#''do whatever you want! its JUST fiction'' but this is just so disappointing. and pretty sick

[tinyapplejuice]

HII !! I dont think I've requested yet but I LOVE ur writing and was hoping for some 8bit x fem reader headcanons OR VIRUS 8BIT X FEM READER HEADCANONS! THE CHOICE IS URS I JUST LOVE YOUR WORK SM !! ^.^

8-BIT DATING HEADCANONS

✧.*

•Guys I’m stepping into unknown territory, I got back into this game since like 2023 late Decembers and I’m pretty sure I missed so much stuff correlating to 8-bit or even any brawler’s lore since I used to play this game since like 2020 so if there are any key details I’ve missed about his character IM SO SORRY LIKE IM GENUINELY ASHAMED OF MYSELF TOO BECAUSE I DON'T WANT TO DISAPPOINT THE FANS WHO ARE GENUINELY HUGE NERDS ABOUT THIS BRAWLER if you have any like canon information about it or if there’s a site that contains lore about Brawl Stars and it’s characters, in general, please tell me. I’m desperate, my sister is helping me with a piece of stone and rock and using our cavemen brains together. But enough about my silly ranting, let’s begin!

•8-bit, 8-bit, 8-bit, ha, what an interesting robot to date since it’s an arcade machine. I mean imagine if you go to an arcade and just see someone being affectionate with one of these things? Pretty weird, huh? But unlike them, 8-bit is actually alive, and in Brawl Stars anything could happen since it’s fiction! Oh, wonderful!

•It has mad anger issues, do I even have to say it aloud? (Some of their things have some sort of reference that leads to being somewhat negative or aggressive like in that animation with the CCTV animation and such; even his design has some cool details with both the skull on its thing and that big X on its back but whatever!) Sometimes I like to think it can get easily annoyed and just grab out its pistols and just shoot at the thing that angered them but if it’s you, they will just warn you pretty aggressively.

•BUT!!! Don’t worry, it goes to… therapy!! I know I was pretty surprised about this too but during your relationship, it does visit a therapist to sort out its behavioral problems which is awesome! So if you notice them resisting the urge to blow up then you know they’re slowly improving out it's anger issues!

•Do you think they have a general dislike of humans in general? I think it does, the only people they can tolerate pretty well are Brock, maybe some other brawlers like Pam, and you! I just think they're neutral about robots as they don’t irritate it as much as humans do. But still, if you ever see it glaring at people especially in the age ranges of a kid to teens, just know it despises them.

•OOHH! It’s so awkward hugging this big blocky dude because of their shape and size! They’re so blocky and it will be so funny if you have to maneuver around just so you could have the perfect hug! They’re probably going to be confused too.

•I like to think it doesn’t enjoy being touched. I don’t know but I like to correlate the hating humans headcanon to the fact that the reason why it doesn’t like to be touched is because of its players! They hate it when the person’s grubby hands are on the controllers, aggressively tapping and beating up the poor dude so I could see how it would grow to dislike just the simplest touch. Obviously, it isn’t going to push and then shoot you if your fingers accidentally touch them. No, they’re surprisingly a brawler who has both great and little patience if you get me. I feel like he’s able to let his loved ones touch them even though they’re not the greatest fans. AHHH IT COULD BE SUCH A SOFTIE TO THEIR LOVER TOO WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT! UGHH

•8-bit’s love language is quality time. I like to imagine it enjoys spending time with their lover and doing whatever they want to do even though they suck booty! The only exception is when they have to move their legs.

•Speaking about it, They’re such a slow walker that it doesn’t even want to walk anymore for most days. They literally loathe it and you have to be such a patient person if you want to do any moving activities with them.

•Heh, another robot brawler you know what that means!!! RAHHHH ITS GOING TO BE THE FIRST CLUELESS ABOUT LOVE!! I genuinely love this headcanon and would almost apply this to every robot brawler. I don’t know. I cannot imagine a robot’s first programming to love people and that includes the arcade machine we love! I feel like they would generally get it faster though due to the lovey-dovey couple it’s been exposed to during its times of being an inanimate object.

•Can you also imagine it tried to mimic them like one time but that made both you and it uncomfortable so it doesn't do it ever again. Hehe silly billy!

•8-bit does not kiss, he literally doesn’t have lips. I could just imagine a replacement with that would be hand-holding. (If you kiss him, he gets a bit of a tingly, statiky feeling).

•OMG whenever they get flustered which is like barely like their whole face turns red and then like this some sort of pop-up appears that its system is being heated and that it needs to cool down or something and you can see smoke coming out of their body like a smoking hazard.

•The majority says that 8-bit will allow you to play their super hard, brutal game but personally it’s like a maybe especially since it lost the controller and the fact it HATES its players. It may be hesitant to let you play on it. But you know what they’re honestly fine with you playing on other arcade machines. They may be very very good at it, like they know the cheat codes and the super epic strategies that pros use or they will be dogwater. (I prefer the first one but honestly, it just depends on whatever you think it’s true!)

•Relating to its controller it lost, do you think they still mope about it once in a while? Like I could imagine it one day grumbling about the fact they lost it and you know those wasps that can clearly remember someone’s face and have photogenic memory? I could see 8-bit remembering the exact person who does it and can even accurately describe them and it would make them pay for it if they ever stumble upon them again.

•Can you imagine 8-bit easily having grudges and it’s hard to let them go? That could also be another behavioral problem that they’re fixing with his therapist. Like, imagine if you had a fight with them, and for like the aftermath of the fight it was kinda cold with you. I think they’re trying to forgive others easily, especially their loved ones.

•At first in the relationship it has the most NPC dialogue for an arcade machine. I could see them struggling to say regular words that humans would use for conversation since it’s so used to saying what it’s always programmed to say when a player wins, loses, and more but as you dated them and the months passed, their vocabulary would increase and it would have been having regular and normal conversations with you even though from time to time it would resort saying back to “Player one” and such.

• He isn’t a huge talker but that one moment where they could properly express what it has been feeling for years was so refreshing for him! That was probably the longest he ever talked and it will be so funny if he speaks about his journey of his motherboard exploding or whatever mind-blowing and crazy in a nonchalant tone of voice and you have to stare at him like WHATT??!! Could you imagine them spilling out what was on their mind for years?? CAN YOU SEE IT PLEASE??

•It can make the cutest facial expressions for someone like them. They’re actually very expressive?? (My favorites from them are UwU and 0_0) Can you imagine it being silly and wonder if someone hacked them even though it can be like that on certain days.

•Wait just as its vocabulary increases do you think its personality develops too? It will be really interesting but I don’t really know how I could see it being more relaxed and would smile often but I don’t know.

•8-bit can actually use both of its hands, I think it’s called ambidextrous. I could imagine it using both of its guns but as you know, it can’t so now it uses these magic hands to do productive things.

•You know how it can make words on its screen to make facial expressions, imagine if it ever gets grumpy it just doesn’t speak to you and instead it would write it out like [this] (Imagine the bracket keys being the screen)...

•8-bit is a geek about games and would make references about it that nobody understands except the hardcore nerds, specifically and especially the old-school games. In addition, can you imagine it being a technology nerd as well?

•I could see it as someone who’s very defensive and protective. I could just imagine them shielding you in a protective stance with their gun out…

•Also it will be super funny if they shut off randomly and then like you have to insert coins in order for them to continue “life” Otherwise they will be shut down unless someone decides to play them. So imagine just you holding spare coins just in case it ever happens or just forcing multiple coins onto their slot so they can stay alive for as long as they can.

•They are a cool. Yep, a cool arcade machine!!

GUYS I DONT KNOW IF ITS LIKE SOMEWHAT REALISTIC I GENUINELY HAVE NO IFEA ABOUT 8-BIT BUT WHOEVER REQUESTED ME THAT THANK YOU SO MUCH AND I HOPE YOU DONT HATE ME BECASUD OF THIS

ALSO I LITTERALY PUT 8-BITS PRONOUNS AS HE/HIM BEFORE I REALIZED IT WASNT LIKE THAG IN ITS STUPID DESCRIPTION SO I HAD TO CHANGE ALL OF THAT INTO IT/THEY/THEM/THEIR AND IT WAS SO ANNOYING BECUASE I WAS ALREADY AT 1200+ WORDS !! (҂` ﾛ ´)︻デ═一 ANYWAYS HOPE YOU ENJOY!!

[ultfreakme]

Nah Zutara is def happening. Two of the writers (Omashu and Into the Dark) are Zutara shippers and liking Zutara content all the time esp about Kiawentiio and Dallas. The Netflix accounts are pushing Zutara like crazy. Albert Kim is an enemies to lovers enthusiast and said that the original endgame ships are up in the air.

I am trying so very hard to be objective about this and so I am going to tell you what I'm seeing in the nicest way possible but I'm really sorry if I can't:

I've checked the official Netflix account, I follow it on twitter, nothing afaik. The closest I found was picture sets but they did it for Dallas and Gordon, Dallas and Ian, Elizabeth Yu and Kiawentiio too, and obviously Gordon and Kiawentiio, all the duos. There's a video clip of Kiawentiio throwing out a question card about if Katara likes Zuko and their first immediate reaction is laughing (and not in a way that's confirming it- like Dallas was about to clap and Ian gave a thumbs-up, not encouraging and they conclude it with saying a lukewarm 'no kinda well' likely because it's spoilers for season 3).

Kiawentiio right after an interviewer mentioned Zutara, she said and I quote ; "What Avatar are you watching?"

Albert Kim on Kataang:

It's being delayed to S2 because the age difference looks way too obvious in live action. It's still happening, just later when the actors look closer in age. They heavily hint towards future Kataang by comparing Aang and Katara to Tui and La on-screen (Yue saying the ocean will forever search for its counterpart while panning between Aang and Katara whos is reaching out for him, and Sokka and Yue where Sokka's begging Yue to stay- it's very on-the nose).

The OG show also had creatives who like Zutara, they inserted bait for it in the chibi shorts but nothing came of it in any canon and everything is steadfastly for Kataang. Heck, currently the cast are pushing Zukka all the time, doesn't mean it's going to be canon(Dallas Liu and Ian Ousley saying "hey ship our characters!" word-for-word does not equal Zuko and Sokka are going to date for real in the show).

It's disappointing that fanon ships aren't canon, but that's just what you sign up for when shipping fanon. You are not going to to get what you want, neither am I.

Kataang is the heart of the show, nothing will take that away and I think it's best to just, make peace with that instead of looking too hard into behind-the-scenes and cast stuff hoping THIS is when it's going to happen(I play along with the Zukka bait because it's funny, not because I think it's going to be real).

Also, writers liking Zutara content? Fine, do you, have a blast! It DOES get weird when they're sincerely promoting Dallas and Kiawentiio as an item though because they met when she was like 15 and he was 19/20, and now she's 17 while he's 22 now. She's a child, he's an adult pretty much their entire work relationship. That's really freaking weird. EDIT: Dallas and Ian, who are the actual adults in the cast have been actively redirecting all ship-related conversations towards themselves and their characters because they CAN handle whatever flame wars erupt from that, meanwhile Gordon and Kiawentiio are children so they shouldn't even be in the discussion as actors when it comes to the fictional ships.

[sapphic-agent]

I read your analysis and anti bakugou posts and I want to say thank you!

Going to be kinda long so I’m sorry!

There is another fandom where there is character exactly like bakugou; angry, violent, egotistical and target his hate and aggression to one person only.

the character name is Jiāng cheng from the MDZS novel. But the narrative in the story doesn’t treat all the shit that jerk did as right, it the opposite. He seen as vile that nobody want to associate with (getting banned from all the match making places in the story even)

He never takes the spotlight of the two main nor he is redeemed characters instead seen as pathetic and arrogant jerk he is. The MC, Wei wuxian who was his adoptive brother (not really more like a servant that got treated like a dog) cut ties with him in the end.

He a well written and rounded character but the character personality is shit and I don’t really like him. And the narrative isn’t treating him any differently than being a piece of shit

Why I’m telling you this? Because I feel like if MHA have been written by someone who isn’t Hori bakugou would not have gotten away with the shit he did in the story.

beside the point of the way the narrative treat Jiang cheng, it’s the fandom. When I got into the MDZS fandom I was so disappointed to see bakugou stans 2.0 there but instead of bakugou it’s Jiang cheng.

Both bakugou and Jiang cheng get the same treatment in the fandom as “UWU needs to protect the angry violent person” and “it’s the MC fault our cute UWU baby didn’t do anything wrong” and lots of stuff that I bet you seen in the bnha fandom

It’s sad that even if the story shows that what Jiang cheng wasn’t right (unlike bakugou case where the story doesn’t make him have any consequences) people would outright be mean to other people just because they follow the canon prototype of the character in their fics (I seen it and it’s horrible)

And, in fics it’s seems that every time that Jiang cheng appears in the scene he makes everyone OOC (if the fic is sticking to canon personality). Makes them act like they won’t ever act; it’s the same thing with bakugou (in canon and fanon respectively sadly)

I love to call it the “black hole effect” when a certain character just make the scenes about them no matter the context, like a black hole.

Im sorry this is all over the place, im not really good with words and i used to be pretty active in both fandoms but now its really hard because bakugou and Jiang cheng stans are overall tiring to deal with and they seems to grow up in numbers everyday and yeah… 👍

Have a nice day and week!

Hi! I've never read it but it sounds interesting.

I always try to tell Bakugou stans, it's not the fact that Bakugou's an awful person. I don't care about that. Fictional characters aren't real and can be liked for whatever even if they're vile pieces of shit. It's okay to like a vile piece of shit.

What's not okay is creating that vile piece of shit and then brushing over and never calling out their horrible actions. What's not okay is everyone around them condoning their behavior. What's not okay is pandering to them over their victims. What's not okay is never making them face consequences for their actions. What's not okay is constantly putting them on a pedestal for doing the bare minimum.

Look at Vegeta (RIP Toriyama). Vegeta is always getting humbled and called out. He is never going to surpass Goku because never getting what he wants is part of his retribution. Considering his actions, he should be worse than Bakugou. But he's a way better character because of how the narrative and the other characters treat him.

(You can even compare specific instances. When Bakugou rushed ahead and attacked Kurogiri and got Thirteen seriously hurt, no one said a thing to him and he still won all his fights. He faced zero repercussions. When Vegeta let Cell absorb 18, he immediately got his ass kicked and had to get saved by Trunks and Krillin. Vegeta's actions always affect him terribly, Bakugou's actions always affect everyone else terribly while he gets off scott-free)

DBZ came out decades ago and it still created a better character arc than a 2010s-2020s manga. Horikoshi could have easily given Bakugou a proper redemption arc. He chose not to

[evelhak]

I’m curious about a few: Propinquity, Anem and Bitchberg (a great name, lol)

Well, you've already read about Bitchberg by now from the previous ask. :D

Lol, I actually winced a little when I saw you asked about "Propinquity" since it's the current working title of my Akashi centric fic, and I know you don't find him that interesting. It's still just a bunch of "notes" (=bits of monologue and dialogue that come to me and I have to write down so I won't forget). I haven't actively started this fic yet, since I can't really write multiple projects at the same time. I will probably have to finish another shorter fic after The Luminous Things, before I get to this one.

I know the opening lines, though:

Winning is like breathing. Sometimes I wake up, gasping for air, but my lungs seem to have fallen into a partial state of paralysis.

Or something fairly close to that. The idea has been in my head for a long time, because I really enjoy digging up ignored dimensions that kind of naturally follow from whatever is going on in canon.

There is of course one thing in this fic that could interest you: The main love interest is an OC. :) You know some things about Azumi already. Here's a snippet that will probably serve as her introduction in the fic:

I absolutely pretended to be the empress of this micro-utopia, growing up. Not because it was mine to conquer, or control. Because it was mine to know. To pick apart. Explore, taste, and merge with. A little pocket of wonder in this huge city, a bubble with its own rules. That's what I came to realise pretty soon, anyway. About the world. How different, how illogical and ultimately unsatisfying it was, compared to my shrine, my home, my own ecosystem, my island of undisturbed ground. It frustrates me that the rest of the world doesn't know how to do it. Live and let live. Give and take. Circle of life. A system that works. Because I was born into it. An heir to it. Happiness.

Micro-utopias are a huge element in my whole fic series as it progresses, and there are several kinds of them, Azumi's home life being its own example. Utopia is generally something I'm really interested to write about, especially because a lot of people claim you can't write interesting utopia without making it dystopia in the end, and I very much disagree with that, as people are always imperfect, so you don't need to add any intentionally awful circumstances for a story to have conflict, if you're writing believable people. For me, the key to what makes the most out of utopia is to centre it around whose utopia it is and why. This got slightly off topic, these are just themes I really like exploring and since my fics are my playground, I definitely use them for exploration of things I might want to write later in a more polished form in my original fiction.

The working title "Propinquity" came while I was writing a chapter in The Luminous Things where Kagami ends up lost in Kyoto (it's complicated) and spends the night in Azumi's place, where he has many enlightening conversations with Akashi. (Azumi and Akashi are already together in my main fic timeline, their own fic will cover how they got together, among other things.)

Here's a snippet from the chapter also titled "Propinquity", which I haven't yet posted anywhere, so things might still change a little, but for now, Akashi muses something like this in it:

"[Propinquity] is the central theme of this shrine. Things develop, and change, and prosper in propinquity. It rings true, doesn’t it? Right things, wrong things… so it really matters what you surround yourself with. It’s not enough to know and think. You have to see, and taste, and touch… A plant wouldn’t grow from the understanding that it needs water, if it never got it. It would still die from poison, no matter how informed it was. Azumi knew all of this, so bone deep. That’s why she was disappointed with the world. That’s why she retreated back to her paradise. I think that’s what caught my attention at first. How she had a physical place to go to when she needed to get away."

I probably would not have developed any need to write a story about Akashi's love life on my own. (Well, it's not all there is to it, but it is a how-they-get-together type of story). It was the influence of my ex, who's a big Akashi fan, and as I have probably said before, Azumi was originally her OC that we worked on together a lot. Eventually I grew attached to Akashi and Azumi together, and now I have my own version of the story.

I don't think I actually read any Akashi x OC fics myself, but my ex read them and complained about them, usually, and I picked up on two pretty common patterns, which I didn't want to do: I didn't want the OC to be 1) poor, or 2) have a similar family dynamic and childhood trauma as Akashi. This is because I wasn't interested in dealing with the power imbalance that tends to come with very different socioeconomic standing, and I also didn't want to write a relationship where people get stuck in validating each other's trauma, and it takes them a long time to grow beyond that phase because their relationship is centred around how similar their experiences are. I wanted to hit that sweet spot which I like the most, a relationship that centres around growth, having enough common ground, and being inspired by things about the other that you've never experienced before, or even believed really exists in the world. The kind of relationship that makes you feel that you want to fill your own gaps, and a key factor in that is the proximity, or, propinquity to a person you can rely on, because they don't have the same weaknesses as you. I just really love writing about people who are good influences to each other.

A lot of this fic will also be about dissociation and trauma. Yay.

Anem, then, is another original novel I've started multiple times without being completely satisfied. The premise is pretty classic religious cult + good girl/bad girl dynamic, or at least would seem like that in the beginning.

Here's how I seem to have described it on my website at some point:

Dina is a good girl. She picks up flowers every morning, to put on the altar of her family’s home. She’s chaste, she’s beautiful. She fears God. Semira is a “Wild One”, she rarely goes to church, she speaks out of turn. She could be beautiful, if her hair wasn’t so short. Dina doesn’t think it’s her job to save Semira. After all, if the Fathers don’t know how to help the girl, how could she? But Dina keeps ending up spending time with Semira anyway, and the more she does, the stronger the big black swirling something grows in her stomach. There’s clearly something very wrong about Semira. And there’s something wrong about the woods surrounding their isolated village. Dina knows she’s supposed to stay away, but Semira keeps going into the woods.

It has a lot bigger world and anything but clear-cut themes and dynamics, even though it may seem like that in the beginning... and it's one of those early projects that are sort of everything, because you're not good at narrowing it down yet. It's like a dystopian supernatural medieval fantasy horror philosophical cult story I wrote just to barf out everything I was thinking in my early years of studying theology. It's certainly a cult story, but is the cult the big bad or the world around it? It's certainly a queer story, but is it a love story or a hate story? It's certainly trying to say something, but what? No one knows, not even me. It's a big mess.

I'm also starting to feel like I'm dealing with every element and theme I have in this story, in some other story too, and coincidentally someone from my writing group actually just got a book published this year that has a strikingly similar setting and themes, (we both wrote them without knowing about each other) and even though it shouldn't, it does kind of add to my confusion to what to do with this story. I do still want to write it at some point, but it's a big question mark that sort of just pops up from below the surface every time I'm not actively thinking or writing about another project.

Some angsty pictures of Dina, also drawn in my early university years (Oh Lord how obvious my Arina Tanemura influences still were in the way I draw):

Yeah... at least they are accurately dramatic to the story.

Thanks for the ask. I hope there was something entertaining. <3

For anyone curious, here's the WIP list.

[transthadymacdermot]

WIP intro: Brave Boys of Renown

Genre: horror, political fiction, kind of histfic but idk if you would really classify it as that lmao

Setting: Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1974

Warnings: this is, at its core, an extremely dark and pessimistic story about paramilitaries cannibalising people. if this puts you off in any way block the tag. it is also about child abuse, classism, colonialism, and the top ten most unsanitary commercial kitchens + none of the characters are in any way good or even mostly tolerable people. once again this is mostly just a personal catharsis story for me so I will be writing whatever I want and if it isn't for you then settings > account > filtered tags > "wip: bbor"

Synopsis

Lazarus McClure's day is already going pretty badly, but even after everything that's already happened accidentally hitting and killing someone with his car represents a serious escalation. Faced with the prospect of years spent in prison for what looks like yet another contribution to Northern Ireland's already years-long civil war, he makes what is of course the only logical decision available to him: forcing the only witness, a bystander by the name of Brendan Breen, into the car with him, and driving him and the body back to the chip shop which represents Lazarus' livelihood -- a place where, shall we say, no one will notice another body. But Lazarus has no idea how to dispose of it in a way that definitely won't trace back to him. He even considers turning himself in. And then Brendan, who works part-time as a butcher, cleverly noticing that they are currently in a room full of meat mincers and fryers, offers, in exchange for his freedom, to provide a solution...

Inspired in many ways by my own family history (NOT INCLUDING THE EATING PEOPLE. LET ME CLEAR THAT UP NOW) and an inability to stop thinking about politics ever. I will say rn that the cannibalism present in the story is used almost wholly as a horror aspect and is. how do I say this. basically if you're looking for cannibalism-as-desire this piece will disappoint you. however, if you're looking for cannibalism as a metaphor for colonialism, capitalism, the British aristocracy, power imbalance within relationships, and [insane person voice] the underrepresentation of any non-England place within the UK parliament, this will likely appeal to you slightly more <3

[multiwreckedmess]

February Filth Fest - Day 23

Pairing: Artist!Hyunjin x older!fem!reader Prompt: Cheating/Creampie WC: 3.2k Summary: LIfe is exhausting and mediocre for most days of the year. Especially when you feel invisible. Hoping to drown your weekday sorrows with a glass of wine and loved ones you visit a friend’s gallery opening. Maybe your husband should’ve gone too. TW/CW: INFIDELITY, Hyunjin likes that you are married, unprotected penetration (fem receiving), multiple orgasms, age gap not stated specifically, reader called whore, under discussed kinks, really all of this is not very safe.

once again this is fiction do not do this. please discuss things with your partner. i’m so serious do NOT use fiction as a guide for your intimate life.

“Can’t you just go to that fucking gallery thing alone?” The flicker of the tv bounces off the white wall of your living room. “You know I have zero fucking interest in that bullshit anyway.” “Yes dear, I know. You’ve told me” You’re totally unable to hide the exasperation in your voice. Not that he’d hear it, not that he’d care. Not that your husband ever cared about your interests despite how happy they made you. Still you invited him to gallery openings, art fairs, even a history of sports photography special expedition that you had no interest in but you’d hoped he might be interested in. It was all in vain. 

It hurt, having to tell your friend that once again you’d be showing up without your plus one. You’d warned her that it was unlikely he’d make an appearance but you’d try your best. Still you could see the flicker of disappointment as she joked with you that at this point she was starting to doubt that your husband even existed. “Well there is wine to soothe your soul, and several beautiful paintings to bless your eyes! Just have a glass and do a once-through before you hurry home to hubby.” Half smiling, you reach out and touch her arm, “he’ll be fine. I’m fine. I’m excited!”

Truth was you were exhausted, pouring yourself whatever white wine was open into your small clear plastic cup. The art on the walls was of only passing interest. Her specialty was “emerging” artists. Certainly what was shown was work of people still developing their craft, derivative but pretty. A small floral series catches your eye along the central wall, a cluster of smaller paintings surrounding one large canvas. “HYUNJIN” The placard reads. “A Study of She.”

On the largest canvas, laid languidly on its side a seemingly naked figure of a woman is sketched. A beautiful bouquet traveling from the figure's toes blooming brilliantly at its stomach, wrapping up to a floral explosion at its head. The flowers have a brilliant rough texture to the paint, thick strokes from a stiff brush. The next a watery lily painted with thin water colors contrasts the previous large bold artwork. Even its colors are soft and delicate in comparison to the bold slabs of oil paints. “It’s the female orgasm.” The man is all legs; dressed in all black with a thin gold chain framed by his v-neck. “You must be Hyunjin.” His eyes light up, “is it that obvious?” On quick appraisal he knows he’s handsome. The playful smile on his face seems to suggest this at the very least. It’s vaguely aggravating because he has a right to think as much of himself. “What right do you have to capture the female orgasm on a canvas?” Hyunjin wanders closer, speaking in a hushed tone. “I’d like to think I'm intimately familiar with it.” This self-assured bastard. His tongue pokes the inside of his cheek as he wiggles his eyebrows. “Surely not as familiar as Georgia O’Keeffe. It’s a good effort but…well you’re young.” “And you’re…?” You give him a withering glance, debating whether or not you want to chide him for asking a woman her age. “Older than you.” “And you reference O'Keeffe because your passing knowledge of her comes from popular culture? Otherwise I’m sure you’d know how frequently she denied it.” “I do know!” Your cheeks burn. The wine is gone from your glass. “Based on the sophomoric description of the composition I’d assumed you did not.”

Hyunjin looks you up and down, eyebrow cocked. “So you don’t feel I’ve captured it accurately then?” This time your stomach flutters. You try to tamp it down, walking away quickly to refill your glass. Hyunjin follows closely. “Please allow me.” His gaze locked with yours he fills your glass and then his own perfectly, halfway up the glass, without looking. “I am very curious as to your experience with it. If you’d care to share what I missed.” Chugging your wine you gulp deeply, avoiding his persistent stare. “I’m…not sure. I’m not an artist…I don’t have the language for it.” “Well, just tell me how it feels for you. What colors or textures come to mind? Objects, places, people, really anything.” It’s difficult to avoid him now. You pour yourself a third glass. “Is it better than chocolate?” Hyunjin says playfully, grinning at you like the Cheshire cat. “Nothing? Really? A learned woman such as yourself surely-” “No. Nope. I really…I don’t remember. I don’t know. I don’t even know that I’ve-” You wish the floor would open up and swallow you whole in front of him. It’s something you had avoided telling everyone in your life, friends and lovers alike. Your secret shame. At first you’d thought maybe it was the jitters from the deed. Then as you had more partners you figured maybe it just was something broken inside you. Either way you’d never managed to orgasm. Not that you thought anyway. Nothing had ever happened that felt even close to the bombastic fireworks that pop culture had described. His eyes flare, jaw dropping as though he’s heard the juiciest piece of gossip in the world. “You don’t KNOW? How can you critique my painting when you don’t know? Tsk, you have less of a right than me to talk about the fem-” “Can you not say it?” you interrupt, placing your hand firmly over his mouth. “I don’t need the whole room knowing.” Hyunjin kisses your palm, his lips firm and full. Retracting your hand he’s silently giggling. “I’m going to remedy that. C’mon.” Hand secure around your wrist he walks you to the back of the gallery, past his paintings, though an inconspicuous door painted white. You’d been back here before to drop off lunch on a couple occasions but now in the dark Hyunjin is navigating the corners of the tiny hallway with incredible speed. You realize he’s dropped your wrist and you’re following him of your own curiosity. You could turn around easily to return to the party and never know what he meant about “fixing” your situation. Except your legs keep moving forward as his blonde hair bobs in front of you at an increasing distance.

“What? Wait, Hyunjin! What do you mean?” This time you grab his wrist, halting him amongst the clusters of desks and filing cabinets housing obsolete hardcopies of receipts for long-sold artworks. Eyes glinting in the dim light he replies, “oh come on. You’re older than me, aren’t you?” You splutter, “yes. I am. But-” Paused in the office space, time holds still. The sounds of the party in the distance buzz in the background dully and just for that second it’s only the two of you that have ever existed. Slinking up to you he weaves his fingers with yours, playing briefly with your wedding band. “I’m going to make you cum. And then we can have a conversation about my art.” To be honest, your husband doesn’t even enter your mind. The beautiful stranger in front of you is already promising more than your husband had ever in your time of being married.  You breathe out, “okay.”

Pulling you to the end of the row to two office doors. Quickly Hyunjin jiggles the handle of one and clearly finding it locked, jiggles the other. For a second you mourn the journey that never was, the anticipatory knot in your stomach loosening somewhat. But the door pops open with a sharp squeak and he pulls you in with him. Conglomerations of dark shape’s you’re sure should be familiar to you bunch in equally shadowed corners. The rumble of an office chair being shoved away sticks out against the murmurs of the party filtered through the windows.

Hyunjin is stronger than he has any right to be, arm looping around your waist to hold you pelvis to pelvis. The sudden intimate position has your heart plummeting down into your sex, awakening it from its thousand year slumber. Gasping, the twinge is so forceful your knees knock into each other, thighs clenching. “You cannot be this easy to crack.” Hyunjin smirks, breath playing across your lips. “I’m not!” You try to sound intimidating, forceful, but with your arms folded into your chest and fists pressed together it’s a difficult gambit. He presses your butt to the lip of the desk, leg propping between yours. “I don’t want you to think you can’t get out of this. Just say the word, I will stop and never say a word of this to anyone.” The scent of rose soap clings faintly to his neck. It's faint enough to feel like a wild hallucination. How can he even smell floral? You don’t want him to stop, you want him to want you. It feels so good to feel wanted. Subconsciously you twist the band on your finger. The band pulls uneasily at your skin, tighter than you remember it being, too difficult and too obvious to remove. Searching the room for anything but his face to look at your eyes fall on a small glinting plaque on the wall. “This is my best friend's office,” you choke on your ambition. “This is my boss's office,” he shrugs, still trying to make eye contact. Looking at the desk, papers strewn to your sides. The most precarious place you’ve ever hooked up. “Do you think she’ll mind?” “Do you think I care?” He teases with a lilt. “Do you care?” Twisting your ring more frantically as though the friction could burn it from your finger you mumble “I’m-I don’t.” Cupping your hands with his, Hyunjin kisses your knuckles. “Are you a ravishment girl or a slow and steady girl?” He asks with a tilt to his head, finally catching your gaze. “I don’t think I know.” You are breathless as he brings your hands to his shoulders. Finding your waist again he slowly starts to encourage your hips on his thigh. The increased bloodflow already has you sensitive, hissing into the rocking motion. “That’s it- quick learner. Doesn’t that feel good? Rubbing yourself on my thigh like a whore.” You duck your head into his shoulder, stifling a moan so only he can hear the breathy note escape your lips. The gentle stimulation is pleasantly frustrating. Just enough to rile the butterflies in your stomach but not enough to coalesce into a singular form. Your moans grown in vigor and volume along with your impatience. It’s close. You know the close feeling, if you just clench harder or go faster or press harder -- but it’s all for naught. “Just a bit more love, just a bit,” Hyunjin swoops in, nibbling on your earlobe. You grunt in anguish, “Hyunjin. It’s not going to fucking work. This doesn’t ever fucking work. I’m going to fucking wring your neck.” “Alright alright!” He laughs, fitting himself between your thighs, the wet spot on your tights suddenly cool with the blast of night air. “Feisty for an old lady!” “Overconfident brat-” Hyunjins lips meet yours suddenly, passionately, ripping away the air from your lungs. “Will your husband care if I ruin your tights?” Googly eyed, your jaw hangs, “no, I don’t even think he knows that I wear tights,” you reply out of breath.

It takes one sharp tug at the flimsy seam to rip the two halves of your tights apart at the crotch. He plunges two fingers into you easily, slick warm walls welcoming him in. “Fuck, love, you’re soaked. Does he know how fucking wet you get?” You squirm as he leverages his entire forearm to thrust into you. Shaking your head tears well up in your eyes. The intense arousal pools and bubbles like a cauldron in your stomach. The crook of his fingers is just enough to caress your inner walls like he is stroking your belly button through your spine. It twists your gut and has you bucking back at him for more. Hyunjin seems pleased with your inability to respond, kissing you greedily. “I didn’t think so.” You clench harder down around him, chasing what feels like a peak, a summit just a little farther from your grasp. “Fuck!” You finally yell, the wound up energy slowly trickling back down. As long as his fingers are and as skilled as his work is, there just isn’t enough to push you the last few steps. Tears finally roll freely down your cheeks. “I’m so close. I’m closer than I’ve ever been!” You wail. Hyunjin pulls his fingers from you, licking them clean before cradling you in his arms. “Hey, hey. All you need is a little more attention okay? I’ve got you. I’m paying attention.”

His tender kisses surprise you, fingers still tracing the outline of your slit in your ruined underwear. Slowly kissing your neck, basking in the pauses between your breaths, listening, really listening to what your body is saying. You can’t remember the last time someone has treated you this delicately. Certainly not your husband, who would’ve cajoled himself into by now and already left you to clean yourself, still unsatisfied. Instead Hyunjin holds you, letting the pads of his fingers tease your clothed clit, slowly working you to a trembling mess on the desk. “Hyunjin?” You whine his name, undignified and shaking. “Yes, love?” His pitch also shifts higher to match yours, mouth parted and eyes dilated. You’d never begged a man a day in your life but here you were in a musty studio office on your friends quarterlies. “I need it, I need it now.”

Pushing your underwear aside he slowly feeds his cock to your hungry cunt. Slick enough the stretch is the only thing that keeps him from bottoming out easily. The extra pressure from his swollen member is exactly what you need. Hyunjin cautiously thrusts into your warm, wet hole. Barely moving so that you can adjust and so he doesn’t cum immediately. Placing his thumb at your clit he works in circles, feeling you clench down around him, watching your eyelids flutter. Mouth wide your tiny breaths come quicker and more shallow and he smiles. “Feeling good?” Every nerve in your entire body goes off like someone setting ablaze to a fireworks store. You think you’re dying. Your heart pauses and skips, breathing stops. You fight to keep your eyelids open but your vision goes blank. “Shit,” you mutter, weak and shaking. “Hyunjin-fuck-” you writhe below him, each nerve ending washing from white hot to icy cold, blooming from your center outward like frost crackling on a window pane. “Oh my fuck,” you grab the back of his neck with both of your hands and kiss him roughly, walls pulsing and pulling him deeper. “Thank you,” you mutter, breaking the kiss. “Can you go again?”

In theory you know people can have more than one orgasm. In your current state you wonder how they withstand the sheer physical labor of it all. The rush of oxytocin sweeping your body makes you want to take a nap, just slide the rest of the way back on the desk with his cock fully in you and rest. On the other hand now that you’ve experienced it you can’t help but fear you may never feel it again. “I’m tired…” you whine. Hyunjin circles his hips inside of you, “I know love, just take it okay? I promise I’ll give you another one before I’m done with you.” You nod, cock drunk, each word is like a honey coated pill swallowed easily down. His gentle thrusts jostle you, almost unable to resist the push and pull of his cock in your walls. Carefully he takes you down from the desk, resting your torso on the damp papers. Re-entering your swollen cunt he groans, fingers curling into the flesh of your hips. “Pussy’s so tight. What’s wrong with your husband? We’d fuck so much the next guy would feel the imprint of my cock in you.” He growls in your ear, hot breath tickling your neck as he rolls his hips against the plump flesh of your ass. “Should I take a picture for him? Show him what you like? Leave a nice video tutorial on how to fuck his wife? Tell him who made his wife cum for the first time.” Squealing, fingers scrambling, you reach back for him, “Hyun-hyunjin!” The new position feels dirtier, less intimate, closer to your natural forms. He grunts with each punishing thrust. Teeth gritted into a smile. A cool drop of sweat travels from his forehead down and drops to your mid back as he hunches over you, hands pinning your waist to the desk as he uses you. “Don’t worry babe, I’ll fuck you nice and good for him.” He smacks your ass with a responding wallop, sending reverberations through your spine. “Tell me, do you let him use this hole?” He asks in a sing song, thumb working your slick against your puckered hole. “N-no- but-” you splutter and wiggle. “Hm, shame, maybe just a taste then?” The first knuckle of his thumb pops past your tense ring and the world goes technicolor. Blues and purples of the shadows look bright and jagged, peeling away from the white plaster. Every ridge and vein of his dick are prominent in your walls, leaving your mouth hanging dumbly. And then he starts matching his thrusts with the digit. Face pressed to the wood, toes twitching, you’ve lost all sense of shame. At this point anyone could walk in and you’d be totally unphased. Breath knocked out of you in groans and hisses your cunt is already tensing and releasing, working him in time with his hips. “Hyunjin it’s-oh fuck-it’stoomuch!” You slur your works together, eyes screwed shut. Hyunjin is shaking too, dripping with sweat as he gingerly reaches down to fix your hair sticking to your damp face. “You can take it, love. Just a little more. Take it like the whore you are.” You choke on your inhalations, “fuck.” This time your release is almost violent. Gasping and gripping, your entire body fighting the friction that is slowly driving you insane. You could swear he was reaching deep inside your body, rearranging intestines to make room for himself. Body going stiff, the vision in front of you closes in again, cradling you in darkness. “Fuck! Fucking cum on my cock,” harsh and demanding he snaps against you as your cunt drenches him. Tight wet heat enveloping him, he snarls. “Milking me like that, gonna make me cum inside that thirsty lil pussy.” Almost boneless beneath him he collapses stiffly on top of you. His cock pulses hard inside of you as it shoots his release into your throbbing walls.

Hearts beating in flashes of reds and blues the night is calm.

You don’t want to go back out there, the party having dwindled far too thin for your absence not to be missed. Hyunjin presses flat a wrinkle in the back of your dress, the sticky cool wet remainders of your tryst still staining you beneath the facade. Your tights are stuffed in his pants pocket, his own trophy to take home tonight. Hyunjin coughs, holding out his business card to you as you both re-enter the gallery. “If you ever want to talk about art, give me a call.”

all of this is inspired by the “hotter than you ex better than your next’ shirt from like a year ago. Yes i STILL think about that.

Also i’m sorry i’ve been away!!!! i am trying to battle my want to write 28 days of literally 3k long fics and being physically and mentally unable to. I’ll be posting them slowly as i go!!

[jovenshires]

I was soooo disappointed when Courtney said “next time we’ll do ff”. I cringe every time they talk about it, I prayed they wouldn’t reach their goal when it was “we read ianthony fanfic”. I remember I left the games stream when Spencer started explaining A/B/O to Shayne. Those are not for them, I hate when they take things that are made by fans for fans and make fun of them. I mean, is there really someone who enjoy when they read fanfics? I feel secondhand embarrassed physically.

to each their own; if people enjoy this then that is fine and they are allowed and smosh is welcome to do whatever they want. and as someone very kindly pointed out to me, for this spt they're doing it on a volunteer basis. (im not 100% positive they've done this in the past?? i was pretty sure the 'tis i' person didn't get a heads up but maybe i'm wrong bc. its been probably five years.)

but we can all talk about rpf and the intersection between person and fiction and what 'is' and 'is not' for them all we want, but our own personal takes on that matter aside, i think it's undeniable that, in certain points in the past videos, it has felt like a mockery of the fanfiction niche of the fandom. i think jazel (@shaymiens; i asked her if i could steal these tags and she very kindly said yes) said it better than i could here in her reblog of my ask:

#but i think the problem is that they have so much power to uphold fic writers the same way they do fan artists and editors #yet they almost always punch down #as katie puts here it's hard to stomach that they're bringing vaguely negative attn to smthn that was made in earnest with love #spt sorta makes the author the nonconsenting subject of a roast #held by thousands of viewers who have no reason to defend them against their favorite content creators #idk if smosh just doesn't Get fic culture or if they actively decide to mistreat/misunderstand it

and that's exactly it. a lot of the time it turns something very positive - something i, and a lot of you, turn to for comfort and peace and enjoyment - into a target for hostility. and this isn't a criticism of smosh alone (ive seen a lot of creators do this with fanfiction), and i'm glad that they're asking people to volunteer their work now (and again im not sure if they have in the past), because that at the very least makes it a consensual interaction. but i still feel like it's making fun of fanfiction at large and that's not personally for me. maybe i'm biased because i write fic; maybe i'm thinking too hard about a non-issue. maybe! but that's just my take on the whole thing.

anyway, tldr: if you enjoy this series, that's great! if you think what they're doing is fine, that's great, too. but i personally probably wont be tuning in.

[trans-cuchulainn]

saw your post about reading a book in a medieval setting that didn't seem to mention christianity at all. i love medieval historical settings but i dont often find anything where the setting contributes meaningfully to the plot, or where daily life is faithfully represented to some degree. i know it's a high bar but name of the rose is the only really good one I've found. do you have any novels with medieval settings you do recommend?

i enjoyed the story of silence by alex myers for the medievalism of its setting. it is, as the title suggests, a retelling of a medieval text, so i would've been pretty damn disappointed if it didn't lean heavily into its medievalisms. in particular it makes a lot of use of the cultural christianity of the setting e.g. using paternosters to mark time, days being divided by services, knowing the time because of church bells, lodging with a religious order while travelling, etc -- all the things the other book i was talking about notably omitted (made more pronounced by the fact that i read the two one after the other)

could honestly not tell you how much i enjoyed the rest of it because my brain yeets every piece of information about a book from my mind as soon as i finish it lol. it left a fairly positive impression in my brain though.

there were a lot of medieval-set books that i read as a child which i enjoyed and which felt realistic to me then/when i've reread them, but i don't know how they'd hold up compared to modern research! e.g. i loved the load of unicorn by cynthia harnett, and rosemary sutcliff is always a good time

i don't know of many other recent publications (esp. adult fiction) that have a strongly medieval setting that aren't also a retelling of a medieval text though, but that is partly because i have avoided reading quite a lot of pseudomedieval books because so many of them have caused me suffering. i also don't read a lot of Pure Historical novels like your bernard cornwells or whatever, i'm not really into big chunky novels about real historical events, i want pacey genre fiction in a medieval setting if that makes sense. but probably there are some better-researched books in that genre for the purely medieval details

the book i was vagueing about was a "historical" romance novel that had clearly been a fantasy romance novel at some point earlier in its life (judging by the acknowledgments) which the author had retrospectively attempted to set in the fourteenth century with what seemed like almost zero research into what material culture and everyday life in the fourteenth century would be like, let alone how people would experience and express emotions

tbh it was massively disappointing because so many historical romance novelists put a shitton of research into their regency/victorian romance novels and i wish we could have a medieval romance novel that did the same instead of half-arsing it! or i wish that author had left their book as a fantasy romance novel so that i could have still enjoyed everything else about it :( alas. i will just continue to think resentful thoughts in the direction of that book whenever i see it in shops or in rec lists lol

oh ETA: it's ages since I read it but I remember Hild being pretty solid for early medieval vibes? and the sequel just came out so I will probably try to reread it at some point and give an updated opinion

[veliseraptor]

December Reading Recap

I thought about trying to do some kind of 2022 reading summation/best of/worst of/whatever and I might still do that but right now I'm just going "too many booksahhh" so I'm just going to keep on going with month two of my "here's what I read this month" short reviews.

I read a lot this month, but unfortunately it involved several books that missed for me (but a few that I really enjoyed).

The Husky and His White Cat Shizun: vol. 1 by Meatbun Doesn't Eat Meat (Seven Seas Translation). I mean, as usual, even without knowing the actual quality of the translation as a translation I am still pining for a professional translator. And yet I'm still reading, because this is the way I have to read the thing as translated by an actual human, and I am enjoying it. This time around I am falling much more in love with Chu Wanning than I did the first time around when I was laser focused on Mo Ran as more nakedly ~my type~ but boy!! *pats Chu Wanning* this man can fit soooo many issues in him.

Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by R.F. Kuang. I feel like my relationship status with R.F. Kuang's writing should just be listed as "it's complicated" because I don't even know how I feel about this book, really. It's conceptually fascinating, it's doing so many cool things, the way she chose to end it is very bold and I respect the hell out of it, and something still just didn't quite...click for me in the way that I wanted it to.

I think it was that it felt a little heavy-handed with its metaphors. Which is fine, to be sure, and making your imperialism metaphors specifically about language and translation isn't something I've seen somebody do a lot with in fiction, but...yeah. I'm calling this one less a fault of the book and more a fault of the me, though; it definitely feels like a your mileage may vary situation.

Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke. I picked this up on a whim and it wasn't worth it. The book was very taken with its own cleverness; I was not.

The Maidens by Alex Michaelides. This was another one where the summary/description was more interesting than the actual book turned out being, which was, while readable and I was intrigued enough by the mystery to power through it pretty fast, underwhelming overall.

Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots. Some people (me) keep picking up retellings despite at this point knowing better; other people (me) keep picking up superhero-comics-inspired books despite at this point knowing better, only this time I was actually surprised by how much I liked it. It was legitimately a good story! And you know I'm always going to be a sucker for a story that takes the villain's side.

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield. I have the creeping feeling that this book was too sophisticated for me and I would have liked it more if I was more sophisticated, which is an unpleasant feeling to have.

I wanted more deep sea horror from it than I got - not in the sense of ~creatures and tentacles~ or anything, but this was far more a book about grief and loss than it was horror, and it was billed to me as the latter, so I came in from the wrong direction and was a little disappointed. It was a good book, though, and beautifully written.

Everything I Need I Get From You by Kaitlyn Tiffany. Had I known that the title of this book was from a One Direction song (I didn't) I might have anticipated more how much it was about bandom and therefore less relevant to my interests. It was also lighter on the analysis than I expected/wanted, so ultimately this one was a disappointment too.

Beowulf trans. by Maria Dahvana Headley. This is the first translation of Beowulf I have ever actually read (!) and after reading it I kind of wished that I'd read at least one other translation to compare it to. But a lot of the things she was doing with alliteration and assonance and rhythm in the language were just spectacular. And it gave me the chance to read this one (by this translator) coupled with:

The Mere Wife by Maria Dahvana Headley. Adding this to my "books to read in pairs" list alongside the Song of Achilles / Silence of the Girls dyad. It's been sitting on my shelf for a while now, and I finally got around to it as spurred by reading the original Beowulf text, and...whoa. I'm going to be thinking about this one for a while and I want other people I know to read it so I can bounce off their thoughts about it. If you haven't heard of it: this was billed as a retelling (I know) of the Beowulf story set in a gated community but I feel like the fact that it's based on Beowulf is almost beside the point in some ways, and in other ways it's very much in conversation with that text and lives alongside it and maybe a little in argument with it.

Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: vol. 4 by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (Seven Seas Translation). I feel a little bad about how my reaction to this volume was a little bit "this was mostly a lot of Wangxian stuff so I was less excited about it" but there you go.

Siren Queen by Nghi Vo. I have to say, I read The Chosen and the Beautiful when it came out and was a little underwhelmed, but the synopsis for this one sounded interesting, and people kept raving about it, so I decided to give it a go, and I liked this one both (a) much better than The Chosen and the Beautiful and (b) just as a book without comparison needed. It also made me want to dig more into early film history. The way that this book is in love with (in a way) early film is also a delight to read, and while I can't call it subtle, it's eerie and beautiful in a way that really worked for me.

The Last Days of Jack Sparks by Jason Arnopp. I read a lot of horror despite the fact that I end up underwhelmed by the vast majority of it. I was slightly less underwhelmed by this one than I expected to be, but that is, as you might note, not exactly an endorsement. Part of the problem was that I found the main narrator just too fucking hateable in a very specific way to feel anything about his suffering but vague, detached interest in where it was going to go.

Heaven Official's Blessing: vol. 5 by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (Seven Seas Translation). I just love this book so much and everything about the reading experience is difficult to judge in an objective way because my brain just kind of goes "look at them go! look at these little dudes go! they're so funny :)" in a very empty-headed sort of way.

This volume does sort of fall between my favorite bits, though (after end of Black Water Arc, before the Hua Cheng's Sculpture Gallery), so while it started digging into some of the Crown Prince of Wuyong lore it didn't quite hit the parts that are juiciest for me.

The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett. This book made me so mad about public health policy. Like, so mad. I'm mad about it periodically anyway but this just made it worse. It's really good, very comprehensive overview of some of the emerging diseases since 1950, including Lassa, Ebola, antibiotic resistance, HIV/AIDS, and others. It's long, and definitely a rough read if you've got any kind of disease phobia (she isn't...gruesome about the clinical descriptions but she also isn't mincing words), but worth a read if you feel like you can do it and are interested in epidemiology.

There's definitely outdated terminology and some bits that made me squint about the book's politics, but overall the author's clear message of the need for holistic health policies for everybody mitigated a lot of those concerns (particularly the way the author repeatedly underlined the links between poverty and deprivation and vulnerability to illness, and the vitality of giving people a way out of that situation as part of public health policy.

The Bone Orchard by Sara Mueller. The last book I read in 2022! I'm so fascinated by everything this book was doing. There was some very interesting world-building under the skin of what was really mostly a mystery with a side of politics. And I say that favorably. Ultimately I'm not sure that it'd make my favorite books of the year list, but I'd give it a casual recommendation; that is, if someone was eyeing it to read I'd say it was worth picking up.

I'm currently reading Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism by Michelle Goldberg, which was published in 2007 (during the Bush years) and I can already tell reading it now is going to be an experience.

[peterlorres21stcentury]

pictured: the ghost of Peter Lorre dictating my next work of fiction

Peter: "yeees, you should start those three different stories all at the same time. It won't be at all difficult! You can trust me." me: yessir. I just need another year or several. :3

Somewhat off topic but there's something I have wanted to say about writing and my own opinions of modern storytelling for a while, but I realize it's going to be a whole load of irrelevant waste for most, so behind a cut it goes:

I realize that I write for a pretty niche audience, namely, the Peter Lorre megafan community (hi there, all ten or twelve of y'all 😉). But in doing so, I'm not only trying to create worlds and stories well-suited to our boy's talent, even so many years after his death. I'm also attempting to keep a tradition of older storytelling alive.

What do I mean by this? Mostly it's my own irritation at almost all visual media (at least American media; I can't speak to everything in this world) made in the last 15-20 years or so, which seems designed to stifle anything that might be the least bit interesting or fresh. Or even the fact that "normal" dramas and slice-of-life stories that were commonplace in film as recently as 30 years ago, would never in a thousand years be considered for production today. And what is it replaced with? A lot of sloppy, unfocused, really bloated franchises that go nowhere and say even less in two and a half hours (??!!) than most older films and TV could convey in the average 30-60 minutes. You cannot tell me with a straight face that the kids today find older movies too "boring" or "unappealing" when absolute fuckall is happening in whatever bland shit is currently overstaying its welcome.

And maybe t'was ever thus, and mass entertainment has always been stupid, and niche voices from the past always fade into obscurity. But the loss of gold-standard, very tried and tested methods of storytelling on a really fundamental level feels especially keen to me now. It really does feel like so many screenwriters have thrown all history of good writing out the window in favor of... I dunno, the random STUFF ping-ponging around in their heads without rhyme or reason or motivation or setup, or an endless parade of unfunny jokes, or a lack of compelling characters, or a general lack of anything that made me care about writing in the first place. I first ran into this problem as a college student in a very disappointing creative writing course almost 20 years ago, and it hasn't gotten any better since.

I am not a professional. I am not here to write what is profitable. But I am highly influenced by the storytelling techniques of the past, which is why I have gotten more than one cherished comment from readers telling me that my stories "feel like movies." That is deliberate. I always said that I am a thief; I steal from many sources. At the end of the day, I am here to write the stories I want to read, as strange and niche as they may be, and share them for free with anyone who cares to remember when strong writing and well-crafted stories really meant something. I can only hope I live up to that legacy in a day and age I cannot keep up with, in my own small and extremely insignificant way.

[oddmerit]

i try REALLY hard to like cohost dot org and there IS a lot to like about it, legitimately:

most of the staff are jewish gaytrans furries so they Get the need for firm moderation that accounts for “plausible deniability”-type bigotry, even if they slip up it’s pretty quickly rectified (see below)

good 18+ filtering, pro-posting queer hole

NO BULLSHITE ALGORITHMS. chrono timelines only

css/html/markdown crimes

that being said.

the general culture there is rough bc a lot of the prominent powerposters are friends or friends-of-friends of the devs by nature of how they conducted the closed alpha, but bc of the lack of public metrics it’s considered taboo to claim that there ARE powerposters in the first place. and because powerposters are just a few degrees removed from the devs, people who WERENT part of the alpha want to emulate that general vibe. part of which means getting extremely hostile and defensive if anybody says something that could be construed as putting the devs down and claiming they’re “twitterbrained” or whatever and that people who “expect too much” of the devs are going to be the downfall of the site

the most recent incident of this stemmed from a moderating misstep where someone i followed reported a nazi channer who followed her and was part of an antisemitic harassment campaign, but hadn’t posted anything to the site yet. the staff who handled her report said “this is concerning so we’ll wait and see BUT we don’t take action based on offsite behaviour”, despite that being untrue based on previous moderation actions (notably TERFs getting nuked from orbit before they could even start posting). the person who reported them got upset and several of her followers (including me) were like “what the fuck, that’s unexpected and shitty”, some saying that made them feel unsafe in case that ever happened to them. once the decision got traction (and other people started reporting the account) the staff went back on its decision “based on internal review” and suspended the account in question, which is where this story should have ended

except, the day after it happened, i woke up to a post on my cohost dashboard that was someone screaming their head off about people who had said “this is disappointing and makes me concerned”, and kept quoting one specific person who they claimed had overreacted and was symptomatic of the above-mentioned “twitterbrain” and that it was all “bad faith”. like, if THAT is gonna be the community reaction to someone being alarmed about inconsistent moderation, why would you ever publicly bring up moderation concerns at all?

its one thing to ask site members to be considerate of staff (its a small team and half of them were at a con AND it was a weekend AND they eventually backtracked and apologized anyways so it was all good at that point) but its another thing to go off on a rant quoting mostly one specific person while claiming its really “just general you” and claim that they’re the reason the site will go under. if you’re going to claim that you need to bite your tongue over missteps “for the good of the community” that’s a HUGE fucking red flag! bc thats how resentment will grow and eventually explode into something MUCH worse! it wouldnt turn into “intra-community infighting” if everyone was like “cool, thank you, please make sure this doesnt happen again” after the issue is solved instead of dragging it out and turning it into an example of “oooo look how PRO-HARASSMENT twitter has made you, you’re HARASSING the devs by voicing concern”!

and dont get me STARTED on the shitfits people were throwing when staff said “we don’t allow loli on this site”. people understand “cohost isnt a free speech absolutist site like twitter” when it comes to hate speech but they absolutely do NOT understand it also applies to jerking it to fictional csa lmao. cohost isnt overrun by “puritans”. the devs will not ban queer hole*. the devs post queer hole. its fine

(*the only way i can see NSFW getting banned is if stripe drops them for processing cohost+ subs or the future tipping system and even then i trust staff will fight for Queer Hole as hard as they can)

[readingaway]

Worst Reads of 2022

time for some negativity! I’m just going to list the books I absolutely hated this year and give a short explanation of why I hated them.

1- Disfigured by Amanda Leduc

Literally the best part of this book is the description. The contents never get deeper than that and the book utterly failed to really investigate or explore what Leduc claimed to be writing about. Much of the text is taken up by autobiographical details and biographical details about other writers. 

2 - Namesake (Fable, #2) by Adrienne Young

This was especially disappointing because I’d quite enjoyed Fable - in-so-far as I can enjoy most YA adventure fantasy-romance, and Fable was very typical of its genre. But Namesake? What the hell was the point of this duology. I have to ask. What was the point Ms. Young? More importantly, you do understand that in your chosen genre of YA fantasy adventure the protagonist needs to do something.

But wait a second I need to go over another detail before I get back to the insanely weak plot and characters. The worldbuilding. It sucked. In Fable I put up with it, there was some nice imagery. But with all the other issues in Namesake I couldn’t ignore it. Young uses the same tired costuming tropes where, in one scene, the MC is forced - forced I say! - to wear a pretty dress to a party which involves a horribly uncomfortable corset. (What undergarments was she wearing before?) But that’s barely even an issue compared to, for example, that there is exactly one alcoholic drink in the entirety of this fictional world and it is called rye. That’s it. Rye rye rye. He was drinking rye, she was drinking rye, they were drinking rye. I wouldn’t be surprised if it had originally been rum and the editor made Young come up with something else to call it because rum would be too stereotypical or whatever. The rye thing is a pretty good example of the weak worldbuilding without getting too far into the plot. But I would also note that there is no clarity in what the climate is like, or the various cultures. Oh yeah. I guess there’s some magic in this story and some people have the ability to read or sense gems somehow, and it is only used for tension in a couple scenes and doesn’t matter to the main plot.

And back to the plot, which sucked. As a general rule, the main character of a story needs to do something. There are other important things about plots and characters, such as that a main character should want something, and that this drives the plot. The MC here does, at least, want something: her father’s love. What she does do over the course of two books is all about gaining her father’s approval or love, or it’s about helping her love interest. Just typing that makes me realize that somehow this duology failed the sexy lamp test with its main character. Fortunately it’s been almost a year so I won’t write more but seriously. This book is so bad. It’s soooooooooo bad.

3 - The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

I love the 90s adaptation of this book and so was excited to read listen to it, at last. That was a mistake. The first section of the book, up until Edmond escapes prison is good. It’s tense and you can really feel and understand why he’s so angry and set on revenge. The rest of the book.... his revenge is too intricate, there’s too much moralizing and talking. The revenge isn’t even satisfying. There’s a time gap between the escape and Edmond’s return to Marseille and he picks up this Greek slave girl who is kind of his adopted daughter but then becomes his love interest. He screws Mercedes over. The movie changed almost everything from the point of the escape and that was the right decision. There’s no satisfaction or great romance in the novel.

4 - Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey

So, I wasn’t a fan of American Hippo because it turned out that the novellas were not, in fact, fun and were instead gritty westerns. I figure that’s more an issue of my not reading the description carefully enough. This, I was unsure about and I just wish I hadn’t picked it up. It might have been good, but it’s missing so much worldbuilding/ information. I cannot buy into a story where somehow, at the time of the real american civil war, there’s instead this very fascist government over all the white people and there’s a secret society of people ferrying folks from the east to the free, rebel-held west. And that the headquarters of this rebel stronghold are in Utah. And the place names are the same. You cannot actually expect me to believe that there is a Provo, Utah not twenty years after initial colonization that is a glorious safe haven for free speech and being gay and nonbinary. I also don’t recall there being much about race or colonization in this story despite it being set, again, at the time of the real american civil war and with the group the audience is supposed to be rooting for heading for safety in a very recently colonized place.

*addendum, apparently this story is actually supposed to be “near-future.” But the worldbuilding issue remains the same. There’s nothing in this novella to 1) make it clear when this is supposed to be set, 2) make it clear or even possible to guess what has happened to bring about this “near-future” dystopia. I’ve read other, similar stories that also involve a near-future dystopia set in the US that give enough detail for that described future to be plausible. (Ex, The Handmaid’s Tale, or Civilwarland In Bad Decline.) This novella does not give enough information for me to even visualize the story, much less understand the essential question of “how did we get here?”

5 - How to Write a Mystery, edited by Lee Child

There were a lot of bad essays

6 - Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam

I wrote a review of it which you can read here.

7 - The Once and Future King by T.H. White

So yeah. I would like to stuff a sock in Merlyn’s mouth and duct-tape it shut and shoot him out of a cannon. That’s a bit extreme, but so much of this text was taken up by his patronizing, philosophizing, when he wasn’t going on racist rants and making up colonial manifestos. Such speeches rang especially hollow with the hindsight provided from the last several decades since the books were being published. There were other issues I had with the book, such as abrupt time skips and glossing over important details or constantly referencing other authors so that in order to understand this excessively long book, one must already be familiar with the preceding major works of arthuriana.

[peaceandloveonpluto]

I am 99% sure I am somewhere on the aromantic spectrum IRL because the thought of dating another person tends to stress me out. There is a chance I'm ficto tbh (not sure if that falls under the aspec umbrella) because honestly just imagining being with fictional characters makes me happy, likely happier than I would be with a real flesh and blood human being. I just don't know how I'd explain this to other people in my real life because I'm sure they would think it's weird. I suppose I could just tell them the aromantic part, and that would come with its own can of worms to unwrap ("how are you sure? maybe you haven't found the right person yet!" "do you REALLY want to spend your life alone?" and other things like that).

Even in a space that feels "progressive" (discord server I'm in with folks in the LGBT club from the college I went to), when I was talking about the whole selfshipping community (not being explicit that I was a member), there was at least one person who was treating it like it was embarrassing and pathetic for the selfshipper involved, which obviously really tanked my mood. I didn't even know this person that well, I was more of a fly on the wall in this club but it still hurt.

I think also, even if I were to try dating others, I would compare them to the fictional characters I'm attracted to and there is pretty much no way they'd be 100% like the fictional character, so I'd be disappointed and that's really not fair to the person.

This is really disjointed but whatever, I wasn't trying to make a cohesive essay anyways. Just wanted to get some thoughts out.

[sol-flo]

i really wonder what about midsommar and the annihilation movie makes me hate them so fucking viscerally. like you bring them up and i'm ready to rip and tear

[onlyang3ll]

Gotta Be Better

a/n: HI hello, rafe cameron imagine here!!! wanna say I personally have dealt with loved ones and addictions ruining their life. and just know you are not alone if you deal with something like this in real life. I did not make rafe in this murder rafe lol but its typical jerk kook rafe. I AM NOT romanticizing drug addiction nor any sort of toxic relationship! this is all just me trying to write an idea that came to my head and FICTION. anyways, I hope you enjoy I feel like I went about this one different while writing. so idk if i feel confident in this writing but b a nice human and enjoy once again. did not proofread wanted to get it up.

summary: yn and rafe date whilst he deals with addiction. 

warnings: swearing, DRUG USE!, drinking, oral sex(male receiving),  female stimulation, toxic relationship(staying with someone toxic), driving while under influence, showering together. 

word count: 3.7k

“Baby, you in there?” I heard Rafe’s voice, and a knock on my bathroom door. I am currently washing my hair in the shower. “Yeah, come in!” A second later I hear the door open and close.

I hear Rafe’s heavy breathing, “Are you okay?” I speak softly, in case he is worked up about something. These past couple years I have learned how to bring him down from his rage fairly quickly. “No. No, I am never okay. It's all just fucked up, yn.” I lean over and peer out of the shower curtain he is gripping onto the counter top so hard his knuckles are white, his hair is hanging over his face.

“Come here..” I hold my hand out to him. He shakes his head, I just let out a sigh. “Yes Rafe, take your clothes off and come get in here with me..” I wiggle my hand a bit, making him turn to look at me. He hesitantly walks over grabbing ahold of my hand. “I should go back there and kill him.” His eyes have that void in them, it happens when he gets like this.

I have never been scared of Rafe. He liked that about me. He knew he could always count on me to not back down from him. I shake my head at his words, and give him a little pout. “No you should not, what you should do is take those clothes off and come give me some company in this shower, yeah?” He groans, like he is fighting with himself to just let whatever got him so pissed go.

I gave him a little pouty lip, and he sighed then pulled my hand up placing a kiss against the back of my hand. He quickly got undressed and stepped in the shower. The best thing about my shower is the two shower heads at each end. So we both stood under the stream of hot water. I moved closer to run my hands up his bare chest, “You feeling a bit better?” Rafe looks down to see your face, pushing his wet hair back off of his face, nodding a little. “What had you so worked up?”

I ask him that question every time, so we can walk through ways to handle it next time, or just help him realize he shouldn't be so bothered by things. Rafe has been my friend since we were children, being neighbors it was hard not to be close. He is about two years older than I am. But in the many years of being friends turned lovers, I have learned to handle his breakouts pretty well.

But recently the rage has been spewing out of him wildly. Every day something happens and it makes him tick. It hurts me seeing him battle things within himself and I try my best to help and be there for him as much as I can. But he always tries to shelter me away from things, but I always find out the truth.

“It’s not worth repeating, baby..” He replied, I stood up on my tippy toes placing soft kisses on his cheek. “Well how could I even justify your want to ‘kill’ someone if you won't explain what happened?” I gave a little confused look. When Rafe hides things, it's normally stuff he feels I will be disappointed about.

Rafe tugged me closer by my hips, our bare chests pressing together. He leaned down and gave my head a gentle kiss. “Before I start, I promise it was just for shits and giggles. It won't be an all the time thing again..” as he spoke those words, I began to pull away from him, already not liking where this was going. But Rafe pulled me back, keeping me locked against him.

I look up to see his face as he explains further, “I went to visit an old friend..” he wiped some droplets of water off of his face before continuing. “Fuck! Okay , I was hanging around people I know I shouldn't have gone back around, did a few lines..then some douche started talking about you. I did a few more lines to try and ignore his shit talking. Then I blew up and had to leave before I did something stupid.”

Even though I am completely pissed off he snorted fucking coke again, I know Rafe cant control his temper when it involves me. He has to protect me. I don’t think anyone has ever bad-mouthed me and gotten away with it. But I needed a moment to think before speaking. I slipped away from him and got out of the shower, wrapping a towel around my body.

“Oh come on... baby you can't be that mad. Shit head was trying to rile me up and I walked away.” He completely leaves out the fact he did blow again. I stay silent. I heard the water shut off, and heard Rafe cursing under his breath. I let out a small laugh. “What is so funny?” He deadpans.

“Its fucking funny that even after how hard I try to help, how much I show you I am here!” I point to my chest, “you still can’t keep your fucking nose from sniffing shit!” Rafe was getting angry, but he knew this would cause an argument. He knew how much I hated that fact he used coke to cope with things. It has only gotten worse in the last year.

He was doing so good. All my caring for nothing.

Rafe walked up, gripping onto my shoulders, “It is all too much. The things I have going on in my head. I promise I will be better.” He stared down at my face, his eyes overly dilated and glossy looking into mine. “Baby, I will be better..You make me better. I can not lose you.”

When he said things that like and did what he did tonight makes me think otherwise. How could I make him better when he is still repeating old patterns?

I give him a small nod, “You won't lose me.” The corners of his mouth turning up a bit, he pulled me into his chest wrapping his arms around me. And when I say rafe won't lose me.. I mean it. I can't imagine and wont even dream of a life without him.

“Come on, let's get some sleep..” I spoke quietly.

~

“Rafey..” I nudged the six foot two giant laying beside me with an arm and leg swung over mine. “Your phone is going crazy..” He slowly opened his eyes, and turned over grabbing his phone off the nightstand. “Who is it?” I ask with squinted eyes, trying to make out any movements by him.

“Shit..” He hurried out of the bed, frantically searching for his khaki pants. “Shit, shit..” He repeated over and over. “Rafe what the hell is going on? It is four thirty in the morning, who are you in such a rush to see?” Now I am sitting straight up on the bed, watching my boyfriend run around like a mad man.

“Not important..um just go back to bed.” He spit out quickly, tossing his phone on the bed as he buttoned up his pants, and began putting his shoes on. Not important my ass. I grab his phone and look at the screen. Twenty messages from one unknown number. Before I could unlock the phone, my wrist was being squeezed, causing my hand to let go of the phone.

“I told you its not important, so don’t fucking touch my phone.” Rafe let go of my wrist, grabbing his phone. I was overly annoyed at this point, and just wanted to help. But rafe wants to be a dick, I can play that game too. “Well run along wouldn't want your late night booty call waiting much longer.” I know I shouldn't have said that. It was selfish and I knew it was not true.

Rafe would never cheat on me.

“What the fuck did you just say to me?” He walked over to stand in front of my small figure, while I sat on the edge of the bed. I stayed quiet. “How could you ever say that?” He sounded hurt. But anger still lingered in his voice. “You sound so fucking stupid saying that,” Rafe bent down to make our faces level, gripping onto my chin.

“I fucking love you. I would never do anything to hurt you.” He spoke softly. He always seems to forget he constantly breaks promises, and that is hurting me enough.

“Yn, do you understand that?” He spat, I gave a light nod. “Good girl,” He placed his lips against my forehead, letting go of my chin and taking a step back. My eyes moved up to look at his face which was plastered with a grin. “I will see you later, k.” No other words, just another kiss being placed on my lips and he was gone.

~

It has been over six hours since I last saw Rafe, now nearing around almost ten o’clock, I made my way to the country club early to grab a cabana to relax for the day with some friends.

Slowly through the next hour or so, the sun began to beam down and I sat reading and engaging in random conversations with my friends. It has been a peaceful morning. “Fuck out of the way pogue.” I spoke too soon, I knew that voice too well. Turning my back, Rafe was walking my way, smiling and gave a wave to me.

I couldn't help but smile back, he may be rough around the edges but god do I love that man. He could be evil and cruel, but never to me. At least never on purpose. The only time Rafe ever gets on guard with me is if he is high or planning on getting high.  I heard my friends say they were going to go swim for a little while, which I assume is because Rafe is now here. No one else besides me and his friends were fans of him.

“There is my beautiful girl,” He holds out his hands, to help me stand up off of the lounge chair I am sitting on. He wore sunglasses, his hair perfectly placed and his outfit is just normal Rafe wear. A dark blue polo with Khaki shorts. Handsome as ever. Once I am fully standing he tugs me into his chest, giving me a short but passionate kiss. “I missed you,” He whispers into my ear before placing kisses all over my face. I let out a small giggle. “Missed you too, even though you left my house all weird this morning.”

Rafe groans, “Lets not think about that right now..” He pushes a strand of hair behind my ear. “I came here to see my beautiful girlfriend, looking sexy as hell in her little bikini she has on.” He took a step back and pulled his glasses down a bit, checking me out dramatically. I laughed a bit, and reached up playfully tugging his sunglasses off, before I could get them away too far his hand caught my wrist. “Please don't do that” I gave him a confused look letting him put his sunglasses back on.

Instantly I knew why he wanted them on so badly.

“You're coked out aren't you.” I spoke in a low voice, not to let others around hear us. Rafe stayed quiet. Figures. “I can not believe you Rafe! Just last night you once again said you would try and be better, not even twenty four hours later you're high again.” I step away gathering my things, throwing them into my tote bag.

“Don't walk away from me,” Rafe grabbed onto my hand gently as I passed him to leave. “Please, don't leave me,” He pleaded. I stopped in my tracks, the pain in his voice hit me like a ton of bricks. “Can we just leave here, I don't wanna be here anymore” Without another word, we were silently driving in his truck. I had nothing to say to him right now, and I know the minute he talks and gives me a reason he did whatever he did today I will forgive him.

“Baby you gotta talk to me. I only did two lines. I was so stressed because I had to handle some shit with my dad earlier and he just pissed me off.” I glance over as he talks, noticing his knuckles gripping the wheel tighter from just the thought of his father. I begged him to let me drive due to him being high, but he wouldn't let me.

“You can't go around sniffing shit every time your dad pisses you off Rafe! You are killing yourself, you always ask me to stay. Never to leave you right? Well what happens when you leave me.” Rafe scoffed, “Never will I ever leave you, you are my only source of happiness” I shook my head, “No you will leave me when that shit ends up killing you!” I replied with tears forming in my eyes.

He sighed pulling the truck over to the side of the road, turning off the ignition. “You know I can't stand to see you cry, baby..” He reaches over and wipes a tear from your cheek. “I just get so into my head, always having these fucked up thoughts, and my dad doesn't help. And i just want to be better for you, i dont wanna bring you down because my fucking issues.” I hold my hand up to stop him from continuing, “Wrong Rafe, you should want to come to me with your issues, you will NOT get better unless you realize what you're doing is wrong, don't use me and not want to bring me down as an excuse. I much rather enjoy your company sober than high anyday. So as I am still sitting here, telling you once again I wont leave Rafe. I will be here through the good and the bad. But I never will just let these things slide. I won't sugar coat things, you have your own issues yeah, we all do. But I know you're smart, and are capable of so much more than what your father makes you think you are.”

At this point I am sobbing, it's hard to express things to an addict. They don't see what it's doing to them or people around them. Rafe sniffles, wiping away a tear of his own, “I am getting my shit together baby, for you and for us.” He speaks like he is trying to convince himself.

“I know you will rafey..” I reply, nodding. But I just say it because it's the right thing to do, who am I to bring him down when he is trying to see his faults. “I will be better because you need me, I can't leave you. I would never leave you, pretty girl.” He ran his thumb across my cheek. He is right, I do need him.

~

“How does this look?” I walk out of my closet wearing a black tight spaghetti strap dress that goes to about mid thigh, doing a little twirl. Rafe sits up from his position of laying flat on his back on my bed. He gives a little whistle. “One of a kind you are, how lucky am i?” He smiles, while I blush.

After the whole melt down in the truck, we spent the day just spending well needed time together, It's been a really great day since. And we plan to end the evening at toppers house with a party.

“Oh hush, come on we can't be late” I tug his hand and make our way. Walking into the party, fully pressed against Rafes' side, his arm slung around my shoulder. People waved and yelled a few ‘hey what's up?’ here and there but we didnt stop and chat until we found topper. Instantly our hands were holding drinks and Rafe of course was downing way faster than I could. I laughed as he whispered things into my ear while I was perched on his lap, his fingers mindlessly running up and down my thigh.

Goosebumps rising on my skin, I leaned back feeling at ease in his arms. The ease went away pretty quickly, when Kelce walked in tossing a bunch of baggies filled with white powder on the table. I felt Rafe tense underneath me. “Everyone enjoy, the Yay is on me” I wanted to strangle this man.

Rafe dug his fingers into my hips, I turned around and sigh. “Let's get out of here..” I stand up, grabbing his hand and pulling him to stand with me. He won't budge. “Rafey please..” Maybe I can't get him away and continue to have a good night. He will see it's not worth it.

Then an idea hits me. I lean down, placing my hands on each of his knees, moving in close to his ear and whispering, “How about since you have been such a good boy all night, we go somewhere I can reward you?” He smirked, wrapping his hands around running them up the back of my thighs. “Whatever that reward is, will be ten times better than this shit” He waves a hand at the coke all over the glass table.

Progress. My sweet boy.

The whole time I was dragging him out of the house and down toppers boat doak, Rafe could not stop grabbing at my ass, and whining about how badly he wanted to take me right there in front of everyone so they could see how hot I am but will never have me. I laughed, so possessive.

“Why are we on top’s boat baby?” He looked around confused. Once he spun back around from looking through the boat, I was already on my knees. He groaned, “What a sight to see..” He pulled his phone out quickly, he nodded at it. I knew he wanted a picture, I looked so innocent, doe eyed looking up at him with my pouty red lips. I nodded, and he snapped the picture.

“You gonna stand there gawking at me or take your pants off for me?” I deadpan, never seen him get undressed from the waist down quicker. His dick was already standing and leaking from the tip. “You were such a good boy tonight..” I slowly bring my hand up to wrap around his base, a hiss leaves his mouth. “Suck it then” He demands. I look up, locking my eyes with his, leaning in wrapping my lips around his swollen tip.

Keeping eye contact I slide my mouth down fully covering his dick, he mumbles a curse under his breath. I begin to repeat the action, going at a slow and steady pace, pulling back to the tip and going down until he hits the back of my throat.

“You take me so deep baby,” He runs his fingers through his hair, watching me suck him off. My eyes are watering, due to holding back from gagging while his tip is hitting my throat, I swallow with him in my mouth. His eyes roll back, “Oh my fucking god, feels so good..” I was wet from just pleasing him, moving my hand down and playing with my clit as I sucked his dick.

“Yeah get yourself off while I fuck your mouth, dirty girl.” His hand found the back of my head and held me still, while he began to move his hips quicker, sliding in and out of my mouth. My finger swirling around my clit, the tingly feeling building up too quickly in my lower belly. I moan around his member, moving my tongue around the tip while he pulls back to repeat his thrust.

“I am gonna cum in your mouth, and you're going to swallow it for me okay?” His eyes were so full of lust and desire, I nodded with a slight moan. “I'm close so when I say cum you better cum” I moved my fingers quicker over my bundle of nerves, squirming and feeling overwhelmed with pleasure, his moaning and heavy breathing, I could cum instantly.

His thrusts into my mouth were getting sloppy, I knew he was close. “Cum, baby fuck.. Cum for me” He closed his eyes tightly and I let go, orgasming and swirling my fingers faster over my clit. His hot cum shot into my throat, I swallowed it all down. After we came down from our highs, he pulled out of my mouth slowly.

Helping me to stand up, he brought his hand up to caress my jaw, “Did so good princess.” He gave me a small kiss on the lips. He pulled on his boxers and pants, looking at me. “Thank you.” I looked at him, “For what?” He grabbed ahold of my hand, lacing our fingers. “For this, for getting me out of the room.” He replied. I sighed, “I will always do my best to help you get on the right track, but I won't always be with you to see if you stay good. But in the end you made the final decision to walk out of that room. You could have pushed me aside and snorted whatever you wanted. But you didn't. You walked away, Rafe”

Moving in closer, I cup his cheeks with my hands, “You will be better, because you just made the first step to trying to be better babe.” I gave him a sweet smile, both of our eyes filling with tears. “You need me, and I need you.” I nod at his words. “I love you,” He rested his chin onto my head, sighing. “I love you, princess. I can do it. I can do it.” I smiled, hugging him. “Yup, and maybe everytime you make the step in the right direction, you mister will get a little reward.” I giggle against his chest.

“That sounds like a good incentive” He joked, “Lets head back in, say our goodbyes and tell topper I got head on his fucking boat before he did” I playfully slapped his chest.

[castiel-left-his-mark-on-me]

Maybe I have been reading too many theories; maybe I just believe what I want to believe, maybe I’m completely wrong in all of this … maybe. But even if I am, even if WE ALL ARE, I really don’t think it that’s what matters anymore. This whole thing has been triggering from the start for so many people, and the CW has neglected to comment on any of it. At first, I didn’t expect them to. Supernatural wasn’t the first disappointing series finale in history, and it certainly won’t be the last; but so many new things have come to light since then. So many unexplained moments and conflicting stories have risen to the surface, and they obviously know how this fandom operates (the episode ‘Fan Fiction’ proves they do) so they couldn’t have been that surprised when all our questions started flooding the internet. Yet, the network has been silent, the show runners have been pretty silent. All we’ve seen is the complete lack of explanation paired with a few of the actor’s desperate attempts to defend their characters—which is heartbreaking because the characters and the actors HAVE NEVER BEEN THE PROBLEM.

I can completely understand why Misha sounded defensive and hurt in that video; because he sees this fandom that he loves and considers family, causing an online riot over something he’s personally involved in. It breaks his heart to see the LGBTQ+ community feeling rejected and attacked through the aftermath of a scene he filmed. He saw his departure as Castiel as a beautiful moment that supported queerness and speaking one’s truth, and now, something completely different has been extrapolated from that scene. I understand why that’s upset him … but sadly, I don’t think he quite understands how much bigger this whole thing is now. If the 15x18 confession was standing alone-- no other episodes to expect anything from, no more show to interpret, then I don’t think we’d all be hurting right now. We were all shocked and saddened when that confession happened, because Cas was gone only a moments later; but we were also elated that he was finally so open and honest, and that Dean heard him. He didn’t say “I love you too” but he heard him and he asked him to stay, he begged him to live. That would have been enough for me personally, but we had two more episodes to watch at that point, and we all expected that the show would find some way to honor that moment as well as the characters involved; but it didn’t. It barely acknowledged that any of it happened, and then it went on to ignore the entire series’ message of “Family Don’t End With Blood” by pretty much only focusing on the importance of the Winchester bloodline and nothing else. By doing that, it not only excluded Castiel and his breathtaking and beautiful confession, it felt like it excluded all of us. We all felt like part of that show—we all identified with someone beyond the brothers. We were its family, and it just-- cut us out.

So, when the Spanish dubbing happened, we thought “Maybe we weren’t supposed to be left out!” Maybe, just maybe … we were always meant to be there and something went wrong along the way. And the only place where all these conflicting stories, all these theories, all these mixed messages seem to meet—is at the CW network’s front door. But instead of answering when we knock and bang and scream for them to, they apparently stay locked up tight leaving the actors to feel responsible for us; and they’re not.

Misha Collins—you are not responsible for us or for our hurt feelings. You and Jensen and Bobo and the rest of the cast and crew did wonderfully and tried your best, and it seems like you fought for what’s right—you fought for us when you could. Whatever happened after that is NOT your fault, and we love you so much no matter what.

I want the CW to put this to bed. I want them to open the door and give us the explanation we’ve been asking for. If we’re all wrong, if this ending was always the plan (to some degree) then I think this fandom is mature enough that we can suck it up and walk away (we have before). But if there is anything, and I do mean any little detail that the network blatantly overlooked or pushed aside for the sake of ratings or money, then I think they need to own up to that so we can all move on. I know they won’t re-write the ending, and they won’t reshoot scenes; obviously that will never happen … but they can admit that for being a network that is supposedly “all about inclusivity”, they were rather narrow minded at times when it came to the finale of their longest running and most beloved show.

I don’t think that’s too much to ask, and I don’t think any more of the actors need to try and answer for them.