#also maybe paul fucked a couple times and his wife was ok with it

[luukka]

It hurt asf but since Tumblr decided to erased it I'll do it again, here's a stupid list of couple and ships from movies and series in which I can see Jim and Ivy and/or inspired myself without realizing in a not specific order :

Lady Marian and Robin Hood - Robin Hood

Ah yes a lady and her pure-hearted hooligan as we love it. No but seriously, their sweet childhood love that never failed through the years is so adorable. She's gentle and courageous, he's adventurous and loyal, what a combination ! Really, they inspired Jivy's relation a lot ❤

Finn and Flame Princess - Adventure Time

Ok hear me out. I've seen only four seasons but I love them. My cuties. That's it. That's all. Also this gif makes me understand that they stayed together for a long time and that makes me happy 😘

Nausicaa and Asbel - Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind

Now I know they are not a couple but their interaction is aaaaaah I love it ! The respect and trust they grow toward each other makes my heart beat fast ❤ and that's exactly what I want for Ivy and Jim !

Pazu and Sheeta - Castle in the Sky

The ship I'll never have because they are too young and I respect that (Miyazaki never fails us) No one talks enough about them. Like really, they are. So. Adorable. At no moment did they break each other's trust and were even ready to die together. AT. TWELVE. YEARS OLD. There is no way I couldn't inspire myself from them 🙄💖

Rox (Tod) and Vixie - The Hound and the Fox

Picture ref is pinterest as you could guess but I haven't the exact source

ok so you can't see them much in the movie but I don't know their cuteness is a marshmallow to me. Also I love how Vixie has fun with Rox's flirt, I think Ivy would play with Jim too lol

Marshall and Lily - How I Met Your Mother

There's no way I couldn't inspire myself from Marshmallow and Lilypad. Love at first sight + soulmate trope ? YAS BITCH 💅🏿 I thougt of Chandler and Monica but they're not quite as close to Jivy as Marshall and Lily

Tarzan and Jane Porter - Tarzan

The sweet awkward and passionate woman and the curious unfeared man. The "he fell first she fell harder". Their dynamic is pretty much what I imagine how Jim and Ivy relationship starter was (maybe reversed tho because she fell in love first ?) they are so cute ❤

Odysseus and Pénélope - The Odyssey

Now I don't have an image but here is a Wolfythewitch art that I found very pretty !

20 YEARS. TEN TIMES TWO WINTERS APART. DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG IT IS. I'M TWENTY TWO, IT'S LONG AS FUCK. And they were still in love. They still wait for each other. They never fell out of love. I'm gonna cry... (every time I listen to Epic I just can't help but imagine Jim sings his lungs out lol also Kate is Circe, Amelia is Athena, Zeus is one of Ivy father I see EVERYTHING)

Phœbe and Mike - Friends

I love how Mike just loves his wife weirdness and the idea of Jim having a link with Paul Rudd (they don't age lmaooo) plus I noticed that both ship has kinda the same background but Phœbe and Jim have a similar path and Ivy and Mike have also a similar path xDD

Stiles and Lydia - Teen Wolf

I could not (again) not put them here. I had the idea of Ivy when I could still watch it on netflix FR 🥲 two smartasses with one trying to hide it and the other being stupid about it clearly helped hahaha

[spidernerdsblog]

Hey dear💟 how are you? Can I ask for some mob!tom smut?? Like he's smoking a cigar at a boring wedding when he meets a mob!reader and after talking a bit things just happen and he takes her home for fucking all night?

Oh and ends in fluff??

Hi nonnie! I'm fine hope you are well too. Here's your request hope you like this.

Pairing : Mob! Tom Holland x Mob! Reader

Warnings : 18+, SMUT, mature content, unprotected sex (wrap it before you tap it)

His Queen, Her King

Being the mob boss Tom had to be a part of various social gatherings, galas, parties etc but the most he dreaded were weddings. Especially when you're an eligible bachelor, people around you are constantly nagging you with the most evident question ‘when is your turn?’ There were several occasions where the leaders of other mobs had tried to set him up with their daughters to forge an alliance but he would turn them down every time because he never found them to be his match. He likes to be in control but that doesn’t mean he would settle for a mere puppet who would dress up pretty and do as told, he wanted someone powerful, fierce who would challenge his authority, a real queen to his vast empire.  

It was one of his childhood friends' wedding day so he couldn't say no. The hall was buzzing with people as he was seated with a couple of his friends at a table drinking and laughing loudly talking about their busy lives and their businesses. One hour to the wedding reception and Tom was already bored he lit up a cigar and took a long puff from it watching everyone silently. 

Just then you walk in through the doors in a long red silk dress hugging your body like a second skin with a thigh high slit paired with pointed stilettos making heads turn. Your hair styled into loose curls cascading down your shoulders complimenting your dewy makeup. Your wrists and ears sparkling with the most priceless authentic diamonds.  Apart from being the maid of honor you are the only woman in the mob business who owns the biggest diamond business in the country. 

People were obviously envious of your power though they never dare to say anything to your face but you have heard how people think you just got lucky with the business as the only daughter of your father, women have no place in the mob even to the extent of being slut shamed and being accused of sleeping with your rivals to run the business. You had simply shrugged it off and showed those people with a flourishing business and earning double profits than your father used to earn when he used to run the mob. You walk over to your best friend.

“Congratulations Jane, finally you’re a married woman now!” you give her a hug.

“Thanks Y/N it feels like a dream honestly” she chirps “but when are you…”

“Please you also don’t start” you both chuckled and continued gossiping.

“Man why are these receptions so dull and boring” Matt groaned “couldn’t they do it at a bar or strip club?”

“Yeah it would have been fun to watch your wife beat the shit out of you after you flirted with one of the strippers” Carl mocked to which everyone laughed out loud including Tom.

“Hey!!” Matt revolted in protest as all of them laughed again.

Your conversation was constantly getting disturbed with their constant brawls and loud laughter. Even the other guests had a frown on their face with the noise they were making.

“I apologize on behalf of my friends, they can sometimes be a little loud” Paul the groom said apologetically.

"It’s ok I know how to deal with guys like them. Let me handle it” You offer and stride your way to their table. 

“Sorry to crash the fun boys but some of us are actually here to attend the reception not to hear your meaningless chatter” you jibe forcing a smile as the men turn their attention towards you. Tom puts down his cigar blowing out the smoke as he takes a quick glance of you.

“I'm sorry love, are we offending you?” he remarks with a smolder and the men around him hollered. The corner of your lips quirk into a sly smirk as you step closer to him drawing a finger along his jawline.

“It will take a lot more than this baby face to offend me” you taunt him back with a grin amusing everyone including Tom at your comeback.

“Oooh damn!” the men hollered again while you turned your back and strutted off to join your friends again. Tom just sat there completely blown away by your boldness. He had heard about you but now that he saw you he understood that you weren’t just a beautiful face after all who just got lucky in the mob business you were a complete badass. The very image of you radiates power and triumph. 

His eyes seeked yours the whole time and then he found you finally all by yourself near the open bar drinking a glass of whisky. He approaches you as he clears his throat.

“Ahem, hey” you lift your eyes from the glass and then put it down on the counter smacking your lips.

“Here to apologise for being a jerk?” you quip.

“I thought we were even already” he remarks with a smug grin.

“Yeah maybe” you half shrug

“Tom Holland by the way” he reaches his hand out and you dismiss it by picking your glass again and taking a sip. 

“I know who you are, the boss of the most powerful mob in London” you say nonchalantly

“Keeping tabs I see” he smirks as he signals the bartender to hand him a drink as well.

“It’s a risky business Holland you gotta keep records about your potential rivals” you state blandly.

“Absolutely, couldn’t agree more” he takes a sip wincing at the strong taste of the drink. 

“So all alone? Bossman didn’t get any arm candy for the night?” you snicker.

“Only a queen fits beside a king like me darling and I haven’t found one yet , what about you?”

“Well I haven’t found my king either” you clink your glass to his as you both gulp down your drinks.

“You look ravishing in that dress I must say” he compliments with a suave in his voice.

“Thank you. You don’t look bad either” you flirt back as you bite the corner of your lip checking him dressed in an Armani suit the Rolex on his wrist glinting in the golden light of the chandeliers.  

“I really admire you. Honestly it’s really hard and dangerous to run a business when you’re a woman” there was a different kind of sparkle in his eyes which you recognize very well.

“What can I say I just love playing with danger” you shrug with sass in your voice. 

“You wanna get out of here? I’m sure nobody will miss us” he licks his lips eyes darkening with pure desire. 

“Well what are we waiting for?” you smirk with a mischievous glint in your eyes both of you coming to a silent agreement.

The whole ride to his mansion was a blur as soon as you were inside he had you pinned up against the door as his lips met yours hungrily. His lips tasted of burnt cigar and whisky.  He started leaving trails of kisses on your jaw and neck while his hand snaked down to your thighs through the slit of your dress unclasping the thigh holster from your leg as it dropped on the ground with a loud clatter. His hand moved further to your flimsy lace thong to feel your sex. 

“So wet already, love? I haven't even touched you properly” you can hear the smirk in his voice. His hand goes to unzip your dress as he leans in for a kiss but you stop him placing two fingers on his lips slowly tracing them. 

“Bedroom?” you ask breathing heavily.

“Upstairs left” he informs between shallow breaths.

You gave him a peck on his cheek and made your way up the stairs. Tom’s eyes never left you as he watched you slide the thin straps of your dress off your shoulders and dropping it off on the floor striding away in just your strapless bra and thong your heels clacking against the marble floor. Tom scoffed in amusement a toothy grin forming on his face . You were really something who was just driving him crazy.

The moment he walked in the bedroom he felt himself twitch inside his pants. There you were sitting in the middle at the edge of the bed slightly leaning on your palms with your legs crossed one above the other. You looked like a viscous siren slowly entrapping him with your charm and beauty. 

“Nice bedroom” You gently smoothed the silk sheets with your hand.

“Glad you liked it” he said smiling.

“Are you just gonna stand over there?” You unclipped your bra and lazily dropped it on the floor putting on a show for him as you lifted a hand pointing a finger motioning him to come closer. A low groan escaped from his mouth at the sight of your exposed breasts as he strolled towards you unbuttoning his shirt and shrugging it off his body drinking in your almost naked form with lustful eyes. You subconsciously licked your lips marveling his taut muscles. He tilted your chin up as you gazed in his brown eyes with parted lips.

“God you’re gonna be the death of me” he mumbles in a husky voice.

“That was the plan all the time, I can then take over your mob” you giggle playfully.

“You minx” he knelt down to capture your red tinted lips passionately tongues clashing against each other as you ran your fingers across his abdomen, nails scraping his skin. He gently pushes you down on the mattress as you shift back in the middle of the bed. He spreads your legs to accommodate himself as he crawls up to be at level to your face pressing a soft kiss to your swollen lips. Goosebumps covered your skin as you felt his bulge brushing on your thighs. You tilted your head to the side as he took the opportunity to suck marks on the nape of your neck. One hand squeezing your ass the other palming your breast as he placed butterfly kisses all over your skin.

“So pretty” he mumbles, pressing kisses between the valley of your breasts,you shuddered when he flicked his tongue over your sensitive bud.

“Oh” you gasped when he wrapped his mouth around your breast sucking the nipple between his teeth, kneading the other fingers pinching and tugging on it. After paying equal attention to the other one too before continuing his journey south. Your stomach flutters as his lips trail down your rib cage, navel the cold gold chain dangling down his neck feeling ticklish against your hot skin. He placed a soft kiss over your soaked panties and you felt that your body was set to fire as you gasped lightly chest heaving up and down. A smirk forms on his face as he moves to kiss your inner thighs ignoring the place where you needed him the most.

“Please” you let out a quiet whimper

“Please what darling?” he whispers with a husky voice. 

“Touch me” 

“I’m touching you love” he lightly chuckles, you whined in protest. “You gotta be more specific with your demands, love, what do you need?” he coos.

“I-I need you, your mouth” you breathed out. 

“See that wasn’t so hard” he practically rips off your thong and throws the shredded fabric away letting out a low growl at the sight of your glistening cunt. He hooked his arms to your thighs, the rings on his fingers felt cold against your skin. He licks a long stripe up your folds sending jolts of pleasure up your body making you squirm in his hold.

“So sweet” he mumbles against your heat. You let out a soft gasp, your hands threading into his soft brown curls as he swirled his tongue through your folds.

You cry out when his tongue flicks your swollen clit giving his hair a harsh tug he groans into your heat. He continued to suck on your clit between his lips pushing a thick digit inside you. Your body arched bucking your hips into his mouth he had to place a hand on your lower stomach to keep you in place. He then adds another finger pumping it in and out of you his teeth grazing your sensitive bud soothing it after with his tongue immediately. 

“Fuck!” You moaned feeling euphoric eyes fluttering shut as he devoured you. Your body tensed up when he added another finger to your heat, your one hand was pulling his hair painfully and the other squeezing your breast rolling your nipple between your fingers. He curled his fingers hitting your spot sending you over the edge.

“C’mon love, let it go want you to cum all over my fingers” he moaned into your heat the vibrations leading you to tumble down the edge as you came undone around his fingers. He helped you ride your high still sucking on your clit, your legs trembled as he lapped up all your juices. He pulled away after sometime his chin glistening with your arousal. 

He got rid of his dress pants along with his boxers and then crawled over to you. You gazed into his warm brown eyes still in your post orgasmic haze as you pulled him down to capture his lips with an urgent need. You tasted yourself on his lips as he deepened the kiss grinding his hips into yours. 

A soft gasp escaped your lips when you felt the tip of his member brushed against your entrance. He gripped his member giving it a few pumps before lining up against your core. You placed a hand flat on his stomach signalling him to stop. He knitted his brow in confusion when you flipped him over to be on top him sitting on the back of your knee straddling his waist. 

“I wanna ride you” you whisper in a sultry voice and his lips curl up to a smirk.

“Then go ahead, darling” he shuffles back a little resting himself comfortably against the headboard. You brought your hand to your mouth and gave it lick before grabbing his member using it for lubrication, slowly pumping his length and lining it up to your weeping core. Your breath hitched when you felt his tip slide through your entrance stretching your walls in a nice way. You slowly sank down on his length feeling so full of him. You stayed like that, your walls warm and snug squeezing him like a vice. Tom groaned when you clenched around him. 

“Oh god Y/N please move or I'm not gonna last for another minute” you leaned down to kiss him starting to move your hips slowly adjusting to his thick shaft.

“Shit” He hissed as you lifted yourself hand gripping on his thighs for leverage to go a little faster, the soft sound of your skin slapping against each other filled the room. Your stomach clenched as you paced up and down his cock, each time filling you up to the hilt. His hands held your hips, fingers digging in your skin groans rumbled in Tom’s throat as he clenched his jaw. He gazed at you with hooded eyes smitten by the way your back arches towards him and your tits bounce with every thrust.

You started to feel a little exhausted, a thin sheen of sweat lining your bodies as you slowed down your pace. Tom’s hands slid down to your ass, spreading your cheeks as he took control, thrusting up into you. You jolted forward moaning out loud, grasping on to his shoulders tightly for support. 

“Just because you're on the top don't think you're in control darling” he says cheekily you let out a light chuckle at his comment before whimpering when his cock hit your sweet spot.

He lifted his knees, planting the heels of his feet into the mattress for leverage as he began to fuck you roughly. He grunted, feeling your walls clench around his cock with every thrust of his hips. You leaned down to kiss him sloppily he reciprocates by slipping his tongue into your mouth swirling it inside your mouth. You moaned into the kiss as you felt a tight knot build inside your stomach.

“Tom” you moan breathlessly, eyes squeezing shut as your hands slide down his shoulder to his chest nails scratching his skin.

“Gonna cum again for me love?” Tom murmured against your lips as he spanked your ass lightly. You nodded your head vigorously starting to roll your hips desperately. He brought his thumb to your swollen clit and rubbed circles as the coil inside you snapped and you screamed out your orgasm hitting you like a ton of bricks. Tom wasn’t too far either as he continued rutting his hips and soon he was spilling inside you.

“Fuck.” He moaned as his face screwed up in pleasure, his eyebrows furrowing as he emptied his seed into your tight pussy, not letting go of his grip on your body. You collapsed onto his chest panting both of you catching your breath, your walls still pulsating around his cock, deeply buried inside you. He caressed your back gently, your chest pressed to his, head resting over his heart as you listened to his steady heartbeat while your fingers fiddled with the chain around his neck. He took your hand and kissed on your knuckles gently brushing his thumb over them lovingly.

“I really like you” he finally spoke out

“What?” you frowned, still a bit dizzy.

“I think I have fallen in love with you Y/N” he confesses softly as you straighten yourself to look him in the eyes.

“Are you asking me out when you are literally balls deep inside me?” you snicker raising your eyebrows.

“I’m serious Y/N” he cradles your face with both of his hands “the moment I saw you I knew you are the one I have been waiting for all my life. A strong, independent and fearless woman who doesn’t need anyone, you are a hell of a queen, Y/N. I want this queen to be only mine, together we can rule the world love. I don’t want this to be a one night thing I want to make love to you every night, kiss every inch of your body and appreciate you, adore you” he rants

“The last part sounded a little creepy though” you chuckled “Well I do like you too my king let’s just take things slow and see where it goes maybe?”

“Sure my queen” he smiles as you kiss him softly.

................................................................................

[whocalledhimannux]

@peregrer the What. 👀👀👀 *insert John Mulaney gif of "say more right now"*

ok so when I say "the extent to which I've fleshed out the QT GBBO AU in my head is getting to be embarrassing," I truly and deeply mean it, please enjoy 1,900 words of utter ridiculousness.

first, our competitors:

Legarus - performs so poorly that viewers are a bit confused how he got on the show in the first place, a la Jamie (series 10) or that one guy who made a lime and chocolate cake in the first week.

Chloe - nice flavors and good ideas for decorations, but pretty sloppy. was up for elimination in the first week but came back with a great showstopper.

Melheret - good but not as good as he thinks he is (hence his bread week elimination because of sloppy technique), heavy-handed with the alcohol flavoring

Agape - solid competitor, not flashy but tasty + pretty results. I haven't worked out exact week-by-week themes (that would indeed be Too Much) but I imagine this is something like "Dairy" or "Caramel" or "Vegan," some particular element she just happens to not be strong on. viewers are disappointed by her early elimination

Teleus - Dad contestant. brings in a bunch of weird pans and gadgets he made up himself, does pretty well until it comes to Fiddly Foreign Foods he doesn't know (probably eliminated in French or Patisserie week)

Laela - typically has good flavors and pretty designs but technical knowledge is a bit lacking, so there are usually some flaws in the execution and she's often in the bottom half of technicals

Phresine - Grandma contestant. nails the classics but ultimately isn't creative enough to make it further.

Magus - the "Ian (series 6)" flavor of Dad contestant, often brings in foraged ingredients or eggs from his own chickens or whatnot and revives old recipes/flavor combinations no one else knows about. one week, some of those turn out to just be too weird, leading to his elimination.

Sophos - pretty elaborate decorations and good flavors (on the border of classic and new), but he tends to try a million different embellishments on everything and struggles with timing, occasionally to the detriment of technique.

Kamet - always has really interesting and different flavors and tends to do well in technicals especially, assuming he doesn't get overwhelmed. which is... an assumption (Finalist)

Costis - leans towards classic and indulgent flavors, although sometimes a bit sloppy--the kind of contestant where the judges look at his dishes and say "it's a bit of a mess" and then Paul Hollywood starts laughing because it still tastes delicious (Finalist)

Irene - absolutely stunning visually, queen of the technicals, occasionally gets the "style over substance" warning (Winner)

more details below the cut

I've gone back and forth on whether Eugenides should be in it but ultimately I decided no because I wanted to maintain a pre-show relationship between Laela + Kamet (I thought otherwise at first but then I realized I hadn't left Kamet any longterm friends or family for his finalist video and that's depressing af) and Irene and Sophos which to my knowledge hasn't happened once on the show so far? so having a married couple on top of that seems like it would be a stretch, and also then I think I'd need to make Eugenides the winner on principle and you know what? he can stand to be second fiddle to his wife for a little bit. My alternate backstory for him is that he was actually the winner of MasterChef one year (good with knives), so in the first episode Irene's first little chat to camera is something like "my husband's been bugging me for years to try out and I keep telling him he's got a skewed perspective on cooking competitions, finally I applied just to shut him up... and here we are." Her little video introduction is about how baking is a stress relief from her bigshot job. Her decorations tend to be abstract and gorgeous rather than cutesy.

Kamet, likewise, was nagged into applying by Laela, but she very cleverly framed it as she wanted to apply and wanted him to do it to for moral support. both were confident the other would get in and surprised that they did themselves. This is one of those series where everyone's friendships are immediate and obvious and super adorable (cast of series 10 my beloved...), and in particular these two are holding hands in episode 1. Laela's deep blue robe from TaT sticks in my head for whatever reason so I imagine her making an elaborate blue peacock cake or something one week that wins her star baker. somebody always does a peacock something and it's always impressiev.

Phresine is cool as a cucumber under pressure, always has lovely things to say about everyone else's bakes, and is the go-to last-minute helper because she usually comes in under the time. Irene starts out similar but as the weeks go by she starts to feel the pressure a bit more and cuts it a bit close. Sophos is the worst on timings, and mentions his wife at least once an episode. (I also played with him being single on the show and meeting Helen later through Irene and Eugenides, but this idea is too cute to pass up tbh.) Teleus lives with Relius, a fact that isn't mentioned until a few weeks in when he comments that Relius likes a recipe or gave him an idea for a flavor or something (Relius does not bake himself but will happily sample practice bakes), to the surprised delight of every viewer whose favorite contestant is the oldest gay in any given series (me, me, that person is me).

Costis tends to use a lot of chocolate and, as I said, pretty "classic" flavors--one of those people who makes a full English savory bake at some point. He's usually in the top half of the competition but doesn't get the top until one of the later weeks in the competition, which is a Honey themed week, and he absolutely nails it. The delicate decorations of his honey nut cakes and his use of honeycomb are particularly praised and that's the week he gets star baker. One of those bakers who flirts with elimination the first few weeks but noticeably improves over the course of the show.

My most, like, plot-y ideas are about Kamet (SHOCKER). I imagine he was born in Setra (I usually make Setra a non-autonomous region in my AUs) but arrived in Britain as a child due to [Unspecified Crisis] and ended up with foster dad Jeffa, who was roughly from the same region but not Setra itself; whenever Kamet wanted Setran food as a kid, Jeffa would take him to the library to find recipes and that was what sparked his love of baking. He's well-read on the subject and knows about foods from a lot of different cultures, so he's usually heard of the technical challenges even if he hasn't made or eaten them. He does a lot of fusion flavors, and is ALL ABOUT bread week.

I don't usually make the his-relationship-with-Nahuseresh-is-romantic leap in modern AUs but I think it works for this one because of the nature of the format--Nahuseresh doesn't actually appear on camera but is alluded to once or twice, ends up being Very Displeased that Kamet is doing something for himself, and during the week following Laela's elimination they have the fight that makes Kamet realizes this is actually a terrible relationship and he needs to leave now. He calls Laela to let her know what's up and mentions that, since he'll need to stay in a motel and has presumbly lost his job as a secretary (yeah working for your boyfriend is Bad, he's realized that now), he's going to have to drop out of the show. Laela, despite living in a studio flat without room to host him, immediately thinks "um fuck that" and calls Costis, and within an hour Costis and Aris and a few rugby buddies have moved all of Kamet's things into Costis and Aris's flat, where Costis insists that he'll squeeze into Aris's room (they've shared before, it's fine) and that Kamet gets first dibs on the kitchen for all bake off practices.

None of them actually reveal any of this to the show's producers. Kamet gets a little overwhelmed the following week and nearly walks away from the tent, but Costis jumps in to keep his bake from being ruined, and some soothing words from Irene + the hosts calm him down and he returns to finish. The only mention of the Drama comes in the finale, during the longer video clips they do on each of the contestants. Kamet is deliberately vague about the details of the situation, but Aris shows up in both Costis's and Kamet's videos and references the fact that having TWO flatmates in the bake off is a bit difficult because they only have a standard size kitchen, so he hasn't cooked for himself in a month and has been living off cake and savory breads. one of the hosts talks to Kamet in the tent after that clip is shown and he still won't talk about it in more detail, but says that he wanted to tell people so they could appreciate why Costis hasn't practiced as much the last few weeks (the judges scolded him for winging it a couple of times), and admits that he totally copied some of Costis's techniques for honey week based on watching him at home.

I imagine the finale task is something like an illusion cake--probably with a bunch of additional required elements because the show has been going bonkers with the finale showstoppers in the newer seasons--and Irene wins with a jewelry box containing, among other things, ruby earrings made out of candy. Kamet does a stepwell, and Costis does something architectural (I was thinking castle but something visibly Greek-ish so maybe a temple or a megaron? idk). Irene wins but they're all BFFs and that's obvious, so everyone's delighted for her. The little montage at the end reveals that Irene + Gen are expecting twins, that everybody hangs out all the time, and that Costis + co recently helped Kamet move into his own flat where he's now working on a novel (Immakuk and Ennikar inspired, obvi, leaning heavily on the honey-shared-on-the-road thing and including some recipes that actually work in the narration, albeit still written in an ancient-novel-like-way).

[Obviously not part of the show, but when Kamet mentions that it's time for him to look for his own place, Costis tries to v awkwardly invite him to stay forever and Kamet is like "nope I've got to try this on my own but yes we will go on a date once I've moved out and see how it goes from there."]

[This is so far beyond the scope of the show but also several of them go on to have more baking-related careers and have active social media presences and at one point they're all hanging out and Eugenides pulls out a camera and demands they all produce baking pick-up lines. Teleus refuses and also doesn't believe anyone knows baking pick-up lines off the top of their head or could make them up on the spot. Sophos sort of proves him right by coming up with "you're the apple of my pie," which Eugenides instantly mocks because Sophos's three greatest loves are baking, Helen, and poetry, and that's the best he can do? Helen comes up with "I like my cake the way I like my men--rich, sweet, and bright red," to which Sophos blushes on cue. Irene's is "when I'm with you, I feel like chocolate heated to 50 degrees--I struggle to maintain my temper." Eugenides protests this is more like an anti-pickup line. Irene insists this is the most accurate marriage-related baking pun anyone could ever come up with.

[Laela's is "You and I are like custard--I hope we never split." Kamet's is "You remind me of bread, because I knead you." Costis freezes for a minute and finally comes up with "Fancy a cream horn?" which produces a lot of giggling and makes Kamet slap his arm in such a way that, hen Eugenides posts this video to instagram, fans of the show all go WAIT ARE THEY DATING NOW] [by this point, yes they are] [I didn't even have to google baking pickup lines for this, guys, I legit came up with them on my own, please clap.]

am I obsessed? I might be obsessed

[randomxreaders]

The Secret

Scene from when they talk about losing their v cards from greys reader lost it to JJ then JJ comes into hospital hurt then the rest of the outer banks squad comes in and yea. By the way I don't own any of these characters and let me know if you would like a part 2. :)

TW: implied sex,cursing,mentions of surgery 

“So, Karev, how old were you your first time” Jackson asked “fifthteen. School nurse, back of her car” Alex replied. “Fifthteen? That's impressive.” “When I was sixteen she taught me how to drive that same car”  Alex quipped back while Meredith laughed. “Sophomore in high school Paul Waxman, had absolutely no idea what he was doing.” Meredith shared. “Junior prom, Sarah Richardson and Penny Caraway, together. I knew exactly what I was doing.” Jackson also shared while Alex whistled at him. Then Cristna perked up “ Nineteen” “Nineteen?” Alex questioned. “Mm-hmm. I was very focused on my studies. It was my chem T.A He was a whole head shorter than me but… Man, he was smart.” Y/N and Meredith chuckled at Cristina. Everyone turned to face Y/N waiting for you to share. “Ok,ok. JJ Maybank I was sixteen. We hooked up in the library at school, dated a little after, saw him in vegas a few years ago and haven't seen him since.” “M-hmm not bad Y/L/N. What about you, April?” Jackson asked. “I’m not talking about this. It was a private-private memory.” April stuttered. “What happened? Did the guy die?” Karev asked. Y/N slapped his arm telling him to stop while laughing under her breath “Alex!” Meredith quipped. “Oh, did it last, like, three seconds, so you don’t know if it counted?” Cristina asked. April scoffed “No” “Mm-hmm.” Cristina replied. “Uh, It was on the beach at sunset. It was beautiful.” April stammered out. Meredith let out a quick laugh “Sunset?” Jackson asked. “Yeah.” April replied slowly, “Really? Weren't, weren't there people there?” Jackson said. “Oh. on the beach? Man, you get sand up in places you don’t wanna get sand.” Cristina added on Y/N let out a laugh. “Mosquitoes” Alex also added “Oh don’t forget the crabs!” Y/N giggled out. “Mm-hmm yeah.” Cristina replied to your comment “ HA! You're a virgin.” Alex shouted “No, I'm not.” April shouted back. “Oh my god. You are!” Cristina said happily “OH, MY GOD. Do it to her right now. Alex deflower her. Do it. Do it.” Cristina edged on Alex with laughter flowing throughout the background. After everyone settled down Meredith said “April, the beach at sunset is very nice.” A loud laughter flew out of Y/N and Cristina. Then Y/L/N and Greys pagers went off. “Well duty calles.”

 “What do we got?” Y/N asked as she put her gloves on. “John Doe, car slid into a light pole on the highway.” The paramedics said. “Alright we got a cracked skull, broken left leg and arm, and some Internal bleeding” Y/N rattled off “someone page neuro.” Grey shouted while you moved the man into trauma one. “Alright we need to get him into surgery.” Shepherd said.

   While in the OR Y/L/N and Torres worked on fixing the leg, Bailey and Grey worked on the eternal bleeding, and Shepherd was fixing his skull and checking for brain damage.

                                                                     1.5 Hours Later

  “Alright I’m going to go update the family” Bailey said while leaving the OR. 30 minuets later Callie and I were done. “Y/L/N, go update the family” Torres said. Y/N nodded as they were scrubbing out, grabbing the chart while walking to the waiting room. “Family for…” they pause while looking over the chart seeing the name they knew all too well, a name from the past, a name they were talking about hours ago, a name that knew all their secrets and held a big one. They cleared their throat “Family for JJ Maybank” They squeaked out. “Um, we are” Their eyes connected with familiar dark brown as they used to be bestfriends. “Y/N?” Pope's voice cracked suddenly three more sets of eyes met yours, you froze seeing John B, Sarah,Kiara and Pope. They all looked the same but slightly older. “H-hey guys” Y/N chirped out “What the hell Y/N you're a doctor!” Kiara asked, proud but surprised. “Um yeah so JJ is stable but he can’t have any visitors yet,but he can in a few hours.” After you head to the resident lounge.

‘What the fuck” John B said then asked “Their a doctor?” ”Well they did go to med-school” Sarah said. “Why haven't they talked to us is over ten years”Kiara said hurt “They contacted me, not a lot but we kept tabs on each other ya know” Pope said “What the hell Pope” all of them said “why didn’t you tell us” Sarah question “I-I-I don’t know”

                                                            Meanwhile

   While doing my evening rounds JJ woke up. “Well,well,well if it isn't Y/N Y/L/N come to see me wifey.” JJ smirked “Hey, That's Dr.Y/N Y/L/N.” You smirked back “And stop calling me wifey, I’m gonna go get the others I’ll be right back.” As Y/N headed out to get the gang she was stopped by Meredith “Hey did our John Doe wake up?” “Yep” Y/N said shakily. “What's wrong” Mer questioned. “It’s JJ Maybank, he one I was telling you guys about earlier” “Omg the guy you lost your virginity to!” “Yeah, but one more thing I might also be his wife.” Y/N said leaving Meredith shocked. “You're what!” Meredith yelled drawing the attention from bystanders. “Ok I’m going to go talk the the family and then we will finish this conversation later” Y/N left leaving Meredith shocked. 

“Family for JJ Maybank” Y/N called out. “Hey, Y/N/N how is he?” John B asked worried “ He is awake so you guys can finally see him, just follow me” Y/N said cheerfully. While heading to JJ’s room Y/N’s eyes connected with Mer’s “Dr. Y/L/N, can I speak with you privately?” Mer asked looking at at the faces behind you. “Yeah sure, um his room is right there” Y/N said turning to the others. “What do you mean you’re married, and to our patient!” Meredith whisper shouted at you. While walking by Derek heard the mention of the patient “Oh did our John Doe wake up?” He said “Yeah he did except our John Doe is Y/N’s secret husband” Mer replied “Whoa secret husband?” Derek questioned. “Yea we got married when we were 19 in vegas it was an accident but we haven't really talked about it since and you guys are the only people who know, so please don't tell anyone.” Y/N rambled out. “Alright well we need to do a post-op checkup.” Derek commented while trying to process everything. “Yeah ok.” Y/N whispered out. “ Ok, we have JJ Maybank came in with a broken left leg and arm, cracked skull and internal bleeding. Me and Torres fixed the leg and put a cast on the arm, Dr.Grey and Bailey took care of the internal bleeding and Dr.Shepherd fixed your skull.” Y/N finished reading off the chart. “Damn wifey you fixed my leg and arm that's pretty badass.” JJ commented while Shepherd and Grey gave you shared glances.”Ok you should be able to go home today we just need you and who will be taking care of you at home to sign the discharge papers.” Grey told JJ. “Yo Y/N will you take care of me after I get discharged” Y/N tried to say something but JJ interrupted before they could get out their comment, “ya know since you're my wife and all!” JJ exclaimed excitedly. The room fell silent as everyone tried to process the news of the formal power couple now being married. 

I hope you all liked this thank you sooooo much for reading let me know if there is someone from grey,outer banks, or criminal minds or maybe even a cross over you would like! Oh also let me know if you would like a part 2 to this story :)

[t4tbruharvey]

two face &&&& someone of ur choice <3

HI BESTIE ILOVE YOU

two face (and mostly harvey):

realistic headcanon: really tall and broad and some of the other attorneys used to think (privately, in the safety of their own homes) that he moves like a fucking great white shark.

this still applies but it's not really as intimidating anymore because like his entire friend group is scary anyway? and they all know like, five mob bosses he's not fucking special for being tall

unrealistic but funny headcanon: this one WAS going to go in the 'unrealistic but idc abt canon' category but i remembered that the second one also had 'funny' attached and this one makes One Single Canon Event absolutely hilarious so: he's trans.

now, while this isn't funny in and of itself, obviously, you have to bear in mind that there was this one time in the comics where

(i've mentioned this before but by GOD will you all hear it again)

where harvey's ex-wife, gilda, now remarried to a guy named paul janus (y'know. the roman god with two faces? that guy)

has kids and- hang on.

ok so a reason harvey supposedly believes their marriage failed is NOT 'he was in an acid attack and then went on a crime spree' but instead 'he failed to give her children'.

so she has TWINS specifically now that she's remarried and he's Convinced they're his.

which is already really funny if he's trans because like can you imagine another rogue trying to like sit him down and explain how reproduction works.

like as gently as possible harvey, i mean this SO so nicely, that's not... um. it's not possible?

but anyway he kidnaps the twins and then they're returned

but IT TURNS OUT they ARE his kids which is just sooooo funny if he's trans because it means that gilda was like 'you know what, i really want to have my ex husband's biological kids. yes i know he's a serial killer i don't care' and then did like the bone marrow thing or something WITHOUT TELLING ANYONE like it's soooo funny to me

"heart crushing and awful" headcanon: put off writing this one because his whole character is sad? i think that like in the months leading up to his mum's death (which i hc to be when he was 15) he sort of lost the support of all his friends? he was in a private school and he was maybe starting to realise that being a girl wasn't entirely Right but he was in a group with a lot of rich girls who were kind to their own but horrible to anyone else. and as his mum's illness got worse he stopped being able to tolerate their kind of 'fun' hangouts and retreated into himself and they kept getting on his case about it and eventually he snapped and got in a huge fight with them and then he didn't have any friends anymore, and then he didn't have a mother anymore.

"unrealistic but i don't care about canon" headcanon: paramore stan

one of my choice: rick jones

realistic headcanon: this is not hashtag deep at all but he has freckles all over his face and is naturally dark blond which is why he dyes his hair Bright Red

unrealistic but funny headcanon: hates spiderman when spiderman is allowed into the avengers because what the FUCK, man, I'M supposed to be the young witty adorable trans guy what the fuck there can't be TWO he's STEALING my ecological niche, bruce! i'm gonna be out of a job!

"heart crushing and awful" headcanon: hmm like there's a lot you could maybe say here but i'm going to go with, like, he witnessed his parents' death? this technically is me not caring abt canon but whatever. local headlines like "couple die in car crash, leaving 8 year old daughter an orphan" or something bc they lived in a small town I Assume and part of the headcanon is the car crash like i think that's sad

"unrealistic but i don't care about canon" headcanon: paramore stan but since the beginning this time. he picked up their first cd When It Came Out on a whim and it blew his mind. he'd previously only listened to like... take me home country roads and bruce springsteen and stuff bc he was insecure about not passing so he overcompensated with a typically 'manly' music taste. anyway paramore stan

[fireladybuckley]

911 Verse this or that

Indirectly tagged by @perfectlynervousbeard <3 

Buck or TK. Look I adore TK, Ronen is seriously one of the cutest guys I’ve ever seen and TK is adorable and easily my favourite LS character.  But it’s not even close when comparing him to Buck, Buck is my comfort character, my absolute favourite of just about anything, ever.  I adore Oliver and there’s not a single person you could compare to Buck that I would pick over him, lol.

Eddie or Carlos.

Again, I really do like Carlos.  I firmly believe Carlos (Rafa) doesn’t get enough screen time and his character development suffers because of it and I hate that.   But again, I love Eddie just SO much.  Comparing him and Carlos isn’t fair because they’re very different and Eddie’s storyline and character in general are SO much more developed, I feel like we’ve gotten to know him so much better and that just makes me love him more, I’m more attached.  Plus Eddie’s relationship with Christopher alone is just so precious and I love it so much.

Bobby or Owen.

Easiest question ever.  Bobby is amazing and the best dad and Owen sucks.

Chimney or Judd Not that I hate Chimney or anything (he gets on my nerves sometimes but overall he’s fine) but Judd is just wonderful.  I love his whole southern gentleman vibe while also being a bit of a mischievous little shit which makes me laugh.  And the way he loves and respects his wife is just so refreshing to see. <3

Hen or Marjan I wonder if this is kind of like how I feel about Carlos; I really like both Carlos and Marjan, but I feel like I barely know them.  Marjan is badass and awesome and everything but aside from her arranged marriage stuff, I feel like we barely know anything about her.  Whereas with Hen, I feel like we know her so well she could just be my best friend and it would be amazing.   She’s smart, compassionate, hilarious and just awesome and I adore her.  I also love her relationship with Karen and Denny and now Nia.  If they take Nia away I’m going to riot

Maddie or Grace.  This one was tougher, and REALLY close.  I really love Grace, she’s amazing and badass and I love her and Judd’s relationship.  I just like Maddie slightly more.  I love how much Maddie has overcome and how strong she is, how she took care of Buck their whole lives (which was NOT fair to her), and I love their sibling dynamic.  I love her relationships with the other 9-1-1 operators.

I will say though that they are both BADASS 9-1-1 operators and they are both queens.

Athena or Tommy Tommy’s fine but she’s very new and I feel like I don’t know her at all (though I love Gina Torres).  Not that that matters, however;  Athena is QUEEN and no matter how awesome Tommy could be, she would never surpass Athena.  Athena is just so amazing and I love her so much.  She is compassionate, badass, hard working, hilarious, terrifying when mad but at the same time so gentle and kind.  Her and Bobby are amazing together (especially earlier in their relationship), she’s such a good mom to Harry and May (and by extension Buck, and maybe even Eddie).  She’s just amazing, ok.

Albert or Mateo  I’ll be honest, I was going to choose Albert because I find him adorable and funny and I wish we knew more about him.  But this time it’s the opposite problem of the others... I feel like we barely know Albert, even though he’s been around for a while now.  The 9-1-1 writers have done a terrible job giving him meaningful backstory imo.  Like he’s been in LA for how long now?  Does he even have a job?   Is he still speaking to his parents? We know barely anything about him besides that he’s Buck’s roommate and he has been on some dates.

Mateo on the other hand is much more flushed out.  I loved the story arc where he is just SO dedicated and driven to become a firefighter despite his dyslexia and I’m so glad it was made possible for him to have allowances for the test.  I love that his crew doesn’t mock him for it or treat him like he’s stupid, they ALL help him as much as they can, and I LOVE when Marjan goes and gives the tattoo parlour who intentionally fucked up his tattoo a reaming.  He’s an earnest, eager younger brother who just wants to help and prove himself and I think he’s adorable.

Michael or Paul. I like Michael, but I like Paul a bit more.  I just wish they would give him more screen time and a storyline that doesn’t involve people being transphobic.  I’m sorry (not sorry) but the sister storyline thing still pisses me off

118 or 126.  The 118, no question.  They feel far more cohesive as a team and I love their relationships more, both with each other and with other people.  The 118 feels so much more real than the 126, and I’ve no doubt it’s because of LS’s continued sidelining of its characters that are not Owen (and, I’ll admit, TK.  I love that he gets a lot of screen time, but not if it comes at the expense of Marjan/Paul/Mateo being shunted to the side). 

Maybe the 126 will get better with time.  I’m certainly hoping that with TK in his new role, maybe they’ll bring in another firefighter to replace him (hopefully a woman!  Both shows definitely lack women in the fire-fighting department imo - but the OG is definitely worse; only Hen in 9-1-1, and only Marjan in 9-1-1 LS but at least LS has Tommy and Nancy as medics.  the 118 needs another featured woman firefighter!!)

California or Texas.  I don’t know if it’s the filming choices or if Texas is just like that (having never been there, I have no idea), but Texas doesn’t seem nearly as nice as California.  That could just be my personal preference; I love lush greenery far more than the more desert-y types of things, and I love the ocean so much.  I feel like LA has prettier settings, and LS is more gritty.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that at all, I just prefer pretty haha.

Buddie or Tarlos I feel like this is a bit of an unfair question, since it’s still up in the air whether Buddie even exists in canon, and Tarlos is unquestionably real.

But of course, if I’m forced to choose, it’s Buddie.  And that’s not to say Tarlos isn’t amazing, because it is... I adore BOTH ships so much.  I’m just too drawn into Buddie, and how their personalities compliment each other, and Buck’s special relationship with Chris that places him firmly into the Diaz family unit, Buddie or not.  I really do feel like they’ve set them up 100% as a potential romance and as far as slow burns go, it’s amazing so far.  Plus, even if they don’t become a couple, I am still so invested in them as best friends.

That being said, Tarlos is fucking adorable and I live for their scenes on LS <3

Tsunami episode(s) or Tornado episode.  There was just SO MUCH going on with the tsunami.  Of course the entire plot arc with Buck and Christopher is amazing and easily one of my favourites in the entire series, but I also loved that the tsunami episodes showed EVERYONE in their element, doing everything they could to help people.  I love that it brought Lena into the mix (I know the fandom is divided on her but I love her unashamedly).  The amazing scenes with Athena and May, the scenes with Maddie and that girl with the drone... it was just SUCH A GOOD ARC and I love it.  The fact that I can remember SO much about it and I barely remember what happened with the tornado tells me just how much more I enjoyed it, as well.

911 or 911 Lone Star.  Unquestionably 9-1-1.   I feel like the firefam has become part of my own extended family and I just don’t feel that with LS.  Maybe after a couple more seasons it’ll be more like that, but for now, 9-1-1 is EASILY my favourite.  I do love LS too, though.  I just wish there was less of Owen and more of everyone else.  AND I WANT MORE CROSSOVERS!!!

I have no idea who has been tagged so I’m just going to pick a few random people.  If you’re reading this and want to do it, consider yourself tagged by me!  (And tag me back so I can read yours! <3) @firemedicdiaz @that-firehouse @bicepsie @tulipsfrom-medusa @evaneddie @kittycat-cas @bvckleydiaz @ashavahishta @matan4il And anyone else!!

[paodequeijofeliz-blog]

Let me tell you a good story

Bloodbound Fanfiction (characters and main story belongs to Pixelberry Studios).

Pairing: Kamilah Sayeed and MC (Annie)

Information:  this takes place after Bloodbound 3, here I’m recreating how Kamilah and MC would meet if she had never gone to Raines Corporation right away.

Summary: Thirty years after meeting Annie for the first time, Kamilah is now a wife and a mother. During a regular family dinner, she decides to tell her daughter and their new son-in-law the story of how she fell in love with Annie after an unusual meeting through the hallways of NYU.

Warnings: there is just a little bit of smut talking in the end. A little. Barely. 

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

Let me tell you a good story - Part 7 (Finale)

March 2nd, 2048

“Okay, okay. Shoo everyone. So. Where was I?” Anna scratched her eyes again. “Right, at the gala. After breakfast, Kamilah asked me to stay at the Penthouse, cause’ it would be easier to just get dressed there… Which lead to a day of not working so much, no details needed, of course. Until we finally showered and got ready to go.”

“Me in forty minutes. She…” Kamilah poked her wife’s head. “Took three hours.”

 “Yeah, she still does that” Lysia sighed in confirmation, remembering how her mother took ages to get ready for the daughter’s graduation. “That’s why you’re getting dressed way before me, when the wedding comes.”

“I wanted to look pretty, ok? It’s not every day that a smoking hot rich brilliant woman ask you to be her date.” Anna defended herself, fighting a yawn. “The part you want to hear happened after we were already there…”

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

September 16th, 2018

The gala was being held at one of those rich, huge, and fancy hotels, worldwide known, that Anna never really memorized the name.

“Baccarat Hotel, darling. In Manhattan.” Kamilah added, but her piece of information was dismissed by a “Whatever Rich Hotel, doesn’t make a difference” response from her wife.

The event was set to start at 8 pm, so it was already dark outside. The city lights and camera flashes glowed on Annie’s dress when she stepped out of the limousine. That outfit was carefully selected to match Kamilah’s. A dark shade of blue with tiny crystals, like the night sky, making the historian’s smooth skin look like a dangerous temptation. The back was barely covered, and even though it seemed to hug her tight on the breasts, it got looser as it approached the hem, floating and following the woman’s movement. It was beautiful, indeed, but nothing compared to her date.

Kamilah was so absolutely gorgeous, Anna couldn’t help staring at her through the entire ride there, and almost lost her breath when she saw that wonderful goddess looking over the shoulders and smiling invitingly. It was the most beautiful vision in the world.

“Darling, what a coincidence, I was thinking the same thing when I saw you that night” the Egyptian laughed, a hint of red flashing through her eyes, “And you’re still the most beautiful vision in the world, with or without a Versace’s dress on you.”

“I do remember you saying ‘without’ was even better in the end of the night…” Anna looked up to meet Kamilah’s gaze, almost loosing track of the story. “So…”

Kamilah’s gown was a silver provocative mermaid cut with a deep neckline and a set of elegant sapphire jewels. They were the night and the stars, and what the Egyptian didn’t know by them, is that one day, years ahead, Annie would hold her hands on the altar an make vowels to ‘always support you, as the night sky supports the moon and the stars, for you are and always will be my entire galaxy’.

Back then, the only thing they were both aware was the intense feeling pulling them together through the event. For the first couple hours, their sole attention was focused on each other. Both danced, drank and laughed like they were the only two people standing on that ballroom. And even though they didn’t kiss, trying hard to maintain the professional boundaries intact (at least in front of the rest of the employees), it was evident to everyone that something was going on. After the sixth waltz, Kamilah felt this urge to just lean in and kiss the woman she had on her arms, sinking in desire, but Adrian interrupted them right on time.

“Excuse me.” He touched Anna on her elbow, capturing the historian’s attention. “Maybe it’s time for you two to blend in. Why don’t we greet the volunteers who are going to be working in the basement with you next month, Ms. Mali? Kamilah needs to have a moment with the senator as well.”

“Of course, Mr. Raines.”

With a last sparkling smile, Annie left her date and followed Adrian’s lead to a group of people by the bar. They weren’t really interesting to talk to and the conversation flew in circles, getting so dull that soon enough she saw herself drinking more champagne than the recommended. At some point, the main topic became Ms. Sayeed. One of them, Mr. Paul Lynn, was excited to work for her.

“Hold your horses, pal. She can be such a pain in the ass.” Annie finally said something, an empty glass on her hands.

“Really? People said she’s a little bit tough, maybe demanding, but a nice person in general.” Paul landed his eyes beyond Annie’s shoulder, quickly composing himself, but the historian didn’t notice this subtle change of posture.

“Good evening. Am I interrupting?” Kamilah’s voice showed up right beside Anna, her gorgeous features monopolizing every single eye on that group.

“Not at all. We were just chatting about work, how’s the project, the documents, the boss…” Annie also didn’t see how Paul and the others got tense over her words, since she could only stare at the one in silver beside her. “They want to meet Ms. Sayeed soon… But as I was saying, don’t get your hopes up, Paul. Besides being annoying, she’s never around. Never. Definitely not checking on us down in the basement.”

“Uhm… Well, I’m sure Ms. Sayeed probably has too many things to do… Right?” said the tall blond woman named Leah, a new archivist there. Her eyes flickered between Anna and Kamilah, unsure what to think of it.

“I seriously doubt it.”

“Why do you think that?” the Egyptian crossed her arms, dropping an amused glare over Anna. That was getting interesting.

“Well, come on, if this is so important to her, why haven’t I met the woman yet? She doesn’t even sign my paycheck, Mr. Raines does it. I bet she’s somewhere fancy right now, having a hot bath and laughing at the poor souls that have to deal with her freakin’ thousand emails every day.” Anna sighed tiredly, too much champagne in her system. “As I said before, a real pain in the ass. When you think you made progress, there comes Ms. Sayeed with a new order. I swear, there are days my phone buzzes so much, seems like it’s trying to jump from my pocket and commit suicide. That’s her thing, you know? Boss around. Not even a polite ‘thank you for working overtime today’. So yeah, the project is great, Mr. Raines and Kamilah here are both amazing, but throw away any ideas of bonding with Ms. Sayeed.”

“Ms. Sayeed, they’re ready for your speech.” They were interrupted by an elegant man in tuxedo who offered his hand to walk the Egyptian to the stage.

At first, Annie frowned in confusion.

Then, her eyes met Kamilah’s and all the pieces finally connected correctly. The company, the situation, when and how they met, what she said that night, why Ms. Sayeed was never introduced to her…

“Holy shit, I’m fucking the real boss.”

“You’re WHAT?” Paul dropped his chin.

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

“OH. NO.” Drake also dropped his chin, just like Paul did so many years ago. “OH NO, OH NO, OH NO”

“I was mad at her!” Annie tried to defend herself, cheeks getting redder by the second. “All I knew was that Ms. Sayeed would only text me orders. Never said ‘hi’, or something nice. Because the one who was saying something nice, in my understanding, was a different person!”

Kamilah couldn’t comment on it, since she was bursting into laughs. No story could make her laugh so much like that one. Slowly, she started to steady her breath, a hand placed over her own chest. By the window, Adrian was also cleaning the tears out of his eyes.

“Come on, mommy…” Lysia smiled kindly at the blushed woman on the floor. “Don’t mind them. We all love you the way you are. Continue the story.”

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

Anna had never wanted to burry herself on the ground that much in her entire life. She didn’t even hear the speech, the chock written all over the Brazilian’s face. Kamilah looked gorgeous under the spotlight, confident, professional. Surely was saying some pretty intelligent stuff too. Annie just couldn’t understand it, since she was momentarily deaf. Petrified. Half a glass of champagne still lingering between her fingers. At some point, the speech was over, but the historian only realized it when Adrian touched her back and whispered a request. She heard it, but apparently forgot every single word in English.

“Quê?”

“Dance with me, will you?” He asked again while gently leading her away from the group. Anna only realized what was happening by the time his hand held her waist and helped her to move around at the sound of a slow song. “Hey. Are you ok? Can you hear me?”

She nodded, not risking saying anything.

“Don’t beat yourself so much, Kamilah could’ve told you the truth long ago, but she was having too much fun with this little secret.”

“Huh.” That’s all her voice was able to project.

Adrian muffled a short laugh, bringing her closer and waltzing away from the others. In a couple minutes, they had escaped those curious eyes, approaching the corner of the ballroom, where he slowly diminished the steps to end the dance. “Now, I believe here you’re safe.”

Annie’s gaze wondered around, still lost in her thoughts. She only noticed Adrian had left when Kamilah’s voice echoed sensually by her ear, making the historian shiver and tense like a statue. Her eyes lifted to find brown ones intensely glaring at her.

“Good evening, Ms. Mali. My name is Kamilah Sayeed, and I’m the CEO of Ahmanet Financial. It’s a pleasure to finally meet the woman who’s leading my most important project. It has come to my attention that you have a few issues towards me and my… Bossy manners. However, it could only be a mistake since last night you seemed really comfortable following my orders in the bedroom.”

Anna bit her lower lip, still quiet.

“Oh, no words? Not a single complaint? What a pity, I was so longing to meet the dazzling historian who managed to criticize my thesis with no mercy.” Kamilah’s fingernails went down Annie’s back smoothly, not leaving marks behind. “Why don’t you come with me to the suite upstairs so we can discuss how many ways am I able to be a real pain in your ass?”

Without even waiting to hear a response, she slapped the historian’s butt before heading to the service elevator with a shining room card sticking out of her neckline.

Anna followed. Hypnotized. No questions asked.

Never again she complained about being bossed around by Ms. Sayeed.

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

“Aw, there’s a happy ending.” Drake’s arms were involving his fiancée’s waist, tightening. “So, maybe you were right, baby… They do have a much better love story.”

“Oh, but we’re not done, there is way more. A couple days after that, something terrible happened with Lily, so much changed, and I…” Annie scratcher her eyes for the third time.

That was it. Kamilah leaned down to take the woman in her arms. “It’s time to go to sleep, my love. We’ll tell them the rest on our next dinner, I promise.”

Anna didn’t even have the strength to resist. She was terribly tired, and her wife’s embrace was too damn comfortable. “Fiiiiiiine… Tomorrow night…”.

Adrian smiled fondly at them. With a silently nod and a good night kiss on Lysia’s forehead, he left to his own apartment. Drake and Lysia went to the guest room after cleaning up the table, while Kamilah slowly got up and took Annie into bed.

The historian mumbled something incomprehensible when was lay there.

“What, darling?” the vampire leaned down to hear it better, spooning Anna by instinct.

“I love you, Mrs. Sayeed.”

Kamilah smiled, turning her face to place a kiss on the girl’s temple.

“I love you too, Mrs. Sayeed.”

[altarflame]

Let me give you this real country music breakdown.

Keeping in mind that 2019 involved lots of gut wrenching transition, including divorce and selling my home of 11 years (the longest I’ve ever lived anywhere). Moving away from the tropics, to a place where the ocean is usually too far and my plants can’t live outside through the winter. I had a kid move out and away, for the first time.   My oldest friend also died last August, after a scant 3 month long battle with cancer. It was a real plague upon my proverbial dog, wife, and pickup truck. And, of course, I’m living through a pandemic, and a long overdue but very emotional racial justice uprising, with the rest of you, now. Anyway. OTHER than those things, my 2020 has been like...My sister’s gradually, gut wrenchingly cut off all contact with me over the past couple of years, culminating in the last couple of months, whenst we no longer speaketh at all. I’ve fought hard for this to be different and it’s still very sharp. I don’t think I’ll ever give up hope, or stop making a fool of myself about it. A new friend I was starting to really care about hung herself in April. I’ve tried to be there for her husband and 5 year old daughter when and how I can, which is honestly not much. I’ve taken several people who were scared to go alone, to her grave.  I felt forced to break up with the person I thought was my soul mate, these past 3 years, and wanted to be with forever, and I have grieved it hard over the last couple of months. I’m still processing this. I’m gonna be processing this for awhile. My threshold for being anywhere near him without overwhelming sobbing is apparently approximately 45 seconds. In the beginning we were scrambled together, mixed in a celestial bowl and hand fluffed with a feather. And the tears of bliss were not amiss - it was a good day.  But the story nears the present time Of restlessness and wake up calls Wake up! Years have flown fast but then who's counting The wars have been won but there's few left standing between us And the shadows of Christmas past... Critically acclaimed but sadly underrated - Fortune definitely favored us, but no one celebrated. Our wits were splitting at their ends... We gazed upon the city lights We each laughed aloud one final time and agreed: This is one thing we'll miss... On his way out, he sabotaged my part time foster child’s mom’s tenuous, fragile relationship with me, so I no longer have the ability to connect with or help that child who he brought into my life. Who I love and wonder about and periodically hear horror stories about via mutual friends. I bent over backwards, I burned calories straining for that trust between the mom and myself.  

It’s so terrible sometimes. It hurts so bad. Jean-Paul. LAURA.   *MILLS*  . Coralye. FUCK. This post brought to you with plenty of hard crying, and no shortage of echoing painful music. I’m physically sick about this shit semi often.  I don’t normally let go of anybody, guys. But certainly not my fucking nearest and dearest.  I have a lot. I have SO MUCH. I know this. I feel good a lot of the time.  I have all 5 of my kids under this roof while the pandemic rages on, and they’re all healthy and beautiful and they all love me and talk with me. It’s mostly all cake these days with them, Elise telling me where she is in her own solitary reading for pleasure, Ananda cracking me up, Jake biking to the grocery store for treats to share, Aaron showing me something amazing in the yard, Isaac washing dishes and giving me weirdly helpful and totally unanticipated advice. They’re almost no work now, it’s all return on investment and I have tons of privacy and I use the fuck out of it.  I’m deeply in love with somebody these past 7 months. Being deeply in new love AND devastated-heartbroken about lost love at the same time is honestly dizzying, I spent a first destitute day thinking maybe I can’t do polyamory anymore, period. Maybe this is too fucking much and I’m gonna be alone and focus on my career and my goddamned plants. (<--not fucking really, obv I am not gonna let the pain win and go full hermit. Brief compelling temptation, though.) My career and my plants are great, btw, thanks for asking. I’ve got basically my dream job, it’s flexible and lackadaisical AND meaningful and challenging, it’s salaried with bonuses and hella benefits and amazing job security. It’s the whole thing, the culmination of 6 years in school and unpaid internships and volunteering. I even have a spare PRN position elsewhere that I mostly hang on to because it’s fun when they want me to come make $200 for a shift, to mix it up a little.  And I have solo projects, writing and web and mental health, all in the works, and they’re good.  I have seedlings sprouting. I have a yard that is pure magic, revealing new secrets each day.  I’ve got some of my oldest people, like Jess. I’ve got some exciting new people, like Jill.  The love, did I mention it? Holy shit. I’ve got Sterling, and that is a whole other story. That it’s been this good while things are this bad is pretty astounding. His own drama quotient has been off the charts, too. I almost can’t imagine how wonderful it would be if we weren’t constantly adrift in a sea of bullshit, though I also strongly suspect we both need a certain staggering minimum quota of bullshit. It’s no accident that we met mutually chasing along after the wake of the same madman’s chaos. We’re nursing some deep wounds in each other, waking up some old old hurts and soothing them back down smaller and smaller. Anytime we’re touching it’s either syrupy soma sweet, blazing inferno hot, or a staggering blend of the two - and then we pull apart to try to actually speak with whole brains, and inevitably take turns being baffled, just hilariously relieved, at how easy it is to communicate. We alternate coming at each other on tiptoe, braced, and then feeling confused and just.... amused? Skeptical? that the other is totally able to empathize with what was just said and is accepting it gently.  We don’t have a ton of objective stuff in common, on paper. We’re both very wordy and linguistic, we’re analyzers, we draw unusual people who will feel safe telling us insane things. We’re both hypersexual perverts, chronic pickers, we both wear too much black. It doesn’t go a lot further than that at a glance. We both have PTSD and ironclad outward facing coping skills, nostalgia for the Florida Keys, scientific skepticism mixed with some faith in magic.... we were both brilliant children who felt pretty isolated. But I haven’t ever really felt like anyone is loving me the way I love people, before. I’ve never even felt like anyone else received my love, the same way I intended it, or at least not all of it. It’s like the intensity of what I’m conveying and meaning when I kiss somebody’s cheek, I dunno man, he experiences it. The goofy flowing sense I have, of holding hands, he comments on it all the time. I’m not just like.... alone, in my overwhelm with being touched, or my enthusiasm for sensations, and that is honestly pretty new to me. Sterling is not tolerating my affection for my sake, and I’m still gradually adapting to that with periodic backsliding into hesitance, and unneeded apologies. It’s like we’re totally fluent in the precise same love language, so nothing gets lost, and the feedback loop is instantaneous.  He’s dark inside, but dark like Nine Inch Nail’s A Warm Place. Dark like the womb.  So as I was saying. I have so much. Including a candle that’s about Mills, and is burning behind me, giving me this slipping sense that I need to blow it out, I need to reserve it, it’s gonna be gone soon. This one spans so many feelings, it’s been positive, some new candle would be what, voodoo? Meddling? I don’t know. This one’s been in a drawer, with our ring buried in it (my dragon). What will I do with that ring? What will I do with all this love?  How can I contain so much, anyway? Why can’t anything ever replace anything else? It’s like infinite space, and the empty places just keep throbbing, and it’s like I sprout new spots for new fullness and the cavities pulse on.  I’m deeply grateful for a certain self-completeness I’ve come to understand that I have, and that not everyone does. I am resiliant A-motherfucking-F (<--meta vulgar!). AND YET. OW OW OW.  I’m sitting here trying to exposure therapy my way through my Mills playlist, as I write this, so Spotify can’t surprise me into sads anymore. I’ve gotten already to a place where sometimes i remember positive things purely positively, and laugh and tell a story and it’s ok. I’m bitter as all hell that I can’t even talk to my sister about this breakup, after she had so many stupid goddamned feelings about the relationship itself, about polyamory in general, about ever knowing him (which might have allowed her to help me grieve at all).  Sigh. I love the internet, maybe feel free to send me a message if you’re still reading, whoever the fuck you are <3

[allthefilmsiveseenforfree]

Magnolia

I don’t know much about Magnolia or Paul Thomas Anderson, but I do know that it takes someone paying me to get me to watch a 3-hr+ drama that doesn’t star Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio, and a really big boat. This is one of my mom’s favorite movies which is why she requested it for me to review. It’s packed with a balls-to-the-wall star-studded cast (Tom Cruise! Julianne Moore! Phillip Seymour Hoffman! John C. Reilly! William H. Macy! Felicity Huffman!) and I’m genuinely excited to see how they all fit together. Cause they have to all fit together in some coherent way, right? Well...

Do you remember in Sorry to Bother You when the Equisapiens came out and things just took like...a real turn? That’s kind of what this was like. Whereas StBY pushed a thought to its most extreme, but logical, conclusion, what Paul Thomas Anderson has done here feels like a magician doing a lot of impressive illusions - sawing a lady in half, making a motorcycle disappear, pulling smaller things out of bigger things - and then for his final trick, walking onstage amidst a grand plume of smoke, dropping his pants, taking a gigantic shit, and then saying, “You’ve been a great audience, thanks a lot and goodnight!” It’s not like you can say the experience was BAD. Everything up to the finale was a really great time! But when you’re left on a note that is that bafflingly odd, it kinda colors the way you’ll remember the whole thing.

Magnolia is the story of one long day in the life of 12 people living in Los Angeles who are all connected via an extensive web from acquaintances to married couples to parents and children to paid caregivers and beyond. It’s a day that has the same kind of ups and downs as any other day until it, well, turns into something else entirely. I’m not sure how else to explain it, but if you want to know more, spoilers will be spoiled below.

Some thoughts:

Patton Oswalt cameo! I am a massive fan and thought I knew his whole filmography and OMG how did I not know that he was in this!!

Ok, in spite of my skepticism this entire opening sequence about coincidence had me hooked IMMEDIATELY. Like, this is some damn good storytelling, if this were a novel, I would not be able to put it down - that pull, that’s what it feels like.

Am I the only person whose encyclopedic memory of character actors/roles gets distracted when they see someone from something that is wildly disparate compared to the role you’re currently watching? For example, I had to pause the movie and confirm via IMDB that I did just see Professor Sprout from HP scream “Shut the fuck up!” at her husband while brandishing a shotgun.

Would people really recognize a grown ass man from being a successful child game show contestant? I’ll tell you the answer, no they wouldn’t, because no one realizes that Peter Billingsley (aka Ralphie from A Christmas Story) is the head of the elf production line in Elf.

I knew this was a stacked cast, but holy SHIT this is a stacked cast. If I had $1 for every fantastic character actor I recognize in this, I would have at least $37, and these are people in the film who have maybe 2-3 lines each. It’s a deep bench is what I’m saying.

This makes me miss Phillip Seymour Hoffman so, so very much.

Watching PSH care for and be so compassionate and gentle with his hospice patient, Earl (Jason Robards),makes my heart ache terribly. All of the people who have been unable to perform this kindness, this type of compassionate care for their closest loved ones as they lie dying in isolation of Covid...it’s overwhelming.

OMG I’m counting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Very Good Dogs in the old man’s house!

I know Scientology is evil and he’s undeniably a complicated and morally grey person. I know all that. But goddamn I just love watching Tom Cruise COMMIT. Particularly when he commits to just absolute fucking sleazebag slimeballs. And boy oh boy is Frank Mackey an absolute fucking sleazebag slimeball.

Related - I know Frank looks like Tom Cruise, so he could get people to sleep with him no matter what, but I honestly feel like as a human being, this flesh suit is WAY more attractive balding and fat in Tropic Thunder than he is in this shiny brown shirt/leather vest/long hair combo.

I’m getting an uncomfortable vibe about these black characters being written by an artsy white dude, because I don’t know any young black kids who want to hang around with cops and offer up information about who committed a murder in their building. In fact, the way all of the black characters are treated in this film - as liars, criminals, the disingenuous “main stream media,” and thieves - feels rooted in some racist ass bullshit. We see a lot of nuance in our white characters, but even in a film that has, shockingly, more than one key black role, we don’t get that spectrum or nuance.

There is nothing I would love more than to learn that Frank Mackey is 1) gay 2) impotent or 3) both. He’s so disgustingly over-the-top misogynistic, it honestly feels like it should all be a complete act.

I confess I am on the edge of my seat trying to figure out how all these narrative threads tie together. It’s compelling as hell, even though half the time I don’t know why these people are having these long, meandering conversations. The pacing feels so deliberate, like a puzzle coming together. There’s real craftsmanship in how every scene is plotted to feel connected rather than manic or disjointed.

This pharmacist is being unprofessional as hell. Judgy McJudgerson, mind your fucking business, Julianne Moore’s father is dying! [ETA: ope, that’s embarrassing, Earl is actually her husband.]

NO THE DOG IS EATING THE PILLS OH NO VERY CONCERNED ABOUT THE DOG.

I think I knew this, but this soundtrack is fantastic. All Aimee Mann and Supertramp, and Jon Brion’s score is this thrumming, anxious thing full of strings that underscore all these nervous conversations, and then it shifts into these low, mournful horns when things start to take a turn and everyone is reaching their lowest points.

I love this interviewer (April Grace) who is taking Frank (Tom Cruise) to task. I think it’s particularly noteworthy that she is a black woman, because the kind of misogyny Frank peddles is rooted in white supremacy.

Stanley (Jeremy Blackman) is breaking my goddamn heart here. I think he and Phil (PSH) are my favorite characters.

Jim (John C Reilly) is the perfect example of how even a cop with the best intentions, with absolute kindness and love is in heart, is abusing his power and sexually harassing a woman he encountered in the line of duty, who is eager to appease him because she doesn’t want to be charged with a crime. This movie reads a LOT differently than it did in 1999.

I normally really love Julianne Moore, but she is a screeching mess in this. I can’t stop staring at her mouth and all the contortions it makes as she delivers every line in hysterics. She’s one of the few weak spots for me here.

Listening to Frank go on his whole diatribe about what society does to little boys to break them and victimize them HAS to be the source of where Keith Raniere got at least half of his NXIVM bullshit. Like, some of these points are word-for-word.

Also if Frank makes as much money as he seems to, there’s no way he would drive a shitty Saturn sedan.

It feels like the common thread of this movie is everyone is terrible and cheats on their spouses, and you should come clean when you get cancer so you can die peacefully. Weird moral, but ok.

If Jim is a cop, how does he not see that this woman he’s interested in (Melora Walters) is coked out of her mind?

Y’know for being a quiz kid, Donnie (William H. Macy) sure is kinda stupid.

I confess I’m not taking many notes throughout this because I’m just kind of sitting breathlessly still watching all these conversations unfold because I am on the edge of my fucking seat to find out how all this is gonna come together.

Secret MVP of this movie is the mom from A Christmas Story (Melinda Dillon) who is giving the performance of her goddamn life as Jimmy Gator’s wife.

Did I Cry? On the surface it appears ridiculous, but when Tom Cruise is having his breakdown at his dying father’s bedside, I admit, that really got me. If you’ve ever been faced with that kind of hysterical, I-can’t-believe-this-is-happening, it feels like the whole world is ending kind of shock and hurt and anger, that’s what the crying looks like.

Are those......frogs?? That landed on Jim’s car? It’s raining fucking frogs???? OK for those of you sensitive to frog harm, this movie is going to take a real hard left turn for you, because I swear that came out of NOWHERE.

Um.

What.

Pray tell.

The fuck.

The climax of this movie - is when literal frogs rain from the sky.

And we finally got resolution about the dog, and the dog DID die, and I’m pissed about it. It’s offscreen but still.

I'm sorry - I know I’m fixating. But how is it possible that I knew about all the characters performing a sing-along to Aimee Mann’s (excellent) song “Wise Up” but I did NOT know that the climax of the film involves literally thousands of frogs falling to their death from the sky? How is that something that escapes entry into the cultural zeitgeist? I’m with it, you guys. I have been Very Online for over a decade, and before that, I read a lot of Entertainment Weekly, and like it just seems that this is something that pop culture really should have told me.

I think the funniest moment of this movie might be the credits in which I discovered that not only is Luis Guzman playing a man named Luis, he’s actually playing himself. I don’t know why, but I can’t stop laughing about it. That was a 189-minute setup to one dumb punchline.

I think I loved this movie but I don’t quite know. The frog thing really threw me. What I’m taking away from it is that even when it doesn’t feel like it or seem like it, we are all connected to each other, always, in ways we can’t see or know. As Wife astutely pointed out, it’s reminiscent of the pandemic - we’re all in the same storm, but we each have our own boats and our own experiences within that storm. And it’s kind of nice to remember that right now, that connection still exists even when it feels so far away. Just not if you’re a frog I guess, cause they really got the short end of the stick here.

If you liked this review, please consider reblogging or subscribing to my Patreon! For as low as $1, you can access bonus content and movie reviews, or even request that I review any movie of your choice.

[cheshasleverage]

The Miracle Job Rewatch

Wow it sure took me a while to watch this episode damn. Also I’m gonna start putting these under read mores because they’re too long

Anyways, I think I understand why they might’ve switched the Two Horse Job with The Wedding Job, on account of it would explain why Nate is ordained and can marry off a couple without anyone questioning the validity of it

If we think about it going in the order it was supposed to though, with Nate marrying off the couple before telling the team he was a priest (or was going to be anyways) its kind of funny because that means the team didn’t care about its validity and just wanted to get the con over with

The mural in the church though, it’s gorgeous. The statue? can’t stop laughing at his little Y arms

The priest is definitely a guy Nate would be friends with, what with his humor and all

Listen I’m not religious and I know this is a running theme throughout the episode but seriously who beats up a priest, or any holy man for that matter? Unless the guys a fucking asshole I understand but come on

How did Sophie get that role? Knowing her the actual cast member dropped out or something and she jumped on the chance to play

Eliot playing Russian roulette with a bunch of criminals is somehow not as bad as watching Sophie’s play and I want to think he’s just exaggerating to get his point across but also Death of a Salesman is almost 2 and half hours long so maybe it really was that bad (either way I think Eliot needs to lighten up on Sophie)

Ok Ok, smooth Nate really smooth

Do you think Nate actually watched the play? He probably already knows the premise of Death of a Salesman so he can cover his ass if he fell asleep but the way he was watching Sophie in the first episode makes me think that maybe he is just fascinated with watching how her version plays out

First mention of Maggie, and with Sophie’s tone and with what we already know, we can kind of figure out that whatever she’s telling Nate is important and that the client is possibly connected to Nate (great writing tbh)

“You read the police report?” “Yeah, I do that.” 

The back and forth with Nate being All Business and Paul trying to get him to tell him if it had been Maggie he was talking to is very.... telling of how Nate feels about his “job” and his old life. Nate lost everything, including the wife he really loved, and now he’s driven himself into the ground trying to do anything that might distract him from what happened to Sam and his old life basically. 

I never realized before but parker has probably never actually experienced church or interacted with any religion in a....... religious way

Nate trying desperately to convince the team to help out his old friend like they hadn’t already helped out Sophie’s against the mob, or like they wouldn’t be all over it after learning some dudes jumped a priest. 

They have better hearts than I think themselves, and Nate, give them credit for

They were fully prepared for Nate! Hardison knew he was gonna start asking about who wanted the church and got signs of each place.

“I don’t do gangs” Do you think this is the episode that Hardison started to learn how to defend himself from attackers?

oof, look at how happy and proud Nate looks. That little boy was his life

This scene really drives home the fact that Hardison and Eliot have had very different experiences in life. While Hardison has mainly done cons behind the safety of his hacking and never really had to fight anyone, Eliot has done this before. He knows where gangs have their hideouts, he knows walking into their turf will draw them out, he knows they’ll pull guns or knives etc.

Side note: Eliot grabbing that dudes gun and holding it down his pants while he interrogates them? kind of hot ngl

“A specific range of efficacy” Yeah ok sure, he hates them because most inexperienced people use them in the least effective range instead of the fact that he’s probably got PTSD 

ANYWAYS DISARMING THAT DUDE WITH A HEADBUTT IS KIND OF HOT ALSO

However, Hardison freaking out is exactly how I would feel in that situation, mainly because I (and Hardison) realize that Eliot is there and after seeing what Eliot can do there’s very little chance he would let anything happen

What was that move, Hardison? Did he shove him??

Hey, at least he noticed that dude was acting weird. He’s very observant and picks up on a lot of things which helps out when he’s hacking

“Somebody’s gotta fight the injured, shoot that’s my niche”

Can we talk about how Eliot keeps looking back? Like he’s expecting a gunshot, whether it’s at the gang member or at them

God when the team is going hard against someone they really go hard. First smacking him with wood and changing his pills, then dumping his assistant on the floor to get him alone in an elevator

“You gave speed?” Hardison’s half-assed attempt to make an excuse for Parker because he did beat up a priest but also, speed?

Parker is so smart. Like, especially when she’s doing anything involving stealing but there are moments like this where she comes up with an elegant way of saying “let's ruin this dude”. 

I peg Hardison for being agnostic. Or something along those lines. Mainly because I feel somewhat similarly toward what they’re doing. Cus there’s a difference between taking advantage of someone’s greeds/fears vs taking advantage of their religion and faith

DID PARKER REALLY DRAW BLOOD FROM HIM

Sophie is vicious. I think they all are in their own way but Sophie gets next to her mark, gets cozy and they trust her and then she turns around and uses them for her con

1) Hardison is an amazing artist 

2) Eliot’s got a point because at 10 feet when you’re not moving and your target is standing still, you should have time to aim and hit it

Alright so digging in: Nate harbors guilt over Sam’s death and the falling apart of his marriage..... and his little game of cat and mouse with Sophie. He never cheated on Maggie, there may have been some flirting but he was honest and never slept with Sophie or anyone else, and I highly doubt Sophie ever tried to push him to sleep with her knowing he was married. But he still feels guilty because, well come on, one guilt piles on another and soon it’s snowballing. He’s thinking about every little mistake, whether Maggie cared about it or not, and wondering if he could’ve done things differently, how would things have turned out?

Sophie, on the other hand, knows he was honest, knows there’s nothing he should be feeling guilty about, at least not when it comes to what they had before the team. Maybe she harbors some envy toward Maggie, but she’s also in a very unstable and unsure spot. She doesn’t know where she stands with Nate personally, only professionally as a grifter on his team. And maybe she does feel somewhat guilty, but she’s trying to lessen the burden that Nate’s put on himself (not that she’s supposed to do that, and it’s another reason I’m glad the writers pushed off their romance)

You know you fucked up when the Vatican rolls up

(now I wanna see a job that takes place in/near the Vatican where the team has to avoid the Vatican and try not to get themselves smited for another fake miracle because Hardison, Parker, and Eliot booked it as soon as they heard the Vatican)

Paul really nailed Nate. At this point, Nate is an alcoholic and he’s depressed, like severely. Nate is using this team as a way to maybe redeem some part of himself, and possibly end him in a way that’s well.... it either does some good for someone or it ruins his reputation

I also wonder if Nate ever did go back before they moved. Maybe just once or twice, even if it was just to talk to Paul. 

Also very clever to use Saint Nicholas. After digging around (googling about him) I found out he’s technically the patron saint of repentant thieves

[newbi-ginning]

The day I came out to Her

Gather round for a heartwarming tale about the day I came out to my wife that I was a bisexual man.

Seriously. It’s sweet. I wish more people were as lucky as I am.

Background...  a few months ago, we had been talking about threesomes, and that working from my desire for her to be comfortable with her needs, I said it was ok with me if she wanted to try sex with another woman, without me present, or with me in another room, available for emotional support. I didn’t want her to be under any pressure to perform for me. I was also ok if we wanted to try an MMF threesome, as straight MMF play was something she had described to me in one of her fantasies.

You see... I had assumed, incorrectly, that she was bi-curious or bi-flexible based on some things she had said. And while she could absolutely understand where I misunderstood her, she said she didn’t have any desire to go down on another woman, any more than I had a desire to go down on any man. (Oh, how surprised I would be on that account!) She also wasn’t very comfortable with threesomes, but would think about it. She wasn’t saying no, just not yet.

We talked a bit more, mostly on the Kinsey scale, and while it isn’t perfect, it was good for our discussion. We both agreed that we were 0.5s. Put the right dick (for me) or pussy (for her) in front of us, and importantly, the right person attached to those parts, and either of us could probably go for it, if we had permission from the other. I wasn’t going to push it. If she didn’t have any interest, that was that. Unless consent was enthusiastic, we would stay right where we were.

I told her that I appreciated her honesty, and that I wasn’t hurt that the kind of MFF threesome I had fantasized about was not in our future, and reassured her that my wanting something was a lot different from needing something that she couldn’t give. I also said that it meant a lot that she hadn’t reacted negatively to my being on the edge of bisexuality, as it was much more socially acceptable to be a bi woman than a bi man. Of course, that itself was a mixed bag, due to the fetishization of bi women in the media. She didn’t care what was socially acceptable, though. 

If our interests were swapped, bros would absolutely be trying to give me high fives and propositioning her or us for sex. Not as likely for what our future will hold now, but that is not acceptable either way.

Fast forward several months... I was watching Netflix’s GLOW, which is campy as hell, fun, but has a lot of sucker punches for those of us who lived through the 80s... and still see the holes left by those that didn’t survive. 

***Spoilers for 3rd season of GLOW, which you honestly should have watched already, and for 1st and 2nd seasons, too, I suppose.***

There is this scene towards the end of the third season where Rhonda (stage name Britannica) tries to reignite the flame of her very convenient and very recent marriage to Bash (the producer of the women’s wrestling show), not through communication, but games and deception. She hires another wrestler’s boyfriend (also a gigolo/sex worker) to just be in their room to play the part of a hotel plumber, who is so very good with his hands, chatting and flirting when Bash comes back at the end of the day, which she expects to make him jealous enough to stop sexually neglecting her. 

We know that Bash is pursued by men and women alike, that he has some homophobic responses to some of those men, and that his butler/best friend Florian has died from AIDS related pneumonia, so what happens next is not completely unexpected. How it progresses was. 

Bash seems nonplussed (that glorious word that means both annoyed and not annoyed at the same time) by this, and suggests that Paul the Plumber kiss his wife, touch her, caress her. I liked how this was going, and really hoped it wasn’t going towards cuckoldry roleplay, as GLOW does tend to drop current buzzword topics into scripts, but I just don’t like that dynamic. No shade on those that do. Rhonda seems to melt at finally getting the affection she has been needing, despite being unsure where this is going.

The bedroom is where this is going, at Bash’s suggestion, where Bash and Paul make a Rhonda sandwhich. Both men kiss Rhonda... then each other... and then put their hands down each others very 80s underwear. Rhonda is a little confused, but she rolls with it as the scene ends.

Except, it wasn’t weird. Just surprising. 

Moment of clarity.

I wanted Rhonda and/or Paul. 

The story continues, and takes a very 80s turn, because this side of Bash scares him. He doesn’t want to die like Florian did. We don’t know if Bash is bi or gay at this point, and I’m not certain that Bash knows. I hope he develops as bi, and that he and Rhonda can have a good relationship, especially as the 80s progress and people better understand how to safely be themselves.

***Spoilers over***

The entire scene showed me something. I was bi. Like I said, moment of clarity. Couldn’t argue with that. A lot of stuff made sense.

I spent the next two weeks grappling with this (and my erection), read some, watched a couple youtube clips on what being bi meant, and watching a lot of bisexual male porn. Which I really liked. A lot. I fantasized about a lot of man on man fun, and how much fun it would be to share a man with Her. I read up on safer same sex. 

And about a week ago, when She asked how my day had been, and mischievously asked if I wanted to share anything sexy with her. I decided that this was as good of an opening as I would have, and I didn’t want to hide this from her any longer than I needed to. It hadn’t gone away like previous urges had. It was fully formed and it was real.

So I said, “Maybe. Can we do facetime?”

Yeah. Facetime. 

Maybe I hadn’t mentioned that I’m putting the finishing touches on our house before we sell it, and She is living in another city, since Her job there has already started? This might seem a bit fucked up, dropping a bomb like this on video chat instead of face to face, but I believed in us.

I told her that I had seen a really hot porn scene (the Glow connection had slipped my mind at this point), and followed it down a bit of a rabbit hole, and that this did not change anything about my commitment to her, but the scene included two guys fooling around. And I had realized that I was bisexual. 

I hadn’t done anything, but that didn’t matter. Bisexuality is about attraction and desire, not actions. A gay person can be a virgin, and if I never have sex with another guy, I’m still bisexual. 

She said that was fine. She loved me, and this didn’t change that. We were strong, and that she accepted me unconditionally

Yeah. She really is that wonderful. I had expected that result, but after about an hour of discussion, not instantly.

I continued to say that watching a guy suck another guy’s dick was really hot, and - 

She interjected, “Well, yeah! Of course it is!”

I knew that there were a couple bi MMF scenes she had talked about being really sexy in various shows she had watched, Sense8 was one, and that she occasionally watched gay porn, and liked it. I just didn’t realize that she thought gay porn could be as hot as I thought lesbian porn could be (and yes, we both realize how problematic it is to consume porn that reduces wlw to entertainment for men, or mlm for women).

Checking to make sure that I hadn’t lost my teeth, I continued. 

I wanted to try giving oral to another man, but not without her permission, as safely as possible, and preferably with her present for emotional support and/or even to join in to whatever extent she was comfortable with. 

She said that she definitely wanted to talk more about it, and that this conversation needed to be truly face to face, but that she would support me, and wanted me to be fulfilled as a person. Until then, I was expected to keep my hands, mouth, and dick to myself. She did say that with love in her voice, but we understood each other. It would hurt her if I went outside our relationship without talking about it. 

And then she said, “Love is love.”

We have talked for hours every day since (so nothing has changed there), and the day that we list the house is getting closer. She says that I’m sounding happier, more confident, and she loves hearing what I’m learning about myself. She has started looking for support groups for spouses of bi people in our new city, and promptly rejected the Straight Spouse Network as coming across as way too toxic and fatalistic from its website. She wants this to work, and I do to. 

And we will.

I’m not just with someone that I want to be with more than all the other women in the world. 

I want to be with her more than everyone else, man, woman, or GNC person. 

I know that not everyone will have a first coming out as positive as this, but we hear about bad ones, and my fellow bisexuals are more likely to be in the closet than most other parts of the rainbow, and have higher rates of mental illness and self harm than gay and lesbian people. The closet is a coffin for us, too. Being as out as you safely can be will show people that biphobia is just as groundless as homophobia. 

I’m not ready to be completely out. That will happen with time. But there are people that are at the top of my list. She wants to be with me as I begin that process, in case anything doesn’t go well. I’m strong, but sometimes a bit delicate.

We still won’t be welcome in many circles, especially conservative and religious ones. And some LG parts of the LGBTQ+ family will still push us away, and I’ll never tell someone that doesn’t feel safe around men that they have to put up with me in their space (I’ll go stand somewhere else, but I AM coming to community events that are open to bi people). 

I’m as much a part of the larger community as they are, and for each of us that is out, it makes it safer for others to be out. It shows we are trustworthy. We aren’t dangerous. We aren’t any more likely to cheat than straight people are. We aren’t spreading STIs. We just see more potential partners in the world than they might. This difference is part of life. 

Viva la difference!

[followthecreeper]

Rammstein Tag Game!

Rules: - Tag the person who tagged you, so they know. - Put your answers under the questions. - Tag as many awesome people as you want. - Feel free to do it if you weren’t tagged! Here we go!

tagged by @062467, thank you dear :) idk who to tag though, so if you haven’t done this yet, feel free to tag yourselves! :D

1. If you get a chance to take a photo with your favorite member, would you like them to smile, make an interesting pose, be serious or something else?

My favourite member is Paul... I'd want him to make one of his silly faces :D

2. If you could choose only one of the previous live performances to go to, which one would you choose?

I'd wanna see their first ever show. I feel like that would be lots of fun. 

3. How old were you when Sehnsucht came out? (1997)

23 months exactly lol

4. Which era (their appearance/look) do you think was the best?

Hmmm I like them all but I think perhaps Reise Reise?

5. What’s your desired relationship with Frau Schneider? (wife, mother, etc.)

Sugar mama. Nothing sexual about it, she'd just come visit me, give me a sexy frown and a handful of money.

6. Which hairstyle suits each member the best in your opinion?

Paul: He always looks good, but I am very fond of “the chicken”

or the “classic messy landers whatever”

Till:

but i also wanna mention this look, there’s something about blond till with piercings that makes me happy

Richard:

Flake: 

blond punk or redhead punk

Oliver: his usual afro

Schneider: 

7. Which of the members do you think you’d get along with the best and why?

I think Paul because we we’re both silly dumbasses

8. Which of the members do you think you’d get along with the least and why?

I like to think I could get along with all of them, but I guess Till? Like i love him but i feel like we’re pretty different and i’m not even sure what we would talk about lol

9. Who of the members would you like to see singing with Till?

Well I may be biased but the more singing Paul we get the better.

10. Which band’s song would you wish to see as a cover by Rammstein?

lady gaga’s born this way

11. Who of the members would make the best dad?

I’d say Schneider?

12. If you got the chance to interview Rammstein, what would you ask them?

Till: i’d ask him to recommend me some poetry

Reesh: what is the hardest thing you’ve ever had to learn to play on the guitar... also how many belts do you own dude

Paul: hOW MANY FRECKLES DO YOU HAVE (nah i’d ask him to recommend me some kind of coffee lol)

Ollie: 

i would show him this picture and: please explain

Schneider: idk i would just ask him some random shit about his drums and then watch him stutter about bananas

Flake: what came first, the dinosaur or the egg

13. Would you consider of doing a nude scene in Rammstein’s music video? (just you appearing nude, nothing too nsfw)

probably not, i am not exactly comfortable with nudity

14. If you could remake a movie(s) so that the main role is played by one of the members, which movie(s) would you like to remake?

i wanna see paul as bilbo baggins or frau schneider in any superhero movie

15. Who of the members would make the best husband?

schneider maybe?

16. You can put eyeliner on one of the members, who do you pick?

they all look great with eyeliner but i’ll go with paul

17. Who of the members would make the creepiest uncle?

flake, the uncle who gives you weird looks, has a guy fuck him on stage and talks about socialism all the time

18. What do you think about the “Pussy” music video?

it’s pretty funny but i’ve only watched it a few times, too porny for me lol

19. If you could travel somewhere with Rammstein and pick a destination, where would you go?

i’d ask them to give me a tour around berlin

20. Who of the members would be the best to get drunk with?

PAUL

21. Could you sing Engel with Till in front of thousands?

yeeees

22. With which member would you agree to swap clothes with and with which one would you definitely not?

there’s no one i wouldn’t switch clothes with... i’d go with reesh because he wears a lot of weird shit and it would be HILARIOUS (also, reesh in my clothes? even better)

23. Which of the members do you think would win in a stripping competition?

RICHARD Z KRUSPE

24. Which of the following would you rather be?

- Rammstein’s manager - Rammstein’s make up artist i mean obviously, if i was their manager i’d go insane after a week and i am too tiny to be a bodyguard - Rammstein’s bodyguard

25. Which of the members would make the best best friend?

I guess Paul

26. Which Rammstein song do you skip on your shuffle? (There must be that one song you just don’t need at the moment)

I tend to skip Amerika and Du Hast because i’ve heard them soooo many times

27. What would you do if Paul made a bad joke about you? (With good intentions but slightly rude)

I would make a bad joke about him too

28. Who would you give a stuffed animal and who a leather thong for their birthday? XD

Animal to Paul, thong to Till

29. Are you concerned about anything that has to do with Rammstein?

I am concerned that one day I will have to witness the end of Rammstein... I started listening to them as a kid, they have been here my whole life. What the hell will I do without them? But hey, that’s still hopefully far in the future, no use worrying about it.

30. Would you like to get a tattoo that refers to Rammstein?

Hmmm I am not sure if a band tattoo is something I’d go for. If so, it would probably be lyrics or something subtle, certainly not a logo or their faces.

31. Would you pet Oliver’s head?

Does Richard like showing off his butt?

32. Which position in Rammstein do you find the hardest to be? (for example: the frontman, drummer, bassist etc.)

I guess the frontman, sometimes I feel sorry for Till, all this shit seems to be taking a toll on him.

33. If you could have one of the members with you in school/work to protect you from evil, who would you take?

Till. Have you seen his arms

34. If you were in one of the boys position, would you feel awkward or strange when you see your face on a giant poster?

hmm i’d find it weird but also kinda hilarious

35. Would you Flake dance with Flake on stage?

THAT’S MY DREAM

36. Do you think any of the songs are underrated or overrated and why?

overrated - none... i mean we’ve all heard du hast a million times, but it IS a good song, so... i think all their songs are great and deserve attention

underrated - dalai lama, spring, spiel mit mir, donaukinder, vergiss uns nicht

37. Who of the members would make the best breakfast?

Reesh wanted to become a cook, right? Let’s go with Reesh lol

38. Would you like them to make a song in your native language? (If they haven’t already)

omg i would love that

39. Which Rammstein couple combinations do you ship?

look when i see paul and richard being soft with each other, it makes me feel soft

40. Would you join Richard in his spray tanning hour?

i don’t wanna be tan, sorry Reesh

41. What Rammstein possession are you most fond of? (merchandise, album or other)

i have a hat signed by Paul and a book signed by Flake! :)

42. Favorite song performed live?

Mein Teil or Weisses Fleisch maybe

43. Would you dare to touch Frau Schneider’s hair?

Only if she gave me permission

44. Rammstein with beard? Yes/No

A bit of beard is ok... except for Flake i guess

45. Which of the members would be the best for playing video games with?

Paul (do i say paul too often? wtv)

46. Red haired Rammstein or blonde Rammstein?

both is good

47. Favorite interview with one or all Rammstein members?

THE METAL INJECTION INTERVIEW WITH PAUL. He is so adorable. Honorable mention: revovo.

48. Would you Till hammer with Till on stage?

Does Paul Landers have a beautiful smile?

49. Your favorite feature in each member?

Paul: HIS SMILE and those lil wrinkles and his voice  Schneider: hair and those arms Flake: voice  Till: them muscles  Oliver: eyes Richard: idk how to put it, like, his body language? like i love the way he sits and walks and shakes his butt and always has to do stuff with his hands... also his laughter

50. If you could write a letter to Rammstein what would you write?

actually i don’t think i’d want to write a letter to them because let’s be honest, what would i say - “thank you, you music is very important to me, i’ve been a lifelong fan”? they’ve heard that a million times already... i’d much rather meet them in person and just chill with them 

[racingtoaredlight]

Degenerate’s guide to college football season 2018 week 8 tv watch ‘em ups

I’m not about to make this a Michigan Wolverines blog but I’ve got to say it warms my heart the way Jim Harbaugh has risen back up in the rankings after being left for dead a few weeks ago. And now he’s facing the football avatars of the sickly Michigan State University so I kind of feel a pull towards rooting him on.

I can’t do that. I would be murdered by my wife and her family. But I might do it.

There’s other stuff happening but with Navy and Miami both effectively dead in the water I’ve already fallen into the mode of only hoping for chaos. There are so many teams that I wish ill upon.

See below for details!

Times are eastern. You can guess whatever else. I might be around to watch with you and I might be outside taking advantage of temperate weather in the desert.

Saturday, October 20

Matchup                                           Time (ET)                 TV/Mobile

Auburn at Mississippi                    12:00pm                     ESPN

Mercifully this one gets rid of itself quickly. Both these teams are bad and the rumors they are a-flyin that Gus Malzahn has all but announced his retirement. Or quitting or whatever. I don’t know if he means to quit coaching altogether or just wants out of Auburn. The racist south lost their best player but he’s a WR and they have three more superstars in that position group. Expect everything to happen and all of it to be inexplicable.

Buffalo at Toledo                             12:00pm             ESPN+ / WGRZ

If things break a certain way, Tyree Jackson could be the #1 quarterback in the 2019 draft. I think he’s probably third at best but somebody could really fall for his potential. Is he closer to Josh Allen as a prospect than he is to Andrew Luck? Absolutely. But imagine the delightful disaster that could be the Giants taking him in the top 10 and then thrusting him into starting duties before he’s ready. The franchise could never recover and isn’t that what we all want? The line has swung towards Buffalo to the point where they’re now favored. Maybe don’t bet this one, though.

20 Cincinnati at Temple                   12:00pm                    ESPNU

Things are setting up nicely for Luke Fickell to return to Ohio State as head coach.

Illinois at 23 Wisconsin                    12:00pm                       FS1

Paul Chryst has a whole season he needs to resurrect if he’s going to live up to his surname. To start he needs to beat the spread against shitty Illinois and that means he needs to beat the hell out of Illinois. The betting public does not trust him to do so but I sort of do. Wisconsin by 40.

Maryland at 19 Iowa                          12:00pm                     ESPN2

The most depressing healthcare story in football comes to the most heartwarming stadium in football and hell if it doesn’t seem like Maryland is the better team, records aside. The spread is shrinking and so is the over under. I don’t feel safe predicting much for either team in terms of outcome but 44 total points? That looks like free money.

Miami (Ohio) at Army                         12:00pm                   CBSSN

This game is crap.

6 Michigan at 24 Michigan State        12:00pm                     FOX

The capacity is limitless for each of these teams to fuck up to the point where you’re not sure whether they mean to play football or not. If I were you and you were betting, I as you would take Michigan State to cover +7.5 and pound the under (40.5.) 

Northwestern at Rutgers                     12:00pm                      BTN

Holy hell this is almost a MAC game.

9 Oklahoma at TCU                              12:00pm                      ABC

Wouldn’t that just be so Gary Barnett to beat Oklahoma right now and kind of fuck over the Big XII Conference. Oklahoma fired their DC last week and here they are favored by 7.5 on the road with an O/U of 61.5. The average total of a Big XII conference game is 94.3.

Tulsa at Arkansas                                 12:00pm                      SECN

Arkansas has started showing signs of life and I don’t know why and I really don’t know why they’re playing Tulsa right now.

North Carolina at Syracuse                  12:20pm               Raycom Sports

If you are unaware, the ACC is full of bad teams this year. UNC might just be the worst of the bunch. So of course they’re going to beat Syracuse today.

Virginia at Duke                                      12:30pm                RSN/ESPN3

The straggler of the early slate is a soul crusher just by listing the teams. UVA is coming off a big upset of Miami that has the Miami faithful, er, questioning their faith. Duke has only 1 loss and a terrible QB who has an odd distribution of hype.

Bowling Green at Ohio                           2:00pm                      ESPN3

Good job by Bowling Green to be bold in a bad situation by firing their coach. 1-11 just feels better without all the extra questions.

Idaho State at Liberty                              2:00pm                      ESPN3

Go Idaho State.

Florida Atlantic at Marshall                     2:30pm                   CBSSN/FB

Luther Campbell’s favorite coach is favored in the road for reasons unknowable. Bet on Marshall here.

Utah State at Wyoming                            2:30pm                      ATTSN

Utah State is a darling of computer rankings and they’re favored by 14 against Wyoming. I’ve got no advice to pair with these things.

Charlotte at Middle Tennessee                3:00pm                      ESPN3

I defy any one of you to offer a cogent expression of expectations for this game.

Eastern Michigan at Ball State                 3:00pm                      ESPN+

Look at all this stupid goddamn MAC football.

Western Michigan at Central Michigan    3:00pm                      ESPN+

At least it’s all happening at once and I won’t see it.

Akron at Kent State                                    3:30pm                      ESPN+

None of it.

1 Alabama at Tennessee                           3:30pm                        CBS

Tennessee got their first conference win in 2 years last week and this week they’ll be slaughtered.

Coastal Carolina at UMass                         3:30pm                     ES/NESN

This is an absolutely perfect weekend to skip football watching.

Colorado at 15 Washington                        3:30pm                        FOX

This is an OK game but it shouldn’t be a contender for best of the week. Brutal slate of games.

Houston at Navy                                           3:30pm                   CBSSN

Ed Oliver had 5 TFL, including 2 sacks, last week. You’d think that would be tough to duplicate against a Navy team that never throws but in two previous games against the Middies Oliver has 25 total tackles, 5 TFL and 2 sacks. He’s a defensive tackle. I understand why he isn’t going #1 overall next year but he should probably go #1 overall next year.

16 NC State at 3 Clemson                               3:30pm                     ESPN

GAME OF THE WEEK! CONTRACT THE ACC!

18 Penn State at Indiana                                  3:30pm                      ABC

I’m not just saying this because I hate Penn State - that 14.5-point line is mighty tempting to bet the Hoosiers. I wouldn’t take Indiana to win but that’s a lot of points to give at home against a team that hasn’t really played up to their rep so far this season.

Kansas at Texas Tech                                       3:30pm                       FS1

My prediction is lots and lots of turnovers from both teams and a final score that’s very disappointing for anybody that roots for and/or bets for the Kansas Jayhawks.

Louisiana at Appalachian State                       3:30pm                     ESPN+

Minnesota at Nebraska                                      3:30pm                     BTN

Our collective dream of an 0-12 season for the Cornhuskers is going to get a serious challenge this week from a pretty bad Minnesota team that isn’t so far away from questioning their own expensive coaching hire.

SMU at Tulane                                                      3:30pm                  ESPNU

The fuccponi’s travel to New Orleans for a debauch and a football game. As far as gambling I wouldn’t touch this one but if you want to see some interesting offensive concepts get in now on Tulane’s modern-ish twist on an option offense. They don’t have any high level talent to speak of but somebody with more to spend is going to scoop up Willie Fritz in the near future.

UTEP at LA Tech                                                  3:30pm                   ESPN+

You aren’t going to see Louisiana Tech favored by 24 over a lot of teams but UTEP isn’t just any shitty team.

Wake Forest at Florida State                               3:30pm                   ESPN2

Florida State is a lot closer to being good again than most people realize. Vegas has noticed and has FSU favored by 10 this week. The rest of you will notice when they beat Notre Dame next week.

California at Oregon State                                    4:00pm                Pac-12N

This is a great Pac-12 After Dark game that is seriously undermined by an early  afternoon start.

Memphis at Missouri                                             4:00pm                    SECN

Drew Lock versus Darrell Henderson in a key RTARL-American cross conference matchup.

Georgia Southern at New Mexico State     6:00pm     11 Sports / AggieVision

SEE FOOTBALL THROUGH THE EYES OF AN AGGIE WITH INCREDIBLE NEW AGGIEVISION VR GLASSES!

22 Mississippi State at 5 LSU                               7:00pm                    ESPN

This is the kind of shit game you can set your watch to. Both of these teams are ranked and, I guess, deservedly so. But that doesn’t mean you should expect good football out of them. Montez Sweat is one of the best players in the country this year and he’s somehow going to get 3 sacks in this game but also lose by 15. Yep, I’m predicting an 18-3 final score.

Texas State at ULM                                                7:00pm                    ESPN3

They got the degenerate part down pat for this one.

10 UCF at East Carolina                                         7:00pm                  ESPN2

The nation’s longest winning streak gets tested by... Whatever. Sometimes ridiculous things happen and ECU winning wouldn’t compare to Old Dominion brutalizing Virginia Tech a couple of weeks ago in terms of insane upsets.

  UConn at 21 USF                                                    7:00pm                   CBSSN

USF and UCF are barreling towards a huge end-of-season showdown and UConn shouldn’t really put up much of a fight here. The Bulls are favored by 32.5 at home and it would honestly be a big disappointment if they don’t beat the spread. One of my favorite things each week the last couple of seasons has been seeing the hilarious final scores of UConn games.

UTSA at Southern Miss                                          7:00pm                   ESPN+

I don’t like this ESPN+ nonsense one bit. Because I haven’t ever figured out what the hell it is and a game like this screams out for the CBS Sports or FOX regional treatment.

Fresno State at New Mexico                                   7:30pm                  ESPNU

ESPNU, on the other hand, I understand. This trash is in its perfect place as a game you put on the tablet to stare at some bullshit while whatever you actually are watching is at commercial.

North Texas at UAB                                                  7:30pm        beIN SPORTS

Oh, hell yes. This is beautiful. I’m rolling with the UNTs +1.5 and over 54.5.

2 Ohio State at Purdue                                             7:30pm                ABC

I find Ohio State football to be deeply and eternally unsatisfying. I can’t count on them to win or lose the way I like. Oh, well, as long as Dwayne Haskins keeps racking up 5 or 7 passing TDs a game they can do whatever the hell they want in every other facet.

Old Dominion at WKU                                               7:30pm              ESPN+

If ODU can finish 1-11 this season we are all winners.

12 Oregon at 25 Washington State                           7:30pm               FOX

I hate the national scheduling making this start in daylight hours but I love everything else about this game. Both QBs were on the RTARLsman list this week as one is the legitimate best QB in the country and the other is leading the country in most counting stats.

Rice at FIU                                                                   7:30pm               ESPN+

Holy crap does Rice suck. This is better left out of sight out of mind.

Vanderbilt at 14 Kentucky                                          7:30pm               SECN

Kentucky being ranked in football is unnatural and bad and I hope it stops soon.

USC at Utah                                                                 8:00pm               Pac-12N

No idea what to expect from either team and I still don’t think of it as a conference game but I find these two uniforms to be aesthetically pleasing.

Arizona at UCLA                                                         10:30pm            ESPN2

Now that UCLA has won a game I don’t know what to do with my hands. I kind of want Sumlin and Kelly to work out for at least a little while in the Pac.

San Jose State at San Diego State                            10:30pm            CBSSN

SDSU isn’t the best they’ve been in recent vintage but SJSU is an abomination of a team that might just be the worst in America. Classic degenerate watch ‘em up. Sometimes San Diego State wears cool looking unis and the contrast between their shiny maroon and black should be very nice against San Jose’s blue, yellow and white.

Nevada at Hawaii                              11:59pm     Spectrum/Nevada Sports Net

Hawaii disappointed me greatly last week but I still love them eternally just for playing so late when they’re at home. This is kind of an ugly uniform matchup but it could still be a fun, wild and crazy game between middling teams that do cool stuff on offense.

[grizzlefur]

WWEm - M. Night Parablamyan

You’ll be pleased to hear that Comic Sans has gone on indefinite leave. Also, the formatting has now become single line spacing, until I find I don’t like it or something. Let me know if you like it/love it/don’t give a monkey’s butt.

As ever, Emma can be found on Twitter as @Waruce, usually during PPVs.

Transmission date: Monday 12/Tuesday 13 June 2017.

all up in this bitch, cos it's SATURDAY AFTERNOON RAW! raise your hands if you can't remember thing one that's been happening on raw shit, can't type with my hands raised rescind that last advance warning: if i make more mistakes than usual in this writeup, extend me some leniency on account of i can barely see straight, because it's fucking summer so my eyes are full of TREE SPERM and MUCILAGE and THE DEATH OF ALL THINGS seriously, it's a party but oversharing aside, let's watch some wrestlemans and wrestlewomans, although the raw wrestlewomans' division needs to figure out what the fuck it's doing

we open with a recap of joe talking shit to an absent devil who i think is going to be turning up this week? i say that like i care and also him choking the life out of a small portly jewish man and being the most well-spoken kind of psychopath snapping into the present, we're apparently in the cajundome and immediately hit brock's music hey, they know what the fans want now i just need to figure out why they want that so yes, the championship is here, attached to the walking embodiment of technically-legal masking agents but thankfully, only paul has a mic apparently this is the day of joe's fuckupening i paraphrase, but i wish i wasn't "Like a shark luring the chum into his domain..." paul, i think we need to take you to seaworld or some shit apparently joe was somehow abusing brock's ring, despite the whole bit where he hasn't been here in a couple of months paul is hastily retracting everything complimentary he said about joe last week and now throwing shade about the fact that joe's not part of the anoa'i dynasty? that's certainly an esoteric burn the angle is that the coquina clutch would probably fuck brock up, but joe won't be able to get it on him because he ain't shit related note: can we have a moratorium on white dudes calling poc a 'mutt' or similar? leaves something of a bad taste joe arrives, him and brock immediately unload on each other kurt sends in security, brock kills them all, so paul calls in the whole roster to pull them apart and they kind of suck at it leave security to the pros, guys all the faces are clinging onto joe like he's the messiah and end thing, apparently tonight's main event is kkb/hardyz for the title round #34982, but this time it's two out of three falls cut for ads, and we come back on a recap video of the exact thing we just watched i know i say my memory's bad, but seriously booker's still here, because shut up with your reasons

but now, here's elias and his guitar and his array of scarves weirdly, this crowd seems pretty split on him he's written a song about the brave inhabitants of the cajundome asks the crowd to be quiet while he plays, cole immediately starts talking so yeah, this is a song about how louisiana and dean ambrose aren't collectively shit so here he comes elias, please never try and rhyme 'breath' with 'darkNESS' again recap video of the deep strangeness of miz's championship celebration aka, The Day Mike Fucked A Clock With A Chair (and offended his wife) i did like the ending of it, though it's nice to have the cameramen acknowledged as something that exists in-universe elias samson is present, so naturally corey is immediately salty as fuck he hates dean, too, but seriously "The man has the vocal stylings of a pigeon that's been stepped on!" (fun fact: i would probably listen the hell out of an elias samson album) (just do acoustic covers, whatever, i just like his voice) so far, this match consists mostly of dean trying to trashweasel his way out of trouble and elias shutting him down duelling chants seem a bit harsh: "You can't wrestle!" "YOU CAN'T SING!" dean gets his usual comeback sequence comprising a strange mix of real wrestling skill and just running in the vague direction of your opponent and hoping they fall harder than you do elias stands far too close on a suicide dive, basically just grabs dean and walks backwards like oh no i am defeated dean gets the upper hand of a super slow turnbuckle spot, miz runs in to bother him elias still can't even pick up a distraction pin maryse is backing miz up, so at least they're still okay dean goes for miz, he does the wife-shaped shield thing it doesn't work at all, miz gets beaten on a lot dean gets back in the ring, elias does a nasty knee drop on his back as he comes in, swinging neckbreaker for the pin "By hook or by crook, a W is still a W!" are you in a fucking ionesco play, corey

but now let's have more of goldust doing his thing his thing, of course, beign sitting in a chair at a terrible frame rate and quoting films dude, if you just turned that chair a bit, you wouldn't have to crane your neck like that can't be good for you but yeah, vague threats in the vague direction of r-truth

but now we're backstage, and an angry kurt has words for the miz those words basically being FUCKIN' QUIT IT he has enough trouble with big samoan guys named joe miz insults kurt, alludes to his indeterminate personal problems, you could chew the tension demands dean be suspended or fired, kurt retorts with a) shut the fuck up, and b) no maryse is apparently still angry at her husband kurt walks off, miz splutters, end thing cruiserweight time now, after this video to remind yiu just how good cedric alexander is, since he's been away for a while and here's noam dar arguing with his phone backstage cedric comes in to remind noam how done he is with him and his girlfriend's collective shit she is, of course, on the other end of the phone she's injured, but she wants her scottish sleazeball to beat cedric right the fuck up tonight cedric's like fuck, fine, whatever, i'll fight you tonight, but then can you please go bother literally anyone else

so yeah, now it's time for that match noam is still on his phone on speaker as he starts his entrance they're having a barely-audible argument and the phone's casting to the tron for some reason also, noam has a new jumper, and it's nowhere near as good alicia wants to be on the line through the match, noam does not want this the ref's like dude sort your shit out we've got a match to have finally puts it down in the corner, bell rings, lumbar check, end alicia is piiiiiiiiissed that's still an absolutely vicious finisher noam is trying to salvage this telepresence argument while also going oh holy fuck my spine hype no. 58 for the main event

but up next, bray wyatt...does a thing, i guess? he's certainly present and i'm ok with that but now a video package of roman, because god knows we haven't seen so much of him see, this package makes him look good, cos it's just the big spots and not all the slow-ass bullshit between them next week, roman has an announcement about summerslWYATT CUT bray fills the screen, tells us cheerfully that the world is ending does the i'm here thing, and now he is after a randy-based wyatt cut, for some reason did someone click the wrong file? corey calls bray 'bizarre', somewhere goldust is like wait a fucking minute bray's going to kill everyone who sins, sits in apathy while people sin, or blaspheme against him apparently seth lives in a house where his architect's blueprints cover the windows and block out the sun this may just be a parable, but it's a fucking great image oh, apparently bray shattered it because it was a glass house? did you mention this before, bray? bit of a shitty twist other wise m. night parablamyan and now seth will be picking splinters of glass out of his soul for eternity that's a fucking greek god level of ironic fate so yeah, anyone who takes the dark lord's name in vain will get fucked on speaking of, here comes seth to get fucked on/pick glass out of his soul i'd be good for either he's like wait a minute dude you cost me my match because i called you names that seems disproportionate but by the way, you suck seth claims he's here to pipe bomb some truth at us, calls bray a coward don't insult him, he has a backwards tractor bray takes the opportunity to give a sermon on pride, tells seth he, too, ain't shit like lol kingslayer ain't that cute *teleports backstage* bray claims he'll win because gods live forever think we need to read you some egyptian/norse myth there

but now, charly has the hardyz in the led interview backstage corridor whatever thing the hardyz would like you all to remember that they're awesome and that jeff has an unhealthy predilection for jumping off things but now, enjoy this montage of what cena's been up to and remember that he'll be back in an episode i am unlikely to blog

but now we have kalisto vs titus, through the medium of his younger, happier dude and akira tozawa is standing in the front row, because titus wants him on brand apollo beats on kalisto, titus stands by the barricade shouting at tozawa like DUDE LOOK AT MY BOY ISN'T HE GREAT tozawa is like please stop shouting at me kalisto goes for an excessively flippy handspring springboard stunner, apollo counters to a spinout powerbomb for the win titus drags tozawa into the ring for an uncomfortable selfie with them he's just like dude stop hugging me

but now, HARD CUT TO CLOSEUP OF RHYNO PUTTING CHEEZ WIZ ON CRACKERS we all needed that miz has come with a proposal for heath to become part of his entourage rhyno is like dude i'm standing right here miz promises to make all heath's dreams come true, heath's like well i've always wanted to be ic champ hmmmmm miz offers him a shot if he joins the dark side rhyno's like you know what fuck you dude i'm gonna go find kurt to give us a match against you maybe rustle up a friend we're out *aggressively eats crackers* so yeah

spot about that theme park competition thing, but now here's alexa our resident wrestlewoman with her shit together oh hey, a recap of last week's match so it did happen after all no, alexa, don't kick off by mentioning your match at extreme rules we're all trying to forget on saturday, we've got the first women's mitb match, but fuck that noise, tonight's about me but here's nia to take issue with the fact that alexa offered her a title shot, then whined about it and cheated out of it alexa's like i know right we should have had a great match but those two fucked everything up so here come those two mickie's redesigned her gear to play up the Native elements again chest dreamcatcher and everything mickie and dana try to remind everyone how much of a bitch alexa's been to nia in fornt of everyone alexa's like lol no i think your eyesight's going ah, cheap ageist jokes but now,...hit emma's music not that i'm gonna complain fucking love that music *beep boop beep boop* emma announces her dramatic return, demands a shot for the title alexa's just like um do you even go here and now here's sasha fuck it, everyone in the division in the segment that's how we do wrestling, right? so wait, are alexa and nia the only heels on the show? seems unbalanced sasha mocks alexa for literally everything she does, punches her in the face, cue brawl and hard cut to an advert for the episode of smackdown i'l be watching later back from ads, and we've got the 6-woman tag match we all saw coming so yeah, emma's still a heel, just one with a problem with the even heelier champ so yeah, emma's back, with weird shoulder things and boobface and everything although following a gear redesign, the boobface has gone from :) to :o it's great that she's back because she's great, but it does mean i have been once again demoted to the second coolest person to bear the name formulaic tag, sasha hot tags in to beat on emma, alexa decides to just walk off instead of letting emma tag out, bank statement for the tap this is not how you make friends

confirmed, later we have slater/rhyno vs miz/[NAME]

but next, corey talks to bayley about her utter lack of extreme after this advert for gold bond and MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY cole massively hypes it, then is like wait what the fuck am i saying that's the wrong brand smoothly done and now, have a package about how great finn is, and that is THE ONLY ORDER THOSE WORDS GO IN complete with lots of shots doing the arms and telling us how good he is

but yes, now we have corey/bayley just by his existence, corey must remind her how extreme she's not for the love of god, woman, get a tatt bayley's like hey i've never been in that situation before i'm a normal person i don't want to hurt people corey's like um have you ever wondered why you're in this business bayley does this whole motivational self-improvement thing which doesn't really work on its own cena does that, but with the understood subtext that if you get in the way of him being his best self, he will fuck your shit right up and bayley says her next thing is to get the belt back manageable steps slightly awkward hug, end interview so that was a thing

but now, here come A ONE MAN BAAAAAAAAAND (and his friend) rhyno should rebrand as a one man road crew miz and maryse arrive, wearing the mania jackets again, because all the best people read this blog (hey, mike) apparently he approached elias during the advert break, who said yeah fuck off dude so here comes his partner with music that sounds like the laughing fucking gnome of something and on a tricycle it's the bear although this bear is much taller and walks like dean ambrose corey christens him Big John Cubb crowd chant for a tag, miz is like i'm not a moron do you think i don't know who this is corey is just spamming us with spurious life facts about the bear because of his refusal to tag in a large mammal, rhyno is just fucking miz up all over the place cole makes a reference to the jbl and cole show, to reward dedicated weirdos bear tags himself in heath tries to take his mask off, bear punches him in the face good to know bears follow lucha tradition does a bearhug (naturally), heath nearly taps miz tags, then starts beating the piss out of the bear at ringside rips off the mask, revealing some dude, once again and rhyno spears miz into the netherworld throws him back into the ring, bear follows, heath tries to convince him to turn on his master, bear hits heath with dirty deeds, excessively long realisation beat, he unmasks and is in fact dean did...did we just get twin magicked by a bear? IT WAS ME ALL ALONG, MIZANIN! ahem dean goes for miz, he jumps and knocks maryse off the apron she hobbles off with a dark look dean stands there with a magnificent ooooooops look until miz turns around, when he hits him with dirty deeds and puts a still-unconscious heath on top of him for the pin slater and rhyno leave, dean puts the bear head on miz and walks off this just became strange this feels like it should be on one of those serial killer warning sign lists miz eventually rips it off, glares, end segment

hopefully we should have the main event next, if they want to give it the time it deserves oh, looks like we actually are huh was not expecting them to do the whole sensible booking thing recap video of the most beautifully-executed surprise return at mania and also this entire feud i'd forgotten how good their heel turn was, as well oh wait, never mind, neville's here phew if wwe started booking things in a sensible, organic way that gave things room to breathe, i wouldn't know what to do rich swann enters, does his usual dancing, gets punched in the back because neville's taken a bunch of levels in twat oh wait was that the neville level i get it beats swann all over the place, rings of saturn until he stops twitching demands his belt and a mic neville crouches by swann, recites a list of pretenders he's fucked on, kicks him out of his ring starts a monologue like it's good to be the king but will all you usurpers just fuck away off namechecks tozawa, hopefully kickstarting a feud that i am down for like you would not believe apparently titus tweeted that selfie and suggested tozawa might win the title the king is less than amused but now, charly interviews the kkb cesaro has a copy of the hardyz' autobiography so they can laugh and throw it away they keep getting more things on their jackets including they live OBEY patches, which is cool

and next, enzo/cass vs anderson/gallows seriously, you should really logically need more time for a two out of three match than a normal one this show has like half an hour left and we still have to see enzo do a thing or not, who knows with this angle douchebag joisey music hits, nobody is here cut backstage, cass is on the floor under some girders the revival walk past in the background, no reason cass says he went down with one blow to the head, emphasises how HARD they hit enzo doesn't want him to fight, but he insists but in the ring, gallows and anderson are here to trade secondary school burns and muttley laughs about enzo and cass hit twat music again, long beat, and here they are accompanied by a bunch of refs like seriously dude this is a terrible idea if only we had some power to stop this match happening alas, we are only lowly wrestling officials, all we can do is point and harangue corey calls enzo a trash fire masquerading as a human being, which i'm like 80% sure is a john oliver line? sort your material, dude cass beats on anderson through weaponised staggering, finally ags out enzo's 3am-behind-a-hollister style works for a bit, until anderson just kicks him in the head a bunch and tags gallows in cass is lying on the floor outside and magic killer for the pin turns out going into this match with a recent head injury was a terrible idea who knew they set him up for another magic killer, but here comes a big shooooooow to help at which point the heels run away and enzo and show awkwardly hug which is what cass comes around to see fuck daggers, he's glaring broadswords show leaves, cass comes up to his partner like the fuck dude, cut to ads

main event next, fucking finally

ok, no, we have to watch an r-truth reaction video first these have a solid frame rate at least, but that's come at the cost of things like 'colour film', and 'not having r-truth' truth quotes network, forgets to cite it, promises to get goldust got get got got get, end and now in the corridors, enzo comes up to show like dude, the clues all kind of point to you, so i have to ask show's like what the fuck you twat i...oh wait, it's your partner, what a twat calls cass sawft, walks off, end

but now we have a recap video of brock and joe from the start of the show why the fuck do we even need to see this just get to the main event already less than 20 minutes left this is not enough time for a properly-paced best of three match with build and everything oh, and now we get to see joe talking to mike mcmikemike backstage apparently this whole debacle has been exactly according to joe's plan this plan has never been clearly stated which is probably also exactly as planned we are all dancing on a large samoan's palm

but now, here come the hardyz fucking finally oh, and an advert break and that package for how great roman is again siiiiiiiiiiigh thing i didn't quite catch before this cut: is matt hardy wearing a fucking button-fronted short-sleeved shirt? that makes no sense for anyone whose gimmick doesn't include the words 'Caribbean', 'dipshit', or 'Caribbean dipshit' cut back, and now he's wearing no shirt ah well guess some things can just never be known and here are the kkb they've kept the jackets, but gone without shirts to maximise the orbital terawatt laser effect of their entrance bell rings, just over twelve minutes left in the show fucking hell, wwe trust your talent the teams clearly know time is against them - sheamus tries to open with a brogue, then immediately takes poetry in motion and a twist of fate for a nearfall and then sheamus basically just punches jeff in the face for the first fall? this match had so much potential sigh and now, let's cut away for an ad break and naom, gallows and anderson advertising pizza hut buy pizza from us, so twats can take it off you and back to the match recap of the first fall - jeff went for a twist of fate, sheamus countered, threw him into the corner, and did a slightly underwhelming kick to the face for the pin and now we have sheamus just kicking the shit out of jeff jeff mule kicks sheamus into a blind tag, matt hot tags in and starts mashing cesaro's head into all the turnbuckles does a delete, on the grounds that anthem probably don't give a shit, right? kicks sheamus off the apron, twist of fate on cesaro for the win i hope this narration is giving some sense of how perfunctory and artificially quick this is that's two falls in just under five minutes in a fucking championship match sheamus kicks jeff off the apron, kicks matt in the face, knees matt in the face, still can't get a pin turns out all my problems cannot, in fact, be solved by kicking jeff breaks up a pin, sheamus throws himout of the ring, cesaro goes for a neutraliser on matt, matt counters, cesaro counters that back into a sharpshooter, rope break nice sequence then matt goes for a small package, which kind of just seems like a dick move double hot tags, jeff does his usual spots, twist of fate to sheamus, cesaro breaks it just in time sheamus drops jeff on the ropes, cesaro uppercuts him, still no pin jeff bullfights sheamus into the ring post, hits a lovely swanton, cesaro pulls sheamus out of the ring just before 2 cue brawling at ringside aaaaaand double countout with which the cajundome is just so fucking satisfying brawl continues, because fuck you and your matches and your belts and we fade on the hardyz shouting from the ring while the kkb pose with their questionably-retained belts

so yeah that's it that's the show the fuck, guys? i mean obviously it was meant to be unsatisfying, and they're going to be doing it again, presumably at GBoF, but still you could still have done it without that shitty tease match but who knows maybe it'll be narratively significant

anyway, let's clean out that bad taste with some SATURDAY AFTERNOON SMACKDOWN! oh wait it's the setup show for a ppv roll on the shitty tease matches! setting up for mitb, so everything is ladders and tonight we have 6-man tag of the men's mitb contestants and randy and jinder 'face to face'

but now, the new day being played to the ring by their very own marching band, because we're in new orleans, so why the fuck not they could probably take shinsuke's violinist, but i'd watch it kofi opens by thanking the band even before doing their own introduction, which is good form the usos interrupt their gyrating to angrily enter and be thug at them and they can't even finish that before the fashion police turn up fandango claims to have compelling evidence hat their day one is not so h after all "If anything, your day one is...G." tell em tyler tyler gets to finish his sentence before the colóns enter to talk shit about breezango's policing skills (psst, guys) (they're not real detectives) so yeah, we're getting an 8-man tag match here although it's not immediately clear how the fashion police are allying themselves with three men wearing about 17 strings of beads between them the levelling for the announce mics is just fucked to hell tonight does smackdown even *have* a tech team, or is that how they run such a streamlined, modernised show? i do love that this push has given tyler and dango the opportunity to remind us how good they are at wrestling jbl, please stop making bead string jokes *brief shudder* xavier and tyler do a weird-ass combo move consisting of tyler doing a rana-style headscissors on xavier, then stopping at the top so xavier can throw him at primo followed by xavier joing the burgeoning dropkick to the back club the faces take everyone else out of the ring, stop for a brief trombone break and now we get to watch more american adverts i am officially tired of this shit i would much rather be watching this match than adverts about how cigarettes will fuck your mouth or this enormously fucked mountain dew advert and i can't even watch the tiny version in the corner i am very easily distracted oh thank fuck, we're back tyler's in trouble thanks to those dastardly usos jbl reminds us again how the usos are the greatest tag team in the world, and somewhere jason jordan is crying i mean, that's statistically likely at any given point, but still yeah, tyler's just getting the piss knocked out of him including a simultaneously dull yet impressive vertical suplex from epico comes back by throwing a bent-over epico at primo, then clotheslining primo so he ddts him nice, if making no sense whatsoever kofi tags in, kicks everyone, hits jimmy with a boom drop and trouble in paradise for the near-fall and tags in xavier for upupdowndown for the pin and taunt the usos as they retreat in failure

but later tonight, we have charlotte/nattie

but now, aj talks to shinsuke backstage and sami walks in like hey guys what do you want to do in this match asks for ideas, then talks over aj with his usual overthinky ring general thing does a they don't want none, goes for a high five, aj just stares, asks if shinsuke likes the plan, he just stares, sami answers himself and walks off to get warmed up long beat Shinsuke: "...I like him." AJ: "Of course you do." some lovely chemistry between those two which shoudl really surprise nobody

but now, dasha interviews mojo in some random corridor hey mojo, how did it feel to fail and not achieve your dreams last week? mojo is still wearing his watermelon hat magnanimous in defeat he's kind of happy he lost, because he responds to adversity with HYPE and we haven't seen the last of him and as he says this ZACK FUCKING RYDER appears the crowd are as stoked about this as i am he is officially back, and the hype bros are back together get the fuck in so yeah, this tag division's kind of huge

but now, here's naomi who we are reliably informed is amayayayayzing although the same cannot really be said of this new flourescent halter top she's got and she's fighting everybody's favourite leather-clad lunarian (shut up, i'll stop making that joke when and only when it stops being really fucking funny to me) bell hasn't even rung when the trash jazz begins just look at that woefully impractical dress and that super fucking awkward walk down the ramp we couldn't have brought her up through nxt and moved billie and peyton up to perform exactly the same purpose because... jbl explains the incomprehensible ascent of lana with leicester city, neglecting the fact that leicester had in fact played premiership football before that season anyway, tamina and naomi are just beating the hell out of each other tamina like i'll see your bouncy moves and leg lariats and counter by PUNCHING YOUR FUCKING HEAD OFF YOUR BODY try punching her leg off of her leg i hear that works against people with legs i don't think i will ever not love that somersault facelock escape naomi does although it does kind of pose the question why she doesn't just commit to it and do a shiranui and split moonsault for the pin good match lana blindisdes the champion incredibly slowly, does a weird-ass glam slam type thing, then gets the belt off an official just by asking for it didn't know you could just do that and all jbl can say is how the belt matches her dress siiiiigh

but now, here are the singhs to introduce their boss he comes in wearing the sharpest fucking blue suit you will ever see next up in entrance music i like way more than i feel i should... the ring is sporting a fucking lovely carpet jinder briefly calls out randy, then goes straight in to calling him a coward and insulting his father maybe ramp the smacktalk up there? and now we're up to the 'promise to dismantle your enemy's legacy backward through history' step this curve feels like it's going to end up in actual bloodshed very soon starts his promo to his people/shouting at the crowd in punjabi, gets partway through, randy's music hits sends the singhs down the ramp to head him off, only for randy to run in out of the crowd and rko jinder on that lovely carpet and then he just fucks back off throught the crowd who love him for being a dickbag but somehow also a babyface dickface? yeah, let's go with that even if it wasn't in his hometown, they could not be setting this up for a 'shock' randy loss any more cue several seconds too long of randy posing and glowering in the stands

and now we have kevin coming into the locker room to brief baron and dolph who don't give the slightest shit what he has to say he's just like guys, i don't actually like either of you, but it's mutually beneficial to work together to take out the babyfaces rather than being dicks for the sake of it and shooting ourselves in the foot which...actually makes sense? dammit, kevin, stop bringing logic and game theory into my wrestling leaves to let them process this, cut to ads

up next, charlotte/nattie

but first, renee interviews randy backstage and he's just like have you even been listening talk less hit more i'm win the thing and leaves well, at least he's sticking to his epiphanies

but yes, now we have the women's match natties back to her old gear, and i'm not thrilled jbl just used the phrases "most likely" and "statistical certainty" right the fuck next to each other in a sentence dude, words mean things and you need to stop just saying whatever but yes, charlotte is here too, with new gear patterned off the terrible moulding on your grandparents' bathroom fittings shot of becky watching the match backstage pull up a fucking chair for once, someone

more wrestling in a minute, but first, YOU WATCH THIS ADVERT BREAK MOTHERFUCKER including an advert romanticising the fact that people need stimulant shots to participate in capitalist society see, this is what happens when you make me watch adverts whioe i'm freestyling i just end up veering into political/economic philosophy, and it's hard to come back from that oh thank god, we're back

we come back on natalya surfboard stretching charlotte like fuck you, i'm a real wrestler charlotte moonsaults nattie for a nearfall as we pan out to carmellsworth watching the match on a tv bigger than either of them again with fuck you i can wrestle, nattie powerbombs charlotte out of the corner for a nearfall (don't tell anyone, but this is actually a good match) naturally, as i say that, it turns into a series of cheap rollup attemtps, then natural selection for the pin but it made charlotte look desperate, which it's always nice to see side note: they've recoloured the GBoF logo so BALLS is the least eye-catching part

time for fashion files noir bitches dango opens with a gritty monologue about his terrible parents cut to him admirin his pecs in a mirror and cut to tyler, lying in the trashed fashion police office dango gets a description of their attackers "One arm....No, two arms!" dango sketches something, tyler confirms that it was them who attacked him dango hustles tyler off to get help, and we slow zoom on the pair of stick figures as the segment ends

but now, let's have an inspiration porn segment about a kid not dying of liver disease let's not get into my ranting about disability politics

moving on, dasha grabs lana backstage for an opinion lana's like i don't actually give a shit what any of you think byeeeeeeee

but now it's main event time opening with kevin's massive distorted face it's like neville and tjp selling their names for power, this is clearly a 'you can be champion if we can reveal how you look like hodor when viewed from below' situation and now here's baron, accomnpanied by a vt of him being a twat last week (but which instance? we may never know) dolph's entrance is mostly overridden by an advert for talking smack, which i won't be watching because jbl's on it sami and aj enter with less fanfare, but they still don't want none to leave time for the best music in the company but how will he enter tomorrow night the suspense whoever the tommaso ciampa-looking dude in the corner is, he is freaking the fuck out about being within reach of shinsuke cut for ads, during which the match apparently started and as we come back, i realise that i didn't fully appreciate the awfullness of those godawful cyan tights dolph iswearing only emphasised by putting him in the ring with shinsuke shinsuke counters dolph's elbow drop through his signature technique of 'being elsewhere', hot tags aj in, and he opens by basically hitting dolph with the bitter end and then an ushigoroshi, except we don't say that any more ooh, nice counter goes for a styles clash, dolph counters to a tornado ddt everyone else gets involved, cut for ads, and we come back on dolph/sami natursally, kevin immediately comes in as i type that sami counters kevin's senton with his knees, basically turning it into a self-inflicted lumbar check as often happens, this heel team seems much more concerned with shouting at everyone within range than having the match sami gets the shit beaten out of him by kevin, counters to a blue thunder bomb, can't quite flop fast enough to make the tag takes some more punishment, pulls out a big lariat and then bullfights all three heels out of the ring in succession sloooooowly flops to his corner, and just as he gets there dolph and kevin pull aj and shinsuke off the apron lovely bit of timing so sami just goes fuck it and helluva kicks baron for the pin maybe lead with that general fighting ensues and now kevin has a ladder he and dolph hit sami and aj with it "Unforgiving impact of that ladder on your flesh." byron's freestyling for his upcoming black metal album meanwhile, baron gets the ladder and fucks on everyone with it sets it up under the briefcase, climbs sloooooowly enough for shinsuke to push it over and somewhere, randy orton began to bleed kinshasa to baron, and shinsuke dramatically climbs the ladder himself and retrieves the most important business supplies in the world and we fade on him posing

so yeah, setup show, but that was pretty good and it looks like mitb should be good better than extreme rules, at any rate and certainly less of a misnomer unless it suddenly becomes clear that shane's accounts were frozen long ago and there was never actually any money but in any case i'll try and get this up tonight (Saturday), and then it's mitb tomorrow hmu on twitter @waruce if you want to see me struggle not to fall asleep and also to reconcile my excitement for MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY with the failings of late-stage capitalism (shit, it happened again)

anyway, that ends this week's show, but up next, it looks like it's gonna get a bit finnegans wake

[cohesionarts]

This just in from Cohesion Arts

New Post has been published on http://cohesionarts.com/2017/01/28/my-aa-meeting-today/

What I Am Not Going To Say At My AA Meeting Today

I’m going to go to my AA “Home Group” this morning. This is what I probably will not “share” with the meeting:

Hi, I’m Paul and I’m an alcoholic.

I feel compelled to  say something today that’s going to sound like AA heresy. But I feel like I have to speak my truth here even if it means becoming the first person to ever be excommunicated from AA…

I don’t really know but one or two of you here, so most of you have know way of knowing what a tough time I’ve been having over the past year. My wife decided last – well, it’s been almost a year now – that she needs to live in Portland Oregon, where her two adult sons and her now  one-and-a-half year old granddaughter live.  And as you can see, I am not in Portland, Oregon. I have been to Portland at least a dozen times since ‘the kids’ moved there in the early ‘aughts, but I’ve never felt like I’ve wanted to live there. After more than two decades, I’m rooted here.

Welcome to Portland!

And as a recovering alcoholic myself, it’s hard to fathom how I am going to live in a city that greets you getting off the plane with a huge sign that says “Give In To Beer.”

Thursday night, I learned that a dear friend had died this week, most likely from complications of alcoholism. He was only a year older than I am. I think that news kinda put me over the edge…

Which brings me to yesterday. Yesterday was a day off from a new job that I got last summer which has absolutely been my salvation over the past 6 months. I like the work, it truly takes me out of myself and makes me a better person than I am when when I’m by myself. But sometimes the days off are challenging because, well, there’s nobody to talk to.

Yesterday, I felt knots in my stomach, that spinning wheel of loneliness and sadness, fear and despair. As I said later to my sponsor, I was having a tough day…

In the middle of the day, I made some calls and sent out some texts, to see if there was somebody in my orbit who could meet me for lunch or coffee. All those overtures came up empty. People are busy.

At one point, I was driving around town and started thinking, “maybe what I need is a meeting…” I had no idea where there was one in the middle of the day on a Friday. I was in town, driving around, and thought about going over to ‘202,’ but… I just couldn’t quite convince myself to do that, either. It wasn’t until later in the day that I fully realized why.

I didn’t go to 202 for the same reason that I don’t go to more AA meetings like this one: because I really dislike the whole format and structure of these gatherings.

A couple of years ago I ran across a TED talk by a Scandinavian counselor named Johann Hari that talked about the antidote to addiction being not just abstinence but connection.

Connection. That is what I was longing for  yesterday. And sadly it is not what I get at these meetings. I don’t really get a meaningful level of connection and engagement from sitting through an hour of extemporaneous  3 minute monologues. And I really don’t like the unstated pressure to be witty and profound if and when I take my own turn to ‘“share.”

So mostly I come to these meetings, sit in silence, and hope I get to hold a girl’s hand when when we all stand up to recite the Lord’s Prayer (which I usually don’t actually recite.  It’s a Jesus prayer and I’m a Jew.).

I know that the whole “no cross talk” structure of these meetings is essential to their decorum. But jeezus, sometimes what you really need is to actually talk to somebody.  The absence of dialog defeats my whole purpose of being here.  It actually makes me feel more isolated when what I need is something… not superficial. When I need the give and take of an actual conversation.

In the realm of recovery, I know that I’m one of the very lucky ones. The compulsion to drink or smoke or sniff (my primary drug of choice for nearly 20 years was pot; thank god I never got in to heroin or crack…) completely left me after, I dunno, somewhere between 30 and 60 days. That was back in 1987 – 29+ years ago – so I don’t really remember. I just know that there are a lot of recovering alcoholic types who struggle with the compulsion every day. That’s why the program insists that recovery is “One Day At A Time.” So I know that I am among the most fortunate of recovering ‘polyholics.’

What I’m trying to say here is: when I’m feeling isolated and alone – the very conditions that might spark a round of drinking if my sobriety was not as strong as it is – the last thing I need in the world is to sit in a hard chair feeling like a lame loser because I’m not to going to be as entertaining as the guy who “shared” before me or the woman who will share after me.  But that’s the structure. And I sometimes I just fucking hate it.

I come to these meetings because they give me the opportunity to at least experience and be grateful for – if not actually “share” – my sobriety, and the fact that I because I quit sipping, sniffing and puffing nearly 30 years ago, I am still living – even it that presently means struggling with some of the most difficult choices I have ever had to face.

I have an “altar” of sorts in my home on which rest photographs of my ancestors, and also the photographs of several friends whose lives were cut short by their addictions. I have another photo to add to that collection now.

But jeezus, sometimes you just want to talk to somebody. Sometimes you just need a hug.

Don’t get me wrong.  I know damn well that I would not be alive today had I not started going to AA meetings back in 1987.   And I come to meetings so that I don’t take that gift of sobriety for granted.

But yesterday, I needed something else.

OK, I guess my three minutes are up.

Thanks for listening.