YOU LEAVE ME NO CHOICE BUT TO HAVE XIAO GE INTERVENE

Zhang Qiling: It is odd to say this, but Pangzi is right again. You are barely back on your feet and could easily get worse again. Wu Xie. Jacket. Now.

Wu Xie: Oh fine. Teaming up on me, I see. Happy now?

Wang Pangzi: FUCKING ECSTATIC. NOW BACK TO HOW WE MAY BE PULLING A LI CU

Wu Xie: If it is an abduction, it wouldn’t be them moving against the whole Wu family—not with Uncle Erbai in charge. Zhang Rishan strikes me as someone who doesn’t make a move unless he is sure of his plan, and this is all a bit last-minute to be a big shift. Besides, they let Xiao Ge keep his sword and we still have all our phones.

Wang Pangzi: TOOK AWAY MY EXPLOSIVES THO THE BASTARDS

Zhang Qiling: In fairness, you were waving them around and yelling that if they tried anything it was going to be “yippeekiyay motherfucker all up in this bitch.”

Wang Pangzi: IT SOUNDS LESS COOL COMING FROM YOU. I THINK I SEE THE TEAHOUSE?

Wu Xie: me too. That’s Zhang Rishan on the steps. This must be urgent. Everybody stay shiny.

Zhang Qiling: I will be getting out first. Wu Xie in the middle, Pangzi at the rear.

Wang Pangzi: AND WHAT A VIEW;)

An hour later…

Main Chat

Wu Xie: Is everyone okay? I tried knocking but nothing is getting through, these are some solid walls.

Wu Xie: guys???

Wang Pangzi: OOPS PHONE WAS ON SILENT AND I WAS BUSY YELLING AT THE CEILING

IM PRESENT AND PISSED OFF

Zhang Qiling: Apologies, I was trying to break down the door.

Wang Pangzi: SO THIS MAY NOT BE THE TIME TO SAY I TOLD YOU SO BUT WHILE WE’RE HERE

Wu Xie: fuck Pangzi, I know, okay??

I’m an idiot, I’m so fucking stupid. It’s not like it’s the first or fiftieth time I’ve put you two in danger, either.

Wang Pangzi: HEY HEY WHOA NOW

STOP SAYING RUDE SHIT ABOUT MY FRIEND

ITS GONNA BE OKAY

DESPITE KNOWING THIS WAS A BAD IDEA I STILL COULDNT PREDICT HOW MUCH CHAOTIC LUCK THIS FAMILY HAS

DAMN IT I HATE WHEN HEI XIAZI IS RIGHT ABOUT THINGS

Zhang Qiling: I’m sorry. This is my fault. My line has a ruthlessly pragmatic streak and they’ve clearly wanted to test us separately to see why the necklace reacted to our arrival like that. It does not excuse Zhang Rishan trapping us in these separate rooms.

Wang Pangzi: UHH BITCH I SAID THIS FAMILY NOT YOUR FAMILY

THIS AINT ABOUT THEM

YOUR FAMILY IS ON MY SHIT LIST EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY

THIS FAMILY MEANT US OBVS

UGH ANY SIGN OF THE BASTARDS?

Zhang Qiling: no. Wu Xie?

Zhang Qiling: Wu Xie, answer me.

Wang Pangzi: WU XIE

TIANZHEN

PICK UP YOUR FUCKING PHONE DAMNIT YOU'RE SCARING XIAOGE

Zhang Qiling: I’m going to try breaking down the door again.

Wu Xie: Hello, Wang Pangzi and Zhang Qiling. My apologies for the rather inhospitable circumstances, but this seemed expedient considering the unknown qualities of the necklace. I could not be sure who was causing what, or what could happen next, and thus have temporarily set you in separate rooms for the sake of everyone’s safety.

Wang Pangzi: WTF GIVE HIM BACK HIS FUCKIN PHONE ZHANG RISHAN I KNOW ITS YOU YOU PRETENTIOUS ANTIQUE

WE DESTROYED THIS PLACE BEFORE AND WE CAN DO IT AGAIN

Zhang Qiling: Your concerns for everyone’s safety are noted. Thank you for whatever you believe you’ve done right here.

Now. If you release us immediately and return Wu Xie to us, we will consider leaving without direct personal retribution.

Wang Pangzi: WHAT HE SAID AND ALSO YOU SUCK

Wu Xie: I regret that this has happened, I hope to make it up to you in the future. For the purpose of today’s needs, however—I will have my men escort the two of you out if you so desire, but unfortunately Wu Xie will need to stay until we have finished examining him.

Wang Pangzi: EXAMINING??? YOU FUCKING PERV HANDS OFF HE MAY BE THE BELLE OF THE BALL BUT HIS DANCE CARD IS SPOKEN FOR

I SWEAR I DID NOT GO THROUGH TEN YEARS OF THIS STARCROSSED CLUSTERFUCK FOR YOU TO SWOOP IN AND STEAL MY FRIENDS BF

Wu Xie: There is no call for rudeness. He will not be harmed. The artifact was responding to him directly. It has not lit up like this in over 200 years, and I need to understand why it is responding, and responding to someone who is not our kin, which it has never done before. This could have implications for everyone in my family if it could protect someone at the right moment.

Wang Pangzi: OKAY BUT CONSIDERING OUR TRACK RECORD IN THIS BUILDING AND THE SITUATION AT HAND Y’ALL ARE ABOUT TO NEED PROTECTION

Wu Xie: The testing would be going better if Wu Xie wasn’t worrying himself unnecessarily over where you both are, it’s making our readings difficult.

Wang Pangzi: OH GEE SO SORRY YOUR KIDNAPPING VICTIMS ARENT THRILLED TO BE HERE TO SAMPLE YOUR CREEPY JEWELRY BOX BUT THAT SOUNDS LIKE A YOU PROBLEM

Zhang Qiling: Zhang Rishan. I appreciate that you must think of our family first in your decisions. As must I. I hope you can appreciate what that means for decisions I make.

Wang Pangzi: HEHEHE SO TRUE BESTIE

YOU PISSED OFF THE WRONG GOTH TODAY BUDDY BOY

Zhang Qiling: A compromise: we stay with him as you run your tests. That will calm him and assuage Pangzi’s concerns and prevent me from…testing the limits of your lifespan.

Wu Xie: I accept that this may temporarily impact our relations, but am hopeful that you will come to understand that sometimes I need to make certain choices for this family that are…difficult. I will come to let you—One moment. Something seems to be happening.

Babysitters Club Chat

Wang Pangzi: OH SO WE ARE GONNA JUST POLITELY SIT WITH WU XIE AS STRANGERS POKE HIM WITH NEEDLES ARE WE HUH WELL LOOK WHOS BEING A HELPFUL LITTLE LAB ASSISTANT

Zhang Qiling: I’m attempting to convince him to let us out. Of course we will not simply sit there. Some lying to gain trust is necessary here.

Wang Pangzi: UR BEIN A SHADY BITCH XIAOGE AND ITS HOT

THATS WHY YOUR TATTOO IS SO BIG ITS FULL OF SECRETS

ALWAYS KNEW YOU HAD IT IN YOU TO—WAIT WHAT WAS THAT SOUND??

At the same time…

Bonnie and Clyde Chat

Xie Yuchen: …so, this is not what I expected to find.

Hei Yangjing: yeah kiddo is a bit freaked out:/ this sucks. I mean I get that they are concerned blah blah blah necklace goes brightbright but maybe we should go find the other two

or at least find a way to let Wu Xie know we are here, that room he’s in looks like a dungeon and not in a good way

Xie Yuchen: Does it look like I’m able to do anything right now? Also, I’m fairly certain they won’t be harmed. Zhang Rishan may be callous, but he isn’t stupid.

Hei Yangjing: r u kidding

he split up Romeo and Juliet, then left Romeo with a sword—seems pretty stupid to me

Xie Yuchen: Yeah I’m not going near that. He made his bed with that choice. What can you see? These Neanderthal guards are blocking my view.

Hei Yangjing: uh so there’s like a lab table situation

Wu Xie isn’t tied up, a good sign in this context

I can’t see what those people are holding, they’re talking a lot and some asshole just grabbed Wu Xie’s arm, looks like maybe they are putting in an IV?

The necklace is—oh. Oh shit.

#whomst #ultimate note #wu xie #dmbj #the lost tomb #pingxie #iron triangle #dmemebj

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nightswithkookmin · 3 years

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I have watched the photo booth photos coming out this week. And JK and Tae first. I wondered if Jimin and Suga would be next. But it is Hobi and Jin. So perhaps Suga and Jimin tomorrow. Is it just me or does Bighit seem to be Really pushing Suga and Jimin? I do honestly believe Suga and Jimin are close but not romantic. Jimin has never looked thirsty for Suga and he certainly has for JK. Thoughts on wtf is up with Bighit and Ship Agenda?

Please don't get me started on this cos I'm afraid I won't be able to stop myself 😭😭😭

For now I'm busy fighting the stigma

But this too is a weight sitting on my chest!

WHAT THE FUCK AT ALL IS A MANLY MAN!I stand with Harry Styles, Zac Efron and all these men who have come out to speak out against unrealistic male body standards and the toxic masculinity in the entertainment industry as well as everywhere.

What about this look is a "submissive gay man" look. 😒

Straight men and Women get butt stimulated, take fingers and dicks up their asses and ARE SUBMISSIVES TOO. IT'S CALLED SEX. Why do you stigmatize some men for their sexual preference and applaud others for theirs?!

If straight men can be submissives, gay men can be submissives. And if being soft looking makes you look gay then EVERYONE IS GAY.

Just look how ANDROGYNOUS AND BEAUTIFUL AND MANLY Jimin looks even without make up!!!!!!!

Jungkook have said he resembles his father and yet he calls him pretty and charming and sexy! You think Jk is confused by his looks?

Do y'all know how much Tae weighs!!!!!!!

That don't look life a soft weak man to me and he is not buffed up crazy!

And the tuktukker's on the bird app and Yt comments claiming he wants to be Tae...

I can I assure you he does NOT!!!!!!!!!!

This is the most absurd thing I ever heard in all my shipping life!!!!!! Y'all are a piece of work!

I'm gonna have to take this over to Kofi from now because some people out here just lack the range and depth to have nuanced conversations about these things and it makes it so hard to talk about some things.

What makes you think I can't talk about the good bad and complicated aspect of life and culture and beliefs or ships? Why do I have to hate BTS to point out if they say something misogynistic or homophobic or racist or exude toxic masculinity?

Have they themselves not said they have learned the most from Armies who've called them out on certain things like the misogynistic song lyrics, cultural insensitivity and all these other things?

Y'all don't confuse me with the fake woke wannabes and edgy folks out here who just want to make themselves palatable to yall. Y'all do them a disservice when you don't stay honest and real.

Expressing concern over POSSIBLE toxic work environment having a negative impact on a member does not mean I am afraid that member would lose their sexuality or sexual orientation. Jk looks nothing like Jimin but I still think HE IS GAY.

And it's presumptuous to assume that if any member had been in Jimin's position that I wouldn't have expressed the same sentiments.

How many times do we hear women celebrities complain about unrealistic body standards and the pressure to look a certain way in the industry? How many times have Male celebrities complain of the same pressures they feel in conforming to the looks yall praise as 'manly?' How many times have RM not looked at Tae or JK and talked about how he's own body isn't up to par and that he needs to pick up or work harder? How many times have Jk talked about fasting and dieting to lose weight? How many times have he called himself 'fat' and that he needs to do this or that?

Forget that Jimin has talked about eating disorders and nearly working himself to death to look a certain way? Why do y'all do that? Why do yall make it hard for us to dialogue about these things and bond over shared concerns or hold diverse views and bond over that and yet even learn from those diverse views?Why does someone you disagree with gotta be evil, and crazy and anti?

There's nothing wrong if you prefer a buff Jimin. There's nothing wrong if HE prefers that himself. But leave room for us to discuss the whys of it all. Leave room. If you think his work environment does not impact his choices that's fine. But don't come for me for also believing it might be impacting him or he might be succumbing to the pressures of the work place.

You think if JK started saying he wants to lose his body muscles or if Jin or RM said that I won't wonder what is motivating that decision too? It's absurd if the only reason y'all think I have is a nefarious gay agenda.

As for BigHit and the Ships

It's like WHY!!!!!! WHY CAN'T WE HAVE ALL THE SHIPS SAILING AT THE SAME TIME!

Y'all do this ridiculous scheduling and pairing as if they are night nurses running shifts! Why the fuxk can't we have all these ships coexisting wholesomely side by side AT THE SAME DAMN TIME!

This is how the conspiracy theories begin- of Tae kook finally getting back together and putting Jimin in his place. No one is putting no one in no damn place! Tae kook is not real.

I can't. I really can't!

Someone beam me up. I just can't anymore.

I might as well delete my Tumblr and move to Jupiter with BTS.

Signed,

GOLDY

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ivanabaqero · 3 years

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Since I just returned from rehab, here is my.. idk, emotional journey on my chronic illness + mental health or wtf ever u wanna call this. This is the most personal thing I have ever posted but I need to get it out.

Before you read, I guess I gotta tw this for suicidal thoughts and descriptions of my symptoms.

I don’t even know where to start. It feels like all of this happened in one week and at the same in a span of several years. But no idea, time just kept passing and more shit happened.

Last summer was pretty cool. I worked hard and made a fuckton of money - not really considering the consequences of the fact that I overstepped the boundaries of my body every single day. Either way, I regret nothing it was pretty cool and another experience I am glad I could make. Well, but when I came back home, I started to notice a few things. Among some weird shit nobody wants to know about, I noticed a change of my eyesight. There was a cloud right on the vision on my left eye and it got blurry. At first, it started with minutes and then it passed. But I knew my body responded to exhaustion in an odd way so I let it slide. As doctors have instructed me, only when it lasts over 24 hours it’s an actual episode/flare and I should go to the ER -- to elaborate this further, I have been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2015 and have not had any bigger flares since, only the regular symptoms like fatigue, etc.

I got treated with the regular medication; cortisone. This shit gave me some energy boost for a few days and then, things went back to somewhat normal. The blurry thing in my eye has changed into a weird ass thing called nystagmus. Basically, my eyeball was twitching. It was better than the blurry sight and my doctors told me that physical therapy was the only thing to help me with that, and up until some weeks ago this didn’t stop, at the moment it’s gotten way better though - a relief because that caused me mad headache and made reading really difficult.

Anyway, that was the smaller problem. A few months later, in December around Christmas, I have gotten really weak and have been constantly dizzy. As usual, I let it slide for some days. Up until that point when I couldn’t move from the bed or look at anything else but right up at the ceiling or I would get fucking dizzy. Back to the ER again, the same procedure began. Cortisone resulted in a massive push of energy that lasted for some days, but after that, all the symptoms slowly returned. Not only that, but it started to get worse. I have been dragging and limping with my left foot since months but I still managed somehow to walk and get around. In January I had a major panic attack when I noticed that I couldn’t walk on my own to my doctors, which is merely an 8 minute walk away. I had to call my mom to bring me back home because I couldn’t go any step more. My doctor sent me to the ER but the next day, I decided that I was fine and being over dramatic and everything was perfectly fine. The whole thing kept getting worse, I could not walk anymore, I kept feeling dizzy all the time unless I was staring at only one spot: my laptop or phone. So that was what I did, ignore my symptoms. Adding to my chronic fatigue, dizziness, inability to walk and my eye problem, a sensitivity problem spread all over my body from the chest downwards. My hands hurt and my fingers cramped up and got stiff, I lost all feeling in my feet. I had an appointment at the neurologist thank god, or else, I would have let it gotten worse and kept telling myself that I am being over dramatic and nothing is actually wrong. Delusional? Maybe. I don’t understand myself there either.

The neurologist decided to keep me in hospital for a whole ass week, getting cortisone every day. I got in there with the ambulance in a wheelchair and left out of there walking again. Not perfectly, but I thought things were looking up. Of course, once the high dose of steroids begins to wear off and you slowly come down from it, you first catch sleep. Steroids this time have been given to me five days in high dose instead of three and in addition, I had to take pills that I had to reduce slowly over another two weeks. I did not sleep in those three weeks more than 3-4 hours per night and then I finally could. To make this more understandable; my brain was tired but my body was buzzing. I also had a tremor that has still not entirely left me as a wonderful side effect from the medication.

That time stationary they finally put me back in a MRT and found 2 bigger new lesions. One of them in my cerebellum and the other in my spinal cord. Each of them causing me all those massive problems. Back at home I had physical therapy every day, but despite all of it, I had to rely on a wheelchair. I got my wheelchair in march and named him Otto because he is the best man ever. Next time in hospital, I was mentally and physically just fucking done and tried to just ignore how much my mental health was going downhill along with my body, the neurologist offered me stationary rehab at a very well known center where they treat several physical as well as mental illnesses. I said yes, and luckily got a place in July.

The initial plan was to stay there for four weeks, but the doctors suggested to extend to six. I did. And good that I did. I made slow progress. Very slow. To imagine, in twenty minutes at the first day I could barely walk 130m with four breaks in between, with walking aid and what not - and my last day I made 640m in the same time with no breaks. I know this doesn’t sound like a lot but fuck -- I made it out of a fucking wheelchair. I am walking again. Not perfectly or any good, but my legs are used for their purpose again; to get me through this world. For someone who loves hiking and going for little walks alone, this was such a big deal to just not be able to anymore.

The day I had the panic attack was the day I realized that in 2015 I made a promise to myself that if I ever have to rely on other people, I would end it. But I felt selfish for not wanting to end it. I felt selfish for wanting to live and being a burden to people. I know, none of this is my fault and I am the first to give good advice, but am I good at handling my own shit? Absolutely not.

With all the physical therapy I did for six weeks every day, I also had a psychologist that helped me understand myself better and deal with the trauma this experience brought me. I have to find another psychologist at home as well, because I didn’t feel the one I have helped me at all. I had to make a lot of promises to myself, such as accepting and asking for help and that it’s no shame in doing so. I feared losing my independence and I still do. But fuck, this experience was an eye opener in so many ways. I made new friends in rehab as well, which was one of the coolest things. And I got hit on by two attractive men - can you believe? I was in a wheelchair, dressed like absolute shit and not making any kind of deal of how I look! But yeah, my interest wasn’t really there to get involved in anything. I’ve got a lot of love to give but I need to give it to myself rather than pour it out on someone else.

I learned so many lessons, about my body and about my mind. My brain is an idiot and I have so many fears I was never even able to see until now. I thought optimism could beat everything and well... while it helps me a lot to get through every day life, every now and then I just need a slap in the face to look at things in another light. Not everything is fine if you tell yourself it is, no, you are not over reacting and you are allowed to feel sorry for yourself when life is dealing you a bad card. It doesn’t matter that other people have it worse -- it doesn’t mean your own shit is any less valid. And with that, I am going to wash my face and stop crying. I am still in a shock of reality state because I am back at home now and everything is different. And I got to admit, I feel a little lonely. But I don’t want to reach out to my old friends at the moment with whom I felt like the “sick friend”. I want more friends in similar positions as me so I don’t have to feel bad for... well, feeling bad, and I don’t want to hear any more optimism monologues from healthy people who have absolutely no idea what it is like to have chronic pain, fatigue and overall; an illness. Whether it be mental or physical.

If you really read all of this, thank you. There was no need to, but I appreciate it. I honestly just needed to let it out. Because I haven’t done so properly since all of that started.

#shush vanana #uhh #no tags i am lazy

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gisellelx · 3 years

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I think I speak for everyone when I say - can you please write about Esme & Rosalie

By “write about” do you mean fic, or meta? I usually tend toward actual fic when I have something I need to know about. I feel something like, “Oh I need to see what happened here,” and from that comes a fic. That was how this whole thing started: I read Edward's comment in BD about talking to Carlisle about having sex with Bella and went, "Oh that had to have been an awkward conversation, wonder what that was like...." and so "The Talk" was born, and well, that was 12 years ago.

I haven’t written fic about Esme and Rosalie or even written in their POVs much because even though I am fascinated by them, their stories are hard. They are dark. Inhabiting their headspaces is not easy to do. No one is more surprised than I am that so far in Cien Años 75% of the POV is Esme. I guess she has had stuff to say to me all along! Nevertheless, I think this will be forthcoming at some point, and in fact, I'm pretty sure I'm going to capture Esme’s reaction to Carlisle turning Rosalie, because I truly believe she was horrified. Rosalie permanently altered Esme's relationship with Carlisle in ways that they're still suffering blowback from. So here's some meta in the meantime.

That moment would’ve ripped open wounds that she and Carlisle hadn’t talked about as much as they needed to. Of course, some of these things came to the fore when Edward killed Charles and Carlisle was somewhat meh about it, and they spent a long time working through that. But there’s a big difference between your husband being kind of okay with your husband getting murdered (even if your son murdered him) and him bringing home another woman because she’d been brutally gangraped. That would’ve caused all sorts of things to surface for Esme, and would’ve been bewildering for Carlisle, who would’ve thought that they had figured the whole thing out. I don’t believe for a minute the “Of course you couldn’t [leave Rosalie in the street]” from Esme in Eclipse was the end of it. Or perhaps I do believe that it was, but that her own acquiescence means she ends up unhealthily shoving things down. And I think there’re some serious feelings about the negative consequences of Carlisle’s choices not only for Rosalie, but for Esme which sit there, festering, for the bulk of their marriage.

Esme would feel incredibly maternally protective toward Rosalie. She is undoubtedly hurt that Rosalie doesn’t accept her as a mother. And yet, she knows what it is to live eternally with the memory of rape. So there is a part of her that is protecting Rosalie from Carlisle, and from Edward, and from the ways that they remain naïve about the complexity of rape at the hands of your marital partner. Carlisle’s and Edward’s solution to this, remember, is “Well, just kill them and it's all fine.” (e.g. Carlisle's "I looked the other way" in the dinner table summit in MS.) But it can never be that straightforward for Esme and Rosalie, who had, at least on some level, convinced themselves that Charles and Royce would be acceptable, even good, partners. There’s little about Rosalie’s character otherwise which suggests she’s a soulless killer--beginning with the fact that she killed only her rapists and didn’t spill any of their blood, and then continuing on to Bella, which is not at all about killing and but is about protecting her family. So I don’t think she did that and then went, “Welp, great, that’s over!” in the same way I doubt that Esme went, “Edward has taken care of Charles, what a relief!” The pain of those deaths and the conflict of feeling both happy and sad about them just sits there for both of them. And they both pretend for the sake of Carlisle and Edward that they’re perfectly happy, and that’s a hard, hard dynamic. (I think Rosalie is much more honest with Emmett about this and and that in turn complicates the dynamic between Emmett and Carlisle and Emmett and Edward.)

And Esme has to choke it down a lot harder than Rosalie does. Edward and Rosalie, in their petulance, both get to scream at Carlisle on occasion about their anger for his taking their deaths away from them. Esme does not. Rosalie’s presence in their family makes it much harder for Esme to convince herself that what Carlisle did was unilaterally a good thing, but she can't freely yell that at Carlisle. So Rosalie permanently complicates their marriage.

I should point out here that this is a difference between what I think SM intended and what’s realistic based on what SM put on the page and you know, how people actually work. I absolutely believe SM intended for both of them to just have their amazing husbands and their beautiful bodies and to love their existence, as evidenced by the fact that she allows Rose, before and after her explanation in Eclipse to just be a cardboard cutout who only exists to antagonize Edward and hold Renesmee. I don’t think she thought at all about what it would be like for Esme, a domestic violence victim, to have her husband, whom she'd just spent a decade learning to trust, bring a rape victim home and with the idea that she would become Edward’s mate, wtf. SM clearly intended Esme to be the perfect, Mormon stepford wife, and for Rosalie to be the cautionary tale for Bella that not having a child makes a woman go crazy. However, that’s an artifact of the fact that every character in the story who is not Edward and Bella was created to serve Edward and Bella’s story, and it doesn't actually match other things she wrote about these women (Rosalie being willing to kill Royce and his friends; Esme running from Charles at whatever cost). When you truly round out a character, and spend some time thinking about how the backstory you’ve envisioned for them actually affects the way they might behave in a given situation, you end up with characters who don’t always cooperate fully with the plot you've otherwise envisioned. That’s a lot more interesting to me as a writer, and one reason I remain fascinated by this series.

Esme and Rosalie are bonded by their desire to be mothers and by the horrors they were subjected to at the hands of their men. In canon, they get opposite catharses for these problems. Rosalie is able to openly resent Carlisle for trapping her in her worst moment; Esme struggles with acknowledging that she also feels pain there. Esme meanwhile, gets to be a mother, especially to Edward, while Rosalie never gets to have that desire fulfilled. I imagine that their relationship is rich, fraught, and very, very complex as a result.

#esme cullen #rosalie hale #carlisle cullen #edward cullen #tw: rape #tw: domestic violence #meta #asks

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copias-thrall · 3 years

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Cause I'm Young and I'm Here and So Beautiful

A look into the rise and fall of Mary Goore's flash-in-the-pan modeling career.

~12.5K Mary Goore/Reader *drug/alcohol use; mentions of past child abuse; brief homelessness; plot no porn; POV shift*

This fic was inspired by and is very loosely based on Aurelio Voltaire's early days in NYC in the 90s, though I have set it in Boston in the early aughts. 😊

Many thanks to the artists who did commissions for this! 🥰

One Way Streets

Mary stepped off the regional rail and gripped his backpack. He had $72.57 in cash rolled into his socks and a give-em-hell attitude.

When he’d packed his bag the night before, he wasn’t even sure if he’d go through with it, but he couldn’t stand being home anymore. Some of his friends had told him he was crazy.

"Three more months, dude. You got this. Just finish high school, then bounce."

But they didn’t have to live with his dad and the step-monster. Every day was a new indignity. Having them bitch about his music and his style was one thing—that he could have dealt with—but everything else had just kind of…escalated.

Now that the kiddies were older, they’d turned into gremlins. They’d somehow sensed that Mary wasn’t their beloved older brother—he was some sort of half other. They’d stopped questioning why "mom was so mean" to him and had accepted that she was because there was something wrong with Mary. They realized they could be little shits and blame everything on him.

And dad just didn’t care. He’d throw up his hands and say, "I have to live with her"—as if Mary wasn’t in the same boat.

Dad hadn’t stopped her when—in a rage—she’d smashed every single vinyl album Mary had owned because the twins ruined her nice tablecloth. He’d shrugged when she cut all Mary's guitar strings so he couldn’t play "the devil’s music." He’d held Mary back when she took a match and burned all his secret stuff that Mary kept under his bed—action figures, books, guitar mags, journals—in the backyard because he got detention for smoking. He hadn’t said a word when the police showed up after she came at Mary with scissors because he’d dyed his hair black and he’d pushed her away before she could scalp him.

Mary thought for sure he was going to get carted off to jail as she screamed about him terrorizing the family and being afraid he was going to kill her sons in their sleep, but the officers had just looked at her bored and told her being a teenager wasn’t a crime.

So, no: Mary couldn’t wait 3 more months.

He’d scraped together what money he had left from his secret shifts working as a busboy under the table at a local dive downtown, packed his backpack with the essentials, and walked the 5 miles to the train station instead of going to school.

Eighteen was 10 weeks away. He could fudge it for a few months, especially since he could already get away without using his fake ID to get into shows most of the time.

So, to the big city it was.

He shifted his weight and tried to pretend that he belonged here in Boston, but actually facing the busy streets was a lot different from looking at a bird’s-eye view map. He had a printout in his pocket, but he didn’t want to look like a doe-eyed tourist. So he set off down the seemingly labyrinthine streets in the direction he could have sworn was the correct one.

It wasn't.

When he came out a side alley into Faneuil Hall, he almost wondered if he'd gone through a fairy portal, since he was clear on the other side of town. Begrudgingly, he checked his creased map, and set out once more.

And ended up spit out by the State building.

Finding the hostel turned into a fraught adventure, and he got turned around several times more. When he tried to ask for directions, most people pushed past him while one lady shoved $5 at him. He used the cash to buy a hotdog, and it was the vendor who ultimately gave him directions in his thick, Southie accent.

Of course, making it to the hostel ended up being just part one. The rates were almost double what it stated online ("Sorry, honey—that site hasn’t been upgraded since the 90s."), and two nights were practically all his savings. Mary had thought he’d at least have a couple of days to find a job, not 36hrs.

He left the hostel, wondering for the first time if maybe he shouldn’t go back home…but he decided it was a nice day out. Surely there was some place he could hunker down. Just for the night.

What he hadn’t anticipated was the cops at every fucking turn telling him to move along. And any place out of line-of-sight seemed to already be inhabited.

He finally found a place behind some rocks in the Seaport where he didn’t think he’d be murdered in his sleep, curled around his backpack, and drifted off into a fitful sleep.

Mary woke up damp from the dew and the morning sun streaming into his eyes. The birds were creating an awful racket, but Mary guessed it was as good an alarm clock as any.

He ran his fingers through his bird's nest of hair, and he made his way back to the South Station. The men’s room may have smelled like a sewage treatment plant, but at least it was free. He had expected it to be mostly empty at the crack of dawn, but it was full of commuters making that last run to the head before they had to take the train 2hrs out of the city for work.

And it was a sight: a bunch of suits with their fancy lattes washing their hands, and Mary in the corner trying to surreptitiously wipe down with paper towels under his Misfits t-shirt and his shredded jeans. At school, he’d have probably gotten into several altercations by now—no one would have let him just turn into Mary Goore without a fight—but this was Boston, and no one gave him more than a cursory glance.

Just another college kid.

It emboldened Mary to go full-out in the kind of way he had only done when going out to the punk shows downtown at night: kohl all the way around his eyes, and some on his cheekbones; mascara because his lashes are long and thick, and he knows it (his dad had said it made him look hard, and Mary had sneered that maybe that was what he’d been going for. But maybe it had been because he’d liked the way it had made his green eyes pop.); a smear of the step-monster’s fanciest matte lipstick on his full lips; and airplane glue in his hair to give it that lift.

He made a kissy face at himself in the mirror, and headed back out.

It was a nice Spring day—almost boiling in the direct sun—and it tempted Mary to wear only his battle vest, but even he kind of figured applying to jobs half dressed was a mistake.

He walked all over the city, trying not to get lost, looking for any kind of work—dishwasher, busboy, barback—but all he had to show for it was blistered feet and a raging appetite. The only good part of the day was that he noted any restaurant or bakery that looked like it might toss perfectly good food at the end of the day.

He and his friends had become experts at dumpster diving in his podunk town, and he felt confident that he had a good feel for a jackpot. Mary staked out a bakery and was rewarded with a find of "old" bagels. He shoved as many as he could into the nooks and crannies of his backpack before slinking off to the Commons to inhale at least two of them.

Cold, stale dough never tasted so good.

He watched the tourists and the professionals walk by in ones and in groups while he ran his bare feet through the grass. Some laughed with each other as they sauntered down the path while others seemed singularly intent on their ultimate destination. A pack of dogs ran and played with each other as their owners looked on fondly, and nearby the baseball diamond hosted a casual game.

Mary counted his lucky stars that his first week in Boston was April at its kindest—always mild during the day, even when it turned cloudy, and a few times even downright warm. The nights turned chilly, though, and it had Mary in more layers than an onion. If the birds or damp didn't wake him, his butt cramps from being curled in a tight ball all night did.

He spent those days walking around the city proper looking for work. He wasn't adventurous enough to make the leap across the bridges to Cambridge just yet, but his travels gave him a good sense on how the different sections of Boston connected—and showed him potential places to crash at night. He didn't even mind living off day-old garbage food and drinking from bubblers (he'd bought a water for the express purpose of reusing the bottle), but the barren wasteland that seemed to be the job market was beginning to weigh on him.

At home, he could always find a shit job if he was willing to put up with shit hours and ridiculous requests. Here, though, Mary was just one of many desperate people willing to do desperate work.

And he didn’t look particularly trustworthy or reliable.

@dipendancesld

Hashtag WTF

I’m scrolling through Insta on the T, and I’m way down the rabbit hole of hashtags. New content was at a minimum this morning (how can I follow accounts in triple digits and only see the same 4 posts?!), so I’d started with some art tags and ended up where I usually end up—trolling social media for blurry pictures of my boy.

His band has been a local staple for years—or at least that’s what he told me on our first date. I had just moved from New York after a nasty breakup, ready to start fresh, and I’d seen him at a coffee shop hanging posters for his next show in his leather jacket, asymmetrical Metallica crop top, and stomping boots.

Fresh had never looked so good.

Then, a few months back, an online publication had featured his band in the year’s 50 best bands "you��ve never heard of," and now the band's starting to gain traction.

He’s starting to gain traction.

Finding the new online content of him first has become a game the two of us play. We had to stop counting images posted from the popular fan accounts because Mary's now acquaintances with most of them, and I said it was hardly fair to snipe me that way. Mary had pouted—but it was to cover up his grin. So now we troll for the pictures of his latest gig or at his favorite haunts from either his casual fans or one of his new ones. I even have a whole range of hashtag typos saved if I really want to triumph, since Mary just doesn't have the attention span.

I usually win, though, by virtue of not keeping Rockstar Hours—and because Mary doesn’t have a smartphone. Mary delights in spending the wee hours while I'm sleeping finding new content, and I'll often wake to one he's pulled up on my laptop and a "suck it" sticky note stuck to my monitor.

(But I’m reigning supreme.)

There’s a thirst tag I sometimes comb through (for reasons), and today I’m desperate for that morning serotonin to keep me from dozing off, which is why I stumble across a particularly convincing cosplayer in some…risqué poses and outfits.

The dude is really good, and I have to admit he really does have Mary’s mannerisms down pat. He’s younger and a little skinnier than Mary is now, but his facial expressions are on point. I zoom in to see the contouring technique because he's using one of those filters to make it look old…and that’s when I sense something off. I can’t quite place my finger on it, but usually there’s an uncanny valley to his serious cosplayers, and this dude looks so real. He’s even 100% accurate with the mole placement, which is something I never see.

My heart does a flip-flop.

Is that…actually Mary?

Foundling

Mary's sixth night in the city, it rained. It was more of a brief Spring shower, but it was still enough to soak him and his backpack through. He shivered through the early morning hours until the sun came up, then he made his way to the Commons to lay his belongings—and himself—out into the sun to dry.

By midday, he had a slight sunburn across his nose, but most of his things were dryish—though the food was a soggy lost cause. He cut his losses and decided to buy a sausage from the hotdog vendor, even if that meant he was down to $52.37 in his sock bank.

It was the most amazing thing he'd ever eaten in his entire life (sometimes he still dreams of it), and he gobbled it down as he sat in the grass and watched the show of people pass by.

He could take today off from his job search.

Just another Groundhog Day of rejections.

A gaggle of kids about his age walked past, and he lit up when he saw them: studs and bright hair and cuffs and combat boots. They ran and shrieked and shoved at each other, and Mary had never felt such longing to be a part of something.

Not that nebulous feeling of "my world is out there somewhere," but "my world is right there if I can just get to it."

And he realized maybe he could.

These were his people.

Mary hopped off the bench and approached the boisterous group.

"Uh, hey…guys."

The pack stopped and looked him over, confused but not hostile.

"Oh hey, man" said a girl with green fins and a studded, leather jacket.

"Hey."

I have nowhere to go. Can I go with you?

"Sorry, I forgot your name."

"Oh, you don’t—"

A guy in a tight striped shirt, snake bites, and blue hair interrupted him.

"Shit, were you in my intro into film class last year?"

Mary was a high school dropout.

"Nah, dude. I’m new and shit."

…But he wasn’t stupid.

A curvy white goth with bleached blonde hair and a cream princess dress smiled at him.

"Aww, that’s rough, honey. If you think about it, they really ought to give transfers on-campus housing. It sucks to be so new and away from the action."

Mary nodded. "Yeah. Sucks."

"Well, we’re going to The Pit, wanna come?"

"If you guys don’t mind…"

"Fuck, the more the merrier!"

Mary smiled as they assimilated him into the group. He found out the goth’s name was Vanessa ("But call me Vanity."), green fins was Alexa ("Or Alex. I’m trying it out."), striped shirt was Billy, and the two other punks were Mandi (Manic Panic red) and Aaron (band tee, spiked collar).

No one laughed at him when he introduced himself as Mary or asked him why he had a girl’s name.

They took him onto the T at Charles MGH, and Mary marveled at the setting sun over the Charles River before the train ducked underground to barrel in Cambridge. At Harvard, they ushered him off the train and directly into The Pit, and Mary almost cried when he saw the pit rats there playing hacky sack, strumming guitars, and smoking cloves. Mary watched as his group high-fived, bumped chests, and hugged nearly everyone there before introducing him as if they’d known him for years.

He was shit at hacky sack, but he accepted a round on the guitar and shared a clove with a white girl who had a rat's nest of hair.

"Fuck their beauty stands," she said when she caught Mary staring.

Mary smiled and pointed to his own mess of hair. "Fuck ‘em," he repeated.

She cackled and handed him a brown bag with what he expected to be whiskey, but tasted like turpentine.

She laughed harder at his face as he coughed, and she pounded him on the back.

"Moonshine, dude. Lenny makes it in his bathtub."

"Which one is Lenny," Mary asked as he wiped off his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Oh, he’s not here. He goes to MIT. We have a strict trade agreement—booze for pot. I’m Katie."

Head fuzzy, Mary had made out with her until Aaron tugged on his arm.

"Shit dude, we gotta go before the T closes. You live close to here?"

"Uh…"

"Aww, I think he got into Lenny’s moonshine," said Vanity. "If he’s a transfer, I bet he’s at some shithole in Allston. You in Allston, honey?"

Mary just nodded.

"All right then," said Alex, taking charge. "We’ll put him up tonight. There’s no way he’s gonna make it back to Allston by himself, and I’ll be fucked if I’m trekking out there without a BU party to crash."

Mary wobbled slightly as Alex took his arm in his and led him to the T.

"Ok, we gotta go now or we’ll all be hoofing it."

They took Mary back to their dorm by the Hatch Shell and signed him in as a guest.

"Is this ok?" Mary asked warily—he didn't want to get kicked out in the middle of the night.

Mandi patted him on the back.

"We do it all time. No one really gives a shit. Vegan Mick dropped out 2 semesters ago and they don’t even check for his ID."

That night, Mary slept in the common room on a lumpy couch that was half as long as he was.

It was heaven.

The next morning seemed like the end, and Mary slumped as Vanity to sign him out. For one brief day he'd been a part of something, and now it was back to Mary, party of one. But Vanity took one look at his face and asked if he wanted to get breakfast at the dining hall.

Of course, he wanted to…but he thought of the dwindling cash in sock bank and hesitated. Vanity, bless her, misread his trepidation.

"It's on me, sweetie. I know most transfers don’t opt in. Too expensive when it’s not bundled. No worries, I got a ton of points I don’t use."

Alex and Aaron were already half done with their food when Vanity and he joined them, and they looked on in amusement as Mary ate half the breakfast buffet.

When the subject of classes came up, he shrugged off questions.

"None this morning."

Alex narrowed her eyes at him.

"What year did you say you were?"

"Sophomore."

"Not a freshman?"

Mary shook his head. "I’m not a freshman."

She seemed about to ask another question, so Mary quickly changed the subject.

"I thought I’d spend the day applying for jobs. You guys know of any place that’s hiring?"

"No work study?"

"No."

"What kind of work you looking for?"

"Shit, anything. I’ll sweep the fucking floors."

They bandied about ideas, places for Mary to try, but no one had any leads. Too soon, some unknown gong had them scurrying to get to class.

Mary suddenly panicked.

"Hey, do you guys mind if I spend the night again? I mean…"

"Yeah, sure," said Vanity. "Aaron?"

"Yeah, man. Meet me after class and I'll swipe you in."

It apparently was a time-honored tradition, passed down from upperclassmen to underclassmen, on gaming the guest system. Most kids used it to essentially move their significant others into their dorm rooms, but a handful every year used it to give haven to others who had questionable housing situations.

So, just like that, Mary had a place to rest his bones.

@dilfpassing

A Deeper Look

I’m so intent on scrolling through the comments on the grainy pics—which I'm sure now are actual scans—that I completely miss my stop, and I have to put my phone away so I can wheeze lightly jog my way to where I work as a receptionist at an alternative hair salon.

It’s really important that I start a good hour before we open so I can return any calls left on our voicemail first thing in case I can fit anyone in today. Which means I have to shelve my find for now, much to my irritation.

Mornings are super-busy because apparently there are some people in the world that like getting up with the sun and want everything done by noon. (June Cleaver’s salon lets me get away with a lot—like coming to work in denim short-shorts and ripped tights, free hair colors, and a snarky attitude—but late start times aren’t one of them.) I honestly don’t have room in my brain to obsess about the pictures because I’m too busy answering calls, making coffee, settling accounts, and giving the new customer spiel for the 57th time to a walk-in.

It’s just after midday, when Penny, the shampoo girl, collects my cash for the salon-wide sandwich run, and I finally have a moment to breathe. And obsess.

I take out my phone again, and I have to retrace my steps because of course the app has refreshed, which is why Sonia has the time to look over my shoulder.

"Missing dream boy’s dick so much you gotta spend your lunch hour ogling pics of him on the internet?"

I zoom in on the one of maybe!Mary in his underwear.

"Who does that look like to you?"

Sonia makes a guh sound in her throat and backs away.

"I don’t need to see your intimates!"

"That’s the thing! It’s not mine!"

"Your boy’s nudes get leaked??"

I wave my arms around.

"I don’t freakin’ know! They may not even be him. Fucking. C’mere and help me out!"

Sonia warily creeps back over, and so does Ryan, since all the yelling has attracted him.

The three of us peer over the phone as I scroll through the images again.

By the time Penny comes back with lunch, we’ve gone back and forth on who’s in the images—Mary or a fake—and I haven’t been able to do any actual research. The afternoon rush starts, and I have to table the whole thing again, having made no progress at all.

It isn’t until near-closing, when most of the other stylists have gone home—and it’s only June who does the post-work crowd—that I can really dig into the matter.

A deep dive and a couple of defunct, decade-old forums later, I find that what I took as an aspirational hashtag was actually the name of a zine called "Heroes."

There’s like, zero online trail about it—except for a few other grainy scans of other pages of articles, poetry, concert pictures, and art—but it seemed to be an early aughts missive for local underground culture and color.

It still doesn’t explain why Mary’s in there in various states of undress and poses.

Or why Mary has never said a word about it to me.

Stripped Bare

Mary settled into a sort of routine. He spent most days looking for a job—any job—with his backpack full of food from their dining hall. Most nights he rotated couches on different floors so the RAs didn’t notice that he basically lived there.

He made friends with Vegan Mick for about 5 seconds until Mary had eaten an entire Rotisserie chicken from 7-11 in front of him. Mick had launched into a whole spiel, and Mary had pointed out that Mick's jacket and Docs were made of leather. He’d only meant it as a joke—a callout in answer to a callout, like he'd do with his friends back home—but Vegan Mick had turned purple, then iced Mary out every time he saw him after that.

Oops.

The brief friendship had lasted long enough, however, for Mick to give Mary some tips and tricks of being homeless.

Homeless.

That had been a tough pill to swallow. Until Vegan Mick had put Mary’s situation like that, Mary had just thought of himself between places.

But it was true: he didn’t live anywhere. He skated by on the kindness of his new friends, and he didn’t know how much longer he could keep up the ruse of "transfer student who didn’t like his shithole apartment and was too busy job searching to concentrate on classes."

He still spent a few nights a week finding an out-of-the-way place outside to hunker down in or huddling in with Katie and a few of the other gutter punks under their boxes in the corners of the T stations. He knew they would have been more than happy to make room, anyway, but Mary always emptied his backpack of all the pilfered dining hall food for distribution amongst them.

It honestly wasn't so terrible now that he had friends and a warm place to go on cold or rainy nights, but.

He needed an actual place to live. To afford an actual place to live, he needed a job. To get a job, he needed a place to live.

It seemed like a catch-22, and he began to despair that he’d never get ahead…until Mandi offered him a leg up.

Mary was sitting on the grass in the Commons in the shade, thinking that with summer coming up, maybe he could fudge it until the gang came back in September. There was always Katie and The Pit, and Mary was sure he could chip in somehow.

Mandi sat down next to him.

"I thought that mess of hair was you, Mare."

"Hey, Mandi. What’s kicks?"

"You still looking for a job?"

Mary put his head in his hands and sighed.

"Don’t remind me."

"You over 18?"

Just last week. But Mary hadn’t said, since they thought he was a Sophomore.

"Yeah."

"Wanna be at least 21?"

Mary grinned at her.

"That’s what my fake ID says."

She laughed, a tinkling thing.

"You got anything against strip clubs?"

Mary furrowed his brows at her.

"Uh…what’s the right answer here?"

She shoved him playfully.

"Do you want a job?"

"Yeah?"

"Then say no."

"No. No problems with strip clubs." He squinted at her. "Are they looking for male strippers?"

She laughed again.

"Definitely not." She canted her head at Mary. "I mean, you're very pretty, Mare. I could probably put you on as one of the girls…even with these triple As," she flicked playfully at his nipple, which had him grunting and batting at her, "but I was thinking more behind the scenes."

Mary held up his arm and made a weak muscle.

"I don’t think I’d be much of a bouncer, Mands."

"You said you’d wash dishes, sweep floors and shit, right?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, the club I work at—"

"The club at you what now?"

Mandi gave him a strange look.

"Yeah. The strip club I work at."

Mary’s eyes bugged out.

"As a…waitress?"

"As a stripper, Mary. Duh." At his dumbfounded look she shook her head. "It’s kind of extra credit, as a dance major. I’m going to turn it into my thesis. Plus, I make hella bank."

She swept her arm across the park that made up her college "campus."

"How else do you think I can afford this rock-and-roll lifestyle? Not all of us are here on scholarship or mom and dad’s dime."

She tilted her head at him.

"I thought you’d get it."

When Mary didn't respond, she touched his shoulder.

"Mare. I know you don't go here."

"W-what…? I…"

He looked at her, wide-eyed as the blood drained from his face.

"Hey, it's ok. I'm not gonna tell anybody. Not if you don't want me to."

Mary looked down. "Thanks." He rubbed the back of his neck. "You know that means I've got no address."

Mandi bumped his shoulder and waved his words away.

"A lot of the girls dance. Paddy is used to dorm rooms as addresses. You can use mine."

Mary looked at her, hoping he could convey every ounce of gratitude he was feeling.

She grinned and punched him in the shoulder.

"So, you up for it? Sweeping floors and bussing tables?" She leveled a look at him. "Cleaning up puke?"

Anything.

"Fuck, I’m desperate, Mands. I’ll hold their hair back if it means a paycheck."

"That’s the spirit!"

***

Mary was sure Patrick was part of the mob—or at least in cahoots. The guy had taken one look at Mary’s ID and had said, "But how old are you really?" and Mary had said, "Nineteen."

Patrick had thrown up his hands. "Well, you ain’t gonna be serving alcohol anyway, kid. Your job is to do whatever I tell you. Some asshole breaks a bottle, you clean up the glass so the girls don’t hurt themselves. Some idiot ralphs all over the toilet seat, you scrub the shit out of that fucker. A bachelor party leaves a table a hot mess, you better be out there clearing off the table for the next one, got it?"

Mary had nodded.

"You show up at 5 to help the girls set up the bar. You stay til whenever it takes to close down—but you only get paid 'til 2am—and you get an hour to eat, unpaid. You don’t bother the girls, and," Patrick had leaned in, "you don’t steal from me."

Mary had gulped and nodded emphatically.

Patrick had jabbed a finger at him. "That includes the booze. If I get fucked because some snot-nosed, underage kid is drinking with my good friends Jim and Johnnie, I’m gonna be very put out."

"Got it, sir."

"Don’t call me sir. I’m Paddy to my friends, so you can call me Patrick."

"Yes, Patrick."

Patrick had looked him over.

"You get paid as an independent contractor just like the girls, so you gotta deal with your own taxes, you got that? I’ll start you at $10 an hour."

Mary’s eyes had gone wide. Back home he was lucky to get 5.

"Ten…?"

Patrick had tilted his head again.

"No, you’re right, 12. Do a good job, and I’ll think about raising it to 15."

Mary had to physically stop his jaw from dropping.

"You do weeknights for now so if you fuck up it’s not that much of a problem. If you don’t fuck up and the girls don’t hate you, you can get weekends. Deal?"

Mary had sat up straighter. "Deal." He’d held his hand out, but Patrick had just looked at it until Mary pulled it back into his side.

"Ariel vouched for you, so I’m giving you a shot. Don’t make her regret it."

Mary had shaken his head as Patrick had handed him some forms to fill out.

"Come back at 4 tomorrow with these and we’ll get you started. Now, get out, I got shit to do."

Mary had taken the forms and skedaddled.

Mandi was outside waiting for him, all smiles.

"Did you get it?"

"Yeah, but fuck—your boss is scary."

"Nah, he’s a teddy bear."

***

The job was awful.

The puke was an almost nightly occurrence, and by the end of the first week, little cuts covered Mary’s hands from the broken glass. The customers were loud, rowdy, and acted as if their mother was going to clean up after them.

Mary swore he would never get the beer smell out. It now lived in his soul.

One dude punched Mary and broke his nose for no reason Mary could tell before the bouncers dragged the guy away. The girls gave him some tampons to stop the bleeding, and Mary finished his shift.

Patrick paid Mary in cash at the end of every week with a "It’s your job to report that, not mine," and at the end of the month, Patrick bumped Mary up to $15/hr. He worked 5 days a week because, according to Patrick, "The Lord gave us a day of rest, and you get one day off per week."

Mary never reported a single cent to the IRS.

The girls loved him, and joked that Patrick had gotten them a pet. They showed him winged eyeliner and smokey eyes and how to contour. They guffawed when they watched him try out their shoes like a newborn deer. On slow nights, they tried to show him pole techniques.

He saw the gang less and less because by the time they were getting out of class, he was going into work, and when he was done work, they were crawling into bed. Fortunately, the desk sitters seemed to forget that he wasn’t an on-campus "student" and didn’t even bother signing him in anymore. There were a few sticklers, but Mary found that—while back home he was less than scum—here, he attracted all the right kinds of attention…and a smirk with the right compliment went a long way.

By the time their school year ended, Mary had saved up $1,000 (and he needed to transfer his money out of sock bank and into the ripped lining of his jacket).

Even though they didn't know just how much they'd saved him, Mary showed up on the last day as thanks to help them all move their stuff into family cars or rented trucks. They hugged him goodbye and said to ring them next semester.

Mandi bopped him on the nose and told him to keep his nose clean.

Mary took a sublet in Allston with 2 BU kids and a Berkley grad student. The "room" was a closed-in porch with a sleeping bag left by the last resident—but it was $400 a month until September, utilities included.

At first, Mary didn't know why the gang was so snobby about Allston, but the summer seemed to be one continual party. It didn't matter what day Mary got up, there were always broken beer bottles and stale beer on their front stoop, and the apartment had a designated watering can for washing away the vomit that dripped down from the top porches to their own.

But he took it in stride, and when he wasn’t at the strip club or sleeping, he was partying with the BU kids, or letting the Berkley grad show him better string fingering techniques.

Mary still tried to get out to The Pit with what groceries he could spare, but Katie had moved on with some of the others to do a protest tour with an activist street band that had come through town, and without her or the gang, it made Mary feel lonely.

By the end of the summer, Mary had saved up enough money for first, last, and security. He even had some left over to buy more than ramen and some new clothes. To Mary, it felt like a million dollars. He rented a garden-level apartment in the cheap part of Jamaica Plain for September 1st and spent that entire day with the BU dudes driving around in their rented truck for Allston Christmas’s best furniture finds.

Mary ended up with a mattress that he hoped on a wish and a prayer didn’t have bedbugs, a mismatched set of dishes, plastic drawers that were slightly warped, and a broken futon frame he swore he would fix. Throw in a few sets of slightly used string lights, and Mary’s cave felt downright homey.

When the gang got back, he simply told them he’d dropped out.

"Yeah, I just don’t think college is for me. Music’s my real passion, you know?"

Alex had groaned.

"I knew that Berkley kid was gonna be a bad influence on you."

Mary shrugged.

"My grades were shit anyway. But I’m still around, you know. The strip club’s only a block from campus."

"Because we saw you so much then," deadpanned Billy.

"Hey! Stop piling on Mary," said Vanity. "He’s following his path."

Mary shot her a wide smile.

"Thanks, Vanity."

Patrick finally gave him a little more leeway with his days off, and Mary started taking Saturday night to join the gang in Harvard Square for the shadow cast of Rocky Horror. One of Aaron’s classmates, Amber, was in it, and they all wanted to support her.

Mary felt that something again. That thing that told that this was his place and his people. This eclectic group who got up in front of strangers every week in their underwear for free enthralled Mary.

He and Amber bonded immediately, and Mary began going even without the gang. The cast welcomed him in as an honorary groupie, and Mary's friendship with the gang waned. There was still Mandi to cavort with at the strip club, but now when Mary wasn't there, he was at any one of the Rocky crew's apartments getting high and playing dress up.

"You’ve got such a Look, Mare," sighed Amber. "I’d kill for your cheekbones."

"I’d kill for your tits."

She slapped him playfully. "Don’t be gross."

"No, I’m serious. Someone once put it in my head that I'd be a hot chick."

The girls had giggled and proceeded to dress him up in bras and corsets with cutlets. They added a wig, and the glo-up surprised even Mary.

Still buzzed, they went out for girl’s night and hit up all the bars in Fenway and flirted their way to free shots from the dude bros before batting their falsies at bouncers to let them into the clubs ahead of the line and without the cover.

The cutlets eventually became a nuisance—and soon they were all flapping them about above their heads as they danced—but Mary had loved the feel of the lace and satin corsets against his skin.

When they’d all collapsed in a pile at the end of the night, Mary wondered if they’d tell him where to get some lingerie for himself.

***

By August, Mary was ready to quit the strip club.

He was tired of cut fingers (they were making it hard to play the guitar he’d bought), the drunks, and the sick everywhere. Now that he had a little cushion, he thought maybe he could at least find something with better hours.

Mandi had graduated and was well into a summer internship at Disney in hopes they’d bring her on as a dancer.

Alex had also graduated and moved out to LA to make it as a film editor.

Vanity and Aaron had started dating after finals, and they had moved in together in Cambridgeport for their last year.

Billy had stopped going to classes before dropping out altogether. No one seemed to know what happened, and when they called his home, his mother just said he was unavailable.

There didn’t seem to be much reason to stick around the Grid anymore, and it was a bitch of a commute back to his place if he wasn’t going to hang out with the Rocky crew. He landed a job at a record store that was walking distance to his apartment.

Patrick seemed surprisingly sad to see him go, saying, "Ah, the good ones smart up," and gave him a $500 bonus for not "fucking up."

Tim, one of the older Rocky people, turned out to not live too far from him, and when Mary started hanging out there, so did the party.

Now that Mary was no longer shackled by the strip club’s hours, his world opened a few more degrees. He spent his nights dressing up while he watched the cast rehearse. (When he showed them a move or two he learned from the women at the club, they tried to get him to do a guest star as Frank. But Mary had shaken his head and said that wasn’t the kind of performing he wanted to do.)

When they weren't rehearsing, they dragged Mary to TT The Bear’s, The Middle East, and The Milky Way Lounge for underground shows. They took him to fetish night at ManRay after a trip to Hubba Hubba for pleather and lingerie, and Mary made a lot of new friends.

Sometimes, Mary would show up to work straight off a night out in his club clothes, eyeliner smudged and lipstick smeared. It should have got him fired, but his boss just shrugged.

"I used to keep rockstar hours too."

Mary still wore all his old vestiges—his battle vest and his ripped jeans—it was just that now he sometimes added a corset and heels.

Wherever Katie was now, he hoped she knew he was still fucking their beauty standards.

ry.omen Insta

Answer Me This

I practically vibrate the entire way back to our place. I'm still trying to wring information out of the internet like it's too-wet clothes, but the only thing I accomplish is making myself motion sick on the bus, so I put my phone back in my pocket and breath through my nose.

When I get home, Mary is sprawled across the couch in his pjs with various limbs hanging over sides and edges as he watches some extreme sport show on my laptop.

I wonder if he just got up, but I see the start of dinner on the stove, so I decide not to snark at him.

"Hey," he says without looking up.

I am, however, gonna need some answers on "Heroes."

I gently close the laptop, and he meets my eyes.

"What?"

I climb onto the couch, and Mary’s limbs recede like vines to make room for me as I scroll through my phone to my photo app where I’ve saved screenshots.

"Lucy," I say in a terrible accent, "you have some ‘splaining to do!"

Mary squints at me and takes my phone, his expression morphing into one of surprise.

"Shit, babe. Where’d ya find these??"

"So they are you!"

He chuckles.

"Christ…I haven't thought about these in fucking years."

"Mind telling me what the fuck?" I ask, my hands on my hips.

I'm only half joking.

Mary grimaces at me.

"Ah."

"I'm gonna need more than that, mister."

He rubs the back of his neck.

"Fuck, you know those were hard times for me."

I know about his family, the homelessness. I know he tried out a lot until he found a life that fit. He'd given me the overviews with occasional anecdotes filled with names I never remembered.

But none of them included naughty pictures.

I worm my way under his arm.

"Yeah, I know, Mare."

His hand strokes down my arm.

"I mean, shit. I was kinda an asshole, you know?"

I wrap an arm around his chest.

"You're still kind of an asshole, Goore."

"Thanks."

"No problem."

When he doesn't say more, I poke him hard in the side.

"I’m literally dying here."

He laughs a little.

"Fine. But you gotta remember you asked."

Model Behavior

One day, Mary was walking down the street on his way to drinks with the new friends he'd made the weekend before. It was a good day. He wasn’t hungover as fuck, his makeup was only smudged artfully, and he was pretty sure he was going to get laid.

A guy in a leather jacket and tight jeans maybe a few years older than Mary stopped him on the street.

"Hey, man! I love your style."

Mary batted his eyelashes at him. "Thanks, dude."

"You ever think of dark modeling?"

Mary squinted his eyes at him.

"Dark what now?"

"You know—modeling but like," he gestured up and down Mary’s form, "for dark beauties. Show the world beauty isn’t cookie cutter."

"For like what? A website or some shit?"

The guy dug into his pocket, pulled out a card case, and handed one to Mary.

Heroes Greg Karson, Photographer/Web Design Butera School of Art

Actually, Mary had heard of this. It was a zine about the local happenings around town—concerts, art shows, parties, etc. There was a stack of them next to "Rrriot!" in the record shop. He’d flipped through one occasionally, mostly interested in the band reviews.

"We’re really on the lookout for anyone with the right look. You know, wear stuff you already own."

"So like a street fashion spread?"

"Well, we might do a little more with it, but—you know how it is. Most of the budget goes toward printing costs."

Mary perked up.

"Would I be paid?"

Greg laughed.

"Peanuts, my dude. But yeah. Even if it’s a T token. You interested, then?"

"Hell yeah!"

"Mind if I take a few test shots."

Mary smirked at Greg.

"How do you want me?"

"Just natural."

Putting his hands in his pockets, Mary arched his back and gave Greg his best snotty hipster face.

Greg dug out a digital camera from his carrying case and took a dozen or so pictures of Mary from different angles while telling him to turn this way or that.

Afterwards, the two of them huddled over the camera and scrolled through the shots.

"Aw yeah, this one. I love the attitude. The guys are gonna love it. You have a number where we can reach you?"

Mary gave him the number of the record shop. (His apartment had a phone, but he’d never gotten around to wanting to pay for service.)

Later, he and Amber looked up the Angelfire website on the back of the card. It was one page that contained the mission statement, bios of the creators, and locations to pick up the zine.

"Omigod—you’re gonna become a famous model, Mare!"

"Yeah, right. You know most of it ends up in the trash, right?"

But when Ben called, Mary said he was game. He directed Mary to a co-op in a converted warehouse in Dorchester, and Mary brought his favorite clothes in a borrowed duffle.

A girl in cat pajamas opened the door and pointed at a set of metal stairs with her cereal spoon.

On the second floor, Mary found Greg setting up a makeshift studio. A girl with multiple piercings and yarn dreads leaned against the wall in her black babydoll dress.

Mary sidled up to her.

"You here to model, too?"

She gave him an unimpressed once-over.

"I’m the art director, asshole."

Mary flushed hard as she turned to Greg.

"Couldn’t find one with brains?"

She turned back to Mary.

"I don’t know if you thought this would be a good way to meet chicks or what, dude. But I’m letting you know right now that I’m here on my day off to make sure this adheres to our aesthetic, so if you're not serious, fuck off."

Mary rubbed the back of his neck.

"Shit, sorry. I was expecting a dude named Ben."

She waved her hand in the air as if dispelling Ben.

"The Bens are morons. Good idea, terrible execution. I’m here to make sure we remain true to the idea of 'Heroes,' so don’t fuck up my shoot." She gave him a once over. "Christ. You have any experience?"

Greg turned from where he was testing the white balance.

"Angelique, stop harassing the talent. We get it, you have a degree from RISD."

Angelique snorted.

"As if I don't hear you going on and on about being a professional photographer. 'Hey, lemme shoot your portfolio, baby.' Whatever. As if we're not your only professional credit."

"Hey—you wanted a photographer for peanuts? You got me. You wanted models for peanuts? You got him."

Mary gave her his full snaggle-toothed grin.

"I take T tokens."

Angelique sighed, then pasted on a smile.

"Hi! So happy you’re here!" Her smile drooped. "You got your wardrobe in there?"

"Yeah."

Mary handed her the duffle, and she handed him release forms.

"Here: sign these"

She pawed through his offerings.

"Not bad, not bad." She pulled out a corset and his heeled boots. "We'll keep you in your jeans and have you wear your jacket over your corset. Cool?"

Cool.

The shoot was as professional as a shoot in a warehouse in what Mary was taking to usually be a living room could be. Angelique directed Greg with what she wanted. Greg called out positions and expressions for Mary to pose in.

It was surprisingly hard work, and by the end of a solid hour, his smirking lip was getting tired. Angelique and Greg scrolled through the shots, murmuring to themselves and nodding.

Mary waited—greeting at the other inhabitants as they squeezed by on their way either up or down—until Angelique approached him.

"That’ll do. You mind if we post on our website?"

Mary preened.

"Yeah, that’s kosher."

She handed him a pen and pocket notebook.

"Write down a quick bio."

He scribbled down a quick elevator pitch

Into general skulking and metal \m/

and handed the notebook back to her.

"Great, thanks."

She handed him a $20 bill, her eyes skimming him up and down.

"Next time we should show off those hip bones. Just jeans, I think."

Mary perked up. "Next time?"

"We’ll call you."

***

"Omigod, omigod!"

Amber perched on the record store counter, flipping through "Heroes," as Jon peered over her shoulder.

"Mary…look at you!"

Mary tried to swallow his smug smile.

Failed.

"Yeah. I’m hot shit, ain’t I?"

She bopped him on the nose with the newsprint.

"Don’t be vain."

He showed her his toothy smile.

"I like to think of it as confidence."

"So did Icarus."

Mary snorted and went back to putting prices on the new CDs.

"The camera loves you," said Jon, who was always quiet and reserved as you please…until he put on Frank’s corset and heels.

Mary had tried flirting with him, but Jon always ducked his head and played it off.

"Thanks, man," said Mary, giving him a softer smile.

"So??"

"So what, Amber?"

"Are you gonna do it again?"

Mary shrugged.

"I mean, if they call me, sure."

But he was kind of hoping they would.

When the next issue came out weeks later, Mary stared at the cybergoth on the pages and felt himself deflate. Listlessly, he thumbed through the delicate print, barely skimming the section devoted to the World/Inferno Friendship Society’s set he’d been at the week before.

He set it down with a sigh before he picked up his guitar and plucked out a tune he was trying to coax into a riff.

By the time a Ben called again, Mary had given up the modeling thing as a one-off.

"Hey, dude—thought maybe you guys forgot about me," Mary said in a teasing tone.

The Ben on the other end chuckled.

"It’s like herding cats to get shit out. Nah, dude—we definitely want you to be one of our regulars. You in for next Saturday?"

He was.

***

Over the course of a year, "Heroes" had Mary come out multiple times for shoots. Mainly, Mary wore his own clothes and did his own makeup, but occasionally, Angelique wanted something specific.

"How comfortable are you with boudoir shots?"

"With what?"

"Like a pinup, but more…saucy than sexy."

I'd pose nude if you paid me enough.

(Sure, he was a noodle boy, but he knew he had the goods.)

"Yeah, I’m cool with that."

Angelique brightened at him.

"Great!"

She picked up a set of complicated leather garters and thrust them at him.

"Put these on."

Mary had only ever worn lace garters—mostly out to clubs, but occasionally under his ripped jeans for an extra pop—but he found he liked these even more, liked the way they emphasized his thighs.

"Hey—where’d you get these…?"

(He was already thinking of what he could pair them with for goth night.)

"Local leatherworker. He mostly does pieces for Renn Fairs, but he'll also do custom. I can give you his info."

She led Mary into what was clearly someone's bedroom.

"Don't fuck anything up, or Joye will never let us use this again."

Mary shot her his best shark smile.

"Hey, I only mess up the sheets if someone asks."

Angelique gave him a flat look and called for Greg.

(But when he draped himself over the bed and told Greg to "Paint me like one of your French girls," Mary could have sworn she almost smiled.)

On one memorable occasion, she brought in a guy whose rope bondage demo she watched at a sex convention.

"Put on some of that lingerie and we'll truss you up. You ok with that, Goore?"

Mary ran his fingers over the coils and gave her a wolfish smile.

"You know I'm game for anything."

She gave him a vulpine smile of her own then, and she looked down at him from the height of her platformed boots.

"Good. I thought you should be submissive for once."

Mary had no witty rejoinder for that.

He listened with interest as the guy carefully explained what he was going to do, complete with pictures, and he relaxed easily into the process. (They put bunny ears on him, and it would be much, much later that he got that particular joke. Well played, Angelique.)

The ropes hadn’t let him do much posing, but Mary had kind of liked the constriction, and his thoughts were already on asking Amber to help him create a more versatile version for fetish night.

He’d left that day with a new kink…and the guy’s number.

"Why not just do one big shoot?" he asked another time. "Get it all done in one big bang!"

Angelique held up his garments to eyeball over him.

"Honey, we never even know if there's gonna be a next issue. The Bens spend most of the time arguing. My god you should hear them—Ben bankrolls the whole thing, so he says he should get final say on shit, and Benji wants total artistic control because it was his idea, because 'he's the graphic designer', and because it's his Kinko's employee discount they use."

She gave Mary a curled-lip smile as she tossed a few items at him.

"In the end it's this bitch you're looking at who gets shit done."

Mary began to change (they were long past modesty).

"How'd you get involved?"

"Went to school with Benji."

"Ben too?"

"Neg. The Bens are childhood friends. Ben works some cushy start-up job, so Benji lets him bankroll them both. Rent, utilities—everything. I love Benji to death, but he's a giant mooch."

"Shit, that must be nice."

Angelique shrugged. She stood back to appraise Mary's look.

"It's fucking lame. But it least it gets us fucking paid."

Mary didn't say I'd do this for free. Instead, he struck a pose and said, "I'm just happy for the exposure."

Angelique rolled her eyes and went to fetch Greg.

***

That year and a half would become a nonstop party with Mary as one of the VIPs; he wouldn't say no to anything—be it casual sex, club appearances, or whatever drug the current pretty thing was offering him in the bathroom.

But recognition started slow.

At first, it was customers who would leaf through the zine and recognize Mary.

Then, it was the occasional scenester who’d stop him on the street in JP as he walked about, and Mary would pose for grainy cell phone pics.

Soon, he was being approached at shows and clubs. The first time it happened, Mary was high off his new infamy and ready to please. A woman in a black bandage bra and pleated skirt with bondage straps approached him, and Mary was already thinking of what he could do with those.

"You look like that guy in ‘Heroes’!" she'd shouted to him over the music.

Mary had flashed her a crooked smile and leaned in.

"Maybe I am the guy in ‘Heroes’."

She'd given him an exaggerated once over before sidling closer with hooded eyes.

"I dunno…you're wearing way more clothes."

Mary had pulled his mesh top down by the collar in a tease as he'd curled over her.

"Take me somewhere more private and I’ll let you do a comparison."

She'd compared him all night.

And that was before he and the other "Heroes" models formed their own posse.

The Bens had thrown a BBQ and had invited everyone they'd ever met. There were people packed into their little 2 bedroom in Brighton, spilling down the back stairs, and equally packed into the little square of shared backyard. Ben had taken the 12-pack of 'Gansett beers Mary had brought, then introduced him to the other dark models.

"Now you're all here!" said Ben. He slung his arm around Mary. "Guys, this is Mary. Mary this is Mayhem, Lesley, Lola, and Bryan."

Mayhem was a rivethead, and Mary took to him instantly, but he was wary of the others. Lesley was the cybergoth who'd been in the first issue after him, and Mary still felt a bit salty at them, even though Mary knew by now the Bens rotated the models. Lola, the romantic goth, reminded him enough of Vanity that he felt guilty for losing touch with her and had him projecting a little. Bryan was a metalhead, so: competition.

Mary had thought they'd get along like cats and water, but weed, booze, and "Never Have I Ever" went a long way to creating a shared bond.

And there it was again. That pull. The magnetic force telling him that he'd found the place he was supposed to be. They quickly coalesced into their own pack, calling themselves the "Deathbutantes" (because they always killed it when they debuted for the night).

It had been rare for Mary to miss Friday and Saturday night shenanigans with the Rocky crew, but now, every night was Friday night. There was always a show or a concert or club that one of them knew about—and if they couldn't get lucky with the local color, they'd just go home with each other.

Mayhem taught Mary what Lola jokingly called the "grab a bat" dance, and the two of them cut quite the picture on the dance floors.

Lesley took to Lola, and the two of them could always be counted on for scintillating conversation in dark corners when Mary's limbst needed a break from flailing about.

The clubs weren't really Bryan's scene—take him to a sticky hole in the wall with concrete floors and a stage close enough to feel the sweat from the bands, and he was in heaven—but he liked to come along to hang. He'd drink PBRs, rub Lola's feet when she invariably abandoned her heels for the evening, and argue with Mary about the purity of death metal.

Mayhem and Lola weren't really into live music of the screaming kind, so—while Lesley, Bryan, and Mary bounced off each other in the mosh pits—they'd save a "home" base at one the bartops.

Amber noticed Mary's diminishing presence and stopped by the record shop to call him out.

"So you're not dead! Could've fooled me."

Mary was organizing the albums into order, and he grunted at her.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm a cad. I'll make it up to you."

"You missed game night."

"Sorry. Jethro Tull played some tiny venue in nowhere Mass, and Bryan was salivating. I mean, Jethro Tull. Can you blame me?"

He looked at her, arms out wide in supplication. But she just blinked at him.

"You have no idea who Jethro Tull is, do you?"

"Sorry, dude. But christ, Mare. You should have invited me. I'd've gone. Maybe I would have even liked them. Now you'll never know."

"I could just lend you an album."

"Nope! The moment passed. Too late!"

Mary riffled through the stock and shoved a Jethro Tull CD into her hands.

She tapped it against her thigh.

"So, when do I get to hang?"

"I can get us into 80s night free."

"No, I mean, with your cooler friends. Your 'murder models', or whatever."

"You wanna hang out with the Deathbutantes?"

Amber scrunched her nose.

"That's so fucking pretentious."

Mary kind of liked it.

"Dunno if they're really your scene."

"Oh? And what's my scene?"

"Musical theater on crack."

She mock gasped at him, "Called out!" before smacking him with the CD. "Whatever. You love musical theater on crack."

Mary draped his arm around her shoulders.

"Yeah, I do. But I don't live it, you know? You guys have your niche—and fuck…I love to visit—but it's not mine."

Amber looked up at him, her expression serious.

"So the Dumbutantes are your niche?"

Mary shrugged and went back to shelving.

The Rocky crew had been good to him. They'd taken him under their wing, no questions asked, and helped him realize things about himself. Tim had taken him to the ER when Mary had come down with a serious case of the flu. Matty had taught him the basics of sewing. Gretchen had held him after a bad trip. Omar and he had had many drunken heart-to-hearts about their shitty home lives.

And Amber was his best friend. She'd been his #1 cheerleader for years and had never been afraid to call him out on his shit.

So yeah, he loved the Rocky crew…but they laughed at anyone who took anything too seriously. Mary would show up to game nights in his latest creation—with everyone else in pjs or jeans & hoodies—and they'd tease him about trying to impress the wrong people. He'd try to talk about the newest guitar god he'd been mainlining, and they'd make snoring noises at him.

How could he explain the kinship he felt with the Deathbutantes? That they were as serious about music as he was, that they just…got why he felt the need to dress the way he did to express the way he felt inside on his outside.

Instead, he said, "I'm just trying shit out, Ambs." He quirked his eyebrow at her. "I gotta do something while you guys do your real-person jobs."

(Amber had recently started as a junior marketing assistant at the American Repertory Theater. "Purely mercenary," she'd said. "Maybe it'll give me a leg up during auditions.")

She made a disgruntled scoffing noise in the back of her throat.

"Fuck, don't remind me. I actually gotta go to bed a reasonable hour now."

"Don't worry." Mary winked at her. "I'll keep ya honest."

"That sounds a lot like my head in a toilet, Mare."

"I'll hold your hair back."

She gave him a good-natured shove, and he pretended to cower.

If she wanted to cross pollinate, who was Mary to stand in her way? So, he invited her out the next time the Deathbutantes went to a show, and it went exactly like he thought it would.

They disliked her, and she was equally unimpressed. They thought she was too loud and frenetic, and she thought they had no sense of humor.

"I fucking told you," Mary had snorted as they sat on the curb sharing a clove.

"Shut the fuck up, Mare."

But she'd put her head on his shoulder.

"They make you happy, though. So I guess I approve. Just as long as I don't have to play nice."

Mary still hung out with the Rocky crew—there were still game nights and drug-fueled sex parties and theater games—but the Deathbutantes introduced him to the underground scene. They always seemed to have insider knowledge about the best up-in-coming bands and the secret shows. Theme nights at the goth clubs were always a must, and they rarely missed one. Sometimes, Angelique would crash, and they'd take the commuter rail to Providence to party at Club Hell before collapsing in a sweaty, smeary pile at a friend of a friend's hole in the wall.

As a bit player in the Rocky crew, Mary had been another made-up face in the crowd. As a certified member of the Deathbutantes, Mary became the face.

They all did.

The owners loved them because they bought round after round at the bar, and if word got out that the Deathbutantes were there, their admirers came to spend money as well. The employees loved them because they were fun and talked to them as equals. The clientele loved them because they were pretty young things.

Sometimes, though, Mary wasn't in the mood to party or get laid, so he talked to the DJs instead. He'd buy them rounds and stay past closing to help them pack up while they talked about the history of punk and 80s new wave and nu metal. There was one in particular, Dave, that Mary even considered a friend.

The two of them would sit in the club past closing, sharing a whiskey and talking about life while the bartenders closed down and cashed out. Occasionally, Dave's other friends would be around, and they'd all walk back to his place; he'd fool around spinning in his home studio, and they'd drink box wine as they danced and laughed before Mary would have to sit on the ground in an intoxicated exhaustion, good for only thumbing through Dave's vinyl collection.

Mary was just happy to talk shop with another music aficionado, but Angelique had pointed out that he should leverage his minor clout.

They'd been waiting for Greg to finish setting up, and Mary had been struggle city after a particularly hard night out. It was all he could manage to sit there quietly and hope some god would put him out of his misery.

"You need to get your shit together," Angelique had said out of nowhere.

Mary had cracked a puffy eye and had slowly (as to not bring the nothing in his stomach back up) turned his head to her.

"As if I haven't seen your melted ass on the floor wanting to die."

"Fuck, Mary. You've turned it into an art form."

He'd closed his eyes and given her the finger, but that hadn't stopped her.

"You wanna be a rockstar, boy? You can't just sit on your ass and hope the right person on the right night hears you. You're effervescent and charismatic—heads turn when you walk into a room and not just because of your skinny jeans—but you need more than air, Mary, which is all you are right now."

"Fuck you, Angela."

She'd clapped in front of his face, and she was lucky he didn't Exorcist bile all over her.

"You're a fucking pain in my ass, Goore. I'm doling out the good stuff, try not to bite my hand off, k?"

"All right, all right!"

"You wanna start that band? You wanna get play and amass fans? Well, make that demo you're always droning on about and give it to those DJs you're alway fanboying over. Fucking network, Goore."

At the time, Mary had been too hungover to care, but her advice would sink in…

Eventually.

For the time being, Mary was content. He loved the attention, and it made him feel invincible, made him feel like it was finally His Time. And he was going to make up for every slight, every unfair situation, and every beat down with sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll.

With his newfound nightlife, Mary's day job had become an afterthought. He started sleeping through opening shifts, but with the extra foot traffic Mary brought to the store, his boss seemed resigned to let Mary slide (after a stern talking to and a pay docking).

The shadow cast had started using him as a mascot of sorts, and he was happy to show up on Saturday nights and hype up the waiting line with a pseudo striptease. (Even if it was sometimes to kick off his evening with the Deathbutantes and not hang with the cast after.)

Mary started a band ("auditioning" any and all of the many admirers who said they’d be more than happy to join it), and after a few false starts and a couple of lineup changes, they began working on an EP. (At least, when Mary showed up to rehearsal, they did.)

A Boston Phoenix reporter got wind of the Deathbutantes and called around about doing a story on them. The Bens were excited about the exposure that meant for their zine, and Angelique and Greg were excited about what it could mean for their careers. Mary did a brief interview over the phone where he answered questions about his style and talked about his dream of making his band a household name.

Mary saw his name up in lights, and he was reaching for it, full speed ahead.

But then things turned.

The story fell through at the last minute with no further explanation or contact by the reporter.

His boss finally fired him after Mary showed up too high to function too many times—or not at all.

The shadow cast had a turnover, and suddenly he was old news—a cringey hanger-on.

A trip to the clinic and a round of antibiotics for an STI had him way more wary of who he hooked up with.

"Heroes" lost momentum when imitators popped up and Ben cut off the gravy train.

Angelique moved to NYC for "better opportunities," and the Bens took their brand of counterculture to Portland, OR.

Greg took down the website when he got offered a legit job as an apprentice at a food magazine, and that was that.

The physical zines were cheap things, most ending up papering the sidewalk after trash day or lining the bottom of cages. Without the online presence, did Mary's "modeling career" even exist?

Mary was a little sad to see the era go, but when he woke up in Maine on the hood of some girl's car and only a hazy recollection of how they'd gotten there, he was beginning to see Angelique's point. He needed to get his shit together if he was ever going to become a rockstar. And frankly, he kind of felt like he needed to spend an entire month eating carrots and hydrating.

The 24/7 party had always been an ephemeral thing; it had been sand passing through his hands in a finite amount as he'd tried to hold onto it

He put himself on detox, and waking up sober for the first time in months felt like a revelation. And as it turned out, playing the guitar without badly shaking hands was way, way easier.

He found another job in another music store, and his starter!band was bringing butts into the smaller venues, like Toad.

He still had his old Rocky friends and the Deathbutantes. The club and venue owners still let him in for free, and Dave was always happy to give his demos a spin. By anyone's else's measure, he was steal one of the scene's darlings.

But Mary was beginning to realize that he needed to stop seeing himself as that scared kid who’d arrived in Boston 4 years ago with only a backpack, $72.57 to his name, and void where his family should be.

He needed to stop finding people to please into loving him.

Instead, he needed to live for himself and let them love him for who he was—fuck ups and all.

@slimylayne

Epilogue

"Honestly, that’s probably the reason I even got a band together," he says. "I was still kind of shit at guitar, but people came to see ‘Model Mary’ perform in his underwear."

He shoots me a smirk.

"I’m sure there’re pictures out there of me looking more glam than metal. I kind of played up the whole pinup thing for a while."

"Fuck, I would kill, literally kill to see that."

He pulls me into his lap until I’m straddling him.

"I could open up my underwear drawer and show you right now."

"Goore, you temptress."

I lean down to kiss him, and his hands sneak under my shirt, but I pull away again.

"I kinda thought I knew all your torrid secrets by now. Shit, how come Dave's never needled you about it?"

After 2 years with him, I’m surprised I hadn't even heard a peep from his oldest friend.

Mary snorts.

"Dave would miss shit hanging off his nose. Great dude, amiable as fuck, but he's always had fucking tunnel vision for his music."

I smirk at him.

"Sounds like someone else I know."

Mary pulls a face at me, and I apply kisses to every line until he laughs and bats me away.

"But really, Mare—how come you never told me about your brief career in blue steel?"

He blows out a breath, his hands smoothing up my thighs.

"Fuck. Cuz maybe I was a little embarrassed at how off the rails I was then, ok? Didn't want you to know what I fuck up I was." He takes my hand and kisses my palm. "And even I know it's a shit move to pitch woo at someone by telling them about banging half of Boston."

I make a face at him, and he laughs.

"Yeah, that’s what I thought."

His hands rest on my waist.

"Christ, everything about that year's a bit fuzzy, and it was like 10 years ago. Sometimes it feels like it happened to someone else, honestly. And shit—most of those people aren’t even around anymore. College kids who moved on and 20-somethings that grew up and moved who knows where. I used to watch Amber have—what is it when it’s four people?—and now she lives in bumblefuck Pennsylvania with 3 kids. After she left, I just kinda drifted away from all that."

He shrugs, his eyes downcast.

"I’m sorry, Mare," I say as I smooth his eyebrows.

He shrugs again.

"I mean, we all kinda keep in touch. It's like the only reason I have Facebook."

"When was the last time you even signed into that?"

Mary grins at me.

"Lola's birthday."

"One of the models? What happened with them?"

Mary bites his lip and thinks.

"Mayhem found religion after an OD and kinda ghosted everyone. Lesley followed a girl to New Hampshire. Uh…Lola pursued a PhD for something sciencey involving renewable energy with sugar beets in Idaho, and Bryan moved back to Florida to care for his grandma, who raised him."

Mary leans his head back on the couch and rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands.

"I mean, shit. We were fucking babies back then. Head empty except for a good time and unlimited potential."

I run my fingers through his hair.

"You miss it?"

His eyes pop open to look at me.

"Fuck no. Not for a million dollars. Too many question marks." His eyes glint as he runs his hands down me. "I like what I got going on right here."

I wrap my arms around his shoulders and kiss his forehead. The fucking sap.

Mary picks up my phone and scrolls through the pictures again.

"Fuck. I used to be goddamn adorable, though. Half this shit wouldn’t even fit me anymore."

I squish his little potbelly, and he grunts at me indignantly.

"Do you still have any originals?" I ask.

He shakes his head, his eyes wistful and his smile sad.

"Nah. Got destroyed when my roof collapsed and leaked everywhere. Fuck, landlords are useless. Glad we fucking own now, babe."

He scrolls up, scrolls back down.

"Just these four?"

I nod.

"Yeah. They were the only ones I found—and I did a lot of searching."

"Christ, I think there were at least 10."

I smile ruefully at him. "It’s not gonna be long anyway before they make their way into the popular tags and shit starts coming out of the woodwork."

He tosses my phone onto the table.

"Whatever. Just shows that I’ve always been cool."

And then he’s kissing me again, his hand tangling in my hair.

"You know, I’m your family now, Mare. Just for you."

He brings my hand up and kisses it.

"Fuck, I know that. Why’dja think I put a ring on it?"

#mary goore #longfic #gender neutral insert #aurelio voltaire

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