#In the unlikely case the stars align for someone here other than me to be into both bsd and Vocaloid

[fists-on-up]

My Thoughts on the Loie Fuller + Taylor Swift Connection (Part 2)

This part will be a bit more speculative and subjective than the last, but I think both are important to examine. In this part I want to discuss where I think Taylor's interest in, and dedication to, Loie came from and how I believe she has shown this influence beyond the Reputation Tour.

ORIGINS, MAYBE?

I think that really understanding human nature is fundamental to being a good writer. If a character is going to do or say something, it has to make sense and feel organic. The better aligned with that character's past, values, and intentions something is, the more real it feels. Humans are very predictable creatures, really, and our options for actions or responses to any given thing are much fewer than we realize. Being good at making fictional choices make sense often makes you good at recognizing when real-world actions or statements don't.

It becomes this kind of background process that's always running, and when someone says or does something "off", you feel it. It's not unlike recognizing subverted rhyme. The foundation is laid, you know what the word will be, and when it's subverted, it's obvious. It makes it easy to sort of reverse-engineer someone's motivations, also. If situation A or B would result in saying X or Y but they said Z, A or B could not have really happened and situation C is more likely true. It's hard to explain, but it has as much to do with what people do not say or do as it does what they do. It's a huge part of the reason I ended up in the gaylorverse.

So how might a singer/songwriter and pop star who started in country music come to dedicate a very telling song to a little-known lesbian dancer who lived in Paris a hundred years ago? (Who fled to Paris, even, literally because the culture was clever?)

Maybe because she was very in love with a dancer who also loves Paris.

A while back in my journey down the gaylor rabbit hole I came across this video of Karlie backstage of the 2014 VSFS. I'm not sure if it's a rehearsal, or if it was on the day, but at the time I saved it because it's adorable.

(recall the quote from the excerpt in Part 1 that stated Loie played a "hide-and-seek illusionist game" with the audience. All eyes on you, my magician, all eyes on me, your illusionist, etc.)

Some months later, I came across this video. I'm not sure if this was another take, if this was a rehearsal, or if it was edited but the televised version of this walk we all know so very well does not include this very Loie Fuller-esque flourish Karlie does at the end of the runway.

For reference, here is a portion of Loie Fuller's Butterfly Dance.

Can I say for sure that Karlie introduced Loie Fuller and her history to Taylor Swift? Nope. Nothing is impossible. But it sure seems to me that one of them introduced her to the other, and it seems more likely it would have started with Karlie. I'd expect a gay ballerina to have a greater knowledge of Loie's history than Taylor just as I'd expect Taylor to have a greater knowledge of, say, Melissa Ethridge, than Karlie. And if this is the case, the dedication to Loie could have been a sort of vicarious dedication to Karlie.

BUTTERFLY DANCE / SERPENTINE DANCE

Of course it's applicable as fuck that the two dances Loie Fuller was known for were the Butterfly Dance & Serpentine Dance. Especially considering the association between Karlie Kloss & butterflies since, well, the presumed beginning of her involvement in all of this.

But it gets much more interesting leading up to Reputation when several things happen and Taylor ends up embracing the title of "snake".

It's always a bad idea to pin a label on a girl who's been told who she has to be her entire life. That's not going to go well. But Dear Reader, if you're young this is absolutely the best way to respond to bullies. They want you to fight back. They don't know what to do when you gleefully make it you're entire personality and thank them for it.

If you follow me on TikTok or Twitter, you probably know that I think Taylor was sabotaged from coming out not only in 2019, but before Reputation. I think that was the purpose of whatever album "Karma" would have been and I don't see any other reason why an album would be scrapped entirely.

So presumably we have this knowledge of Loie Fuller, Karlie's association with the butterfly and now Taylor's association with the snake, and I think this is exactly where all of this emerges. It's all so serendipitous, and as a poet I can confirm we sure do love that shit.

I think in a way Loie Fuller and the true reason behind her artistic choices became a way to sort of romanticize closeting. It wasn't forced, it was a magic trick. It wasn't torture, it was a game. If you have to do it anyway, you might as well approach it in a way that makes you hate it a little less. It gives you a sense of control. If you can't make it stop, make it *art*.

And this continues into the Lover era in such a beautiful way. To my knowledge, that's the first introduction of The Crest. And you will never convince me that's not a snake in the shape of an S and a butterfly in the shape of a K. The entire crest is for the Lover. I seriously doubt she used both to represent herself, despite the use of fluffy imagery during the era.

I think Taylor does cover up self interest with a thin (and messy) layer of allyship, but I think it's also true that her inability to honor the one person she wants to honor often makes her look like she only cares about herself. Another example of this is the montage of sweet clips in Miss Americana that are just... all Taylor. The "someone" she had fallen in love with is never shown. Likewise the Rep attic movies in the Lover music video are all Taylor. Because she couldn't make them all the muse like she wanted.

It must really fucking suck to always look like something you're not, but I digress.

I'm adding this depiction of snakes & butterflies mostly because in looking for what I wanted to include here I noticed something about this back tattoo I'd never noticed and I've never seen anyone else talk about - there are two snakes. It's not a snake bursting into butterflies like the beginning of ME!, it's two district snakes with different patterns coiled around one another.

Perhaps two "snakes in the grass" were meant to finally fly free. I'm not sure if that's what it means, but I had a good cry about it anyway.

Of course after the Lover era and the absolute clusterfuck that came with it, it's understandable that everything wasn't sunshine and rainbows anymore.

But one thing that did remain was the crest. We see it again in the Evermore photo shoot, albeit behind glass which I'm sure is a coincidence.

But even now, the crest remains relevant. It pops up again in Anti-Hero, when Taylor's glittery insides are exposed and she ruins her friends' dinner trying to cover it up. Then she tries to drink from a wine bottle with the crest on it, but fails because it's empty.

Once she's OUT of the house, however, a similar wine bottle is able to be drank.

The crest was even in the Apple Music experience thing a couple of months ago, both on the stained glass found in the Lover House, but on the "a message in a bottle" bottle.

Although I do think the crest itself is a symbol of Taylor & Karlie's relationship, at minimum it's an ongoing use of the butterfly/serpent juxtaposition seen in Loie Fuller's work and throughout Taylor's.

I think it's fascinating how much we're all inspired and impacted by one another & those influences are meaningful whether people ever know about them or not. I know I have people who have inspired me but will never know. I'm sure you do too. We're all connected in that way.

I just love to consider the "why" behind someone's actions or choices, especially when it comes to art. I like to understand people, and doing so helps me understand myself. Of course it's impossible to ever get confirmation for these sorts of things, but I think it's as good a theory as any.

If nothing else, I'm almost certain that the Vogue writer had good reason to suggest Loie Fuller was the key to Reputation and Lover, although they left it at that. I suppose they had to hide their thoughts in plain sight too, in a way. Maybe they knew, or maybe when you've had to be the illusionist, you can't help but see how the trick is done. It takes away the magic, but it gives you the truth.

[novafire-is-thinking]

BYF / BYI

(because this post is meant to be a road sign and not a solid wall like a DNI post)

Welcome, potential friends and foes, to my space station of a Tumblr.

You can call me Novafire, or Nova for short.

I question the effectiveness of long intro posts, so here’s a summary:

My way of navigating life on this site aligns pretty well with True Neutral. But in true neutral fashion, it’s not a strict code I adhere to. It just means:

My own interests take priority, but I try to be kind as it makes things easier for everyone involved.

I have the courage of an ostrich mixed with the wits and confidence of a crow. (i.e. I suffer from a lack of conviction in all but a handful of things, but I’m willing to learn.)

I tend to evaluate things on a case-by-case basis.

I will not bite unless I see the need for preemptive action or if someone bites first. And even then, I’m more likely to ignore stuff since I just can’t be bothered to retaliate.

More details below:

What to expect:

I scan and monitor every Tumblr that follows me until I’ve gotten a good read on them. Blank blogs are fine as long as I can see they’ve either followed other TF accounts or have liked+reblogged TF content recently.

My blog is SFW for the most part, but NSFW accounts are free to follow and interact.

I rarely follow accounts that aren’t primarily Transformers-focused, but I reblog from anywhere and everywhere.

Communication:

I use tone tags for convenience, but they’re not necessary if someone wants to interact with me.

My inbox is open, but I disable anonymous asks every now and then when I expect issues.

DMs are open, but my response time varies depending on whether or not my proverbial stars have aligned and how well I know someone.

Please, no venting to me without warning. I may know a lot about the human mind and psychological and social dynamics, but I have no desire to play armchair therapist.

Triggers and how I accomodate:

If you need something tagged, let me know :) Anything asked of me earnestly will be granted.

I have very few triggers myself, and the ones I do have don’t require mentioning since I just scroll past stuff that bothers me.

If I reblog something from someone, it doesn’t mean I’m married to them. 95% of the time I reblog, I don’t consider the source. To me, good content is good content. However, if you alert me to something and respectfully request that I not reblog from a particular user, I will comply since I don’t want issues.

My relationship with my followers:

I am not responsible for the behavior of my followers. I carefully consider what I say so as not to incite drama or allow for my words to be taken out of context. However, I’m not perfect and my followers have wills of their own.

I am not responsible for anything any of my followers reblog on your posts. Do not expect me to moderate this.

Unlike some around these parts, I do not consider there to be such a thing as “Nova Nation” or anything along those lines. My followers are not my disciples, even jokingly. They are not necessarily a direct reflection of me or my views.

My relationship with characters:

If you see me kinning a character you’d consider problematic, please don’t jump to conclusions. More than likely, there are just one or several isolated traits I relate to.

I admit I have a fascination with and a love for IDW Prowl. However, please note that I do not consider him to be a “good person.” I just think the way his mind works is really interesting. And no, I’m not a JazzProwl or TaraProwl shipper.

I do not believe in excessive woobification of characters without acknowledgment of their faults, especially those like IDW Prowl. Yes, I want to wrap him in a blanket. No, I’m not blind to the horrors he’s committed.

I avoid character “tribalism” as much as possible. When it comes to any character, I will never shove my opinions down another’s throat, but I will absolutely provide thoroughly considered opinions in a controlled way.

I’m not a hardcore shipper myself, but I have a select few I like. I also respect most other ships out there.

Miscellaneous:

I make spam posting a habit. I’ll disappear for half a day to three days and then appear out of nowhere to drop 20+ reblogs at once.

I talk in the tags. A lot. :P

Spam likes and reblogs are more than welcome.

Feel free to tag me in stuff at any time! There’s no need to wait until we’re mutuals.

If you tag me in something and I don’t acknowledge it within a couple of days, please DM me. Tumblr is a stupid cat that likes to eat tags and reblogs. >:(

This is where you’ll find my playlists, moodboards, character ref collection, etc.

last updated: 11/16/23 (section updated: My relationship with characters)

[technicianuprisingau]

Meet the Cast - Meta Knight

Alright, simpers, get ready. Here's your blueberry borb. Writing his weakness is... finicky. I honestly don't know how, unlike Team Starstruck that has glaring weaknesses (ex. Robobot Armor sucks at fighting speed-based opponents, Bandana Dee risks himself more when getting hit by a particularly strong attack, Kirby can face problems if you use another gimmicky fighter), this guy is just. Fast. Like, faster than Bandee, so yeah. Real hard to hit. Help. Feel free to hand over feedbacks, if you wish!

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

"...why are people interested in me... oh well. I shall answer your questions then."

Basic Information

Name: Meta Alecta

Age: 43 [by the start of Planet Robobot]

Gender: Male

Orientation: Asexual

Hometown: [REDACTED] ("...I would rather not recall.")

Species: Puffball

Ability: Wing + Sword

Job: Star Warrior, mentor to Kirby Team Starstruck

Other names: Meta Knight ("This is my knighted title. Please refer me as such formally."), The Lone Swordsman ("...why do people gave me such fancy titles...?"), Batman ("...Galacta..." *sigh*)

Alignment: Lawful Neutral, leaning Good

A veteran star warrior who keeps track of Dreamland's defenses with a mysterious past and years of experience behind him. As Kirby's mentor, he acts as the uptight 'father' when it comes to handling Team Starstruck. His fears of getting his student into danger had only risen since he was brainwashed in The Technological War. He was even skeptical of the Technician ability at first but its first outing of successfully defeating several mysterious attackers convinced him it was for the best Kirby kept that helmet. Stern and logical, he fights with the legendary sword Galaxia, with the permanent Wing ability he has had since birth, and the Sword ability he learned along the way.

Detailed Information

Goals/Motivation: "I simply wish to do what I was meant to do as a member of the Galactic Soldier Army. It is true I am a Star Warrior, and thus my supposed job was to travel, but I have requested for extended stays due to my student, Kirby."

Hobby: "Reading. And baking, occasionally - but do not count on me doing so often..."

Favorite Food: "...grapes. If we were to go beyond that, I think we are getting personal here that-" {Kirby: "Hey, Mety, do you want me to buy you some sweets? Or the parfait from-} "Kirby! Not now!"

Least Favorite Food: "...licorice."

Favorite Game Type: "I don't play games." {Robobot Armor: "What are you, a f^cking boomer?"} "Would you please be silent for 5 minutes Robobot Armor, and cease that dirty mouth of yours..."

Habits: Rarely ever swears, tries to cook by himself [unfortunately they all taste bad], secretly hides sweets ("What is that you are writing?")

Other Liked Things: "I have not much to tell in this case."

Secret: All his hidden sweet tooth aside, The Nightmare War gave him scars he didn't want to remember much on, and he has been dealing with the pain he has for a long time. The existence of his crewmates, the Core Four of Dreamland, and Team Starstruck has helped him to lighten up things, even if he can't or won't admit it. He may have no incentive to love anymore, a part of him wants to feel such, but he couldn't. The people he actually loved either married someone else, died, or both, so he is afraid of that happening again. All he has now is platonic love.

Relationships

Best Friends: "...I have... a few. His Majesty King Dedede... my crewmates who operate the Halberd alongside me. And my... students." {Bandana Dee: "...students? I thought it's just Kir-"} "...I can't believe I have to say this in front of... Fine. Couldn't you appreciate yourself, Bandana? I have three students, that includes you and Robobot Armor. Now go back to your duties..." {Bandana Dee: "...s-sir, you are-"} "I said return to your duties... at once."

Rivals: "...I do not acknowledge any-" {Galacta: "Sup, batman!"} "Oh great... Can't you just leave me? For now? I am not interested in-" {Galacta: "Anyways, do you know that he wants to whoop my butt because I was-" *gets a book thrown to his face* "HEY-"} "LEAVE."

Enemies: "Any enemy to this planet and the Galactic Soldier Army is an enemy, as well."

Family: "...I have none. Not any longer. Except the people I know."

Crush/Love Interest: "I have none, as well."

Skills and Abilities

Overview:

Meta Knight is a very experienced swordsman. Due to his rough training in the GSA, he has learned several techniques, and the things he bring, including the Galaxia and his Dimensional Cape, helps him to combat efficiently. His speed is also amazing, able to outrun a lot of combatants, which he combines with his swordfighting to dispatch opponents much faster. He also has several minor skills that is nothing to laugh at, including being able to operate battleships as well as general knowledge regarding his own kind, such as copy abilities.

Apparently, he also knows some types of magic and while he usually doesn't use it on fair fights, if he has to, he WILL use them, especially in decisive battles.

Strength: Fast and accurate would be a good way to describe Meta Knight's battle style. The legendary sword he holds helps out inflicting damage both short and medium ranged, which can hit hard, especially the Sword Beam technique, one which has been horned for hit far opponents. Once he gets the chance, he can follow up with quick hits, making it difficult to find a breathing room at times. His knowledge on magic also helps him to find weaknesses, and there are times he does use spells of his own, which can complicate things. It doesn't help that he can fly too.

Weakness: Much like any speed-related fighter, if he is not careful, it tends to be that one mistake could mean fatal. Fortunately, he is actually very careful, and thus, this problem is easily mitigated - he has a great stamina and persistence to back this up. Problem is, attacks that have huge range can still trip him at times. Opponents that can outlast him is also a problem.

"I suppose that wraps up this talk. As of you... is there anything else? If not, the door is over there to your right - I shall return to my duties, as well."

[kyouka-supremacy]

Vocaloid songs that remind me of bsd characters:

Common World Domination (Atsushi) HIBANA (Atsushi) Deep-Sea Girl (Kyouka) The secret garden (Kyouka) Rolling Girl (Akutagawa) (duh... ) Tokyo Teddy Bear (Akutagawa) Abstract Nonsense (Dazai) God-ish (Dazai) Meltdown (Dazai) Black★Rock Shooter (Chuuya) Dramaturgy (Chuuya) WORLD'S END UMBRELLA (Kouyou) Heaven's Song (also cover with Meiko) (Kouyou) Nostalogic (Kouyou) -ERROR (Sigma) Matoryoshka (Gogol) Crime and Punishment (Dostoyevsky) (okay this one's a joke)

Re-education (Ryuunosuke & Gin) How To World Domination (Ryuunosuke & Gin) Cendrillon (sskk) Bocca della Verità (sskk) Black Board (sskk) Magnet (sskk) Patchwork Staccato (sskk) Lover's Suicide Oblivion (odazai) (duh...... )

[plus-size-reader]

Dream Come True

Spencer Reid x Plus size!reader

Word Count: 1638 words

Warnings: none

Summary: Spencer gets advice from the ladies at the BAU when he starts seeing someone new, but it doesn’t work because she is unlike anyone else. She’s quirky and strange, but Spencer wouldn’t have her any other way. 

——————————————————————————————————

Spencer had very little experience with the ladies, as a general rule. 

He had always had much more important things to worry about from a very young age than girls or dating. After all, with an I.Q like his, social cues like that were difficult. 

...But that all seemed to change with you. 

He met you at the library of all places, reading about cold cases involving serial killers. It was a strange hobby for a civilian but Spencer thought better than to point that out, considering what he did for a career. 

If nothing else, your interest in something so polarizing for most only increased Spencer’s draw to you. He found it so incredible that you would even think about something like that.

Though, that wasn’t the only thing about you that Spencer found immediately interesting. You had to be the most compelling human being he’d ever seen and he worked with Garcia every day. 

Every single thing about you was perfectly unique, like you’d given each tiny detail of your appearance it’s own thought. 

For someone like Spencer, it was absolutely wonderful to see someone as obviously invested in the minute details of who they were as a person. Up until now, he had always thought he was the only one.

Everything seemed to be absolutely perfect, like the stars had aligned when you two met and it was all meant to be. However, it wasn’t that easy. Even if you and Spencer were obviously feeling the same way, that didn’t change the fact that he couldn’t even speak to you. 

He didn’t know anything about women and he certainly didn’t know anything about how to effectively court a woman like you. Clearly, you were way out of his league. 

So, Spencer did the one thing he knew to do and gathered the help of every single lady he knew in hopes that it would help him understand you better. 

“Hey guys, can I ask you something?” he started, putting himself in the center of the girls, who were all talking about the girls night they were planning for this coming Saturday. 

They had been casually in discussion but as soon as the younger man entered the picture, all their attention pointed to you. “Sure Spence, what’s up?” JJ asked, the first to speak of any of the women. 

Whatever this was, they wouldn’t hesitate to help him. The problem was that Spencer wasn’t even sure if their advice would work on you. Even with the very little experience he did have with women, he knew that you were unlike anyone else on the planet. 

For all he knew, this wouldn’t benefit him at all but he had to try. 

“I met a girl” 

It was just a simple sentence, but to every one of his friends, hearing those words was like a declaration. Spencer had never really shown too much of an interest in the opposite sex while working at the BAU, aside from a few comments here and there. 

The news of a new love interest in his life was quite an exciting one, for Prentiss, JJ, and Garcia alike. They could hardly believe it but still, Spencer was met with squeals of excitement all the same. 

“Tell us about her. What is she like? Is she pretty? I bet she’s pretty” Penelope gushed, already dreaming up what a wedding would be like, and how stunning you must have been. 

Every potential detail about you swarmed around her head as she thought about what it would be like when she did finally get to meet you. She had only been dreaming about this forever. 

This was a dream come true for her. 

“I find her to be very aesthetically pleasing, yes. Her name is Y/N and I met her at a bookstore and then we got coffee at a cafe down the street” he informed, knowing what followup questions she would have before she could even ask them. 

It was perfect.

Of all the places where Spencer could have met his soulmate, a library was absolutely incredible, at least as far as Penelope was concerned. She couldn't have thought up a better place in the confines of her mind. 

“Sounds great. So what do you need help with?” Emily spoke now, recalling the start of this conversation above all else. She was just as ecstatic for Reid as the others but she wanted to help him too. 

That seemed to get him back on track. 

“Right. I have no idea what to do to show her how much I care for her? I enjoy her company but every time I approach the idea of telling her that, I can’t find the words” he explained, wishing desperately for a change to that.

He wanted to understand you, he wanted to be able to show you just what a change you’d made in him but he couldn’t. Communication had always been a problem for him, but the feelings he had for you made it that much more difficult.

“Dr.Spencer Reid, speechless? I can’t believe it” Emily grinned, proud of herself for her little joke. Though, Spencer was so wrapped up in his search for the answer that he paid it no mind.

He was desperate to understand, for your benefit and his own. 

“I’m being serious guys, what do I do? Is there anything you guys would like that I can do for her?” he tried, romance seemed very simple in readings and poetry but it was much more complicated in real life. 

Life wasn’t as simple as Romeo and Juliet had made it out to be. 

“Take her to a nice dinner, that’s what Will always does for me” JJ suggested, thinking that would be as good of an option as anything else. If nothing more, it was a good place to start. 

...And that was exactly what Spencer was going to do. 

Spencer called you almost immediately after getting together with the girls and set up a dinner date for the restaurant Will always took JJ for special occasions. He had never been there himself but it had to be nice. 

He just hoped that you would like it.

~

“This is really fancy Spencer. I don’t think I’m dressed for something like this” you commented almost immediately, looking around you at all the upper class people, enjoying their Friday night dinner. 

They were all dressed to the nines and made you look like a fool by comparison. Currently, you were wearing jeans, a doctor Who t shirt, and mismatched sneakers, one blue and one green. 

All things considered, you looked crazy. 

Even so, Spencer thought that you looked beautiful. You always looked beautiful, and it didn’t matter if you were here or somewhere else, that was always going to remain the constant. 

It was obvious to Spencer immediately that you were uncomfortable here, but perhaps it was just because you hadn’t been brought here before. After all, your dates were usually much more casual. 

It wasn’t until that discomfort persisted that Spencer actually started to get worried. You were exhibiting clear signs of upset, fidgeting with your menu and glancing around the room every few minutes. 

“Are you okay?” he wondered, watching the tenseness in your shoulders when you glanced up at him, only relaxing once you met his eyes. Even as uncomfortable as you were, you found comfort in Spencer. 

You couldn’t help it. 

“There’s just a lot of people here, that’s all” you assured, doing your best to focus on having a nice time with him, even though all you could really think about was all the other patrons and the things they must have been thinking about you.

You were used to being an outcast, and having people comment on how strange you were but that was why you avoided places like this. With you and Spencer here together, you could only imagine what they were thinking. 

It was driving you insane having to think about it. 

You wanted so desperately to just have a nice evening but it was too loud in here and you couldn’t tear your eyes away from the other people having dinner. It wasn’t fair to Spencer.

You owed it to him to have a good time but you just couldn’t focus. 

“Oh, um I understand that. Would you like to go somewhere else? Somewhere quieter?” he offered, he should have known better than to do this but he just wanted it to be nice. 

He wanted to show you that he was capable of giving you a nice dinner just like everyone else, but it never occurred to him that you wouldn’t want that. If only he’d actually thought about you while making these plans. 

It made all the sense in the world that you would struggle in this setting. You had always been anxious in public with too many people. For you, this was much closer to torture than relaxation. 

“I don’t want to ruin your nice evening though Spence, you put so much thought into this” you sighed, you could just suck it up, for his sake if nothing else. 

...But Spencer knew better than to allow that to further any discomfort you may have been experiencing.

“Come on, we can go back to my place and watch a movie or something. I don’t mind” he assured, throwing down cash on the table and escorting you out of the restaurant before anything else could trigger your anxiety. 

Nothing was worth that, and besides, no one said that you two had to follow anyone else’s blueprint to prove how much you cared about each other. You could do this your own way, just like you did in your personal life. 

In any case, Penelope was right...you were a dream come true.

[glass-rose-paperweight]

The Mysterious Case of Queerbaiting

BBC Sherlock

There’s one thing about BBC Sherlock that has never made sense to me. As I’m sure many of you are aware (and something I’ve talked about before), BBC Sherlock has been accused of Queerbaiting, of intentionally setting up John and Sherlock as being attracted to each other but never following through with that or even intending to do it. And it’s one of those things that has just always baffled me; I can’t make it make sense. A lot has already been said about the way things are portrayed in the show and what the subtext behind a million different things could mean (seriously, I love that I am part of a fandom with so many perceptive and intelligent people; watching the show is only half the fun) and how none of it makes sense. Today, I would like to use my powers of deduction get to the bottom of this mystery.

The way I see it, there are 3 possible explanations.

1. The Producers of the Show Queerbaited

I have to admit, this seems unlikely given that one of them is literally a gay man. Why would a gay man knowingly and intentionally engage in something like this? Why would a gay man write a script that constantly pokes at Watson’s sexuality if the only point was to make it into a joke? To say ‘oh, no, the poor straight guy is constantly mistaken as gay. Look at how defensive he is getting, hahaha, what a funny joke’. That just makes no sense. It makes no sense for Mark Gatiss to have gone to the lengths he has gone to within the show, from whatever direction he gave the actors so that they portray an obvious chemistry between Sherlock and John to having a jealousy trope at John and Mary’s wedding except it’s Sherlock getting Jealous over John’s ex commander to this interesting thing about the best man speech to Mary saying ‘neither one of us were his first’ or ‘the man we both love’ or ‘I know what the two of you could become’ to Sherlock putting John Watson face on The Ideal Man to all the gay artwork in TBB (I could not for the life of me find this meta even though I know I saved it, and I am so distressed) to a thousand other things that the fandom has discussed over and over and over again. Who puts that much effort into queerbaiting? Especially when you would have a vested interest representation? So, it just doesn’t make sense for those directly involved with the show the be the reason.

2. Higher Ups at BBC Told Them No

This seems much more plausible to me, however I still doubt it. I can’t say I know just a whole lot about BBC, but I do know they have tended to be on the more progressive side of things, and I just really can’t see any of the higher ups just flat out refusing to allow the writers to make Johnlock canon. The first season gets a pass because I’m pretty sure that openly same sex couples weren’t allowed in media at the time (I think it was allowed in 2011, but I’m honestly not sure. I’m in the US, not the UK, so if I’ve gotten this detail wrong, please correct me). But they had 3 other seasons and another 7 years to make it happen, and I just don’t think that the higher ups at BBC would have just flatly said ‘no’. So, that leaves the last explanation.

3. Someone Other Than Those Involved With The Show Stopped Them

The majority of the Sherlock Holmes stories are in public domain. Copyright expired in 1980 in Canada and in 2000 for the UK (X). This would seem to make it a pretty cut and dry case: in the UK, you can do pretty much whatever you want with the Sherlock Holmes stories. But it’s no quite so simple. The US works a little different because copywrite law isn’t the same (isn’t he US just great?). As it stands, there are still 6 stories today that the Conan Doyle Estate still has the exclusive rights to in the US. If I understand how the copywrite law works correctly, that would have been 14 stories back in 2010. But, that shouldn’t have affected anything going on in the UK, right? Theoretically, no. The Conan Doyle Estate wouldn’t have had any legal rights to coveting the characters and the stories in the UK. However, that doesn’t mean that those involved with the show wouldn’t have been extremely apprehensive of the power that the Estate wielded, especially considering the previous decade of legal battles. Only 3 cases are listed here, but the Conan Doyle Estate is very protective of its copyright of the work (as evident by the fact that they are literally trying to sue Netflix, among others, for portraying characters in a way they supposedly weren’t portrayed until later books). There were other court cases after 2010, however. A decisive court case in 2013 declared once and for all that the stories written prior to 1923 were completely in public domain and that a license wasn’t needed to create things based on any of the stories prior to those dates (something the Estate had convinced BBC of when they first created BBC Sherlock). However, an appeal by the Estate was later made, stating “Sherlock Holmes is a ‘complex’ character, that his background and attributes had been created over time, and that to deny copyright on the whole Sherlock Holmes character would be tantamount to giving the famous detective ‘multiple personalities.’” The appeal was, thankfully, thrown out. But it’s the attempt that matters. 

Oh, and here’s a fun little tidbit, the 2 stories that have, perhaps, the strongest evidence of there being more than just friendship (this quote, this quote, and this quote (which was said after Holmes stated that, if he had hypothetically loved someone, he would kill the person that killed the person he loved)) come from the stories The Problem of Thor Bridge (the first quote) and The Adventure of the Three Garridebs (the last 2), which both belonged to the Estate in the US until after the final season of the show.

So, let’s get into the minds of BBC, for a moment. Someone has decided they want to reimage Sherlock in a new and unique way: modern day. The Holmes Estate has been fighting legal battles in America for the past decade and has won all of them, and has also issued the verdict that to make stories, you need a license. You say ‘okay’ and go along with it because you’re a big corporation that can afford to do such a thing. When the first season of the show airs, it isn’t legal to have openly gay characters, so everything has to be regulated to subtext. You outright state that being gay is okay because you want to let people know you are in full support of homosexuality, even if it isn’t legal yet. The writers and producers of the show are huge ACD fanboys and BIG fans of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, so, yeah, there’s some gay subtext. By the second season, hey! Homosexuality is legal! Except the 2 stories with the biggest indication of Sherlock and John’s attraction towards each other are still very much in the hands of the Estate, who has spent the past decade fighting legal battles. You may be able to pay for a license, but a lawsuit really isn’t something you’d like to go through. Whether the Estate has any legal standing to do such a thing or not, a lawsuit would be a long, messy battle. By the third season, a court case in America has decided that anything written prior to 1923 doesn’t need a license (damn, that’s 2 seasons of being successfully intimidated into a license). However, the two stories with greatest evidence still belong to the Estate, and the Estate tried to weasel their way into owning more of Sherlock than they should by arguing about his character. They probably wouldn’t take well to an openly gay Sherlock, would they? By season 4, the same problem still exists. Cut to 2020. Both of the stories with those quotes have entered public domain. But, uh oh, a month, a month before the 10th anniversary of your show, the news breaks that the Estate is filing yet another lawsuit, this time against multiple different parties, one of them being the mega corporation of Netflix (god, that’s some balls right there) that what they did broke copyright law because it portrayed characters in a way they supposedly weren’t portrayed until later stories, stories the Estate still owns (that is some balls right there). So you might feel the need to cover your ass a bit. Despite the past decade of saying that they characters you have portrayed are nothing but platonic, the fans don’t seem to buy it, and, in hindsight, there’s a lot of reasons not to. Maybe something needs to be created that subtly tells fans that they really are just looking too far into it. And, what great luck, a YouTube channel is asking you to make something for the 10th anniversary. 

Is this what happened? I don’t really know. I have nothing more than circumstantial evidence and guesswork here to go off of. I’m not privy to the private thoughts of Mark Gatiss or Steven Moffat or any of the head honchos at BBC. I don’t know what kind of executive decisions are made in the best interest of the company. All I know is that the Conan Doyle Estate is hanging on to whatever copyrights they can possibly manage, that they are willing to level lawsuits on, quite frankly, ridiculous terms, and that having a lawsuit put against you is no laughing matter and that those whose work revolves around Sherlock Holmes and creating stories about him would want to tread carefully. This explanation is, admittedly, far fetched. But it’s the only one that really makes sense. It’s the only one that would explain why a gay man and a generally progressive company would have a show that has layer upon layer upon layer saying that there is more between John and Sherlock than just friendship, as well as a rabid fanbase that they know ship it, and still not deliver, even attempt to squash such mindsets. 

There is, however, one final note I would like to end this on. I have talked before about how I think there will be another season, if the stars align and schedules allow such a thing. The best estimates of when another season might come out is 2022 or 2023, and I’m inclined to think the later year (god, that seems so far away). The year that the last story will become completely open to the public and the entirety of Sherlock Holmes will be public domain is 2023. So, maybe there is hope. 

[neutral-emerald]

SILVER THE COSMIC TIME-JANITOR (or: dude, what's with all the alternate futures)

silver the hedgehog has a very simple backstory. he's a kindhearted, sorta-naive but altogether very driven psychic hedgehog here to save the world by time-traveling to the past (also known as present-day) to prevent the apocalyptic future he was born into from coming to pass!

[ID: A screenshot of Silver from Sonic 06. He’s glowing with cyan energy as he flies over a dark, post-apocalyptic city.]

...wait, if he's time traveling 200 years into the past to completely change the shape of the timeline, how do the stars manage to align such that he manages to be born at the exact same point in the new timeline with the exact same genetics? how are his parents born? does silver have parents?? and how does he do this no less than THREE SEPARATE TIMES??!

hey everyone, i'm tumblr user neutral-emerald here to make good on the idea i vaguely gestured at yesterday and point out silver's wildly inconsistent backstory(s) and then explain to you how this isn't just sega playing hopscotch with the concept of time travel, but actually TOTALLY EXPLAINABLE if you don't mind a whole lot of conjecture and "fuck dude i just think it'd be cool."

LET'S GO.

before i get started, a few things to establish.

first, this is about… half serious, tops. it’s less of a theory and more of an observation of something that’s weird and then throwing some possible explanations at it because i am a massive sucker for time-based nonsense. if you wanna take my observations and build your own conclusions, go for it. i’m not your boss.

second, i'm basing my conclusions off of both the games and the idw comics. the conclusions i draw are applicable to either continuity, but the logic does rest a decent amount on the comics, so just a heads-up in case you were expecting pure game canon from this.

and third, i'm working off like half a brain and very intermittent checks of the wiki and cutscene compilations, so there's probably many things i'm missing! if you notice something i said was wildly off-base, go ahead and correct me in the replies and i'll either edit the post or explain to you just how that detail doesn't actually matter, depending on whether it. y'know. matters.

with that out of the way, let's get into the first topic of discussion!

part 1: the future is inconsistent, y'all

now, i'm not sure if you've heard, but in the year 2006 sonic team released this little indie game creatively entitled Sonic the Hedgehog. it was a smash hit, won countless awards, and for some reason went down in history as a messy, incomplete bugfest. but that's not what matters. what matters is that it introduced Silver the Hedgehog.

silver hails from 200 years in the future. the world is a bleak, fiery place, and has been since the monster iblis was unleashed after princess elise's death. silver was born into this world, which we know since it's literally the first thing he says in his story.

[ID: A cropped line from Silver's story in Sonic 06. "This world was devastated before I was born."]

i'm not going to drag you through a beat-by-beat summary of the entire plot of sonic 06, you should know it already. silver meets mephiles, gets lied to about who caused the apocalypse, mephiles yeets him and blaze into the past, he tries to murder Sonic the Hedgehog™, and so on. eventually he helps kill god, and then sonic and elise travel further back in time to kill god even deader so that none of the game ever happened, and the bad future into which silver was born never happened, thus thoroughly scrubbing silver's existence from the timeline!

...until.

sonic rivals.

i'm not going to speak much on sonic rivals, mostly because i'm not super familiar with it. but what matters is that silver is back! he's still from the future, he's still here to change the past, and most importantly he wasn't deleted from existence by the destruction of solaris, unlike everything else from sonic 06 including everyone's memories of it. and obviously, whatever state his future is in, it's not the same as it was in sonic 06.

now, i don't have a single clue what is going on in rivals 2, so do inform me if there's some big information i'm missing from that one. all i know is he's fixing yet another possible apocalyptic future, like always. correct me if i’m wrong, i don’t have the patience to trawl through it myself.

then we've got sonic colors, in which silver is again from the future. notably, he’s definitely not from an apocalypse!

[ID: Some screenshots from the DS version of Sonic Colors, again cropped to just the text. Tails and Silver are talking to each other.

Tails: What's the future you came from like, Silver? Silver: A lot brighter than this. Silver: The sky is blue, and everybody's got a smile.]

sonic generations doesn't add much. again, correct me if i'm wrong, but i don't think we learn anything about what kind of future silver is from, and he's definitely not here to fix it this time. that's sonic's job! he's just hanging out like everyone else.

now, up until this point the future has been reasonably consistent, setting aside my somewhat abstract understanding of the rivals games. there's nothing to say that silver's not coming back in time from the same point in a single timeline, which is the one and only version of the future ever since the destruction of sonic 06.

UNTIL.

[ID: Two panels from the comic Sonic Forces: Stress Test. In the first panel, Silver looks worried as he lands in front of Knuckles, who looks skeptical.

Silver: We've got big trouble! Eggman— Knuckles: How can you be here? I thought you returned to the future?

In the second panel, Knuckles looks away with a self-assured grin, while Silver looks more panicked.

Knuckles: Oh wait— I must be dreaming! Silver: What? No! I've come back with a dire warning from the future!]

i have a lot of issues with sonic forces, especially with how its story is written. something i do NOT take issue with is the supplemental comics, mainly because they are WONDERFUL evidence for my crackpot time travel theory.

like i said, up until this point we don't really know whether silver has been experiencing separate instances of the future, or simply traveling back in time to prevent an also-time-traveling eggman nega from messing things up in the past. but here, we get some very juicy information:

[ID: Knuckles and Silver again. Knuckles has his arms crossed and is looking at Silver, who has a nervous look on his face as he slams a fist on the palm of his other hand.

Knuckles: Come again? Silver: Something happens that brings the world to ruin! But the historical records are sparse or make no sense. I came back to hopefully head off whatever's about to happen and save the future.]

silver travels back in time to prevent a terrible apocalypse. this is not the beautiful future silver came from in sonic colors— but this is the same silver. everyone recognizes him. he recognizes everyone. and yet, the future he came from is different.

part 2: silver is a walking paradox

allow me to remind you of what i pointed out when i was talking about sonic 06. silver was born into the iblis-apocalypse. considering no elaborate timeline nonsense happened to him before the events of the game (by his reckoning) i think we can safely assume he was born like a regular person with parents.

in the first post-06 timeline, silver was probably also born. let's be charitable, acknowledge that sonic team doesn't overthink the butterfly effect like i do, and say that silver was born to the same parents, because the universe likes to keep things nice and simple and contrive itself to make this particular character exist in this time period.

so, it's entirely fair that silver comes to exist in a post-06 timeline at the equivalent point in time, aka 200 years in the future. it's also fair that he travels back in time to prevent some kind of apocalypse, because that's his narrative role! it's what he does. when it's time for him to exist in the story, that's what he's there to do.

what isn't fair is the fact that it keeps happening.

[ID: A panel from the IDW comics. Sonic is stretching his legs while looking faintly exasperated at Silver, who is nervously holding his arm.

Silver: Er… No. I came back because defeating Eggman didn't save the future. Sonic: Couldn't even play along. Had to bring the mood down. Sonic: *sigh* Okay, what happened this time?]

[ID: The following panel, cropped to just Silver's text bubbles narrating over a starry sky.

Silver: When I left, my time had been conquered by the Eggman Empire. Everyone lived in fear, choking on polluted air. Silver: When I went back, the Eggman Empire was gone— but so was everyone else. Silver: There was nothing left. No people, no animals, no machinery. Only water and sparse, metallic plant life.]

allow me to summarize my understanding of all this: silver is from the future. normally, the future is good. sometimes it isn't. when it isn't good, he goes back in time and fixes things, then returns to the future to check if that fixed things.

the least conjecture-y interpretation i can come up with is that sometimes silver will go into the past, then go back to the future but end up in a Bad Timeline and thus go into the past again to fix things. there's no weird warping directly between bad timelines, he only gets there by way of the past.

but that's boring, so here's my PREFERRED interpretation.

silver hails from a good future, but sometimes it just changes. he's unstuck from time— if something weird happens in the past, he's the only one to know that the passage of fate was changed, because he went to bed in one timeline and woke up somewhere categorically worse, and the only way he can fix it is by figuring out just what caused this and going back in time to fix it.

or, to say it in a meme:

[ID: A picture of someone lying in a hospital bed with a nurse standing next to them, edited so that Silver is in the bed.

nurse: sir… you've been asleep for 2 hours silver: oh boy i can't wait to wake up in the same timeline i went to sleep in]

part 3: how did this happen?

it's one thing to point out that silver doesn't experience time like a normal hedgehog, and another thing to explain how and why this happens.

fyi, this is the part where i go wildly off the rails and start saying whatever i want. there's a ton of explanations one could come up with, most probably stemming back to sonic 06. i'm just going to go with my own, and probably not come up with a whole lot of concrete evidence because i'm just spitballing. this is me having a fun time. going "heeheehoohoo time traveling hedgehog go brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr"

so. something i haven't touched upon is that in all games after sonic 06, silver can time travel. we never see him do it, it's never explained how he does it. all we know is that he's doing it under his own power.

which is kinda odd, don't you think? should he be able to do that?

in sonic 06, we see three mechanisms for time travel. first is the chaos emeralds. if two people perform Chaos Control with a chaos emerald apiece, they open up a swirling rift in the air which can send them to different points in time and space. silver can't be doing that, for obvious reasons— he's only one hedgehog, and he's not exactly running around with a chaos emerald at all times. that can't be how he does it.

second is a time machine eggman built. that obviously can't be it; the machine doesn't exist at all after the timeline gets wiped, and again, silver is doing this on his own. he's actively antagonistic towards eggman, even. absolutely not this one.

third and finally is mephiles, who can make big purple orbs to take himself and passengers to different points in time. this obviously can't be it either, for similar reasons to number 2, right? after all, mephiles is one half of solaris, who was destroyed before he could be split off. he doesn't exist to be silver's time-traveling uber driver.

...right?

well, obviously. i'm not going to try and tell you that mephiles is secretly alive and shepherding silver back and forth between timelines for no reason. that's ridiculous. no, i'm going to try and tell you that silver is mephiles.

or rather, he's solaris. or RATHER, he's the new solaris, sorta-ascended to the role of Time God after the old one got blown out like a birthday candle.

like i said, i'm going wildly off the rails and as such don't have any concrete evidence to explain why it's this instead of something else, but hear me out. after elise blew out the flame of hope, the universe was left in an interesting situation. someone needs to be in charge of the flow of time, but the previous time-god was just unceremoniously destroyed. but all the power and energy of a time-god has to go somewhere, in some form, in some time.

with nothing else to go off of, the role of time-god starts flipping through every notable being it had interacted with. they're all solidly accounted for in the timeline, except for one. silver the hedgehog was born into a timeline that cannot exist. silver the hedgehog does not, and cannot exist. silver the hedgehog interacted quite a bit with both sides of solaris— he spent a substantial amount of time fighting back iblis, and associated with mephiles, even being one of the few people to directly experience his time travel abilities. silver the hedgehog tried and failed to absorb iblis into himself.

here's my theory: after sonic 06, the universe reasserted itself such that silver was the new Solaris. silver is not consciously aware that this is what he is, but he knows that he can time travel. sometimes the timeline will rearrange itself around silver. he is unaffected by this because he is a higher being unaffected by such petty trifles as "an origin" or "paradoxes".

silver the hedgehog probably doesn't have parents. he sprang into existence one day and everyone just kind of went with it, himself included.

oh also something i thought was neat but couldn't think of where to put:

[ID: More cropped dialogue, this time from Team Sonic Racing.

Silver: I'm fine. It's just, something bad is gonna happen. I can't explain it. I just feel it. Blaze: Have your travels through time given you precognition? Silver: I don't know. Maybe they have. Or maybe I'm just thinking too much.]

silver might be becoming psychic in a future-vision kinda way. that, or he’s riddled with anxiety. possibly both.

TL;DR

silver hails from no less than three separate timelines, his existence is a tangled web of who-knows-how-many grandfather paradoxes, and i choose to believe that he's god.

if anyone who cares more about evidence wants to gather up like, little one-off clues that support or conflict with my conclusions, go right ahead. or just throw your own arbitrary headcanons for what's going on with this at me. or incorporate these ideas into an au or something! i just want more people thinking about what the Fuck is up with silver post-06, because by god there is a WHOLE lot of potential packed in there

anyway thanks for reading make sure to like comment and subscribe—

[starrysupercell]

UwU the rest of the outline at per request. @lumpy-veev (still unfinished but it's okay! This should be thought of as a rough draft.) 💙

🦝 "RaR 3" or "Breaking Point" 🐍

It would be an unofficial Brawl, which is not allowed, but it happens, and what can you even do?

I see the two as basically ignoring each other's presence upon finding out that the other is there. Of course, as much as they won't admit it, it's making them think of. Everything.

This leads to even more on edge tense atmosphere whenever they would cross each other's path, because even if it’s a big park, you can only avoid someone for so long, especially when you happen to have common associates. (the Coworkers, Tara, etc.)

It doesn’t help they have growing animosity and take every little thing personally for every interaction.. and it’s only been a month or two.

Rumors begin to pick up around the park-- Just a little chatter at the bar. Just a little observation that those two sure have something between them huh? The gossiper is shushed, because did you forget who runs the place? his connection to Byron?

Luckily, the bartender didn’t seem to hear. He was busy cleaning glasses. The topic’s changed. customers continue to come and go.

One who arrives is Piper, who sits down at the bar. It’s busy, so she waits patiently for Barley to get her usual. (he’s good at that.) He sets down a coaster and the glass in front of her, but instead of a greeting and bustling away this time, he sticks around.

“Byron is well on his way to becoming a topic of interest around here...” he tells her.

She leans forward with a smile. “What have they said? And who, for that case?”

He explains what he heard, and omits the names.

Piper thoughtfully considers this. She had noticed this, but hadn’t chalked it up to a personal history, just conflict of interest. (byron was well off, belle was a thief. he would be cautious) Now that she knew, she wanted every drop of intel.

“I can talk to him. we wouldn’t want our dear coworker being talked about, do we?”

“I do not.” Barley replied, tipping his hat to bid her goodbye as he steps away to another client. He lets Piper take care of this, because he likes letting people come to him if they want to talk, and he feels that Byron would have already approached him if that were the case.

~

So, it’s another one of their patented teatime tête-à-têtes.

Piper skirts around the issue before dropping the news of whispers about the two.

But Byron doesn’t humor the topic, and refuses to talk about it.

Piper cheerfully pokes at him. “Crossed paths? Did you know her before the Park? maybe previous business associates? She robbed you, but you had good insurance, and one day she tricked you? Ooh~ Former flames-?"

And then Byron stands up and is about to leave wordlessly until that last suggestion processes bc if he doesn’t clarify now, ugh that’s gonna be what Piper thinks is plausible (kind of, bc he gay af) and he does NOT want that to be a thing.

“She’s a relative,” he says with so much distaste before he leaves that Piper is even more intrigued. but at the same time, there’s something that tells her she shouldn’t fan the fire any further.

they’ve had their share of back and forths, and it’s been a blue moon since something had gotten him so upset that he just up and leaves.

she drops it, and as the #1 gossipmonger of the park, the hushed whispers of “mystery between byron and belle?” is completely stamped out with a dismissive attitude and several “Really? I didn’t notice anything.”

If Byron really and truly didn't want this around the park, she'd honor that.

~

Of course, with QD Edgar on occasional trips with the Gang, that’s the biggest connection the sibs have at the moment.

The first time Edgar name dropped Byron, Belle froze and listened to 2.47 more seconds of the teen's rambles before telling him to get a move on around camp and quit yapping.

Edgar didn't notice this first time around and grumpily went about his way.

But I'm sure there's one thing or another that makes Edgar talk about his dad manager again, and one thing that will really piss Belle off, is comparison.

Tara, who notices the shift in mood, puts herself in between Edgar and Belle and swiftly soothes things over. She suggests getting on with the plan they have (already knowing what Belle will respond with).

"heist cancelled," Belle states, rearing up Elodie and galloping away from camp. (She usually winds down on her own after celebrating a big heist, but never before-- and never had called it quits at that.)

Edgar is put off. Tara muses that it's nothing he could help...

On her own, Belle just contemplates everything. Hours. It brings up familiar memories of being up on the rooftop with her head buried into her arms and knees feeling terrible.

Except now she's more than grown, with her share of things to be proud of and great memories she forged on her own. She's not curled up on herself anymore. She's staring to the long distance of the desert-- her home-- traveling with ease.

That stupid rooftop section of her life is nothing more than a fraction of her well-lived life.

It doesn't make her feel better.

Yet another thing Byron ruins for her without even trying.

She needed a drink.

~

Not wanting to head back to her camp for the night, and not in the mood to try nabbing some good drink, Belle simply walks into the bar and orders something.

Barley treats her the same as any Brawler, despite what he now knows about her.

As far as he was concerned, she came in there as a customer. And as long as she paid, he saw no problem in serving her...

She drinks quietly, and he keeps an eye on her intake.

And eventually, just like with any other customer with something heavy on their mind and enough drinks, words flow easier.

She doesnt use names, and keeps terms vague. Speaks angrily of her parents. Calls the brother a "dumbass of a pushover."

Now, it isnt like he associates Byron as a (pardon his french) 'dumbass' in any way, but it's the way she uses it that makes Barley connect the dots. The tone wasn't as bitter. Almost fond. Almost.

He lightly prods for a little bit more insight, and she gives up a little more as she drinks.

Unlike the other two members of his Trio, it wasn't in his nature to gossip, so this would stay between them.

Barley listens, because that's what she needs right now. Not advice, not interjections or lectures or deflecting the subject. Just someone to listen.

Eventually he cuts her off before she gets too inebriated (and probably causes trouble.)

{I AM going to write this scene out in depth. And cry while doing so.}

~

On the other side, after the season and back at the Gift Shop, Edgar is 🤔🤔 over that incident. He considers talking with Colette but 1) she's as mad as a Colette could be at the fact that he hung out with the NEW BRAWLER and TARA and didnt bother getting her ANYTHING. and 2) tbh she's a blabbermouth.

Byron does his regular check of the shop that day. Making sure Colette hasn't run off and Edgar isnt sneaking a nap.

He welcomes Edgar back from his little trivial loot and shoot games.

While Edgar hadn't even thought twice about it before, he recalls that when he had told Byron he'd be working at a different section of the park (namely with the new Brawler, Belle) he had acted just as dismissive.

Like yeah, there was your usual "old man doesn't get the teens" shenanigans, but Byron had never belittled his interest in anything before. Calling his involvement in the season a 'trivial game' sounded... personal.

He outright asks Colette if Byron was acting weird.

Any snippiness that Colette may have had for 2 minutes diminishes when there's a chance to talk with her favorite person in the world that she's seen little to none of for two months, AND about her favorite topic: Brawlers!

She spills everything she knows, because despite Piper's efforts, theres no secret a Brawler can try to keep when shes around.

She didn't find out everything of course. But she knows that there were questions involving Byron and Belle. Piper hushed it up, so for sure there was something.

Edgar nods. "Totally. I think she was close to rippin' my head off once. I brought up Byron once and she was ready to chew me out." (in case i didn't make it clear, Edgar picked up a slight drawl because of belle)

"Cool!" Colette exclaimed. "..I mean, not the rip your head off part. But that is cool too. I meant do we have lore on our hands?? That nobody ELSE knows!!?"

Edgar shushed her. Byron is in his office but the shop wasn't really sound proof.

......cue shenanigans from the Coworkers trying to figure things out in their very amateurish ways compared to Piper by "sneaking" around and "nonchalantly" trying to get him to admit something.

Byron knows they're up to something, and humors them until realizing the topic when Edgar tries bringing up the Goldarm Season.

He shuts them down even faster than Piper.

Of course, instead of deterring them like her, he just confirms their suspicions. Colette and Edgar are "o yeah we are def going to get to the bottom of this."

~

So, it's plan B! If they even try asking Piper she throws them for such a loop and leaves them so bewildered that Colette even forgets to ask for anything she could keep, and Edgar didnt realize she gave them nothing to work with until they're already out the door and down the street with cake pops in their hands.

So, Plan C! ...Barley.

It's hard to find a time to go there, since it's busy when they get off work. And Barley always seems to be at one place or another....

So the kids choose the perfect time (roughly midday), and just wait for the perfect day... when Byron comes in and checks the shop, then decides on his own that they could handle it for the rest of the shift and leaves them to it.

When the stars align, the teens wait until Byron is out of sight, and close up the gift shop. Their plan is to head to the bar... and maybe try and get something out of Barley..... not much of a plan, but they don't realize it there.

They make haste, running to the bar, because time crunch (when/if complaints start rolling in.)

Bursting through the doors of the Bar, Barley gives them a look. "Don't.. do that, please."

Colette apologizes enthusiastically, and urges Edgar forward. "Ask him! I'll keep watch!"

She hops over to the door and peers through it periodically.

Meanwhile, Edgar is stammering because he didnt plan anything to say, he expected Colette to talk to the robot.

"If you two think I allow underage drinking, I most certainly do not, no matter what Penny says." Barley warns.

"Uhh, no it isn't that. ...Umm. do ya know... well, you would know about Byron, and not Belle, I guess. But they've been acting weird lately, and we want to know why."

. . .

Barley pauses in consideration.

Options and questions flood around his mind, and he still had no answer.

Wonders if he should even mention Belle's visit some time ago, or the fact that he knows more in depth about it than Byron would care for, or that if Piper found out he knew more than her, and then told these two over would she be offended? ....Actually, in that case, why was he considering telling them anyway? Well, if they were interested in the topic for genuine reasons...

Edgar doesn't even know what to do either. Barley's not saying anything.

Colette squeaks, and scrambles from the door. "Edgar!! Any luck here? Because we're out of it over there!"

"What?"

"I think I see Byron heading here!!"

Who would have thought.

this is where i kind of dropped off the outline, but to continue/wrap it up, Barley points them to the curtain that covers the back room. There's an exit there which he tells them about, but the teens stay to EAVESDROP bc they care.

Barley and Byron chat. the conversation dips into the area having to do with Belle.

Byron frowns. "If I didn't know any better, I would think you're trying to get me to admit something, Barley. I can understand Piper, but you?"

"Me?" Barley asks. "Sir, you know I never mean harm."

"..." Byron stares at him unconvinced. "If Piper did put you up to this, you can tell me."

"U.. Believe it or not, I am among others in this park who care about you, Byron."

"...." wouldn't that be nice. But Byron believes him. My bad. He humors his coworker for now. "Fine." And asks for a drink.

Barley gets him his preferred one. [Lol I'll come up with it eventually.]

They talk. Barley finds out a little more. But just a little bit. Byron... it isnt like he has practice talking about ☆~feelings~☆

The teens listening in leave before too long. Colette is like O.O;; and Edgar decides that all they wanted to know was the relation between Byron and Belle, and they got that.

She agrees, and they both leave through the back door.

Byron didn't get as drunk ofc, it's still his working hours. Just enough to loosen up a bit and get through mild robot therapy.

After his leave, Barley sees him off, and then goes to check in the back. They're gone and he has a brief "oh, thought they would have gotten the hint to, listen in. Oh, well."

[There's one more event, involving the Coworkers interacting with Belle one last time, but still unplanned <3 it leads to the meet up and the fight... somehow though. I'll release that when I think of it.]

I can also see Piper being ":0 you knew before I did? And didn't tell me? You're mischievous, Barley!" In a very light hearted way at the very end.

Barley frets ;;; "I am not!"

[rainofaugustsith]

Rain Plays SWTOR: Why Do We All Hate Makeb?

Viri has been going through the GSI dailies on Makeb to bump my GSI reputation up to Legendary, and it's given me time to really think about the planet, and the Rise of the Hutt Cartel story as a whole. I tend to take my characters through Makeb just to spend more time with them, and to enjoy the scenery. Having said that, most players seem to detest Makeb and skip it.  It's weird. Makeb has:  1. Some of the most beautiful scenery ever seen in the game. 

2. Some really stunning design for the houses and gardens. Seriously. Look at this. 

3. Really, really nice decos available from the reputation vendor.  4. Other really nice decos' designs are based on Makeb.  5. A departure, mostly, from the Imps vs. Pubs!! storyline that some of us had grown so bored with.  6. Some interesting creatures such as the exoboars and underwalkers. We all love the exoboars in Vaylin's palace, don't we?

And yet, it's still loathed.  The question becomes: why do we hate Makeb? There are a lot of very valid reasons.  1. We don't get to bond with the NPCs we meet, nor do they play any critical part in story before or after.   With the exception of Doctor Oggurobb, Darth Marr and Chancellor Saresh, the NPCs with whom we interact in the entirety of the Makeb expansion are neither seen nor heard from again. We're kept at arms' length from them. This is different from both the class stories and Shadow of Revan, where the characters we meet become regular presences in our toons' stories.  2. The romances...aren't.  When RotHC was first released, Makeb was called "the gay planet" and a lot was made of the fact that the expac contained the game's first same-gender romances. Considering LGBT+ players got absolutely nothing in the class stories, this was a Very Big Deal. However, the romances fall very flat. For one thing, they're restricted by class. If you're Imperial, there's no wlw for you. If you're Republic, there's no mlm.  The moment that a male OC can have with Lord Cytharat feels like it can work - it's essentially an "I was so scared for you, and I care, and don't ever do that again" sort of moment. The wlw romance, on the other hand, really doesn't feel like one, at least to me. Lemda Avesta never seems particularly into the player's character. As a wlw, I usually avoid this romance because it feels so awkward and forced.  3. It's really grim.  Almost the entire time you're on Makeb, you know the planet is about to be destroyed. Anything beautiful you're seeing is about to disappear. People have lost their homes. It's pretty grim.  There's no happy ending on Makeb. Like, none. The planet dies. Even though it's physically saved, nobody can live there anymore for any length of time. Lots of people die, including some that work with the PC. There's no way to save them in some cases. Even though each side does have a win - the Makeb citizens escape in the Ark; and the Empire gets its isotope -5 - it's very empty because so much tragedy surrounds it all.  While Star Wars isn't sunshine and rainbows, there's usually something positive to perk up a reader/player even in the darkest storylines. At the end of Revenge of the Sith, there's the promise of baby Leia and Luke, both being raised in safety. At the end of Empire Strikes Back, Luke's got a nice new hand, he's safe on a Rebel Alliance ship and he's reunited with Leia and the droids. At the end of SWTOR's class stories, the player has triumphed somehow in their own field, and they usually have controlled their own destiny in some way. Makeb doesn't have that, and I think it makes a difference for replays.  4. It may hit too close to home.  Makeb is dying because people exploited its natural resources for profit. Hmmm. We've heard that before in our own world, haven't we? The mining causes groundquakes. In our world, fracking is said to cause earthquakes. Not only that, but seeing the houses crushed by groundquakes can hit a little close to home to anyone who lives in an area with lots of earthquakes, or has witnessed the destruction they can cause.  While I don't think any sort of environmental message was intended with Makeb, I do think there are things about it that can, even subconsciously, make us feel uncomfortable. 5. The maps and mobs. 

For me, the maps of Makeb are not nearly as frustrating as some of the ones on Taris, Balmorra and Hoth. For one thing, the land is divided into individual little mesas so you're not covering large swaths of ground the way you do on a planet like Alderaan or Tatooine.  Having said that, they can still be daunting. And unlike other planets, there's often no real way to go off the beaten path. If you do, you just might plunge to your death over the edge of the mesa.  Making this more problematic: the mobs. There are a lot of enemy NPCs, and they are everywhere, and you often have no choice but to plow right through them. This makes navigating very tedious. If you're a lower level, it can also make getting from Point Aurek to Point Besh very difficult.  Also, if you have a fear of heights, you may really, really hate this planet. It's nothing but sheer drops and light bridges across chasms in this nook of the galaxy.  6. The gameplay can be very repetitive.  A number of the quests just have the player doing the same or similar actions over and over again. It gets boring.  7. The heroics are hell.  Makeb heroics are incredibly long, complicated and overly tedious. They can literally take as long as some of the very short flashpoints, with ridiculously high difficulty in some cases. I don't think most of us bother with them.  8. It feels very detached from the rest of the story.  Nothing we do on Makeb matters. Or so it seems. What our characters accomplish in the class story, or Oricon, or Shadow of Revan seems to make an impact. RotHC, on the other hand, is something we can literally skip over without it having any repercussions. The only time it seems to come up with any significance is in Onslaught, where it's mentioned that the Empire still has some ships fueled with isotope-5. But even that is said in passing...and if your character never did Makeb, the ships are still fueled. If you're a Republic character, Oggurobb has very little to say to you about Makeb - except to tell you that you've aged badly since then (thanks, dude).  9. Some of the classes don't seem to fit.  Oddly, you would think the underworld characters - the smuggler and bounty hunter - would be peas in a pod here. They're not. You really can't find much of a reason for the smuggler to suddenly be interested in saving a planet's humanity. The bounty hunter isn't given any clear targets to assassinate. It's one of the times where certain classes seem to be really out of place.  10. And there isn't much said about our individual classes.  Each class does get an individualized intro cut scene, as well as some NPCs referring to them as Master Jedi or Dark Lord or whatever, but there's really not much difference doing this as a Jedi or a Trooper, a Sith or an Agent. 

11. The Force isn't a part of things.  It's weird. When things in SWTOR are entirely focused around the Force, it does exclude the non-Force using classes to some extent. When it's completely absent, though, it feels wrong, too. On Makeb, our little space wizards find that there's nothing specific to the Force for them to care about. The alignment of the planet isn't mentioned. No ruins. No weird artifacts someone's left in their mansion. Nothing. It feels slightly disconnected taking a Force user through these areas.  To me, Makeb feels like it had more potential than it received. I've read more than once that there were several other planets intended for expacs that were scrapped; perhaps with them, and a wider arc, Makeb would have played differently. All the same - come here for the scenery. You probably won't want to stay for the gameplay. 

[ahgasescenarios]

Rough Night- Yuta

Word count: 1.6k

Genre: smutt

Plot summary: One day, you find yourself more attracted to Yuta than ever before. You call your best friend to help calm you down, but what if Yuta were to overhear the entire conversation?

 You weren’t unfamiliar to this scenario. You had been here multiple times before, watching the boys practice because sometimes it was the only time you had to spend in their company. But it was the first time that your eyes trailed over Yuta’s body as though you were ready to devour him. Everything about him that day, the glint in his eyes, the facial expressions and oh god, the damn new belly ring all did things to you like never before. You were completely mesmerized by his every move and while you had always found Yuta attractive, who wouldn’t, today felt different somehow. Maybe you were just horny and your hormones were deciding to make Yuta the victim. Whatever it was, you had a hard time concentrating.

 “(Y/N), hello? This is like the fifth time I’ve asked.” Mark was staring sternly at you.

“I’m sorry, what was the question?” You forced your eyes away from Yuta.

“Seriously? I was asking you how this move looked,” and he demonstrated. As a dancer yourself, you provided objective feedback from time to time which came in handy when they were preparing for promotions. You stood up and walked over to Mark, showing him the right angle for the move. Vague “5,6,7,8” were heard in the distance, but your mind felt a thousand miles away.

You hadn’t dared speak to Yuta ever since you got there. He joined you on the floor, taking a much-deserved break from the non-stop dancing.

 “What’s up with you?” You whipped your head in his direction. Too obvious.

“What… what do you mean?” Your voice betrayed your attempt at sounding calm. 

“You’ve been staring at me for the past hour, am I that bad?” He was holding back his smirk; you could just feel it. He knew.

“No, um, actually you just do the choreography so well that my eye was focused on you! Good job!” A nervous laugh escaped your lips as you tried to come up with a plausible excuse. His eyes narrowed at you slightly, but he decided to let it go for now. With a shrug, he was back into position.

 At this point, you needed some fresh air of some kind. And you needed to vent. That was one thing that helped you calm down when someone reasoned with you. With this in mind, you excused yourself to go to the bathroom and quickly dialed the number you had memorized by heart, your best friend’s.

“Hi, I need your help, can you talk right now?” With a half-assed “yeah” from the other end, you began.

“I don’t know what it is with me today, but Yuta is making me feel some type of way and I can’t-“ You stopped yourself, “like I want him to dick me down so bad it’s not even funny.” You facepalmed, realizing what you were saying.

“Look, if you want to fuck him- why don’t you?” No, no, no. She was supposed to talk you out of doing something stupid, not talk you into it.

 Yuta had felt this weird vibe from you, unlike he had felt before.

“Who wants a food break?” Taeyong inquired. Everyone was in favor.

As he placed the order, Yuta decided to chase after you. When you excused yourself to go to the bathroom with an expression on your face that told of how bothered you were feeling, he knew he had to get to the bottom of this. What he did not expect was to overhear that.

You were so engrossed in your conversation that you almost didn’t hear the doorknob turning, only to reveal the author of these fantasies of yours. Your jaw dropped in shock, praying this wasn’t happening or at the very least, that he hadn’t heard anything.

“Hey, I’m gonna have to call you back.” You put your phone back into your pocket and waited for Yuta to say something. Anything.

“Hey, are you okay? I feel like something’s off with you today.” You heaved a huge sigh of relief. Oh thank god, he hadn’t heard. You were safe.

“Yeah sorry, I had a rough night and I guess I’m just feeling tired.”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk. (Y/N), you don’t know what a rough night is.” He leaned in to whisper the last words in your ear, “Not yet.”

Your breath hitched in your throat. Was he saying what you thought what he was saying? Seeing the confusion scattered on your face, he continued.

“What’s the matter, cat got your tongue? Funny, you didn’t seem to have a problem with me “dicking you down” just a second ago.”

Fuck, fuck, fuck. He had heard. He had heard everything. You pieced two and two together and your cheeks took on the color of a ripe beet, you were embarrassed to your core.

“Yuta, I didn’t-“

A single finger was pressed to your lips, silencing you. He stepped closer to you and you could now feel his breath on your face. His hand grabbed your throat and you were ashamed at how much that aroused you.

“I didn’t say I was against it, did I?”

Before you could question the weight behind those words, his lips were on yours, trapping you into the roughest kiss. His hand was still on your throat as his tongue explored your mouth, ruining you in the best way. He separated your legs with his thigh, close enough that you could ride his thigh and the thought brought nasty scenarios into your imagination.

His lips found your neck and he attacked your sweet spots, love bites and hickeys guaranteed when you walked out. But it felt so good, you couldn’t care less.

“Yuta, please.”

“It’s sir to you.” You moaned out “sir” this time and he seemed satisfied with your obedience, kissing you again until you were left dizzy, Yuta the only thing on your mind.

“Strip for me, (Y/N).” Under any other circumstances, you would’ve protested. But this was straight out of a fantasy, so you wasted no time in obeying. His eyes traced your figure, biting his lips once you were completely naked.

“So beautiful.” He spun you around so your back was facing him, still fully clothed. His hand traveled down your neck, to your breasts and he couldn’t help himself to give them a squeeze, pinching your nipples so you moaned for him again. It was music to his ears and he wanted more, so much more. Next was your toned stomach, down to where you wanted him most. An ecstatic gasp left your mouth when he slipped a digit inside you easily.

“This wet just for me?” You nodded eagerly, practically begging for him to fuck you know.

“Please, sir. I want you.”

“You’re gonna have to be clearer than that, princess. What do you want?”

Your head rested on his shoulder, you were at his mercy and you weren’t even ashamed.

“I want all of you inside me, sir, please.”

A smirk appeared on his lips and he took off his clothes too. The moment was over too soon, you would’ve stared at him naked for hours. He pushed you against the wall which felt cold on your back, pressing himself into your thigh while he kissed you hungrily. You were extremely grateful that this was a single bathroom at that particular moment.

“Up.” He motioned to your legs and you got where he was going with this, wrapping your legs around him. He aligned himself with your entrance and with one swift motion, he was inside you. You yelped in surprise, expecting him to go slower than he had. But you weren’t one to complain.

“You like that don’t you, babygirl?”

“Yes sir, please, don’t stop” you let out in between thrusts. He was merciless, his thrusts more powerful than the previous so you were bouncing on his dick. One hand gripped your hip as he found the spot that made you a moaning mess beneath him. A shit-eating grin graced his handsome face and another idea popped into his head, his hand covering your nose and mouth as he continually hit that spot.

As he repeatedly thrust into you, you started to feel your stomach tighten and the lack of oxygen was only accelerating the process. Before long, your walls clenched around him and he kept his grip on your face so you were seeing stars. Yuta didn’t last long after that, cursing under his breath as he released his hot load in you. When you came to, Yuta was standing before you with the most innocent look you’d ever seen on him.

“Are you okay? Did I take it too far?” His eyes had worry written all over them. You laughed at how cute (and ironic) he was.

“Yuta, I’m more than okay. That was amazing.” Your eyelids were drooping, but you felt properly fucked out- you didn’t even remember the last time you had felt this way. You barely noticed when he started cleaning you up, his cum dripping down your thighs.

“In that case, maybe we can do it again sometime?” He scratched the back of his neck. Was he nervous?

“Well, you did promise me a rough night.” You winked at him.

“It’s a date, then.” He looked over at you. “We should probably get back.”

You hadn’t even thought about where you were. Shit. How were you not going to make this obvious? You agreed to have Yuta go out first and wait five minutes before you followed, which ended up useless.

“Was about time.” Taeyong shook his head at the both of you, seeing right through you.

“Now that that’s out of the way, come here we have work to do.”

You sat back down at your original spot, practically in a daze. Maybe it hadn’t been so bad that he had overheard after all. Because now all you could think about was what this “rough night” would look like. And you couldn’t be more excited to find out.

a/n: hi lovelies! Hope you’re all doing well, staying home/safe. I wanted to take the time to properly thank you for all the love this blog has been receiving lately, it rlly means the world to me so thank you!! And here’s a little smut as a reward haha enjoy 😊

 masterlist

[tarhalindur]

2021 NFL Predictions

Man, as someone who occasionally spends too much time thinking about the NFL (football: the closest thing American sports have to a turn-based strategy game) and trying to predict how its season will go it occurs to me: why do all this work in my head and not write it up?  So, here goes nothing:

(Terminology note: “true talent” = estimate of how many games I would expect the team to win given average luck and schedule.  The categories are derived off the old 16-game schedule because that’s what I was drawing off of and I’ll need to see how the new schedule plays to calibrate the break points now: as it is, “Super Bowl contender”: true-talent 12-13 wins or better (in 16 games); “division contender”: 10-12 wins; “wild card contender": 7-10 wins, with 9-10 being “upper end” and 7-8 being “low end”; everyone below that is bad.)

- The AFC South got fucked by the scheduling gods (they drew the AFC East and NFC West, likely the two deepest divisions in the NFL), and I will be quite surprised if any team in it gets a wild card. (Let’s take an upper-case outcome and assume the second-place team in the division sweeps two terrible teams and splits with the division champ.  That’s five wins.  Assume the Jets are terrible too and that’s six.  And then... what?  Barring a Kliff implosion and/or the Rams rolling injuries to the stars on their stars-and-scrubs roster the worst team in the NFC West should be at least true-talent seven wins.  New England could be trash if Mac is bad or gets injured now that Hoyer is their best backup, but otherwise every non-Jets team in the AFC East is true-talent nine wins or better.  Cross-divisional?  Not likely unless the Colts implode due to injuries and Jacksonville does massively better than expected - they get the Bengals and Broncos, and the Falcons might also count depending on whether that team hits its fail states.  The AFC South would even have a hard time benefiting if both the Browns and Chargers implode, because the third place team last year is the one team basically guaranteed to be terrible in Houston.  A wild card isn’t impossible, but it needs a whole lot of dice rolls to go in a team’s favor either on the field or between games - which is by definition not likely.)

- The NFC North also gets an uphill climb to a wild card. They rolled the NFC West, the AFC North, and the new cross-conference against the AFC West, an absolutely brutal set.  Getting a wild card out of that probably needs at least 4-2 in the division (probably needs exactly one of CHI/MIN to implode, though sniping a game off Green Bay also works) and some good fortune either in games that should be close in true talent or in events elsewhere (the easy road involves at least two implosions in CLE/PIT/ARI).

- The AFC East probably gets a wild card.  They rolled the AFC South (likely 2-3 games where you’re heavily favored if you’re even a wild card contender) and the NFC South (admittedly not free, but NO and CAR are both probably winnable and while I’m high on the Falcons they have significant downside risk - there’s also the possibility that Father Time finally gets to the far side of his near-Brady experience), plus the Jets and the new cross-conference game against the NFC East.  Worlds where the AFC East doesn’t get a wild card probably involve both multiple implosions in the AFC North and West and at least one of Coach of the Year Robert Saleh and OROY Zach Wilson.

- The AFC West probably gets a wild card?  They rolled the other likely weak division in the NFC East, which goes a long way, and frankly there’s enough teams with implosion risk in the AFC North and West (CLE, DEN, maybe LAR, maybe PIT) that it’s probably going to happen to someone.

- The NFC East... they’re probably exporting a whole bunch of wins as well?  Not a guarantee, though, I could actually see them get a wild card if there’s enough implosions in either the NFC South or the AFC West.

- The AFC North might be the highest-variance division in football.  If they hit the high end they’re absolutely stacked, but there’s a real risk the Browns are fool’s gold (I think they were a true-talent 8-8 team last year that lucked into one of the easiest schedules in years, the question is how much they improved) and that Father Time gets The Older Rapist enough to knock the Steelers down to a true-talent 8 win team (have a hard time seeing them go further down with Mike Tomlin’s team-building, though admittedly they might underperform that given Tomlin’s occasional issues with not covering certain receivers and looking past bad teams on the road).  One thing’s for sure: I don’t think there’s enough wins for all of the AFC North, AFC West, and NFC North to get wild cars.

- The NFC South has one good team (barring Father Time finally getting Brady, one that should be decent (Payton isn’t a bad coach), and two that could be anywhere from wild-card contenders to outright collapses.  Note that with the Easts and Souths playing each other this year, there’s too many wins for both the NFC East and NFC South to whiff wild cards unless both divisions seriously export wins to the AFC (in which case the AFC North has an uphill climb and there’s a pretty good chance that the AFC East gets two wild cards and the other goes to the AFC West).

(Bonus under the cut: individual team thoughts!)

- Bills: Should be in the playoffs and are the division favorites, but slightly more downside than they’re getting credit for. The problems are twofold: what should have been the second most favorable schedule in the division (because the likely best teams in both the AFC North and NFC East did not finish first last year) is salted by the schedule gods taking away: they draw Pittsburgh in the season opener so are the single most likely team to face a full-strength The Older Rapist, and they draw Washington in September as well maximizing the chance that they get Fitzpatrick before he inevitably turns back into a pumpkin.  (Fitzpatrick playing out of his mind and beating the Bills mostly singlehandedly and getting Team fans’ hopes up before dashing them would be peak Fitzpatrick...)  More to the point, their early schedule is PIT, @MIA, WAS, HOU, @KC, @TEN; it’s not out of the question they start 2-4 or even 1-5 going into the bye if the stars really align against them, and at that point locker room morale becomes a factor.

- Dolphins: Wild card contender (true talent roughly 10 wins), could be more if Tua really develops or the Bills stumble. Good news: they dodge KC and instead get the Raiders in a quite winnable game, on top of the common AFC East schedule, and now they get the Giants (who I suspect are the worst team in the NFC East) as well. More good news: like, the worst Miami is doing against the Pats is a split, right?  Bad news: they face Baltimore.

- Patriots: With Cam gone and Hoyer (a second-tier backup at this point) the presumptive backup the Pats are suddenly one of the highest-variance teams in the league.  If Mac Jones is good immediately they’re a division contender, and if he’s even a competent game manager they’re another true-talent 10-win wild card contender given that run game and possibly that front seven as well. If he’s bad or gets injured, however, they now might very well wind up with a top 10 pick.  Which might actually be part of the point, on top of doing a vet a solid and avoiding any locker room issues?  In a weird sense Belichick is unconstrained by job security in a way no other NFL coach is; he doesn’t have unlimited job security... but he’s also nearly 70, and if the rebuild fails then by the time his seat would really be getting hot he’s probably considering retiring anyways.  So he’s playing with house money.  It’s not likely, but don’t be shocked if the Pats pull what Arizona did a few years back and draft a first-round QB two years in a row - it’s definitely an option if Mac is terrible.

- Jets: Not out of the question as a dark horse if Zach Wilson is good, I’ve been getting good vibes off of Saleh.  Problem is the combination of their division and injury issues; I’m not sure they have the roster to overcome that yet.

- Steelers: Basically covered above.  If Big Ben aka The Older Rapist is still above average they’re a wild card contender or even an outright division contender again; if Father Time gets him and they’re stuck with Mason Rudolph or Dwayne Haskins-level play at QB they probably still win a few games because Mike Tomlin is not a bad coach but they have an uphill climb.

- Baltimore: The one obvious division contender in the AFC North, given a very good quarterback and one of the five best coaches in the league.  Admittedly their OC is potentially a question mark, but they should get back to the playoffs.

- Cleveland: Actually hard to tell.  There’s two offsetting issues here.  First, as mentioned above their schedule was soft as fuck last year and that’s unlikely to still be the case. On the other hand, I think there’s a decent chance they take a step forward this year.  Ceiling is about where their record was last year barring a massive leap, floor is a 7-8 win team unless a bunch of other teams hit their upside at Cleveland’s expense.

- Bengals: Depends on how good and/or healthy Burrow is, but they probably finish last in the division regardless.  Low-end wild card contender if everything goes right?

- Titans: The one team in the AFC South that should actually be good.  Exactly how good depends on things like “did they overuse Derrick Henry last year?” and “is the defense any good at all?”, but the fail state here is a true-talent wild card contender in a likely soft division.

- Colts: Depends on two questions: can they get Wentz back to anything resembling 2018 form, and do they keep getting bit by the injury bug?  AFAICT the core roster is of the classic “quarterback away” type with good D and a decent running game (see also this year: Denver, Washington, possibly Carolina, Pats if Mac Jones doesn’t pan out).  The best case is that they can reclaim Wentz and the injury bug is done with them for the year, in which case they challenge TEN for the division.  Worst case Wentz is bad and/or injured and half their roster is on IR, in which case they get a top-10 pick and the AFC East and NFC West are even more likely to get wild cards than they were already.

- Texans: Obvious tire fire, and not just on the field at this point.  Problem is the tire fire includes both the new owner and his favorite exec, so they’re likely to remain a tire fire for a while...

- Jaguars: Probably depends on how good Trevor Lawrence is and how quickly, especially since I suspect Urban Meyer is at higher-than-usual risk of flaming out.  Best case they’re a true-talent 8 win team that might manage to take advantage of a soft-ish schedule to challenge for the seventh seed.  Otherwise look for them to export wins.

- Chiefs: Obvious Super Bowl contender is obvious, barring a Mahomes injury they’re the presumptive division favorite and near-locks for the playoffs.

- Raiders: I’m high on Carr (solid Tier 2 quarterback IMO, on par with someone like Tannehill and I’d take him over Kirk Cousins - and probably Baker Mayfield, too, though maybe not since Mayfield has less track record and thus higher upside).  I’m considerably less sold on Gruden, and have doubts about what he’s done to the roster.  Still should be a wild-card contender.

- Chargers: How much of last year’s late-season run was fool’s gold?  Not sure.  Could be all, could be none.  IIRC they replaced their head coach, so that hole is at least possibly filled.  Herbert is probably good, though I want another season of track record to be confident.  The real problem here is that they still seem to be connected to some Indian burial ground somewhere.  Upside is division contender, downside is 6 wins or so.

- Broncos: QB-away team in a bad division for it.  At least they get the NFC East, but I suspect they finish out of the playoffs again this year.

(Interlude: A general thing to note about the NFC is that due to two QB injuries and one QB retirement there is exactly one team that finished first place in their division last year that I expect to be the best true-talent team in their division this year.  Worse, due to the aforementioned injuries two teams I expect to be the best or at worst second-best in their divisions finished third and fourth in their divisions last year, respectively.  This is throwing a giant monkey wrench in the usual SOS-based scheduling balance.)

- Football Team: The Football Team has the kind of defense that’s a characteristic of the QB-away team.  There’s two differences between the Team and the usual suspect, however.  First, I’m not entirely sure how good their line and thus running game will be. Second, and more importantly, the usual QB-away team has a consistently mediocre medium-to-high floor, low-ceiling quarterback. The Football Team, by way of contrast, has Ryan Fitzpatrick, arguably the single highest-variance QB of the last two decades, a man who will absolutely win you games you should have lost… and lose you games you should have won.  Also, he’s in his upper 30s and thus at risk of Father Time coming for his NFL career.  So, the questions: how many games do you get Fitzmagic and how many do you get Fitztragic?  If the usual cycle applies, when exactly does he turn back into a pumpkin?  And is the division + the lower end of the NFC South soft enough that it doesn’t matter?

- Giants: Probably the worst team in their division, and my pick for the most likely second-worst team in the NFC.  I don’t like Daniel Jones, I don’t like most of the rest of the roster, and their coach is unimpressive.

- Cowboys: Remember those quarterback injuries I was talking about?  Right.  The ‘Boys are not without flaws – the defense is notoriously questionable (though by preseason reports they may actually have drafted a difference-maker of a linebacker this year) and Mike McCarthy may well be a downgrade compared to Jason Garrett.  But barring another injury (eyes Dak’s shoulder nervously) they have a QB (I’m a bit low on Dak relative to most people, but in this case “low” still means a Tier 2 quarterback roughly on par with Derek Carr), and they should have an offense.  Barring a Jalen Hurts breakout or Fitzpatrick rolling Fitzmagic for most of the year, with a healthy Dak this is at worst a wild-card contender in a weak division and thus the presumptive favorites for the division title.

- Eagles: Oof.  This team is hard to judge, mostly because AFAICT they’re a weird superposition of potentially very good and potentially complete trash (that’s also spelled “very high variance”).  The issues are twofold: they have a largely untested starting quarterback who was roughly average last year but might develop (the aforementioned Hurts), and they have quite a few very good but aging players on the roster.  Best case, Hurts plays like a Tier 2 or even Tier 1 quarterback, the rest of the roster holds, and they’re in contention for the division title and/or a wild card slot.  Worst case, Hurts is meh, the vets fall off or get injured… and then next year might be even worse because at that point you probably need a rebuilding year even if they hit this year’s draft picks.

- Packers: There’s risk here, mostly of the forms “simmering issues blow up the locker room” and “age and/or injury sap Aaron Rodgers and Jordan Love is meh or worse”.  But Aaron Rodgers is one of the five best quarterbacks in the NFL until proven otherwise, and both the coach and the rest of the roster are at least decent, so barring those the Packers should be at worst a division contender with Super Bowl aspirations ala the Ravens.

- Chicago: Uh.  Hmm.  I like the Fields pick, gut says he’s a pretty solid bet at a Tier 2 quarterback of some description barring catastrophic injury.  IIRC the D is still good.  But I do not like that O-line, and I do not like that schedule, and I’m not a big fan of Coach Nagy either.  In the NFC East or AFC South the Bears would have at least a decent chance at the playoffs.  Here?  Not so much. It’s not impossible the Bears do well, but I think a top-10 draft pick is more likely.

- Vikings: Hmm.  By true talent the Vikings are probably a wild-card contender in the same vein as the mid-2010s Bengals.  That’s not quite a good comparison, because I’ve got Zimmer as probably a top-10 coach and those Bengals lacked that.  But the rest fits: solid if aging roster (ala the later Dalton Bengals years), overpaid mediocre QB.  Yeah, I’m low on Cousins; IMO he’s a high-floor, low-ceiling type that gets overrated by analytics, the second coming of Matt Schaub.  He’s a solid choice if you want to win 10-12 games (maybe 13 now) and have a shot at the conference championships, but I’ll be very surprised if he ever wins a Super Bowl as a starter. The problem for the Vikes is that they’re in the NFC North and therefore their schedule sucks balls.

- Lions: They’re rebuilding and their schedule is one of the roughest in the NFL.  They might surprise someone early before the lack of talent really shows, IIRC I’ve heard about that happening once before with a Dan Campbell team, but this team is playing for a top-5 draft pick and they’re probably going to get it.

- Saints: Actually really hard for me to tell, mostly because I can’t tell how good the non-QB parts of the roster are this year relative to last.  They’ve lost a HoF quarterback, and while Jameis has seasoning and a possible QB whisperer now I suspect his ceiling is still a high variance high ceiling, low floor type in the Fitzpatrick mold (absolute peak might be Eli mk. II).  Payton is one of the better coaches in the NFL but finished 8-8 with Brees for multiple years.  That said, the Saints’ roster last year was better than it was in those years, especially on defense.  Question: is that still the same this year?  Don’t know; the Saints took non-Brees losses, but I’m not sure how much.  Peak is a true-talent wild card team if Jameis is above average and the rest of the roster is good; fail state is probably 6-7 wins by true talent.

- Buccaneers: Let’s be real, this boils down to a single question, the same one we’ve all been asking for over half a decade now: “is this the year Father Time finally comes for Tom Brady?”.  At this point I’ll believe it when I see it.  And even if yes they’re probably still a playoff team, because the rest of the Buccs roster is still the best in the division and the schedule gods once again blessed Tom Brady’s team with a weak slate of foes – the entire rest of the NFC South has issues, they get the NFC East, and by finishing second-place in the division last year the Buccs get Chicago, the Rams, and now the Colts as their SOS-dependent opponents.  The AFC East with the probable exception of the Jets will be tough (but even there the Buccs luck out – they rolled New England early, and even without a possible Mac Jones adjustment period even if he’s good the first month for the Belichick-era Patriots has often been an adjustment period as the team figures out what’s working and what isn’t) and the Rams should be as well (here the schedule gods frown, the Buccs rolled the Rams early – a lot of the Rams’ downside is injury-related volatility, drawing them early minimizes the chance of this happening prior to this game), but even then the Buccs don’t look severely disfavored in any game and everything else looks very winnable and would even if Brady declines to 2015!Peyton.

- Panthers: I’m not going to lie, I actually rather like the Darnold gamble in a vacuum.  If you’re betting on anyone in the NFL to pull another Tannehill he’s the one, because I’ve gotten the same vibe off him that I got off Tannehill on the Dolphins: possible tier-2 QB held back by coaching (and the same coach, no less).  The problem is, I think he might be better off as a backup behind a mediocre starter for a little while to regain confidence the same way Tannehill was, and instead he’s getting thrown straight into the fire again.  (Also, Fields was available, and Mac Jones too though I’m not sure the Panthers would have been a good place for him to develop.)  The rest of the roster is another QB-away team with a likely very solid defense, Christian McCaffrey, and IIRC an O-line that is at least decent.

- Falcons: Possible sleeper team.  The Falcons have one major advantage that people keep forgetting about: barring a major breakout from one of Jameis and The Darnold, they have at worst the second-best QB in the division, potentially even the best if Father Time gets Brady but not Ryan.  And that’s not damning with faint praise; at his peak I had him as the best Tier 2 quarterback and roughly sixth-best in the NFL overall, that MVP year was not a fluke. He’s just been saddled with bad coaching and bad rosters and been unable to overcome that, which I can’t blame him for given all those 8-8 years for the Brees/Payton Saints in the mid-2010s.  Good news: Dan Quinn is gone, and the schedule this year is soft (49ers game aside).  As I noted above there’s probably a wild card sloshing around for the NFC South and NFC East, and I would not be surprised in the slightest if the Falcons got it.

- Seahawks: … We know the book on the Seahawks by now, right? Top-5 quarterback in the NFL (and of the three I would take over Russ on the field itself, two are old enough for Father Time to be a real concern and the last is testing exactly how bad off-field issues have to be to make a Tier 1 quarterback unemployable in the NFL), average roster otherwise, coach who is average at worst.  That’s been a true-talent division contender for the last half-decade, and barring injury or locker room issues blowing up I see no reason why that would change this year.

- Rams: High variance, for a very specific reason.  The roster, as constructed, is a wild-card contender, or possibly more if Stafford really goes off.  The problem is that due to spending first-round draft picks like candy and not getting enough out of the later rounds to make up for it, this is (as noted above) very much a stars-and-scrubs roster.  And the thing about a stars-and-scrubs roster is that it’s vulnerable in a way that a roster with more depth isn’t; if a star gets injured, your team is facing a massive drop-off in performance.

- Cardinals: Honestly, unless Kliff hits one of his downsides (can’t adjust now that defenses figured out last year’s offense and/or loses the locker room) then by true talent this is probably a low-end wild-card contender at worst (~8 wins).  The problem is, in the NFC West that makes you the worst true-talent team in the division…

- 49ers: So, let’s just point out the obvious: last year was a case study in just how badly a possible true-talent Super Bowl contender has to get injured in order to get a top-10 pick. Admittedly part of that is that Jimmy G. sure seems to merit the injury-prone label at this point, which is why the 49ers traded up for another QB, but the rest of it is just extremely bad luck and that’s unlikely to persist year-to-year.  This is probably the best team in the NFC West, which is saying something.  (Unfortunately for them, Shanahan is in the Reid/Tomlin bucket and his weaknesses as a game coach make an actual Superb Owl an uphill climb.)

Bonus: Thoughts on the new QB class!

Trevor Lawrence: There’s obvious sample size issues, but quarterback prospects that highly rated haven’t busted in at least 30-40 years (Luck, Peyton, and Elway were all stars).  He’s probably gonna be good.

Zach Wilson: Man, I was all ready to write The Other Wilson off as another LOLJets bust after the draft and then he played well in preseason and Saleh actually looks like the first competent coach the Jets have hired in a while (which may still not help him keep his job because the AFC East is now nuts).  We’ll see if that holds during the regular season; among other things he has the misfortune of playing Belichick in week 2.

Trey Lance: So far looks to be talented as fuck and also raw as fuck.  Shanahan seems to be pretty good at developing quarterbacks?

Justin Fields: I’ve gotten future Tier 2 quarterback vibes off him ever since he was drafted; the problem is he’s on the Bears, with questionable coaching and at least this year what looks like a terrible O-line as well.  Possible next Stafford here?

Mac Jones: People don’t understand the probability curve here – the risk with Mac isn’t the ceiling, it’s the very good but not great outcomes.  He got a first-round draft grade despite  physical limitations, and he’s almost certainly not just being carried by his school – possibly even the opposite given the talent argument and Bama QBs’ track records.  To me, that says he’s a one-tool player whose tool is the mental tool.  And of all the QB tools that is by far the most important.  So, the question: does that tool play in the NFL?  If no, he’s probably a third-tier quarterback at best.  If yes?  Well, in that case there’s a very real chance he’s a Hall of Famer.

[minghaoss-archive]

redamancy - jung jaehyun

summary : a prince who finds himself tangled in a forbidden romance.

pairing : nct jaehyun x female reader

warnings :  mentions of prostitution, unprotected sex, use of  profanity

genre : one shot, smut, angst.

character count : 26.100 | words : 4.7k (fuck ..whoops how inconsiderate of me)

this beautiful moodboard was made by my very talented friend @jaehyunay

Thank you a ton, my dear.  ♡

listen to the tchaikovsky’s 1 hour loop of compositions and ‘howl’s moving castle’ to enhance your reading experience. (esp. valse sentimentale, swan lake and the nutcracker) 

Jung Jaehyun had developed a peculiar obsession with you from the day he had seen you by a lake near the infamous dirty, unfit, dilapidated brothel. 

You weren’t quite the artist but the man admired the ugly swan which sat against  the gooey mud  regardless. He thinks it’s a fleeting moment that love comes to him, whilst the dim sun shone against your skin and droplets of water collected on your lashes. It was the most foreign kind of beauty he had ever laid eyes upon. Usually, he would see women of luxurious lives, with even more luxurious statuses, with complexities heaped over their simple seeming facade.

They were all calculative, mathematical, everything he despised. They were all pearly whites, golden jewelry, intricate liquidised platinum details on napkins, they were everything that Jaehyun didn’t need. They could not complete the lonely prince even after thousand nights spent with him. No tangling of limbs could grant them his heart, a heart encased by tough spirals of distrust. They were all too complex and mundane.

Thus when in you, he found simplicity, delicate and pretty, he hadn’t the courage to let it pass.  For he had  found art, he had found in you strokes of oil paint, torn excerpts from the classics, in you he had found everything he had ever wanted.

But he was not a commoner, he was no ordinary man who you could let yourself fall in love with. He was a prince. He was woven from a different fabric than you. Your happiness, your melancholy, your good and bad had been worlds apart. Yet why had he brought forth such a burden  in his life? Why had he believed the stars aligned in strings and ropes to bring you two together?

He knew you were a whore and from the way he sat transfixed on his saddle, gawking at you with not much abashedness in his eyes, he did not care much for it.

It was  almost as if he bought you when he asked his most trusted man to take you to the castle. You barely had a say as you looked back at him - the sight still one which is hard to forget. He is not, after all, a man who can be easily erased.

He had his white shirt tucked into khaki colored hand stitched pants, he was in his hunting attire, brown hair falling in messy tresses whilst he stared at you with knitted brows.

Not one day in his life did he succeed in looking imperfect, he was someone  beyond worldly beauty. It was an unfair thing, the way he made beautiful look like the easiest thing to own in the entire universe.

You raised your head when called and there he  looked - like someone out of a painting. “Pay them whatever price they ask.” was his curt command. It was a silly thing, you think,  for anyone to doubt that the brothel could refuse what a prince wanted. Especially when she is a whore.

His back disappeared into the serpentine trail of trees, his ebony skinned horse had become a dot, gallops had muted, whispers had died down, the bustling crowd had become a shell shocked audience and you - you were his.

His best man, perhaps his greatest friend, Johnny, had shot you a sympathetic smile back then just as he did  whenever he would see you. Pitiful he was and never failed to make you feel small. It was an unfriendly thing he did, for someone who was so amicable. You could never look him in the eyes. “He is not a bad man.” He would tell himself more than he would tell you. And you believed him. Like incantations of a religion which ousted you.

“You are thinking too much tonight.” Jaehyun chuckled, watching you sit atop the velvety bed whilst he stroked his paintbrush on the pasty canvas.

One may think he had brought you here to fuck you like his personal whore. But such was not the case.

He did not lay a finger on you yet. He treated you like an equal. He was not common, not ordinary and unlike any other man you had ever met, unlike anyone else in the palace. Maybe that is why you were so drawn to him. He was the only person you knew who hadn’t treated you like a dirty old rag they could pick up and use whenever they wished.

But no one was allowed to touch you, no man could share a bed with you or give you their hearts. Because you belonged to him.  

He had a passion for art, something he was a master of. On days when he would be upset, he would take you to the attic and paint you in forlorn  blue hues and on the days when he was happy, you would be in bright yellow, pastel pink, off white; a multitude of colors.

He was an artist and you were his muse.

“Pardon me, your majesty.” The prince now looked back at you with an amused smile playing on his lips, his glasses sat along the bridge of his nose and he placed the wooden brush down. “Would you stand up for me?” You pushed yourself to your feet and watched as he took steady steps to you.

It was splendid how the buttery champagne glow of ordinary candle lights could make him look outer worldly, much more beautiful than he already was. You could not take your eyes off him, even if you tried. Especially when he undid a button of his nightshirt.

He came forward, forward and forward until there was little space between your bodies. Your heart rung in your ears and your toes tugged into the Kashmiri carpet. Why did he do this to you all of a sudden? Why was he playing with your heart?

You leant back into the bed pillars, red curtain brushed against your skin as he placed his palm over your head, face near yours, breath sending shivers down your entire body.

He stared down at your mouth, offering a peek of his milky body from the narrow split in the shirt, a silver locket hung loosely around his neck, complementing how platinum streaks of moonlight sat against his skin.

His fingers played with the thin knotted straps which held your loose dress up.

Once he caught you looking for too long, his rosy lips parted, glossy from the way the wet muscle of his tongue swiped over it. It is so hard to not kiss him. To hold him. To touch him. To feel him. It was so tempting. 

But you do not wish to ruin your bond. You do not want to know if you are in love with him. He is a prince and after all, you are a whore. There will be no fairy tales written about you two. No stars  will bind you two together.

You are two parts of a world which shall never be abridged. Your story is a tragedy. Not a romance.

So you turn your head away, eyes clamped shut.

Maybe Jaehyun could become every other man you had ever met, maybe he would fuck you into the mattress and leave. Maybe that way you could love him less, maybe that way you could forget him. Maybe Jaehyun would be blurred out of your memory if he lay with you tonight. If he treated you like the whore you are known to be.

But he doesn’t.

He huffed, nimble fingers pull the knots, push it off of your shoulder. Your skin burns from the way he touches you, rough pads of his digits smoothed down your upper arm and his nose brushed along your shoulder blade. “You are so beautiful.” He whispered against your skin as he gently kisses it, sucking in a red rose and licking it over. It is not the first time he had complimented you but it is the first time he had touched you. It was the first time someone had touched you the way he did.

You were accustomed to hunger, not want, not the way his fingers would graze against your skin, like you were delicate antique. All your life you had learnt you were of worthless, cheap but between the gaps of his index and thumb, you found value. You had learnt for the first time that night that love was a tangible thing and you wanted nothing but to hold it in your arms forever.

You bit down on your lip to swallow down a whimper.

“Step out of it …for me.” He dragged the article to your hips, voice incredibly low, like you were a secret he wanted no one to know, his eyes a fantastic dark brown and lustful. 

This had to be the end, you reiterated. Jaehyun would bed with you and he would become every other man. He would not be someone you are gradually falling in love with.

But he had only asked you to lay against his velvety mattress and sat back in his chair, painting you again. “Your Majesty…I do not like that name.” He told you, an outline of  his bulge forming against his pants when your fingers dig into the satin sheets. “Lovers do not call each other in that manner.”

Lovers.

Had he really meant what he said? Lover, lover, lover.

You told yourself over and over again. Afraid it would sound unreal if you had not.

This night was special, different from every other night you had spent with him.

Because every time he would paint you in colors, in ornaments and dresses from his palette but this particular night he had painted you in nude. Bare. Fragile. And strong. All at the same time.

Lost, love struck and reminiscent of last night, you had   found  him on one knee the next day, speaking portions of a conversation you hadn’t heard. “I swear to you as you should to me.” He told his  mother and kissed her hand, the happy in his tone astonished you, it was like a tune you had rarely heard and you could not help but wonder what they had spoken of.

Days when the prince went away  for travel were longer, the nights darker, the sun lurid and the rain more pestering. Those were the days when everybody dropped their facade of kindness. Those were the days the castle was not much different than the brothel.

You had readied yourself for an entire week of melancholy yet as his back descended into the background of cobalt sky, littered with dark clouds; you felt.. unprepared. 

There was something wrong, terribly rotten, in the air, something atrocious, ahead of you that you could not put into words and it was wearing a glossy lavender gown.

 The queen.

She was known to be kind or so you could tell from the way a smile curled around her face.  She was everything you had expected of her..at first glance and she had become nothing you had noticed in the second. 

You wondered if remorse is a luxury too pricey for the rich whenever  she looks to you - with nothing but hatred, like you had earned punishment, like she would not mind seeing your head on a silver platter. 

   "He must marry a princess.“ She beamed at you, with a subtle cruelty masked beneath quintillion layers of primping  “You do know so?” it was something she said to you every time he would leave, something she reminded you of. Like telling you that you could never fit into the glassy shoes of a princess. Every time she would warn you and it was all the same, with a stern whisper. Albeit today,  her words stood in your miserable room like an ugly show piece, they hung in the air like a missed note. Loud they were, like how horses neigh acridly before carriages run over pitiable peasants. You learnt that threat insinuated he must marry a princess soon. Like he had promised her. 

You learn that shock can come to you in mysterious ways, like when your father had granted you a brothel life to earn a shilling, like when you cried the first time a man had touched you, like when you understood why Jaehyun stood on his knee and how he could be king if he had a princess; like just how betrayed you had felt after, shock had come one night and made you weep into your cheap mattress. Shock had reminded you how you did not belong. How you never will.

When the prince returned, you avoided him like the plague. You had no reason to be upset and you would not fall victim to love. 

At least that is what you told yourself when the cruel prince both surprisingly and unsurprisingly did not come looking for you. Perhaps it was what he wanted, to be prince and to marry someone who was not as low, inferior as you. Maybe he wished to erase you like the dirt made swan, maybe he used you for art, to flaunt his own talents. Because Jaehyun had always been beautiful, unreal and unforgettable and you ordinary, very, very real.

You had agreed to join the castle’s maid service. A proposal the queen offered to you with great kindness.

 Heartbroken and dethroned from your unfulfilled dreams, you carried the silvery tray with great attention. Watching  lukewarm water crash against the cream body of the small white cup, like imprisoned wishes, tumultuous and never freed. You wondered  how easily your resolve may wear away when you see Jaehyun. it was the first time you would be encountering him after his depart, after all.

Your dress was a sleeveless lilac like all the other maids and you wore it well with your nullifidian, battered heart, a petal you looked like.

“Brother, dare I speak of the girl?” Hendery spoke with his eyes glued to your back. Infuriated, you furrowed your brows, he hadn’t even spared you a glance despite the tea table being sprawled with paintings of you. Selfish and ruthless, that is what Jung Jaehyun is.

The queen sat with them, nonchalantly chatting away about the town’s people and how she liked her soap. Chats which spoke of anything but your naked body  on her son’s canvasses. Who acted as if the piece belonged where it was.

You wondered if Jaehyun bothered at all when you begun to forward his rose tea, the liquid a brilliant blushing quartz, like the way his cheeks flushed in summer’s heat.

Jaehyun blew at the crisp canvas, a soft hum escaping his pursed lips as he shot the younger prince, Hendery, a glance, urging him to go on. With his eyes still on you, the youngster spoke with a low voice.

“She was a whore.” Crash.  It was no surprise. No matter how hard you tried, you could never rid yourself off of your identity. A whore. it was like a scar which would never heal. The liquid rolled down your dress in unflattering dark purple streaks, “Pardon me.” you winced,  getting to your knees with bruised fingers to gather whatever remained of the poor little cup.

Your hand is pulled forward with a light tug and the sight before you almost made you gasp. Jaehyun had dark rings around his eyes which sucked the warm  brown in them up, his skin looked barren and lips chapped. It was the first time he had looked..human, imperfect and absolutely devastated. 

He parted his mouth, licking off the line of blood which formed around your injured index. You felt flustered when the warm muscle of his tongue swirled around  the bruise. He must loathe you too much for punishing you like this, giving you a taste of him, mocking you, knowing you cannot have him to yourself fully.

You rushed to pull your hand away when he let it go, hearing the unison of clearing throats but again, he dragged it back, this time with a stronger pull. “What are you doing here?” You remained silent, looking away, biting back a sob. Your words begged to be said but you swallowed them down with a hard gulp.

“You informed me of her leave. You told me she was ill.” Of all the emotions you have seen on Jaehyun’s face before, anger was not one of which. He was always kind, smiling and emoting himself in softer ways. The contrast was so alarming that the room fell into palpable, eerie silence. “She is well now, as you see.” His mother replied with a bravery so false and a voice so shaky that you could almost pity her. 

“You told me she refused to see me.” Jaehyun gritted his teeth and sprung up rather ungracefully. The queen now, slightly shaken blinked at her son, attempting to grasp at her words like a sinking ship would to its anchor. “She took an interest in being a maid instead upon hearing your marriage proposal.” She looks to you, lying smoothly through her pearly white teeth. “She could not see herself off before you had gotten married to the princess.”

When he stares at you like you are a traitor, gaze burning into your face, you let the heavy weight called a head hang low. There was no emotion on his typically vibrant, euphoric face, nothing but indifference, phlegm, a barrier.  “Forgive me, my lady.” You turned, broken portions of both the cup and your pride in hand. You took your fingers away from him and this time, he does not stop you.

You do not see the prince for a day, not until the King arrives, not until you are summoned to set up his bath. Something no female was allowed before. It was usually arranged by his most trusted men. No one was allowed the luxury of seeing him bare and it rose immediate suspicion. See, invites of his marriage were being sent out generously to both the commons and elites. No one had see his spouse to be and the excitement of this reveal had thus begun to buzz throughout the entire empire. Banners hug in red and white, rose and the whole palace smelled of rosemary and chicken stew.

You sighed worriedly, avoiding the way everyone looked at you like you were a poor girl being sacrificed to a pagan demon.

Pushing the white, satin curtains away, you took in the enormous bathing room’s rudiments with widened eyes and a parted mouth. It was dimly lit by orange lanterns on each corner, the sapphire glow of moonlight slipping in and letting a waltz of a multitude of colours dance its way into the chamber. It smelled of honey and roses, something that reminded you of your long passed mum. You found yourself smiling, absorbing fond memories but only for a brief moment …because before you, dipped into the opalescent water, sat Jaehyun, with his back pressed against the enormous water body and arms rested on either side. 

“Come here.” He said, face stern and voice sharp, like he was enraged. You placed a basket of his scents and salts and sauntered to the spot he gesticulated you stand in, just across from him.

“Sit.” You almost winced at the harshness of his tone, he spoke to you for the first time with impoliteness and it made your heart ache. “Near the water. Closer.” Had he really forgotten your loving exchanges? Did you really ever know the prince?

“My Prince.” You paused, not wanting your heart to be broken like the time before. If he was not going to be yours, you  did not want to be so close. You did not want to desire him so much. “I am not your prince.” Dots of gold sat against his skin in droplets and his hair fell back in wet tresses. He looked like someone carved him out of ivory and smoothed out every imperfection there is with their very own fingertips- and you, much flawed, wondered if there was a world where he could love you back.

Your toes disappeared into tender circles of water and you watched him make his way to you in long strokes. Much thanks to his long arms. “Forgive me. Callous of me to forget your approaching wedding.” You had not. It was all you could think of. You do not mean to sound bitter. Reminding yourself that indeed, he is not your prince. Even so, you could hardly miss  how the reminder of wedding  was weighing your memory down, grabbing its throat and taking its life. How could you forget when it was the one thing you wanted?

“You might as well forget everything about me.” He mocked you, hands on either side of your hips, you instinctively parted your thighs, letting him slot in between as he pushed the cottony material of your dress upwards.

“We are equals.” A dry laugh escapes  your chapped lips, like they had been glued for an eternity. Lost in a daze, a change in emotions so  very sudden that you succumbed to the urge of running your fingers through his wet hair. Jaehyun took great offense at your cackles but rested his cheek against your bare thigh regardless.

You have always wanted to touch him and tonight just might be the last night that you would be permitted to.

“Why did you join the service?” He looked up at you with a peculiar droop of his lids, an inscrutable haze in his eyes. “Why did you promise to marry?” Ridiculed, he seemed, now with his chin rested and brows raised upwards. “I promised to marry you.” Shock came to you in many ways, like when Jaehyun kissed the wet skin of your inner thighs with a lewd smack of his lips and when he confessed to you, when your heart beat in your ears, when a happy ending raced towards you and you welcomed it with open arms. Like you had known. All your life.

“I do not understand what you mean-”

“I promised to travel overseas to ensure allies in the North, instead of father… in exchange of your hand in marriage.” You blinked rapidly, wondering if what you had heard was real and not imagined. “Father was not very pleased but he conformed finally.” He grinned at you, “I have 20 brothers, after all. i am sure someone else is more befitting.” The prince paused, fingers travelling upwards upwards and upwards, at pace so tantalizing, you scoffed impatiently .

“Your mother…” You sighed, tugging onto his roots as he creates a trail of wet kisses with his rosy mouth. “wanted me to marry into royal blood.” Your breath hitched when he placed a tender kiss to your clothed core. “Father dealt with her, I suppose.” He whispered into your skin, pulling your body into the water with such care that it made your toes curl.

“The person you are marrying soon is..” Jaehyun smiled bemusedly at you, indentations digging deep into his cheeks.  Your hands were pressed against his bare chest, bodies warm and hearts racing. You could swear sanity had swum away from you when his mouth met yours. “You.” He kissed your cheek, your nose, the corner of your mouth and every spot there is on your face. “you. you. you.” 

 His tongue licked into your mouth, hands travelling to each bend and curve on your body. “ I am in love with you.” He learnt you like poetry, like literature and you let him. He parted, stroking your hair back from your face. “The chambers.”

All this time you thought you were his.  You were his from the day he had found you. It was nothing you did not know. Yet when he touched you, stripped from your long, skimpy dress, you discovered a sense of belonging like never before. You were unprepared and flabbergasted when his fingers set your body ablaze with something as simple as a stroke. You were his, true but he too, was yours.

 Jaehyun stared at your naked body with a faint, scarlet dusted on the apples of his cheeks, his lips are parted as his knees dig deep into the sheets. You could see the outline of his cock from under the silky white barrier of a robe, he held your legs apart and hoisted them on either side of his hips. “Do you not want to wait till I become your wife?” You furrowed your eyebrows, words coming out in broken syllables when he licked his index and wiped it along your folds. “No. I cannot..not anymore.” 

He took your interlaced fingers and placed them above your head, groaning against your neck  as he slipped into you. His pendant hovered above your face whilst his hips snapped into yours, noise unholy, unceremonious. You were convinced his name is the only word you know when your insides clench at the lewd sight of your lower stomach bulging with every thrust he delivered. You loved the feeling of being one, like you were never meant to be apart in the first place. You loved being his and he loved being yours. He held your legs up to his shoulders, which allowed him to reach a spot in you which made you feel dizzy.

His forehead creased, pace reduced to sluggish snaps as he said your name into your ear, like sermons, like words to a song he will never forget and  filled your wet cunt up. His hips did not halt, instead they jolted back in, in slow slapping of skin against skin, teeth clambered down on your jugular. Overwhelming your body with so much pleasure, it quaked. Trembling with want, desire and love, love love.

You released with heavy breaths against his open mouth, voice raspy from moans so loud you would have thought the whole kingdom had heard you.

For the first time in Jaehyun’s life, he thinks he felt strong and not fragile when he is bare. He held your body, in sweaty sheets and not felt a bit dirty, he felt enamored, contented and incredibly in love, never to be alone again, to stay  endless nights in the same fashion, in the arms of the woman he would spend the rest of his life with.

[justoneday-namjoonii]

Don’t Breathe 4.5 | teaser

»Genre: hitman!au || stalker!au ||

»Warnings: kidnapping, stalking, obsession, themes of potential Stockholm syndrome, mono-phobia, mature elements, yandere at some point (? i think ), themes of depression, redemption, they fall in love, lovey dovey, fluff, Disclaimer: I do not condone nor suggest stalking/kidnapping or anything of that nature, this is purely fiction ok.

»Summary: He doesn’t get shaky hands, he never forgets his gloves and he never leaves a trail. He was paid to get rid of everyone who witnessed the exchange between a gang lord and a politician, they were picked off, one by one. He found out a month later, he missed one. A young writer who attended the event where the exchange took place. He has to kill her. Can he do it?

✤ pt.1 - pt.2 - pt.2.5 - pt.3 - pt. 3.5 - pt. 4.0 - pt.4.5

author’s note: coming soon

taglist: @tangledsparkles @just-another-fangurl21 @impartoftoomanyfandoms @komorebi-unnie​ @tangledsparkles​ @yes-sol-not-soul (sorry :( tumblr won’t let me tag you) if you’d like to be added to the taglist please comment on this post💜

The sun is setting like a dream, you can’t say you’ve ever seen it shine so beautiful. The sky looks like a peach painting that shyly fades into a heavenly deep-blue. It’s a perfect evening, the air smells of the flowers growing on the porch and it delights your senses. He’s chasing you barefooted across the grassy yard, like two children playing tag at the peek of spring. Out of breath, he finally catches you and you fall back into the checkered blanket, too tired to run off again.

After seeing you enjoy the balcony so much, he introduced you to his lavish  backyard. Aside from the large stone patio and pool attached to it, the yard expands at least an acre and it’s well-groomed. Early in the evening, you moved to spend some time on the patio, a pencil and paper in hand. Taehyung had some work to do so you had a few hours to yourself, you used that time to think and write. After a few hours, you could no longer resist the urge to take a dip in the crystal clear oasis.

With a t-shirt and underwear, you eased into the cool water and breathed a sigh of relief. For what could have been an hour or two, you weren’t counting, you swam on your back, staring up at the clear sky, wondering if you’ll ever feel peace like this again. When your eyes shut, your thoughts seem to align, and for the first time since you’ve been here, you felt like you were where you were supposed to be. As much as you cherish your life alone, your independence and innate desire to prove that you can make it on your own—it seems Taehyung is worth giving that up.

That would have sounded crazy weeks ago, but it’s how you feel. That night that you confessed that you wanted to be with him, you meant it. You don’t know when it happened, maybe when you kissed him and he picked you up, when you woke up to him fast asleep with a pillow in his arms. Or maybe it was when he suggested you help him bake, since he knew you wrote so much about food in your articles, you’re not sure. But somehow, some time after learning his name, you think you fell in love.

When you were with Jin, you had similar feelings to this. You knew you were in love when you had the urge to smile even when you were hurting just to make him smile. That feeling of unexplained self-sacrifice, something as small as smile, you’d force it out if you knew it would help him. With Taehyung, it seems like he will do anything to make you smile sometimes, even when you know he’s keeping stressful things from you. Is that love? You think so.

You sigh, still feeling a bit wet from your swim a while ago but you’ve dried mostly. He fussed at you for not showering straight away but you said the sun would dry you well enough until your shower tonight. It’s dusk now, and your out in the grass, laying happily on the blanket with him. Only a few minutes ago did you find out that he had pretty lights adorning the patio. He said he’s had them for a while but hadn’t turned them on until today. It casts a warm light out into the grass, you tell him he should turn it on more often.

”You should shower before you catch a cold,” He stresses for the second time. You find his worry endearing but negotiate five more minutes, and he caves. It’s been a while since you’ve been outside like this. He knows this, that’s why he’s laying shoulder to shoulder with you as you gaze up at the night sky. “Sorry I had so much work I had to do today, hope you weren’t too bored,”

”It’s fine, I was writing anyway...”

”Really?” He turns on his side, curiosity piqued. You nod, hands searching for the pencil and pad you had on the blanket.

”I used to write poetry when I was in high school. I wasn’t very good and some of it is kind of cringe now that I look back at it, but I enjoyed it. I haven’t written in so long, I thought I’d give it a shot,” You grab the notepad and look up at it, eyes skimming over the gray hue from all the erasing. You catch him trying to peek over and you hold it to your test. You grin, “Don’t look, it’s not good,”

He pouts, hand moving to intertwine with yours.

“Come on, you’ve never shared your personal writings with me before,” He pouts, leaning closer to you in hopes that you might succumb to the allure of his gaze. “Pleeease?”

”Fine,” You sigh, “but you have to read it yourself,” You lift the notepad, handing it to him.

He sits up and the feeling of anxiousness comes to a halt when you realize one important fact; it’s Taehyung reading this. Not a supervisor critiquing your rough draft or a teacher judging your ability to recite your understanding of the class’s latest assignment. It’s him.

I’ve been given a universe, all for me. My very own stars in your eyes, I can stare at you forever. The remnants of your every gaze births a galaxy and I draw up the constellations by the reminisce of the pattern of your touch on my skin. I, too, have given my universe to you. Though I’m innocent to the stars in my eyes, the constellations I paint on your skin, all for you. No event is there more beautiful than the moment our eyes meet, our nebulae collide. A merging occurs, giving life to new stars that are our own, creating a galaxy that holds a shape that can only be defined by fate. In that sweet moment, we create an intertwined constellation, a design filled with millions of our old and new stars, shining brighter than ever,

“in your universe, my universe...” He reads the last lines softly. Setting the pad down with an expression that you can’t quite read, he just looks at you and you start to feel nervous.

“I just,” You bite at your lip and look up at the night sky that’s beginning to show the stars, “I had this idea about space, it’s a little different but it took me hours to come up with...I’m rusty.”

He props himself up and leans over you, gaze searching for yours with a tender close-lipped smile. He holds his hand to his heart, “That was so beautiful.”

You cringe, pushing his chest so he can roll back on his back. “Oh stop, now I wish I wouldn’t have showed you,” It’s hard to tell if he’s praising you or teasing, it seems like it’s one in the same sometime.

“I’m being serious, I can feel the emotions you’re conveying in your words, I really get it...” He looks a bit surprised that you’d think he was teasing you about this, he leans back over you. 

“You mean it?” You look into his eyes, wondering how anyone could be capable of making you feel so special, like you’re the only person in the world. Without a word, he presses a firm kiss to your lips and you sigh, he means it.

*  *  *

“How’s the investigation going? Jin told me you reached out the other day,”

The busy lawyer sits his freshly ordered coffee in his cup holder as he drives off to his highly-decorated firm.

“I did, the case is more complicated than I initially thought,” Yoongi poured the subpar coffee in the Styrofoam cup, it’s 6am and he’s trying not to be grumpy, “if I’m right about my suspicions, it’s a fucked up situation.”

“What’re you thinking?”

Yoongi looks around, seeing that the only person around was the woman at the desk. “The girl, along with the other individuals at that conference, were targeted. I got the names of the parties at the conference, they’re politicians of course but the details of the meeting was never released. I have a theory,”

He lowers his voice, looking around one more time before sipping his coffee, “I think someone at that conference had those other reporters killed. I went over each autopsy file and those people died from unusual things, but not unusual enough to suspect at first-glance. Most of them dies from too much of a medication that they were already taking, things like that. But this girl, unlike everyone else, she was abducted and I don’t know why.”

Jungkook makes a thoughtful noises. “What’s different about her that not like the others?”

“She went missing a little over a month after the others were found dead. It looks like a mistake to me,” He paces, “I don’t know if I’m being too outlandish, but I have a feeling she’s alive, we just need to find her,”

Jungkook responds with how he feels about it but Yoongi has to cut him short when Eunwoo walks into the station.

“You’re here early, Min,” Eunwoo smiles, beckoning Yoongi to follow him to his office, “I have some good news, and some bad news, which do you want first?” Eunwoo leads Yoongi into his office and sets his briefcase down so he can pull what he needs out.

“Surprise me.” He deadpans.

“Well, last night, we found out that the infamous Hwan Group could be apart of this. You know that group, they’ve been under the radar for years, you can’t catch’em. But there’s a chance they could be the force behind this, they have assassins for hire from what I’ve heard,” He takes a seat, opening one of the Manila folders.

“And the good news?”

“It took a lot to pin him, but we’re bring one of the parties in for questioning today,”

“Good, I think they know something that they’ve been trying to keep under the rug.”

“Yeah, I agree.”

Yoongi gets up, hand tight on the flimsy cup, “If you could give me a call after the questioning, I’d appreciate it. I’m gonna do a little digging into this Hwan Group, see if I can get some info that’ll help,”

Yoongi leaves the building with a to-do list but little does he know, detective Na Jaemin, knocking on on Eunwoo’s door.

“Come in,”

“Hi,” Jaemin slips into the room, an unusual grin on his face, “how are you?”

“Um,” Eunwoo looks around, not understanding why he’s approaching him like this but he shrugs, “good, is everything okay, detective?”

“Everything's fine,” Lies, “I just had a question about that PI, Min Yoongi,”

“Shoot,” Eunwoo awaits his question.

“Why is he so adamant on keeping this case open? I mean, I’m a detective on the case and I think we should start searching for the body,” His tone sounds innocent but he’s trying to sneakily plant this idea in Eunwoo’s mind, “we could be wasting precious time, the family deserves closure and we’re just dragging it on.”

“Detective Na,” Eunwoo stops looking through the folder, “given the other related cases, we have reason to believe she might be alive. Not every abductee is killed, even if that tends to be the case.”

Jeamin swallows, trying to think of how to save himself, “I know, I’m not saying that we should be pessimistic but realistic, rather.”

“I get what you’re saying, but on what prescient you’re saying it, I don’t know. I, and many of the others on this case, have reviewed the evidence and compared it to the other cases, it doesn’t add up. After the questioning today, we’ll talk, until then, your efforts need to go towards finding her alive and well,” Eunwoo walks past Jaemin and the detective gets the memo to get out of the office, “Understood?”

With a feigned grin he stands up straight. “Absolutely, sir,” 

[neworleansspecial]

Letters

My dearest Sarah,

Your letters are a balm upon my aching heart. I have no privileges, unlike some of the better behaved, less hated prisoners. For me, the only solace is your beautiful words, and I thank the stars’ alignment that brought you to me. It is my sole regret that I may not be graced by your voice, which I dream to be as beautiful as your face. 

(Please, my love, send more photos of you in your next letter. I wish to wallpaper my cell with your hands, your eyes, your lips. Dreams of you bring me peace not otherwise bestowed on a wretched soul such as my own.)

I have been reading the medical collection in the prison library, and it dawns on me there is very little in the way of psychology readings. I want to be able to speak with you, my love, and not have you feel forced to speak down to the layman. Should you have books at your disposal to donate to the prison library or perhaps send to me, they would be much appreciated. 

As a token of my own affection, I send to you some more of my drawings. I will admit their lewdness, but you must forgive me for it. There is little kind literature for those of our proclivities, and I find it much more satisfying than to fill in what your photos don’t show me than to find someone here who is in no way as smart, kind, or beautiful as you. I have no other choices beyond my thoughts of your alluring face. 

Do not mistake my lust as the bloody variety. I know you are aware of the crimes I have been charged with, and have likely seen the photos of my body- a carcass, empty, dead compared to before they made me do it- dragged from Chicago’s messiest crime scene, but that is not the person I am when my hand is not forced. There is much more to what I did than what the lawyers have said. 

Have you read the record of my case, my love? I like to imagine that you want to, if only to understand me. My cellmate thinks you view me as a study, but I know your attentions are less than professional. A doctor would not pose so salaciously for me in front of her camera. I hope you are as honest with yourself as I am about the nature of our connection. 

Perhaps you will do me the honor of a visit soon. 

- A. Bekker

[evanstanhoney]

*Shawmila Tarot Reading 🔮✨

*it hurts just to type it lol  

These are the cards that I pulled for them last night. I did several things. I pulled for her, in relation to the relationship. Shawn in relation to the relationship and then I did the relationship in general.  Overall from what I’ve been pulling the relationship is just not good. It’s toxic and it's not good for Shawn in particular. She seems to be alright, and on her end, she could come out of this unscathed which….. I won’t get into lol.  That's not to say that she won’t but upset or whatever when this is all over but he will definitely feel this more and will face serious consequences from it. But this is what I got!

Shawn in relation to the relationship

- Knight of Swords (Reversed): I actually have gotten this card for him more than once. This card means several things; unpredictability, lack of direction, and disregard for the consequences of your actions. It can be a warning card, telling you to stop and think about what you doing before you do it. This card came up in his ‘past’. Which I interpreted as maybe there were red flags that he ignored before getting into the relationship. That he was impulsive and just went with what he thought felt good at the time.

- Five of Pentacles: This one is a really...tough card. The card itself just makes you sad when you look at it, haha but I digress. This card is usually associated with poverty and money struggles, but this can also be interpreted as need and a sense of insecurity. The way that I interpreted this card being in his presence is that he is in need of something, emotionally. He feels lost. This card can also be an indication of help being available to someone if one acknowledges it. He has to accept he’s got himself in a pickle and reach out for help, to get out of it. This card goes along with other cards I’ve pulled for him and the relationship. But pulling this card in particular for him really makes me think that he is the one suffering the most in the relationship.

-.Seven of Swords (Reversed): This is…..a very interesting card considering the circumstances of the ‘relationship.’ haha This is actually one of the only positive cards that I’ve been able to pull for him but it’s a little backhanded lol. What this card says is that he will come out of this turning over a new leaf. There is light at the end of the tunnel, and he’s got a desire to change. Specifically, this card means that you may have done things that were unlike you (lie, betray, steal) in order to ‘survive’. Which…I don’t think I need to really explain that further lol

C in relation to the relationship

- Ten of Cups: So this is like….a really great card. indicating that everything for the most part is copacetic. She was content and felt as though everything was coming together (we don’t know what that was but she felt like things were aligning and things were good)

- Ace of Pentacles: Now this one…. I found a little interesting, haha and I interpreted this as something that like….I just could be way off with this card but I think this indicates some infidelity. What the card actually means is opportunity. Something good is coming your way, and it will be really good for you. This is an interesting card to me for her, considering she is….in a relationship? What new opportunities do you need? It could mean that things are just going well in the relationship as of right now as well, but considering the other cards I pulled for them in this session and in previous ones, having this one positive card seems out of place and I don’t think I’m too far off in assuming that this could mean infidelity.

- Eight of Swords (Reversed): This is another one that I just…i found interesting especially considering the fact that she’s a fucking Pisces. So what this card represents is like acceptance and self-growth. She’s going to learn from the relationship and take with her some positive aspects. That she is moving forward from a time from which she felt ‘victimized’ or trapped by her own thoughts and feelings but she’s breaking out of that now. Which I just think is…comedy gold but MAKES SENSE.

Because basically what I got from her reading is that from her perspective…things are great. Especially considering some cards I pulled previously which indicate taking something and learning from it positively i think that is meant for her. She will leave this relationship growing as a person and it’s tough her lessons. For her….just like we all suspected….it seems as though she had everything to gain from this relationship.

**The Relationship

- Queen of Swords: This one is interesting, considering the other cards that I got for this session haha. It indicates a clear mind and judgment. They knew what they were doing when they agreed to get involved with one another whether it made sense or not. For /them/ everything made sense and it felt like the stars were aligning, even if that really weren’t the case. If that makes sense.

- Eight of Pentacles (Reversed): This is a ‘sticky’ card. Somewhere along the way one or both of them feels stuck, but they lack the motivation to really do anything about it. There may be some dependency issues on either one or both of their parts. They feel as though they are stuck together and don’t know how to get out of it.

- Judgment (Reversed): Quite literally the opposite of the first card I pulled for them but going really well with the second. They are now in a place where they really don’t know what to do? Or where to go from here. Their judgment is clouded and this may be a time in where mistakes are made. This card is one for like…self-doubt/loathing and not being able to see your worth. Its a shitty card and considering the other cards I pulled I can’t help but think that this card is for Shawn in the relationship. It could be both of them going through this. They could have gotten themselves into a situation where they feel they’ve lost themselves? Idk if I’m making sense, haha But this card kind of sealed the deal for me that this just isn’t healthy for anyone involved.

**This is just from the spread I did last night I’ve done several ones for just the relationship in particular and have gotten a rather interesting tale lol so I am taking those into consideration when interpreting these ones!

If you guys want I can post the other spreads that I did for their relationship? I think those are interesting as well and certainly aren’t as bleak. They aren’t good but they aren’t as dark as this. Also, keep in mind that I am so very new to all of this and could be so wrong. There is so much more that I can say about this and I hope everything that I interpreted comes across!

[soror-o-n-s]

Why Liber Resh is so Important

As I wrote in this post, I recently started doing Liber Resh again and realized how potent and important of a ritual it really is. I said I’d write up a post on that, and here it is.

What is Liber Resh?

First of all, if you’re new to all of this, or through some circumstance don’t know what Resh is, here is the text of Liber Resh. It consists of four solar adorations meant to be performed at the four stations of the sun throughout the day. 

How do you do Liber Resh?

The actual text of the ritual is pretty short, and without some involvement with the Thelemic community, membership in the A.’.A.’., or some extra research, is not really workable. If you were a member of the A.’.A.’. you would use your grade sign at all four stations, and would learn the adoration from your superior. Most people however are not members of the A.’.A.’. for one reason or another, and a set of informal, often word of mouth, instructions have developed. So for all of us outside the fold, the signs customarily used are:

Sunrise: L.V.X signs

Noon: Sign of Fire

Sunset: Sign of Air

Midnight: Sign of Water

For the adoration, many people use Liber AL III:37 starting from, “Unity uttermost showed! . . .” I personally like to also include the previous stanza starting with, “I am the Lord of Thebes . . . “ as well.

You’ll find another dilemma if you spend enough time reading about this or hanging around other Thelemites as to whether to say “fill me” or “kill me” at the end of the third stanza. You can read Hymenaeus Beta’s case for correcting that word here. Many people will strongly prefer one or the other, and have valid reasons for their choice. I personally use “kill” here since I like the meaning it brings to the adoration, but there really isn’t a right or wrong answer. If you’re not sure which you prefer, try it both ways and see how you feel about it.

If this doesn’t do it for you, there’s also no reason why you couldn’t also write your own adorations, as Crowley put it in Liber O : “These rituals need not be slavishly imitated; on the contrary the student should do nothing the object of which he does not understand; also, if he have any capacity whatever, he will find his own crude rituals more effective than the highly polished ones of other people.” I personally would recommend trying it the more official way and to make sure that you really understand the meaning and reason for the way the original is composed before rewriting it though. Not only will that help make sure you’re getting out of it what was intended, but also that you’ll be familiar enough with it that if you ever end up practicing it in a group you won’t have to embarrassingly stumble through it.

Why do Liber Resh?

So now I’ve covered how to practice Resh, why should you practice Resh? It seems kind of silly to worship the sun in the modern age when we have things like astronomy and physics to explain what it is and how it works; and the timing is really inconvenient for someone with other things on their plate (or who like to maintain a normal sleep schedule). The reason I hadn’t done it in so long was because it just seemed like an arbitrary way to remind yourself of the Work and to work some bhakti into your day. I figured, I’m already thinking about the Work pretty regularly, the rest of my practice and study takes care of that, and I could just pray and meditate like a normal person instead of worshipping the Sun.

First off, let’s talk about the Sun. The Sun’s pretty sweet. Its gravity holds our entire solar system together. Without it all of these cool planets would go careening off into space and end up who knows where. The light and heat we get from the Sun makes all life on Earth possible. The Earth’s seasons are dependent on the Sun. The very atoms that make up your body were all birthed in stars just like the Sun. Compared to the span of a human life, or even generations of humans, the Sun is practically eternal.

Do you see where I’m going with this? The Sun is practically a God. I know it sounds silly, but the Sun gives us life, keeps us warm, fuels the food that keeps our bodies running. It controls our seasons and weather. The Sun creates the heavier elements that makes the very existence of things like the Earth possible. It was here long before the first humans appeared, and will likely be here long after the last human has died. Better yet, unlike the conventional gods we’re used to today, we can see it, feel it, and measure its relationship with our world. That’s pretty cool, and in my opinion, definitely worthy of celebrating and adoring. No wonder the ancients pretty much universally worshipped the Sun.

Now let’s talk about what the Sun represents. The Sun is the alchemical gold, the perfection of matter on every level. It corresponds to the Sephirah of Tiphareth, the sphere of the Holy Guardian Angel and the accomplishment of the great work. In this sense, the Sun represents the ultimate goal of magick. Your adorations at each of its stations are adorations to your HGA, and a reminder of the highest goal.

In practicing Resh though you’re doing more than just adoring the Sun, you’re identifying with the Sun. According to Crowley’s instructions, “Also it is better if in these adorations thou assume the God-form of Whom thou adorest, as if thou didst unite with Him in the adoration of That which is beyond Him.” You’re meant to be assuming the Godforms of each adoration. To expand on what I said in the above paragraph about adoring your HGA, your adorations are to your highest self, and when you practice Resh you’re identifying with that. One of the first verses of Liber AL is: “Every man and every woman is a star.” And this ritual is in one way a representation of that truth.

There’s also another layer that’s hinted at with the name of the ritual. Resh corresponds with the path between Hod and Yesod on the tree of life, which is associated with The Sun card in the Tarot. To quote from The Book of Thoth:

“This is one of the simplest of the cards; it represents Heru-ra-ha, the Lord of the New Aeon, in his manifestation to the race of men as the Sun spiritual, moral, and physical. He is the Lord of Light, Life, Liberty and Love. This Aeon has for its purpose the complete emancipation of the human race”

“Outside the wall are the twin children who . . . represent the next stage that is to be attained by mankind, in which complete freedom is alike the cause and the result of the new access of solar energy upon the earth. The restriction of such ideas as sin and death in their old sense has been abolished.”

Aside from just reminding yourself of the Great Work and affirming your existence as an eternal star not unlike the Sun, this ritual is also bringing you into alignment with the current of the New Aeon. It’s an affirmation of the law of do what thou Wilt, of your eternal freedom and innocence, and that the times of restriction and the dying god are at an end. Through the formation of a relationship and identification with the star in the center of our solar system, you’re cultivating your relationship with the Aeon and with the Hawk-headed mystical Lord on the throne of Ra.

Resh does so much more than what the text of the ritual might suggest. I would argue that it’s one of the most important daily practices that Crowley wrote, and it’s amazing how understated it is. This is just my understanding of the ritual as well. In practice, each person’s going to have a different experience and come to different conclusions. In my opinion, it’s likely intentionally vague, and there’s likely much more to it than what I’ve said here.