#and i just think it needs to be acknowledged as apart of their multi layered relationship ... do yall get me.

[qqueenofhades]

The Green Knight and Medieval Metatextuality: An Essay

Right, so. Finally watched it last night, and I’ve been thinking about it literally ever since, except for the part where I was asleep. As I said to fellow medievalist and admirer of Dev Patel @oldshrewsburyian, it’s possibly the most fascinating piece of medieval-inspired media that I’ve seen in ages, and how refreshing to have something in this genre that actually rewards critical thought and deep analysis, rather than me just fulminating fruitlessly about how popular media thinks that slapping blood, filth, and misogyny onto some swords and castles is “historically accurate.” I read a review of TGK somewhere that described it as the anti-Game of Thrones, and I’m inclined to think that’s accurate. I didn’t agree with all of the film’s tonal, thematic, or interpretative choices, but I found them consistently stylish, compelling, and subversive in ways both small and large, and I’m gonna have to write about it or I’ll go crazy. So. Brace yourselves.

(Note: My PhD is in medieval history, not medieval literature, and I haven’t worked on SGGK specifically, but I am familiar with it, its general cultural context, and the historical influences, images, and debates that both the poem and the film referenced and drew upon, so that’s where this meta is coming from.)

First, obviously, while the film is not a straight-up text-to-screen version of the poem (though it is by and large relatively faithful), it is a multi-layered meta-text that comments on the original Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the archetypes of chivalric literature as a whole, modern expectations for medieval films, the hero’s journey, the requirements of being an “honorable knight,” and the nature of death, fate, magic, and religion, just to name a few. Given that the Arthurian legendarium, otherwise known as the Matter of Britain, was written and rewritten over several centuries by countless authors, drawing on and changing and hybridizing interpretations that sometimes challenged or outright contradicted earlier versions, it makes sense for the film to chart its own path and make its own adaptational decisions as part of this multivalent, multivocal literary canon. Sir Gawain himself is a canonically and textually inconsistent figure; in the movie, the characters merrily pronounce his name in several different ways, most notably as Sean Harris/King Arthur’s somewhat inexplicable “Garr-win.” He might be a man without a consistent identity, but that’s pointed out within the film itself. What has he done to define himself, aside from being the king’s nephew? Is his quixotic quest for the Green Knight actually going to resolve the question of his identity and his honor – and if so, is it even going to matter, given that successful completion of the “game” seemingly equates with death?

Likewise, as the anti-Game of Thrones, the film is deliberately and sometimes maddeningly non-commercial. For an adaptation coming from a studio known primarily for horror, it almost completely eschews the cliché that gory bloodshed equals authentic medievalism; the only graphic scene is the Green Knight’s original beheading. The violence is only hinted at, subtextual, suspenseful; it is kept out of sight, around the corner, never entirely played out or resolved. In other words, if anyone came in thinking that they were going to watch Dev Patel luridly swashbuckle his way through some CGI monsters like bad Beowulf adaptations of yore, they were swiftly disappointed. In fact, he seems to spend most of his time being wet, sad, and failing to meet the moment at hand (with a few important exceptions).

The film unhurriedly evokes a medieval setting that is both surreal and defiantly non-historical. We travel (in roughly chronological order) from Anglo-Saxon huts to Romanesque halls to high-Gothic cathedrals to Tudor villages and half-timbered houses, culminating in the eerie neo-Renaissance splendor of the Lord and Lady’s hall, before returning to the ancient trees of the Green Chapel and its immortal occupant: everything that has come before has now returned to dust. We have been removed even from imagined time and place and into a moment where it ceases to function altogether. We move forward, backward, and sideways, as Gawain experiences past, present, and future in unison. He is dislocated from his own sense of himself, just as we, the viewers, are dislocated from our sense of what is the “true” reality or filmic narrative; what we think is real turns out not to be the case at all. If, of course, such a thing even exists at all.

This visual evocation of the entire medieval era also creates a setting that, unlike GOT, takes pride in rejecting absolutely all political context or Machiavellian maneuvering. The film acknowledges its own cultural ubiquity and the question of whether we really need yet another King Arthur adaptation: none of the characters aside from Gawain himself are credited by name. We all know it’s Arthur, but he’s listed only as “king.” We know the spooky druid-like old man with the white beard is Merlin, but it’s never required to spell it out. The film gestures at our pre-existing understanding; it relies on us to fill in the gaps, cuing us to collaboratively produce the story with it, positioning us as listeners as if we were gathered to hear the original poem. Just like fanfiction, it knows that it doesn’t need to waste time introducing every single character or filling in ultimately unnecessary background knowledge, when the audience can be relied upon to bring their own.

As for that, the film explicitly frames itself as a “filmed adaptation of the chivalric romance” in its opening credits, and continues to play with textual referents and cues throughout: telling us where we are, what’s happening, or what’s coming next, rather like the rubrics or headings within a medieval manuscript. As noted, its historical/architectural references span the entire medieval European world, as does its costume design. I was particularly struck by the fact that Arthur and Guinevere’s crowns resemble those from illuminated monastic manuscripts or Eastern Orthodox iconography: they are both crown and halo, they confer an air of both secular kingship and religious sanctity. The question in the film’s imagined epilogue thus becomes one familiar to Shakespeare’s Henry V: heavy is the head that wears the crown. Does Gawain want to earn his uncle’s crown, take over his place as king, bear the fate of Camelot, become a great ruler, a husband and father in ways that even Arthur never did, only to see it all brought to dust by his cowardice, his reliance on unscrupulous sorcery, and his unfulfilled promise to the Green Knight? Is it better to have that entire life and then lose it, or to make the right choice now, even if it means death?

Likewise, Arthur’s kingly mantle is Byzantine in inspiration, as is the icon of the Virgin Mary-as-Theotokos painted on Gawain’s shield (which we see broken apart during the attack by the scavengers). The film only glances at its religious themes rather than harping on them explicitly; we do have the cliché scene of the male churchmen praying for Gawain’s safety, opposite Gawain’s mother and her female attendants working witchcraft to protect him. (When oh when will I get my film that treats medieval magic and medieval religion as the complementary and co-existing epistemological systems that they were, rather than portraying them as diametrically binary and disparagingly gendered opposites?) But despite the interim setbacks borne from the failure of Christian icons, the overall resolution of the film could serve as the culmination of a medieval Christian morality tale: Gawain can buy himself a great future in the short term if he relies on the protection of the enchanted green belt to avoid the Green Knight’s killing stroke, but then he will have to watch it all crumble until he is sitting alone in his own hall, his children dead and his kingdom destroyed, as a headless corpse who only now has been brave enough to accept his proper fate. By removing the belt from his person in the film’s Inception-like final scene, he relinquishes the taint of black magic and regains his religious honor, even at the likely cost of death. That, the medieval Christian morality tale would agree, is the correct course of action.

Gawain’s encounter with St. Winifred likewise presents a more subtle vision of medieval Christianity. Winifred was an eighth-century Welsh saint known for being beheaded, after which (by the power of another saint) her head was miraculously restored to her body and she went on to live a long and holy life. It doesn’t quite work that way in TGK. (St Winifred’s Well is mentioned in the original SGGK, but as far as I recall, Gawain doesn’t meet the saint in person.) In the film, Gawain encounters Winifred’s lifelike apparition, who begs him to dive into the mere and retrieve her head (despite appearances, she warns him, it is not attached to her body). This fits into the pattern of medieval ghost stories, where the dead often return to entreat the living to help them finish their business; they must be heeded, but when they are encountered in places they shouldn’t be, they must be put back into their proper physical space and reminded of their real fate. Gawain doesn’t follow William of Newburgh’s practical recommendation to just fetch some brawny young men with shovels to beat the wandering corpse back into its grave. Instead, in one of his few moments of unqualified heroism, he dives into the dark water and retrieves Winifred’s skull from the bottom of the lake. Then when he returns to the house, he finds the rest of her skeleton lying in the bed where he was earlier sleeping, and carefully reunites the skull with its body, finally allowing it to rest in peace.

However, Gawain’s involvement with Winifred doesn’t end there. The fox that he sees on the bank after emerging with her skull, who then accompanies him for the rest of the film, is strongly implied to be her spirit, or at least a companion that she has sent for him. Gawain has handled a saint’s holy bones; her relics, which were well known to grant protection in the medieval world. He has done the saint a service, and in return, she extends her favor to him. At the end of the film, the fox finally speaks in a human voice, warning him not to proceed to the fateful final encounter with the Green Knight; it will mean his death. The symbolism of having a beheaded saint serve as Gawain’s guide and protector is obvious, since it is the fate that may or may not lie in store for him. As I said, the ending is Inception-like in that it steadfastly refuses to tell you if the hero is alive (or will live) or dead (or will die). In the original SGGK, of course, the Green Knight and the Lord turn out to be the same person, Gawain survives, it was all just a test of chivalric will and honor, and a trap put together by Morgan Le Fay in an attempt to frighten Guinevere. It’s essentially able to be laughed off: a game, an adventure, not real. TGK takes this paradigm and flips it (to speak…) on its head.

Gawain’s rescue of Winifred’s head also rewards him in more immediate terms: his/the Green Knight’s axe, stolen by the scavengers, is miraculously restored to him in her cottage, immediately and concretely demonstrating the virtue of his actions. This is one of the points where the film most stubbornly resists modern storytelling conventions: it simply refuses to add in any kind of “rational” or “empirical” explanation of how else it got there, aside from the grace and intercession of the saint. This is indeed how it works in medieval hagiography: things simply reappear, are returned, reattached, repaired, made whole again, and Gawain’s lost weapon is thus restored, symbolizing that he has passed the test and is worthy to continue with the quest. The film’s narrative is not modernizing its underlying medieval logic here, and it doesn’t particularly care if a modern audience finds it “convincing” or not. As noted, the film never makes any attempt to temporalize or localize itself; it exists in a determinedly surrealist and ahistorical landscape, where naked female giants who look suspiciously like Tilda Swinton roam across the wild with no necessary explanation. While this might be frustrating for some people, I actually found it a huge relief that a clearly fantastic and fictional literary adaptation was not acting like it was qualified to teach “real history” to its audience. Nobody would come out of TGK thinking that they had seen the “actual” medieval world, and since we have enough of a problem with that sort of thing thanks to GOT, I for one welcome the creation of a medieval imaginative space that embraces its eccentric and unrealistic elements, rather than trying to fit them into the Real Life box.

This plays into the fact that the film, like a reused medieval manuscript containing more than one text, is a palimpsest: for one, it audaciously rewrites the entire Arthurian canon in the wordless vision of Gawain’s life after escaping the Green Knight (I could write another meta on that dream-epilogue alone). It moves fluidly through time and creates alternate universes in at least two major points: one, the scene where Gawain is tied up and abandoned by the scavengers and that long circling shot reveals his skeletal corpse rotting on the sward, only to return to our original universe as Gawain decides that he doesn’t want that fate, and two, Gawain as King. In this alternate ending, Arthur doesn’t die in battle with Mordred, but peaceably in bed, having anointed his worthy nephew as his heir. Gawain becomes king, has children, gets married, governs Camelot, becomes a ruler surpassing even Arthur, but then watches his son get killed in battle, his subjects turn on him, and his family vanish into the dust of his broken hall before he himself, in despair, pulls the enchanted scarf out of his clothing and succumbs to his fate.

In this version, Gawain takes on the responsibility for the fall of Camelot, not Arthur. This is the hero’s burden, but he’s obtained it dishonorably, by cheating. It is a vivid but mimetic future which Gawain (to all appearances) ultimately rejects, returning the film to the realm of traditional Arthurian canon – but not quite. After all, if Gawain does get beheaded after that final fade to black, it would represent a significant alteration from the poem and the character’s usual arc. Are we back in traditional canon or aren’t we? Did Gawain reject that future or didn’t he? Do all these alterities still exist within the visual medium of the meta-text, and have any of them been definitely foreclosed?

Furthermore, the film interrogates itself and its own tropes in explicit and overt ways. In Gawain’s conversation with the Lord, the Lord poses the question that many members of the audience might have: is Gawain going to carry out this potentially pointless and suicidal quest and then be an honorable hero, just like that? What is he actually getting by staggering through assorted Irish bogs and seeming to reject, rather than embrace, the paradigms of a proper quest and that of an honorable knight? He lies about being a knight to the scavengers, clearly out of fear, and ends up cravenly bound and robbed rather than fighting back. He denies knowing anything about love to the Lady (played by Alicia Vikander, who also plays his lover at the start of the film with a decidedly ropey Yorkshire accent, sorry to say). He seems to shrink from the responsibility thrust on him, rather than rise to meet it (his only honorable act, retrieving Winifred’s head, is discussed above) and yet here he still is, plugging away. Why is he doing this? What does he really stand to gain, other than accepting a choice and its consequences (somewhat?) The film raises these questions, but it has no plans to answer them. It’s going to leave you to think about them for yourself, and it isn’t going to spoon-feed you any ultimate moral or neat resolution. In this interchange, it’s easy to see both the echoes of a formal dialogue between two speakers (a favored medieval didactic tactic) and the broader purpose of chivalric literature: to interrogate what it actually means to be a knight, how personal honor is generated, acquired, and increased, and whether engaging in these pointless and bloody “war games” is actually any kind of real path to lasting glory.

The film’s treatment of race, gender, and queerness obviously also merits comment. By casting Dev Patel, an Indian-born actor, as an Arthurian hero, the film is… actually being quite accurate to the original legends, doubtless much to the disappointment of assorted internet racists. The thirteenth-century Arthurian romance Parzival (Percival) by the German poet Wolfram von Eschenbach notably features the character of Percival’s mixed-race half-brother, Feirefiz, son of their father by his first marriage to a Muslim princess. Feirefiz is just as heroic as Percival (Gawaine, for the record, also plays a major role in the story) and assists in the quest for the Holy Grail, though it takes his conversion to Christianity for him to properly behold it.

By introducing Patel (and Sarita Chowdhury as Morgause) to the visual representation of Arthuriana, the film quietly does away with the “white Middle Ages” cliché that I have complained about ad nauseam; we see background Asian and black members of Camelot, who just exist there without having to conjure up some complicated rationale to explain their presence. The Lady also uses a camera obscura to make Gawain’s portrait. Contrary to those who might howl about anachronism, this technique was known in China as early as the fourth century BCE and the tenth/eleventh century Islamic scholar Ibn al-Haytham was probably the best-known medieval authority to write on it extensively; Latin translations of his work inspired European scientists from Roger Bacon to Leonardo da Vinci. Aside from the symbolism of an upside-down Gawain (and when he sees the portrait again during the ‘fall of Camelot’, it is right-side-up, representing that Gawain himself is in an upside-down world), this presents a subtle challenge to the prevailing Eurocentric imagination of the medieval world, and draws on other global influences.

As for gender, we have briefly touched on it above; in the original SGGK, Gawain’s entire journey is revealed to be just a cruel trick of Morgan Le Fay, simply trying to destabilize Arthur’s court and upset his queen. (Morgan is the old blindfolded woman who appears in the Lord and Lady’s castle and briefly approaches Gawain, but her identity is never explicitly spelled out.) This is, obviously, an implicitly misogynistic setup: an evil woman plays a trick on honorable men for the purpose of upsetting another woman, the honorable men overcome it, the hero survives, and everyone presumably lives happily ever after (at least until Mordred arrives).

Instead, by plunging the outcome into doubt and the hero into a much darker and more fallible moral universe, TGK shifts the blame for Gawain’s adventure and ultimate fate from Morgan to Gawain himself. Likewise, Guinevere is not the passive recipient of an evil deception but in a way, the catalyst for the whole thing. She breaks the seal on the Green Knight’s message with a weighty snap; she becomes the oracle who reads it out, she is alarming rather than alarmed, she disrupts the complacency of the court and silently shows up all the other knights who refuse to step forward and answer the Green Knight’s challenge. Gawain is not given the ontological reassurance that it’s just a practical joke and he’s going to be fine (and thanks to the unresolved ending, neither are we). The film instead takes the concept at face value in order to push the envelope and ask the simple question: if a man was going to be actually-for-real beheaded in a year, why would he set out on a suicidal quest? Would you, in Gawain’s place, make the same decision to cast aside the enchanted belt and accept your fate? Has he made his name, will he be remembered well? What is his legacy?

Indeed, if there is any hint of feminine connivance and manipulation, it arrives in the form of the implication that Gawain’s mother has deliberately summoned the Green Knight to test her son, prove his worth, and position him as his childless uncle’s heir; she gives him the protective belt to make sure he won’t actually die, and her intention all along was for the future shown in the epilogue to truly play out (minus the collapse of Camelot). Only Gawain loses the belt thanks to his cowardice in the encounter with the scavengers, regains it in a somewhat underhanded and morally questionable way when the Lady is attempting to seduce him, and by ultimately rejecting it altogether and submitting to his uncertain fate, totally mucks up his mother’s painstaking dynastic plans for his future. In this reading, Gawain could be king, and his mother’s efforts are meant to achieve that goal, rather than thwart it. He is thus required to shoulder his own responsibility for this outcome, rather than conveniently pawning it off on an “evil woman,” and by extension, the film asks the question: What would the world be like if men, especially those who make war on others as a way of life, were actually forced to face the consequences of their reckless and violent actions? Is it actually a “game” in any sense of the word, especially when chivalric literature is constantly preoccupied with the question of how much glorious violence is too much glorious violence? If you structure social prestige for the king and the noble male elite entirely around winning battles and existing in a state of perpetual war, when does that begin to backfire and devour the knightly class – and the rest of society – instead?

This leads into the central theme of Gawain’s relationships with the Lord and Lady, and how they’re treated in the film. The poem has been repeatedly studied in terms of its latent (and sometimes… less than latent) queer subtext: when the Lord asks Gawain to pay back to him whatever he should receive from his wife, does he already know what this involves; i.e. a physical and romantic encounter? When the Lady gives kisses to Gawain, which he is then obliged to return to the Lord as a condition of the agreement, is this all part of a dastardly plot to seduce him into a kinky green-themed threesome with a probably-not-human married couple looking to spice up their sex life? Why do we read the Lady’s kisses to Gawain as romantic but Gawain’s kisses to the Lord as filial, fraternal, or the standard “kiss of peace” exchanged between a liege lord and his vassal? Is Gawain simply being a dutiful guest by honoring the bargain with his host, actually just kissing the Lady again via the proxy of her husband, or somewhat more into this whole thing with the Lord than he (or the poet) would like to admit? Is the homosocial turning homoerotic, and how is Gawain going to navigate this tension and temptation?

If the question is never resolved: well, welcome to one of the central medieval anxieties about chivalry, knighthood, and male bonds! As I have written about before, medieval society needed to simultaneously exalt this as the most honored and noble form of love, and make sure it didn’t accidentally turn sexual (once again: how much male love is too much male love?). Does the poem raise the possibility of serious disruption to the dominant heteronormative paradigm, only to solve the problem by interpreting the Gawain/Lady male/female kisses as romantic and sexual and the Gawain/Lord male/male kisses as chaste and formal? In other words, acknowledging the underlying anxiety of possible homoeroticism but ultimately reasserting the heterosexual norm? The answer: Probably?!?! Maybe?!?! Hell if we know??! To say the least, this has been argued over to no end, and if you locked a lot of medieval history/literature scholars into a room and told them that they couldn’t come out until they decided on one clear answer, they would be in there for a very long time. The poem seemingly invokes the possibility of a queer reading only to reject it – but once again, as in the question of which canon we end up in at the film’s end, does it?

In some lights, the film’s treatment of this potential queer reading comes off like a cop-out: there is only one kiss between Gawain and the Lord, and it is something that the Lord has to initiate after Gawain has already fled the hall. Gawain himself appears to reject it; he tells the Lord to let go of him and runs off into the wilderness, rather than deal with or accept whatever has been suggested to him. However, this fits with film!Gawain’s pattern of rejecting that which fundamentally makes him who he is; like Peter in the Bible, he has now denied the truth three times. With the scavengers he denies being a knight; with the Lady he denies knowing about courtly love; with the Lord he denies the central bond of brotherhood with his fellows, whether homosocial or homoerotic in nature. I would go so far as to argue that if Gawain does die at the end of the film, it is this rejected kiss which truly seals his fate. In the poem, the Lord and the Green Knight are revealed to be the same person; in the film, it’s not clear if that’s the case, or they are separate characters, even if thematically interrelated. If we assume, however, that the Lord is in fact still the human form of the Green Knight, then Gawain has rejected both his kiss of peace (the standard gesture of protection offered from lord to vassal) and any deeper emotional bond that it can be read to signify. The Green Knight could decide to spare Gawain in recognition of the courage he has shown in relinquishing the enchanted belt – or he could just as easily decide to kill him, which he is legally free to do since Gawain has symbolically rejected the offer of brotherhood, vassalage, or knight-bonding by his unwise denial of the Lord’s freely given kiss. Once again, the film raises the overall thematic and moral question and then doesn’t give one straight (ahem) answer. As with the medieval anxieties and chivalric texts that it is based on, it invokes the specter of queerness and then doesn’t neatly resolve it. As a modern audience, we find this unsatisfying, but once again, the film is refusing to conform to our expectations.

As has been said before, there is so much kissing between men in medieval contexts, both ceremonial and otherwise, that we’re left to wonder: “is it gay or is it feudalism?” Is there an overtly erotic element in Gawain and the Green Knight’s mutual “beheading” of each other (especially since in the original version, this frees the Lord from his curse, functioning like a true love’s kiss in a fairytale). While it is certainly possible to argue that the film has “straightwashed” its subject material by removing the entire sequence of kisses between Gawain and the Lord and the unresolved motives for their existence, it is a fairly accurate, if condensed, representation of the anxieties around medieval knightly bonds and whether, as Carolyn Dinshaw put it, a (male/male) “kiss is just a kiss.” After all, the kiss between Gawain and the Lady is uncomplicatedly read as sexual/romantic, and that context doesn’t go away when Gawain is kissing the Lord instead. Just as with its multiple futurities, the film leaves the question open-ended. Is it that third and final denial that seals Gawain’s fate, and if so, is it asking us to reflect on why, specifically, he does so?

The film could play with both this question and its overall tone quite a bit more: it sometimes comes off as a grim, wooden, over-directed Shakespearean tragedy, rather than incorporating the lively and irreverent tone that the poem often takes. It’s almost totally devoid of humor, which is unfortunate, and the Grim Middle Ages aesthetic is in definite evidence. Nonetheless, because of the comprehensive de-historicizing and the obvious lack of effort to claim the film as any sort of authentic representation of the medieval past, it works. We are not meant to understand this as a historical document, and so we have to treat it on its terms, by its own logic, and by its own frames of reference. In some ways, its consistent opacity and its refusal to abide by modern rules and common narrative conventions is deliberately meant to challenge us: as before, when we recognize Arthur, Merlin, the Round Table, and the other stock characters because we know them already and not because the film tells us so, we have to fill in the gaps ourselves. We are watching the film not because it tells us a simple adventure story – there is, as noted, shockingly little action overall – but because we have to piece together the metatext independently and ponder the philosophical questions that it leaves us with. What conclusion do we reach? What canon do we settle in? What future or resolution is ultimately made real? That, the film says, it can’t decide for us. As ever, it is up to future generations to carry on the story, and decide how, if at all, it is going to survive.

(And to close, I desperately want them to make my much-coveted Bisclavret adaptation now in more or less the same style, albeit with some tweaks. Please.)

Further Reading

Ailes, Marianne J. ‘The Medieval Male Couple and the Language of Homosociality’, in Masculinity in Medieval Europe, ed. by Dawn M. Hadley (Harlow: Longman, 1999), pp. 214–37.

Ashton, Gail. ‘The Perverse Dynamics of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Arthuriana 15 (2005), 51–74.

Boyd, David L. ‘Sodomy, Misogyny, and Displacement: Occluding Queer Desire in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Arthuriana 8 (1998), 77–113.

Busse, Peter. ‘The Poet as Spouse of his Patron: Homoerotic Love in Medieval Welsh and Irish Poetry?’, Studi Celtici 2 (2003), 175–92.

Dinshaw, Carolyn. ‘A Kiss Is Just a Kiss: Heterosexuality and Its Consolations in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Diacritics 24 (1994), 205–226.

Kocher, Suzanne. ‘Gay Knights in Medieval French Fiction: Constructs of Queerness and Non-Transgression’, Mediaevalia 29 (2008), 51–66.

Karras, Ruth Mazo. ‘Knighthood, Compulsory Heterosexuality, and Sodomy’ in The Boswell Thesis: Essays on Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, ed. Matthew Kuefler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp. 273–86.

Kuefler, Matthew. ‘Male Friendship and the Suspicion of Sodomy in Twelfth-Century France’, in The Boswell Thesis: Essays on Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, ed. Matthew Kuefler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp. 179–214.

McVitty, E. Amanda, ‘False Knights and True Men: Contesting Chivalric Masculinity in English Treason Trials, 1388–1415,’ Journal of Medieval History 40 (2014), 458–77.

Mieszkowski, Gretchen. ‘The Prose Lancelot's Galehot, Malory's Lavain, and the Queering of Late Medieval Literature’, Arthuriana 5 (1995), 21–51.

Moss, Rachel E. ‘ “And much more I am soryat for my good knyghts’ ”: Fainting, Homosociality, and Elite Male Culture in Middle English Romance’, Historical Reflections / Réflexions historiques 42 (2016), 101–13.

Zeikowitz, Richard E. ‘Befriending the Medieval Queer: A Pedagogy for Literature Classes’, College English 65 (2002), 67–80.

[snackhobi]

pairing: jimin x reader / word count: 9.1k / genre: smut (NSFW, 18+)

summary: you wouldn’t mind your cute neighbour being such a shameless fuckboy if a) the walls weren’t so thin and b) he didn’t seem intent on adding you as another notch in his bedpost. 

but there’s only so much you can resist park jimin, especially once he gets that peach involved.

warnings: sexually explicit content, Jimin being completely shameless/a lowkey ho, messy peach eating, mentions of masturbation, oral sex (m + f receiving), overstimulation, protected sex, multiple orgasms (f), dirty talk and some cursing, hmm I think that’s it?

a/n: I was so close to calling this ‘jimin and the f*cking peach’ as some terrible homage to ‘james and the giant peach’ 😂🤧 as always I would like to thank @hobi-gif for beta reading this, putting up with me having a meltdown at her, and encouraging me to write smut at work rather than doing my job, ty queen xoxo

--

It’s official. Park Jimin is the neighbour from hell.

He’d tricked you, to start with. With those cherubic features, those doe eyes, and his cute little smile? He looks like an angel. A sweet, innocent angel, one who’d knocked shyly on your door and presented you with a small selection of chocolates when he’d moved into the apartment next to yours. Your heart had gone boom boom at the sight of that cute smile, the slip of teeth, the way his lovely face had scrunched up. 

Nowadays, whenever you see that face, you want to punch it.

Well. Not punch it. Maybe slap it a little. Because Park Jimin is a fiend. 

Your studio apartment is cheap for many reasons. The plumbing is creaky and the heating isn’t exactly great but those are small sacrifices for such low rent—ones you’re willing to make. Creaking doesn’t bother you and throw blankets exist for a reason, right? You get a balcony and a parking spot, which is more than you can say for a lot of other places in this price range, so you’ll take the negatives for these positives.

But you’d give up all the things you love about this cheap flat for some sound proofing.

Because Park Jimin fucks. 

A lot. 

He’d been nothing but lovely for the first few weeks. You’d barely been aware of his existence, minus when you could hear him in the bathroom—your flats are mirrored, rooms sharing walls, so you’d been washing your face when you’d heard his shower start up and then the sound of his dulcet tones drifting through the wall. That had actually been really nice; Jimin can hit some high notes, and it had been a pleasant backdrop as you’d cleansed your face. It had been another bullet point you’d added to the list of things you thought were cute about him (along with his face, his laugh, his smile), and you’d stupidly started to develop a tiny little crush on this boy-next-door, thinking him some soft, kind thing.

But then he’d started to have people over.

You’ve lost count of how many days you’ve had to listen to the moans and gasps that echo through your walls. You can’t escape from it. As a freelance programmer, you’re pretty much always working from home, so it’s not like you can get away from the sounds of pleasure that shudder through Jimin’s flat and into your own.

It’s never consistent, either. There’s not a single hour of the day that’s off limits to Park Jimin. Morning, afternoon, night; the boy is always ready to go, apparently. And judging from the sounds through the walls? He never leaves anyone unsatisfied either.

Which, like, fine. People fuck. You get it. You’re not judging. You just wish it wasn’t so loud. You have to sleep, for God’s sake. But it’s not like you can knock on a new neighbour’s door and be like hey, I appreciate you have an incredibly active sex life, but can you keep it down, please?

So you’d bit your tongue. You’d gritted your teeth to bear it. You’d still smile at Jimin if you ever passed in the hallway, acknowledged him with a small nod, exchanged pleasantries, all the neighbourly stuff that you’d do with anyone. You’d just invested in some good earplugs and thought that was it.

And then Jimin had started doing his morning yoga routine outside. 

You start each day with a cup of tea on your balcony, watering your hydrangeas and enjoying the dawn sun that lifts up over the horizon alongside your plants. It’s a small, singular moment of quiet in an otherwise dull day and you treasure that serenity.

Well. Treasured. Past tense. Because Jimin has invaded this part of your life, too.

The first time Jimin had unrolled his yoga mat on the balcony adjacent to yours, he’d been dressed in a deceptively unassuming outfit—a loose white t-shirt and leggings that hugged every inch of his calves and thighs and shapely ass, which you had pointedly Not Looked At. He’d tilted his head at you with a smug little smile flickering at the edge of his lips, and when he’d greeted you good morning, you’d responded in turn, even if you were still annoyed at how he’d interrupted your afternoon nap the day before with the sound of his headboard smacking into the wall repeatedly. You were still fairly new neighbours and you still felt like you had to be polite, even if he was starting to fray your nerves.

And then he’d started to bend. 

Now, you’ll be the first to admit that you don’t know much about yoga. But you’d swear Jimin was choosing poses that did the utmost to display his flexibility, the flex of his muscles and twist of his limbs, balancing his body on his arms before easing into a pose that had him bent in two, head towards his toes—and with how he had his back to you this meant you got full glimpse of his ass, straining against his leggings, the way his loose shirt slipped up his body to reveal the lines of his stomach and chest, how his face was still twisted into that little smirk even if it was upside down.

Staring at you.

You’d promptly stopped watering your hydrangeas and walked inside your flat, shutting the sliding door behind you.

Jimin is relentless.

He’s pretty and he knows it. All that shy, new-kid-on-the-block innocence he’d had initially is completely gone, and all he does is flirt, flirt, flirt. He winks at you. Stands a little too close whenever you talk. Lets his eyes flicker down to your lips, trail over every inch of you, lashes fluttering when he catches you watching, unashamed and unabashed. He frequently just… hangs around on his balcony. Not topless, no, but he may as well be, his thotty muscle tees doing nothing to hide him from your eyes.

(The worst thing, though, is when you catch him unawares. When he’s tired and clearly not expecting you to be awake, too, his eyes sleepy and his hair ruffled; a little vulnerable, a lot softer than he usually presents himself. Curled up on the small seat on his balcony with a hot drink in his hand, phone in the other, his screen throwing blue-tinted light over the easing lines of his features.

You wish Jimin was like that all the time. But the second he sees you, his eyes flicker, and his brows lift, and his mouth curls, and once again you rue the day you had a fuckboy move in next door to you.)

It’s not that Jimin isn’t hot. It’s not that you wouldn’t fuck him, either. But you have no interest in being some sort of convenient hook-up for him, purely there by circumstance, fate, whatever you want to call it. You dread to think of him sending you haha wyd x texts whenever he feels like having sex and you just happen to be nearby. So you weather all of his obvious come-ons and swerve him something chronic, even if he seems intent on making his attraction to you obvious.

You’ve been managing it for months. But as time goes on, your patience wears thinner and thinner, an atom-thick layer of fortitude the only thing keeping you from grabbing Park Jimin and kissing him and/or killing him. It doesn’t help that you haven’t fucked for a while now, and you’re reminded of this every time you hear another pornstar moan through the wall (the people Jimin brings home seem to like hamming it up for effect), every time you see another mosaic of hickeys laid across the column of Jimin’s gorgeous throat, every time you see the way his yoga outfits do nothing to protect the delicious shape of his body from your eyes.

You dig your fingers into your palms. It’s fine. It’s okay. You can handle Park Jimin and his overt sexual energy, oozing out of him almost every second of every day.

It’s a little harder to handle how he still seems sweet despite his fuckboy nature. How he picks your parcels up for you. How he lets you use his laundry detergent when you run out. How he lets you keep food in his fridge when yours breaks down and you have to wait for a replacement. How he sheds that fuckboy facade whenever it seems like you genuinely need help, how you’ve heard his soft phone calls through the wall, to his friends, his family, sweet and kind and supportive.

Park Jimin is a multi-dimensional being, for sure, and maybe you sometimes wish he was actually genuinely interested in you as a person and not as a lay, so you could peel back those layers to the lovely core at the centre of his being.

But it’s fine. You can handle this stupid yearning and pining. You can handle the knowledge that Park Jimin is a genuine gentleman who just happens to like fucking, is open in his desire for it, and is apparently Very Good at it. It’s difficult, but you can do it.

You can do it.

The date you set up with someone from Tinder ends up being disappointing and lacklustre. You’d escaped before dessert, unable to put up with one more second of this asshole going on and on about stocks, and investments, and trading, or whatever, cursing the day you’d decided to swipe on him. You’re so sick of your luck (or lack thereof) with guys. (At least the food had been nice.)

Of course Jimin sees you schlepping your way back into your apartment, disappointment obvious in the line of your shoulders and lips; it doesn’t take a genius to clock your date outfit, cute as it is, makeup and hair soft. But the night has barely begun and here you are, stepping back into your flat. Alone. 

“Bad date?” Jimin asks, voice gentle, and you just snort.

“Just like the rest of them,” you reply with a small sigh, before shutting your door quietly behind you, missing the look on your neighbour’s face.

Jimin, to his credit, eases off after this. You’re not sure if it’s due to a misplaced sense of pity or something, but even if he still smiles and flirts lightly with you, it’s less… salacious. Still there, still obvious, just a little softer. You hate how this has you feeling grateful towards him, because he’s still got so many fuckboy tendencies that it should outweigh this gentler side of his flirtation, but your traitorous heart still goes gooey every time Jimin smiles at you.

But then. 

But then.

There’s that fucking peach.

You’re just chilling on your balcony, sipping at a glass of lemonade in the warmth of the afternoon when you hear Jimin’s door sliding open. You flick your eyes over at the sound, watching the way Jimin slips out onto his own balcony, how he throws something up in the air and catches it with ease, a flick of the wrist, a curl of the fingers each time he catches it again.

He hasn’t had any fuckbuddies over for a while. A few weeks, almost a month. It’s the longest Jimin’s gone without having sex for as long as he’s started having people over and you’d been sort of concerned. Which, yeah, you know it sounds super weird when you think about it, especially considering how much you complain about Jimin to your friends—help, my fuckboy neighbour hasn’t fucked anyone in nearly a month so I’m worried if his dick has fallen off or something.

(Well, actually, you know his dick is still attached, based off the little gasps and moans he lets out whenever he pleasures himself in lieu of fucking someone else. You’ll take this secret to the grave but those noises that Jimin lets out have been the melody you use to reach your own peaks, although you’re a lot quieter than he is whenever you touch yourself, biting your lip and muffling the wet sounds of your fingers thrusting into your cunt under layers of blankets. You’d never give Jimin the satisfaction of knowing that the mental image of him fucking into his fist and cumming over his stomach and chest is what throws you over your own edge, toe-curling orgasms that shake through your body in time with Jimin’s own.)

Anyway. He looks loose limbed and relaxed when he saunters into view, utterly unsurprised by your presence behind your window box of hydrangeas, giving you his usual, sultry smile. 

He’s started to ramp up his flirtations again. This smirk is one which you’ve learned not to respond to. You just stare levelly back at him, unimpressed as you start to water your flowers, which does nothing to dissuade him. It never does. He clearly revels in the challenge.

Jimin keeps his eyes locked with yours as he lifts his hand to his lips. You catch a glimpse of what he was throwing and catching—a ripe, flush peach, tiny droplets of water shimmering on its fuzz, freshly washed.

And then he starts to eat it.

The peach yields immediately to the press of his teeth. Juice bursts out of its softness, running down his lips, his chin; he makes no moves to wipe it away, the lewd sound of his slurps as he curls his tongue into the fruit, messy and sweet.

It’s shameless. He’s shameless. His gaze is unwavering as he stares at you, his mouth glistening with the peach’s juices, the only sound the wet smack of his lips and tongue as he licks up the honeyed liquid that drips from his skin, curving around the fruit as he swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing.

Water’s been trickling from your small can onto the hydrangeas, cascading over the plants; the soil is waterlogged now, but you haven’t noticed, fixated on the way Jimin is looking at you as he wantonly eats out this peach.

Drip drip, goes the watering can.

Drip drip, goes the peach.

By the time there’s nothing more than the pit in his hand, Jimin is a mess. His fingers and mouth and chin shine with peach juice, eyes dark and heavy as he watches the way you drink the sight of him in, the way his tongue slowly drags over his full lips, catching the sweetness that lingers.

The second he puts his tongue to his fingers to get the stickiness on them, that’s it. You watch the way he sucks his fingers into his mouth and promptly put the watering can down and turn on your heel to walk inside, slamming the balcony door shut behind you.

You’re done. You’re only human. You’ve spent months with Jimin parading himself in front of you, seen the way he contorts his body every morning in an unnecessarily complex sun salutation, listened to the way his voice rises when he cums; the peach is the metaphorical cherry on top, and you’re just. Over. It. 

You hammer your palms against your neighbour's door, rap-rap-rapping on the wood, your blood rising and your heart thudding in your chest, every part of you tense, wound up, pent up. The door swings open to reveal Jimin, his chin still slick with sweet peach, lips curling up in a self-satisfied smile when he sees you.

“Park Jimin.” Your voice shakes and you hate yourself for it, hate the way Jimin’s eyes glitter at the sound, the little hitch in your breath. “You are a fucking menace, you know that?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says. He leans against the doorframe, effortlessly gorgeous, hip cocked, head tilted. He lifts his hand, and there’s a heavy moment of tension as you watch him slowly swipe a thumb over the last remnant of juice on his chin, before his tongue lolls out of his mouth and he licks the final taste of peach from his fingers.

When you grab hold of his collar his expression shifts from something coy into something far more self satisfied, months of his brazen come-ons finally culminating in this—you, shoving him backwards into his apartment, kicking the door shut behind you.

“I swear,” you say. “I swear to God—”

“You swear? I can think of better things you could be doing with your mouth,” Jimin says, and then laughs when you scowl at him. “Damn, you’re so hot when you’re mad.”

“You are infuriating,” you bite out, and Jimin just laughs again, his whole body shaking, every part of him still loose and relaxed even as you continue to tighten your grip on his clothing, feeling every motion of his body under your hands. You hate how pretty he is, even now, utterly unafraid of your frustration—the brightness of his eyes and his smile, that undercurrent to it all, the way his hands slide so smoothly around your waist, your hips, sliding down to grope at your ass.

“I know,” he agrees, still giggling, and then he kisses you.

Jimin dives straight in, no holds barred, and you immediately melt into putty under his touch. He lets out a hum of satisfaction into your mouth as your hands go lax and slide down his chest. You can still taste the peach on his lips, his tongue, licking into his mouth.

You’ve thought about this mouth more times than you’d like to admit: the full swell of his lips, the little curve of his cupid’s bow, how it’d feel pressed against your own, and honestly? It’s so much better than you’d let yourself imagine it to be.

He nips at your bottom lip before soothing it with his tongue, and you bite off a gasp when he pulls you forward, grinding against you. You shudder. Jimin’s mouth is a pleased curve against your own before he pulls away, murmuring in your ear in a voice that’s equal parts sultry and sweet.

“That’s it,” he murmurs, kissing the sensitive skin of your jaw just under your earlobe, making you shiver. “Just relax. You’re always so tense.”

“Maybe that’s because my neighbour keeps me up all night,” you say, but your voice is weak, no strength behind your words, breath stolen out of you at the way Jimin starts to trail his lips down your neck, across your throat. “I find that constantly getting my sleep interrupted—oh, oh—”

Jimin sucks at the hollow of your neck, the delicate skin there so sensitive to his touch, the warmth of his lips magnified, every nerve ending alight with pleasure. Your hands have slid into his hair and you unintentionally tighten your grasp, fingers tugging at his dark locks, and Jimin bares his teeth against your skin.

It’s maybe a little embarrassing how wet you are just from a little making out. But after months of Jimin teasing you and putting you on edge, coupled with how long it’s been since you've had sex? You’re allowed to be a little desperate. All the small frustrations you were about to voice die on your tongue, slipping away from you as Jimin starts to walk you backwards with a confidence that shows just how often he’s done this—leading people to his bed, never taking his hands off you.

By the time Jimin eases you to lie down, you feel breathless. He hovers above you with that satisfied smile flickering at the edge of his lips, taking in the sight of you, finally underneath him—lips kiss swollen, exquisite, all the sharp words on your tongue softened and gone, goosebumps trailing down your skin. You tug at his collar, which catches him off guard; he sways forward and almost hits his face against yours, but before he can spend too long looking smug at your desperation you capture his lips again. You melt into the mattress, hooking a foot over his calf and revelling in the weight of him between your legs, your hips flush, and how hard he’s getting through those stupidly tight leggings of his.

When he grinds against you, the outline of his cock pressed up against your cunt, an embarrassing whine leaves your lips and trembles against Jimin’s own. Jimin goes still before pulling away from the open-mouthed kiss and when you see the expression on his face you slap a hand over your mouth, burning with shame.

“Oh.” He sounds delighted. “You’re noisy, huh?”

“Shut up,” you say, though your words are muffled against your palm. He grinds down again, a slow and deep roll of his hips that lets you feel how hard he is, and a noise shudders out the back of your throat, audible around your hand.

“It’s hot.” There’s that little smirk on Jimin’s lovely lips, every inch of him dripping self confidence. He knows how you’re entirely at his mercy, in spite of your words; your voice is weak. “You’re normally so quiet.”

“Some of us try to be considerate and think about our neighbours.”

Jimin just smiles, pulling your hand away from your mouth before gently kissing your palm, a motion that’s surprisingly tender and makes you pause. 

“Trust me.” His voice is low. “I do think about my neighbour.”

Your breath hitches when he slides his free hand under your shirt, trailing his fingers over the softness of your stomach. He pulls the fabric up, letting his gaze rove over the bared skin. The way Jimin looks at you makes you feel like you’re the only woman in the world, like he’s never seen anyone prettier.

You wonder if he looks at his other fuckbuddies like this.

The thought slides away from you as Jimin dips his head and starts to kiss your throat again. You tilt your head back as his lips trail across the soft skin, his hands coming to rest under your breasts, contained as they are by your bra; once he coaxes you to sit up, it only takes him a few moments to strip your upper body, kneeling between your spread legs as he starts to trail his hands over the parts of you that are now bared to him.

“Pretty,” he says. You’d roll your eyes if he didn’t sound so reverent, and also if you weren’t distracted by the way he flicks his thumbs over your hardening nipples, your core clenching as he does, biting your lip to stop yourself from making a sound. A frown flits across Jimin’s face and he lifts one of those thumbs away from your breast, dragging your lip away from your teeth, letting his grasp linger so your lips are parted. “Don’t do that. I've been waiting for months to hear you properly.”

Before you can reply, he kisses you again, licking into your mouth and swallowing down the noise you make when he drags his hand between the valley of your breasts, down your stomach and settling between your legs, running his fingers over your cunt, the feeling dulled by layers of fabric even though he presses with intent. Your hips jolt at the sensation, and Jimin repeats the motion, dragging the fabric across your flushed lips.

“Jimin.” Your voice is a gasp against his mouth, and you can’t keep the pleading out of your tone, desperation bleeding into every letter of your words. “Please.”

He just hums, sounding pleased, and a breath of surprise escapes you as he pushes you back against the pillows. He wastes no time in getting to his prize, drawing a scattered constellation of kisses that trail across your chest, your nipples, your stomach, the line of your hip bones as you lift up so he can pull your shorts and underwear off. You’re entirely naked underneath him, bare and wet, cunt flushed and shining, and Jimin groans at the sight.

“Look at you,” he murmurs, fingers digging into your thighs as he pulls your legs wider. Your cheeks burn as Jimin stares at your pussy, but you can’t help but feel a pulse of self-satisfaction at the visible twitch of his cock in his stupid yoga leggings. “You’re so wet.”

You should probably feel embarrassed, but by now you’ve thrown all your previous inhibition to the winds. You’ve ended up somewhere you’d privately sworn you were never going to—in Park Jimin’s bed, leaned up against his pillows, laid out for him to touch and take and have, every inch of you desperate for it. There’s nothing in your brain or body but arousal and need. So instead of letting out a snip of a remark you just cant your hips towards him, another pleading sound slipping from your lips.

He gives you what you want. He dips his head and trails his lips and tongue down, down, down, wet and hot, until they press against your cunt. He looks at you with the same hooded eyes as earlier, motions of his mouth an echo of his peach eating, sloppy and messy; he’s unabashed in the way he slides his mouth over you, lips slick and tongue hot, sliding over every sensitive inch—sucking your clit, licking your folds, burying his face between your legs and drinking up every sweet drip of your juices. 

You can’t help but make noise. Small gasps that slide into moans of pleasure, hitches in your breath that make your chest jump and your breasts shake; Jimin lets out noises too, muffled against your cunt, sounds that let you know he’s enjoying himself almost as much as you. It’s honestly pretty fucking hot, the way your own pleasure seems to turn him on, how he chases that feeling, eyes blown as he takes in every one of your reactions, repeating the motions that are affecting you the most.

The sight of him between your legs has you tensing. He continues to stare up at you, the curve of your stomach when you bow towards him, the fall of your breasts, which he slides his hands over, cupping them in his palms, pinching your hardened buds, layering sensation on sensation, never taking his mouth off you.

When he presses one finger inside, and then another, both thrusting firm and deep as he mouths at your clit, you tangle a hand into his hair. He watches the way your hips jump from the sensation of his tongue directly on your clit, and does it again, and again, your voice crescendoing from the explosion of sensation, how it’s too much, before he circles his lips around it and sucks messily. Your brain registering nothing but his lips and tongue against you, the hands that are trailing up and down your sides and still skimming across your breasts.

You’re not even aware of the words that are falling from your lips, oh fuck, yes, Jimin, there, oh, the way your grasp tightens in his dark hair, your hips bucking against his mouth as you can feel your orgasm approaching. The pleasure keeps building, flames fanning brighter and brighter as Jimin buries his mouth even further in between your legs, fingers speeding up as you gasp.

“Don’t stop, don’t stop,” you chant, voice getting higher. “I’m gonna cum, I’m cumming, oh—”

Your words slide into a moan as your back arches and your thighs tighten around Jimin’s head and you cum. Jimin continues to finger fuck you through it, your cunt pulsating around him as he keeps licking and sucking at your clit, his gaze fixed on your face as your eyes squeeze shut and your mouth falls open and every line of your body sings of the pleasure that Jimin has given to you. Even when your legs and hips start to jolt from oversensitivity and you cry out at each ripple of his tongue against you, he’s relentless, almost cruel in how he watches you writhe from a mixture of pain and overextended pleasure.

You're sobbing by the time Jimin pulls his mouth away from your cunt, tears pooling in the corner of your eyes, body shaking as you try to suck in air. He thrusts his fingers into you one more time, slow and deep, watching the way you turn your head into the pillow and muffle a gasp against it. 

“I knew you'd look and sound gorgeous when you cum,” he says, and though you feel boneless from your post-orgasm high, you can’t help a little huff escaping your lips. Jimin clearly catches the sound, quiet as it is against the linen of his pillowcase, and takes your chin in his hand to turn his face towards you. His fingers are slick with your arousal, wet against your skin.

“You sound like you’re reading off the script to a porno,” you murmur.

One of his eyebrows arches. “Oh? You don’t think I’m just speaking my mind?” Those fingers move away from your chin and trace over the swell of your bottom lip; you let your mouth fall open and swallow them down, licking the taste of yourself off Jimin’s skin. “You don’t think that I’ve been thinking about how pretty you’d look as I fucked into you, begging for me to let you cum again and again?”

Your tongue stutters against his fingers and your core clenches at his words, the dark undercurrent underneath them, and Jimin’s expression shifts as he notices.

“You really have no idea, do you?” He runs his fingertips over your tastebuds, saliva starting to pool in your mouth, the slide so wet and messy. “Who do you think I picture whenever I touch myself? Who do you think I was wishing was in my bed every time I took someone else home?”

You nip at his fingers, running the edge of your teeth along his knuckles from equal parts surprise and disbelief at his words. You find it impossible to believe that he really means that, but then you realise—recently, on the few occasions you’d bumped into Jimin in the hall when he’d had one of his lays trailing behind him, for as different and unique each of them was, each one of them had shared some sort of trait with you. Hair colour, eyes, the set of their lips, the shape of their face; once, you’d heard a girl giggling through the wall before it had trailed off into a moan, and you’d done a literal double take at how much she’d sounded like you. Similar, but not exactly the same, a slightly off-tone echo of the sound that spills from your own lips whenever you laugh.

And the emptiness in his bed had only started after the night that he’d seen the way you’d trailed into your apartment with discontent heavy around your shoulders, disappointed at that awful Tinder date.

Oh, fuck.

“You’re shameless,” you say, words a little garbled around Jimin’s fingers, but you know he understands.

“No, I’m not,” he replies, a small smirk curling up the corner of his lips. It should be illegal: the way he has such soft features that can turn so quickly into something sharper and entirely sensual, eyes hooded, lips flushed, the column of his throat so lovely and graceful as he tilts his head to one side. “I just know what I want and don’t try to hide it. What’s shameless about that? I know you want me too, but you always deny yourself the things you want. Don’t you?”

You hate that you’ve been so transparent in your attraction to him. Because the truth of the matter is that for as much as Jimin frustrates you with his entire existence, you do want him. After all—you wouldn’t be naked underneath him, still trembling from the aftershocks of a deep orgasm, if you didn’t.

“You’re not always as quiet as you think, you know,” he adds, pulling his fingers out of your mouth and enjoying the way your eyes widen at his words. You thought he couldn’t hear you through the wall, but it seems like you were wrong.

Before you can say anything in reply, though, he grinds down. Without your clothes in the way you can feel the drag of his yoga pants against your cunt, how the wetness of your cum and Jimin’s spit soaks into the fabric, his hard cock hot, and you let out a whine. He still has yet to remove any of his clothes and you want to  see them off so he’s finally naked. You’ve seen enough of his bare skin over the months to have a pretty good idea of what that looks like, but you want to see the real thing.

Jimin seems just as eager to shed his clothes, yielding to your grasping hands and carelessly throwing his top aside; you end up straddling his waist and kissing down his chest in an imitation of his motions earlier, letting your fingers trail over the lean muscle from his yoga and dance. When you tongue at one of his nipples and he gasps, you feel euphoric. He’s unfairly beautiful, from the lovely collarbones to the flex of his shoulders and arms and the line of his chest and stomach, delicate and somehow entirely masculine. You still sort of want to slap him, but settle with kissing the hollow of his neck instead, digging your fingers into his ribs as you roll your hips down against him.

His own hips buck up. You can tell that he’s desperate to be inside you, but you want to taste him first. 

When you slide down his body and settle between his legs, you hook your fingers into the tight waistband of those stupid leggings and tug them down. Jimin hisses through his teeth as you let the material settle just under his hips, baring the top of his briefs to you, how his cock strains against them, the patch of wetness at the head, darkening the fabric.

You don’t strip him. Not completely. You just hook your fingers into those dark blue briefs and pull them down just enough to reveal the flushed head of his cock, wet with precum. You let your tongue flick out to catch that salty bitterness, and Jimin bites off a curse at the almost shy licks you start to lave across his slit, circling around the weeping head.

Hearing Jimin’s gasps without the wall in the way is honestly an experience. Before, whenever he had people over, they usually drowned him out, theatrical wails and groans overpowering his far more natural noises, but now there’s nothing to prevent you from hearing the way his breath hitches in his throat or the way he moans. Even the smallest things have him letting slip sounds, a noise escaping him as you coax him to lift his hips so you can finally, finally peel those leggings and briefs off, dragging over the hardness of his cock as you do. You want to take in the sight of him fully naked, give it the proper attention it deserves, but then you feel his cock throb in your hand and you can’t stop yourself from immediately lowering your mouth to it again.

His whole body shudders. You let your jaw fall open as you take him in, tongue curling around him, hands touching every part of him that isn’t in your mouth, making sure there’s no part of  him that isn’t receiving attention. His eyes are wide under the mess of his fringe, hair falling over his forehead as he watches the way you run your lips down the side of his cock before sucking one of his balls into your mouth, circling his length with your hands, a twisting rise and fall in the motion as you drink down the noise of surprised pleasure that drops from his lips.

Jimin’s fingers have been tangled in your hair but he lets you control the flow. The sounds of you swallowing him down into your mouth as you bob your head are obscene, wet and messy, but you can still hear how his voice starts to rise, how his fingers tighten against your scalp, and you know he’s close when he tugs you upwards and drags your lips away from his cock. 

Jimin pulls you towards him and you settle against his chest as you start to kiss again, shivering at the way he rolls his tongue in your mouth. This time when Jimin rolls his hips, there’s nothing between your skin and his, dragging the underside of his cock across your flushed lower lips, the slide between your folds and against your clit making you shiver.

“Condoms?” 

You’re breathless, and Jimin quirks a smile at you.

“Top drawer,” he answers. Of course they would be, in easy reach whenever he needs them. 

You lean forwards to reach for the bedside table and Jimin takes the opportunity to circle a hand around your breast and capture a nipple in his mouth, ignoring the way you bite back a surprised noise, staring up at you with almost innocent eyes as he sucks at your skin in the way he’s worked out that you like best. Your hands are a fumble as you pull a condom out of the pack, ripping the sachet away from the others, a bottle of lube rolling into your grasp. You try to focus on your task and not the sensation of Jimin switching attention to your other breast, cupping the swell of flesh in his hand and drawing his teeth gently across your skin.

“You’re insatiable,” you mutter, and Jimin laughs before he kisses between your breasts. 

“I’ve been wanting to fuck you since we first met,” he says, utterly unrepentant. “I don't want to take my mouth off you.”

“Insatiable,” you repeat, but you’re flustered. Even if you know he’s not lying, and you’re naked and straddling his hips, the taste of his lips and cock now familiar on your tongue, it’s… kind of incredible to think that the gorgeous Park Jimin has been lusting after you for that long. 

Or lusting after you at all, really.

But as you tear the foil of the condom, the look he levels at you is burning with desire, roaming over you, every inch of your nakedness, every movement of your body. His hands rest at your waist, thumbs rubbing over your skin as you hold his cock in one hand and roll the condom down with the other, letting your fingers circle his length, dragging your touch over the heat of him and revelling in the way he twitches. As much as you’ve thought of Jimin as a fuckboy, you know that he wouldn’t lie just to get someone in his bed, so as unbelievable as his words are, every single one of his actions backs up what he’s said: he wants you.

You don't notice how soft his gaze is as you take time to warm the lube in your hands, even though you’re desperate to feel him finally slide home. You've always been so considerate, even when he knows you've been frustrated at him, and that's evident now, in this small thing.

You spread the warmed lube over his covered cock, pumping it in your hand to get him slick and ready, loving the way he hisses though his teeth. He has to stop his hips from bucking up as you line his cockhead up with your entrance, his fingers digging into your sides as you hover in place.

“Come on,” Jimin urges. “Give it to me.”

“Insatiable,” you repeat, one last time, then you bend your knees.

You finally ease yourself down and onto his cock. You both let out moans; Jimin, finally feeling the wet heat of you around him, and you, falling into the sensation of him stretching you open, snug inside you, slowly splitting you open as you take him in, inch by inch, until you’re sitting on his hips and he’s fully buried in your cunt.

It’s been a while since you’ve had someone inside you. You grind downwards, rolling your hips, biting your lip at the sensation. Jimin’s chest expands as he sucks in a sharp breath, and you roll your hips again, a hand bracing on one of his lovely, thick thighs, the other resting just under his stomach as you lean back and arch your spine. You lift your hips, easy and slow, and then fall, Jimin’s cock dragging and pressing against your inner walls, a gasp shuddering out of your lips at the electric feeling.

Again and again, noises of pleasure drip from your mouth as you ride him, head tilting back at the sensations rippling through your body and across your skin, the apartment full of the sounds of your sex—the moans, the wet thrust of Jimin’s cock into your cunt, the praise that falls from his lips, months of feeling pouring from his lips. How pretty you are, how gorgeous, how well you’re taking his cock, how wet and tight you are around him; all the things he’s been thinking about, come to life, his hips snapping into yours as a sharp cry cuts through your lips at the sudden change of pace.

The pleasure’s been steadily building between your legs again, warm and unrushed, but then Jimin flips you without warning, fluid and graceful. Your eyes are wide as you end up on your back, Jimin’s hands braced either side of your head as he looks down at you with those dark, dark eyes of his. He thrusts forwards and your hands fly up to grab at him, your entire body shifting up the mattress at the force of his movements. His eyebrows are drawn together as he starts to drive himself into you, unapologetic in how aggressive he’s being, each thrust pushing the air out of your lungs in harried little gasps that shake the air between you.

The sound of his headboard slamming into the wall, a noise that’s been haunting you each time you’ve been trying to sleep or relax, is one you don’t even register. All you can think about is Jimin, Jimin, Jimin, caught up in the way there’s sweat beading across his forehead, strands of his dark hair sticking to it, the intense look in his eyes, the way his full lips are parted, small ah-ah-ahs falling from his lips in time with his thrusts, your body tightening around him each time he slides home.

You can’t remember the last time you were fucked this good. Jimin reads the language of your body with ease, knowing exactly when to lean back and trail a hand over your hips, circling his thumb over your swollen clit, the slide over that bundle of nerves messy from the mix of cum and lube and spit that’s laid slick across you. Each fluid roll of his hips is perfectly timed with the press of his thumb, your thighs going tense and your pussy clenching around Jimin’s hot cock as you start to reach another peak of pleasure.

“Cum for me, baby.” Jimin sounds breathless. “Let me see how pretty you are when you cum around my cock.”

Normally dirty talk seems so ham-handed and stuttering, but the words fall out of Jimin’s lips  as natural as breathing, thoughtless. Stirring your arousal even further. He’s gripping your hips, pulling you down each time he presses up, and you circle your fingers around his wrist as his other hand is occupied with rubbing at your most sensitive part, tightening your hold as you feel another orgasm approaching.

“Jimin.” Your voice is a keen. “I'm so close, please, there, right there, theretherethere—”

You can't blame Jimin's other partners for being so noisy. The sound you let out is just as loud, maybe even louder, Jimin continuing to snap his hip forwards as you cum hard, a drawn out moan that crescendos as you pulsate around Jimin's cock, still hard inside you. He watches the way you writhe beneath him, tangling his fingers with yours when you reach for him and swallowing the end of your moan in a surprisingly sweet kiss, his lips gentle against yours as he slows to a stop before you become too sensitive.

Your voice is a quiet murmur against his lips. “How have you not cum yet?”

His eyes squeeze into a smile as he laughs, light and bright, the sound so sweet. “I've got stamina for days, darling,” he says, oozing that trademark arrogance you’ve gotten used to.

You clench as hard as you can around him and feel smug when he bites off a shocked curse, his smug facade broken. You can’t help but laugh at his expression, scandalised at it is, though your giggle cuts into a gasp when he pinches one of your nipples and then soothes it with his thumb. He seems amused by the look on your face and then laughs in turn, the two of you dissolving into laughter that’s edged with pleasure, your motions shifting his length inside you.

When the laughter trails off, Jimin stays smiling down at you. You draw your hands over his body, tracing all that smooth skin, and he touches the back of your hands with gentle fingers. There's a beat of silence but it's not an uncomfortable one, the air light after your shared giggles. It's… really nice. It's nice and soft and sweet, just like the expression on Jimin's face, tender, even if he's still buried inside you.

You feel so empty when he slips out, already missing the thickness of his cock when it seems as though he’s about to coax you to roll onto your front. Your hands are still linked with his and you tighten your fingers, making him pause.

“I want to see your face,” you confess quietly. It’s probably too much to ask of him but you feel like if you’re turned away from each other then you’ll feel like nothing more than a fucktoy. Just another warm body in Jimin’s bed. You don’t want that.

Jimin stares at you, surprise written across his features before his expression softens. 

"Okay, baby," he murmurs indulgently. The small pet name sounds so sweet in his mouth. "We can stay like this."

He lets your hands go so that he can reach for a pillow that ends settled under your ass, tilting your hips up towards him. You’re not as flexible as he is—maybe you should start doing yoga too—but Jimin doesn’t push you far, hitching your legs up and draping your calves over his shoulders, leaning towards you so that the back of your thighs are warm against his chest. He's bent forward, face hovering above yours, so much skin-on-skin contact that your entire body feels warmed by him.

When he slides back in, you can feel the change in angle immediately. The head of his cock brushes over your g-spot and you suck in a sharp breath; Jimin notices, of course, aiming to hit it again, and again.

It feels good, of course. Amazing. But as much as you’d be happy for Jimin to make you cum again, you’d rather see him fall apart. 

You dig your nails into his shoulder blades, turning your head so you can press kisses along the line of his jaw, murmuring into his ear.

“Are you going to let me see you cum?” 

Jimin’s hips stutter as your words curl out of your mouth, warm against his skin. You’ve been picturing Park Jimin’s o-face for an endless amount of weeks and you’re ready to finally see the real thing.

“Cum on me,” you say, and then choke in a sob of air as Jimin responds with a sharp snap of his hips. “I want you to cum on me, Jimin, please.”

Your begging is shameless and you know it. Jimin’s face is so close to yours in this position and you can see how blown his pupils are, how his mouth is flushed from your kisses and how he’s been biting at them, his teeth digging into his lip as he starts to get faster, sloppier in his thrusts. It feels so good to know that you’re making him feel like this, that he’s reaching the peak of his pleasure with his body against yours, inside you, above you; he might have had other people in this position in the past, but right now it’s you who’s making Park Jimin come apart. 

You urge him onwards with large, pleading eyes, rocking down on his cock each time he thrusts forward, begging the whole time. Pleading for him to cum, to give it to you, to cover you. Jimin obviously likes you loud and desperate, and you're more than willing to give him what he wants.

He slips out of you, fumbling with the condom and carelessly tossing it aside before he starts to pump his cock, hungry to reach his peak as he fucks into his fist. You let your legs fall open as you watch the way his body tenses, his brows drawn together and little breaths falling out of his mouth, barely audible over the wet slide of his cock in his hand. You run your hands over your body, across the swell of your breasts, down your stomach, dipping between your legs, trying to look as arousing as possible, anything to throw Jimin over the edge.

"I've imagined you cumming for months," you confess, words thoughtlessly falling from your lips. "On me, inside me, in my mouth—"

Park Jimin’s o-face is just as gorgeous as the rest of him.

You love how noisy he is. He paints your stomach with his cum, ropes of white spattering across the soft skin of your stomach and hips as he rides out his orgasm, moaning as he continues to milk his twitching cock. It’s so fucking hot, honestly, as is the expression on his face when you swipe your fingers through his cum and lift it to your lips, mouth filled with salt and warm.

“Fuck.” He’s breathless, panting. “You’re unbelievable.”

You let out a small scoff, but it’s edged with affection. “Says the man who was ready to fuck me six ways to Sunday,” you say. “If anyone’s the unbelievable one here, it’s you.”

“I can last longer, but you’re just so hot,” Jimin says. You respond by curling your fingers at him, beckoning him towards you, and you end up sharing a series of messy kisses. 

You were, honestly, genuinely angry when you'd stepped into his apartment earlier, even if that irritation had been rounded out with arousal and desire. Now, though, you feel thoroughly boneless and content, loose limbed on Jimin's mattress, his lips and tongue moving against your own.

He leans too far forwards and smears his own cooling cum against his stomach. He doesn’t seem bothered, though. You’re the one who has to coax him to clean up, though with the way he looks at your still naked body, you know he would happily launch straight into a second round of fucking so he can add more cum to the canvas of your skin.

He really is insatiable, apparently, when it comes to you.

Even so, you wonder if Jimin’s going to kick you out now that he’s finally had a taste of you. He doesn't. He keeps you close, your body pressed against his side in a way that feels far more intimate than you would have expected.

“Are you hungry?” Jimin breaks the soft silence.

You’ve been trailing nonsensical patterns over his chest but pause when he says this. “Hm?”

“Are you hungry?” Jimin repeats, and there’s a cheeky smile flickering at the edge of his lips. “I have some more peaches in the fridge, if you’d like one.”

“That peach.” Your voice is an embarrassed hiss and your cheeks burn, but Jimin just laughs, boyish and bright as you slap halfheartedly at him. “That was just unfair. Who eats fruit like that?”

“Someone who’s trying to make it obvious that he’s imagining the peach is his neighbour’s pussy instead.” He’s so brazen. “And it clearly worked, didn’t it?”

It had worked. It's annoyingly effective, actually; thinking about the way Jimin had been staring at you as he tongue fucked that peach has arousal shooting through you, even after being so thoroughly fucked by him.

“Yeah, now you’ve had me,” you say. “What do you plan to do next?”

Jimin goes quiet. You wonder if you’ve misstepped, but then he sweeps his hand down the curve of your spine, goosebumps appearing in the wake of his touch.

“I was planning on asking if you wanted to go out for lunch,” he says, his voice so sweet, miles away from the fuckboy persona he usually puts on. This is the softer Park Jimin that you’ve caught glimpses of when he’s unaware, the side of him you wished he’d show more often—revealed to you, now. “Then, if you said yes, I was going to take you out on a date. If that date went well, then I was going to ask if you’d like to go on another one with me. And then another.”

One thing you know about Park Jimin is this: he doesn’t do dates. Each of his lays are one time affairs, no attachments made, no real connection beyond the physical act of sex. Your heart rate picks up.

“Obviously we’d fuck between dates,” he adds, raising his eyebrows at you in a way that’s so exaggerated that it makes you laugh. Of course. Jimin likes to fuck. “Unless you didn’t want to, but there are only so many peaches I can eat, you know?”

“So if I said I didn't want to fuck, and you ran out of peaches, what would you do?” 

Your question seems casual and light but Jimin isn't stupid. He knows what you're really asking. Is he genuinely interested in something more exclusive, or would you just become another notch in his bedpost if he grew tired of waiting for you to spread your legs again?

"I can always buy more peaches."

You stare at him. He's looking at you levelly, a small smile on his face that's a little cocky but mostly warm. And, well, you know he's already gone without other partners for you, even before he'd gotten you in his bed. Park Jimin is serious about you, it seems. He'll wait.

You mouth at his collarbones, tasting the salt of sweat as you kiss and lick at his skin.

"After lunch, we can go back to my apartment, if you want," you whisper against his throat.

Just because Jimin's willing to wait doesn't mean you're going to force him to, especially as you're still as hungry for him as he is for you. 

His hands squeeze your sides as you end up kissing again. You feel soft and ripe and sweet, easing under the touch of Jimin's hands and mouth.

"I still think you're a fucking menace, though," you add, and Jimin laughs so hard the bed shakes, still utterly unrepentant and entirely yours.

--

taglist: @beyoncesdragon​ 

[papirouge]

I’m trying to understand how one sells their soul since I’m watching a vid breaking down how Lady Gaga and Lina Morganas relationship was before Lina passed away. LG came from wealth and had everything while Lina struggled but had real talent for the arts. Her mother even stated that LG has her daughters soul after her daughter just mysteriously jumped or fell from a building. I think LG could have hired someone to kill her. You also posted something about spirit cooking and how people on earth will manipulate spirits and souls for personal gain but I’m kinda confused on how someone who is looking for fame like LG came come across that power? Because from what I understand, our souls aren’t technically ours - like we made them - but a gift from God. Would selling our soul mean we’re stealing from God to give to Satan? Hence why it’s so nearly impossible to go back on the contract (Plus all the rituals that go with that - it all seems so much work for something so meaningless like fame and fortune)

Yeah there's been a lot of shady things going around Gaga when she debuted. I heard about a story of her taking a blood bath in her hotel room... During Artpop era, she started flopping and started mingling with Marina Abramovich (a witch) and I think that's how she managed to come back in favor to the industry.

When it comes to artist, I think their surrounding executives play a HUGE part of them turning to the dark side. I don't think evey celebrity or singer wakes up and decide to make blood sacrifice or sec magick for fame an success. This is a multi layered process: the more they want to walk up the fame ladder, the more sacrifice they'll have to make. I think fame is kinda like a drug, the more you make, the more you need/want it. There's also the fact of having made so many sacrifices.....no everyone will turn back after sacrificing their children/spouse for fame & fortune....

I remember Cardi B made a video around the time "Bodak Yellow" blew up where she was in Dubai (we all know what that means...) saying fame wasn't worth it and that she was ready to retire etc... Many celebrities are pushed to their breaking point in order to 'make it' in the industry.

Don't you find interesting how many celebrities/singer have member of their family/acquaintance dying in tragic events (accident, murder, etc) just before they blew up? On most cases, I don't think it's a coincidence.

And for the souls things, I think you're really onto something. Yes, souls aren't really ours. We more like "borrow" it? Like, you rent an apartment and you can still rent it down to someone else (although that's not really legal lol). So celebrities do rent down their souls to the devil, and when their time comes (death), God (the landlord) acknowledge their soul is in the hand of the devil and lets this authority to the devil. It's important to not that's how it works in the spiritual realm: God is almighty BUT He willingly allows satan autority over earth. In the same logic, humans having freewill, God respect their decision to give satan autority over their life (by selling their souls). Ultimately they'll have to pay the eternal price that goes along.

[fromiftowhen]

The Rookie 3x06 Revelations Thoughts

THIS. EPISODE. I yelled a lot about it on Twitter already, but it was getting a bit much, so this is easier. I need to watch again for more coherent thoughts, but here we go. I'm going to try to go through the plot lines in the order that I cared about them, ranging from literally not at all (Nolan) to literally every fiber of my soul being on fire (Harper and Lucy and June.)

This got VERY long, so it’s behind a cut to save your dash. 

(TLDR? I LOVED this episode. My Chenford heart is happy, but my LUCY CHEN IS A BADASS, NYLA HARPER IS A BADASS, WOMEN RUN THE WHOLE DAMN WORLD HEART IS SOARING. SOARING. Read on for more.)

 First, to get the boring stuff out of the way. NOLAN. I AM SORRY. I get that this show wants me to care about its main character. And in the ways that he relates to Lucy and Jackson and Harper, I do. But I'm just entirely past the point of needing Nolan in separate plot lines. This episode, in particular, I could have done without his arc. Any time he interacts with Harper or Tim, I'm good. But that's because of Harper and Tim. This week he took time away from storylines I was MUCH more interested in, and I honestly didn't care. I know they use him to check in on current actual world events, but this show did that SO well with Jackson's story last week/etc. that this stuff with Nolan wasn't necessary this week.

 JACKSON AND HIS NEW LOVE INTEREST. As soon as they panned up to OFFICER ISAAC "A cop on a horse, yeah" YOUNG, I was like OH HELL, this is ON. I forgot about Sterling and then was like, "wait, he has a boyf.... wait, I DO NOT CARE" -- "You must've been looking in the wrong direction"/"Yeah, well, I am not now." And the scene at the end with the bikes! YES. Here for this. They IMMEDIATELY had more chemistry than Jackson and Sterling ever did, sorry. I hope he sticks around. Jackson finally getting a love interest who will (hopefully, presumably!) understand him as a cop and a person of color? NEED. IT.

 TIM BRADFORD AND BILLY RIGGINS MACK DANIELS. "YOU GET PRETTIER WITH AGE." (I am here for ALL references to this show understanding how beautiful Eric Winter is. ALL. OF. THEM.) Derek Phillips is a longstanding love of mine, and he just plays every minor role he's in so well. This storyline was heartbreaking and gave me SO many Tim (and Isabel!) feels. For some reason, even though I thought about this episode a million times over the last week, it NEVER occurred to me to think about Tim's reaction to the UC stuff as an extension of the Isabel storyline, which just... what in the world, self. That is clearly, if you've read my fic, one of my favorite of MANY aspects of Tim's character, and it just never occurred to me that it would play into this episode. So when he said Isabel's name, I had to compose myself. And how it played out, the multi-layered way it gave us a glimpse into Tim now and tied into his clear feelings about Lucy going UC, THIS is what this show does best. 

 When he administered the Narcan to Mack and did CPR, god, I HURT for him (and for Mack and his family) -- but TIM. He's been there. He's watched it tear his entire world apart, and the guilt he clearly still carries from that is just. Heart-wrenching. The scene at the end with Mack's wife and the scene with Sgt. Grey... so painfully good. The guilt. The honesty. Eric Winter is just knocking it 1000% out of the park every week this season. Honestly, I've loved many television characters with my whole heart, but maybe none more than I do Tim Bradford.

(Please know the restraint I’m showing by not writing one million words about Tim’s solo storyline and the Chenford of it all here. Trust me when I say I could have. But this episode ended up being SO MUCH MORE to me than what I thought it would be. I went in for WORRIED TIM and I got that! But in different ways than I thought, and SO MUCH BETTER.)

 TIM "GET CHANGED" BRADFORD PUT LUCY "YES, SIR" CHEN IN HANDCUFFS. WHILE ASKING IF SHE WAS OKAY. AND THEN HE TOLD HER SHE DID GOOD. "I kind of hoped that he would be proud of me... wow, that sounds stupid when I say it out loud." "I know she can. I trained her." Her little smile as he closed the shop door and the way he sort of hesitated before saying anything. It wasn't as much as I wanted it to be (but then again, will anything with these two EVER BE genuinely enough for me? Signs point to no), but it was still EVERYTHING.

 BE SCARED. BE WILD. BE UNPREDICTABLE. There are no words for how much the girl power part of this episode worked for me. From Tamara or asking Lucy for the interview to Lucy sneaking a peek in on Harper's presentation, the clear history that Harper and June have (which I want to know EVERYTHING about), to the end scene, which is one of my favorite things this show has EVER done.

 It ALL worked. I can't adequately express how much this Lucy storyline means to me. I could ramble for a thousand words about it, but to keep it somewhat coherent, I'm going to bullet point all of the moments that gave me every feeling. 

Harper’s look when she realized Lucy was listening. She wasn’t shocked at all. That was pride. 

June’s little glance at Harper as she told Lucy that if she wasn’t nervous, she wasn’t human. There are so many sides to Nyla Harper, and I think the soft,  caring side is one she hasn’t let everyone see. She shows it to Lucy (and Nolan) when needed, but I don’t know if June had seen it before that moment. And it was a lovely moment of all of them acknowledging in a safe way that what they do, what they were about to do, is dangerous, and nerves are natural, even if you’re badass and can push through them. 

“Nope. I just have a flair for the dramatic.” MY GIRL.

Harper’s WINK. I yell a LOT about how much I love Tim Bradford, but I could just as easily yell about Nyla Harper too. 

“Actually, my body does have magical powers, but.” YASSS, Harper. Queen. 

“I think fitting in is a trap.” This one sentence explains SO MUCH of who Lucy Chen is as a person, not just as a cop. “... as though empathy is somehow a liability.” 

“And there sure as hell isn’t anyone tougher.” Basically, every word of that last scene was pitch-perfect, Melissa’s delivery was flawless, and it gave me every feeling possible. 

 This show does a LOT of things right. This episode was so, so strong. I missed Lopez and Wesley because I love them, but I didn’t MISS them in terms of the storylines we got. A storyline for them would have been one too many for this week, and in a season that’s already felt overpacked, random storyline wise, it wasn’t needed. I would have loved to see Angela on the couch with everyone at the end, but it was perfect as it was. 

 I sincerely hope this show has started to realize what its strengths are --  bold, badass women (honestly, they’re ALL fantastic - Luna Grey, Isabel, Rosalind, Julie, Tamara -- and obviously all of the regulars) who CARE and who know that isn’t a weakness, Tim Bradford and his mile-long guilt complex and his relationship with all the other officers (especially Lucy and Harper, and now Jackson), Jackson’s ability to fit into whatever role they put him in (Titus is SO good), and multi-layered episodes like this. We don’t need wild, dramatic bombs or random meth lab explosions that don’t fit into an episode’s overall theme. We don’t need hours devoted to telling us that Nolan is the Good Guy. We just do not. This show has come so much further than that, and I know it can continue to be JUST as good if it focuses on everything it already does so, so well. 

[toonstarterz]

BECAUSE I’M NOT POPULAR, I’LL READ WATAMOTE: CHAPTER #154

The Sports Tournament Arc has come to a close (watch me eat my words), and while things may not have ended in the most spectacular or dramatic fashion, it does offer a healthy dose of retrospection after the flurry of emotions we’ve undergone during this whole thing. Tomoko’s world may be winding down for the moment, but as we all know, that just sets the pace for things to spring right back up. 

Chapter 154: Because I’m Not Popular, The Sports Tournament Will End

Watamote has always been relatively good at picking apart what it means to be female, and acknowledging their habit for casual grooming is just one of those times. But where this series shines is that it neither advocates or condemns stereotypical female behavior. Its stance has always been, “it is what it is,” and the reader is open to make their own opinions on that.

Well, I never expected them to win, honestly speaking. This ain’t no shounen sports manga after all, where the underdogs make a dubious comeback thanks to Nakama Power™. The obligatory homosexual subtext was there, though.  

Yeeeah, one of Yuri’s biggest flaws is that it takes her some time to admit, or even recognize her own responsibilities. Naturally, that includes pointing out other’s faults before her own. That being said...

Is Yuri being Bitchy or Awkward? An Analysis to Come in A Couple More Pages.

Tomoko, being the one to slightly raise up everyone else’s spirits? I’d be more shocked if her growth didn’t already make that actually kind of plausible.

This right here is the single coolest girl in the entire manga.

Side note: Komi’s rekt face is sublime. 

That hit had so much force, it burst through the panel borders. For once, poor Minami.

I see friendships all over the place.

In spite of (or perhaps because of) Komiyama’s overzealous nature, she can also be hit pretty hard with a sense of shame when her efforts prove fruitless. Maybe Itou plays the role of the “Lift Their Spirits” Friend in times like this.

At least the other girls are also taking their defeat in stride. Although, Minami seems particularly down for once. Perhaps she surprisingly feels some disappointment over their loss.,,

....or maybe she just feels jaded watching Mike and her Boyfriend make kissy-face. 

The thing about Kiyota is that he doesn’t seem like an especially capable guy. But from what we’ve seen, the dude’s got a pretty agreeable personality that sort of just makes it easier for people to follow him. It’s the same reason why he became the class representative. Kiyota may not be at the top of the class in any way (that we know of), but his likability makes him a natural leader.

Of course, his true friends will still give him hella shit for it.

Like many loners with self-esteem issues, no one cares about winning until they actually start winning.

Hey, hey, hey! It seems that the disastrous fallout between Tomoko and Ucchi didn’t the stop the latter from making good on her claim to cheer Tomoko on. We don’t know if the Emoji Gang ever intervened after those events, but if Ucchi still has the nerve(cluelessness) to cheer the girl she berated, that can only be a good sign.

It’s kind of weird seeing Hirasawa next to her though, considered how Ucchi cut her down that one time. Long-term grudges do not exist unless you’re Tomoko.

Fuuka, eh? The gap between a character’s first major appearance and their revealed name gets smaller each time.  

So these two are close friends, I see. They certainly give off those “alpha girl’ airs, but not in an unapproachable way. Contrary to what Western media has fed me, bitchy queen bees aren’t actually that popular. 

I’m sure many a shipper thinks that Katou chose table tennis to be with Tomoko, but I don’t that’s the only reason. It could just as well be that she’s into the sport. For the longest time, Katou’s personality has increasingly contrasted with her appearance. On the surface, she looks like the stereotypical beauty whose friendly, girly, and is super popular. But underneath, she’s also rather unaware, possibly perverted, not actually that good with makeup, and frankly, a bit of a weirdo. She’s all full of surprises, and it honestly makes her feel more human.

That was probably not her intent, but a mini party is definitely more up Tomoko’s alley. She just barely made it through the KBBQ party after all, and while Tomoko would’ve probably made it through another large-scale party even easier, small get-togethers are the introvert’s bee’s knees.  

It’s still hard to get a read on Futaki’s sociability, but she seems like a middle-of-the-road case as far as we’ve seen.

Yuri using Tomoko as a support beam is way within my expectations of her. It hasn’t steered too far into the Unhealthy Zone (yet), but I do enjoy that Tomoko’s simple company is all Yuri really needs to enjoy herself.  

Introvert Problems #092: Preoccupying yourself with your beverage to break the awkward silence without realizing the social cue of waiting to clink glasses before drinking. 

Smooth move, me Tomoko.

Good taste, my girl. Very good taste.

I love how the artistic license in this series is played completely straight. Girls with cat smiles are a dime-a-dozen in manga, but it’s usually a visualization only apparent to the readers. But not here. Emoji eyes and a feline grin are just as ludicrous in-universe as it is to us.

Yeah...I have no idea what to make of this. Guess Yuri has her own weird quirks, after all. What makes it extra funny is when you remember that Tomoko is strangely good at cutting things. Ironic humor at its finest.

Harking back to what I said about Katou being full of surprises, it’s easy to judge Katou sorely on her appearance, given how much more refined she looks next to the other “plain" girls. But when you look beyond what’s skin deep, Katou actually has more similarities to Tomoko than she let on. Being decently athletic, but not sporty; having a high tolerance for perversion, and socially naive at times. Katou’s affection for Tomoko had always felt out-of-place when we didn’t know her personality too well. But now that we’ve gotten a good look at it, her budding friendship with Tomoko feels all the more authentic.

Being the Nucleus Friend is never easy, Tomoko. 

Ah, Tomoko, regrets are natural. One of the more informed aspects about Tomoko is that she doesn’t dwell on the past too much. Her episodes of cringe hardly have everlasting negative effects on her personality, and the only times she does dwell are when she comes to terms with the mistakes she’s made. The twist now is that Tomoko puts a positive spin on it this time. Instead of bemoaning how she did something bad, she now reflects on how she could have done something good. It’s a layer of positive reinforcement that I think Tomoko has truly benefited from.  

Futaki coming through with the Nakama Speech™. It’s a pretty good one, too. Not heavy-handed or overly sentimental, but it’s from a place of earnestness that many can appreciate.

And I just realized that Futaki has been going through a quiet development from being a single-player gamer to multi-player gamer. Damn, that was slick, Nico Tanigawa.    

Hey now, those Spot the Difference games are totally legitimate critical thinking exercises.

It’s easy to think from first glance that Yuri is being purposely insensitive by the way she’s ignoring such a heartwarming speech, but I don’t think that’s really the case. It’s not that she doesn’t care about it, it just that those dining table games are too damn engaging for her introverted mind to resist. Yuri’s personality is a lot of things, but a lack of empathy is not one of them. 

Even though that’s true, it sounds vaguely hypocritical coming from you, Tomoko.

As I thought, Mako the Mom is also Mako the Enabler. 

Is Yuri Being Bitchy or Awkward?

Neither. She’s being a weirdo.

We all know by now that Yuri’s no sheep. She’s not going to pretend she’s something she’s not just to reciprocate the mood. But at the same time, she’s aware enough to adjust herself in situations where just doing anything she wants would be potentially hurtful. Of course, that’s only when she realizes she’s being hurtful. And there’ve been a number of times where she failed at that. Yuri’s behavior is very much circumstantial, and in cases where she’s expected to fit in with the crowd, she can be bitchy, awkward, or neither based on how well she can read the atmosphere. 

And that, my friends, is why Yuri’s a weirdo.

I don’t know about that, Tomoko. As absurd as her face and gaming skills are, Futaki’s personality has always seemed fairly normal to me.

Don’t judge an emoji by its emoji.

You may laugh at their apparent difficulty at finding them all, but I read up that these specific Spot the Difference games are a reference to the ones they have in Saizeriya restaurants, which are known for being notoriously tough. (Seriously, a dude called up the manufacturer because he couldn’t find the last one). Thanks as always, /r/watamote!

Eat your words, Tomoko! Just because you have more friends now, that doesn’t mean you’re hot shit and too good for “childish” games. Not that I can blame her too much, though. It’s understandable that Tomoko feels there are certain social conventions that come with increased popularity. But if there’s one thing that Tomoko still has to realize, it’s that popularity doesn’t equal maturity. No matter how high you are on the food chain, doing dumb kiddie stuff is present all across the board. 

Didn’t I tell you that, “Not that I care” was going to be this series’ tsundere line? 

When you think about it, Yuri’s come a long way from how she was at the start. At the end of second year, she lamented that her new friends might drift away from her. Compare that to now, where she’s actually more optimistic about her relationships. Sure, the fact that they’re now in the same class is the key difference, but the sentiment is still there, and feels a lot more impactful given that Yuri has never really been this open about her feelings. 

That’s what happens when you get the last word in.

As with most of these arcs, it’s the journey rather than the end that has the most impact on our characters. For some, like Ucchi and Yuri, it was a major game-changer in their relationships with Tomoko. For others, like Itou and Hirasawa, it was an exploration of what made them the way they are. And then there’s Tomoko, still fumbling around with a degree of popularity she was never fully prepared for. 

But for everyone, it was all about trying. Trying something new, putting in the extra effort, and reaching out to others. While the results were kind of a mixed bag, nearly everyone came out of this tournament with some form of victory.

[artificialqueens]

The Language of Flowers 5.5 (Multi) - Albatross

AN: Dear god it’s finally done after like 4 months! Hope you all enjoy it!

To the anon asking about whether or not there’ll be a chapter about the Shinkx date; the answer is ‘Yes, but…’

Yes, I do have a tentative plan to post mini chapters for both dates but…I’m probably not going to work on it right away. Almost definitely not actually. As much as I loved writing this story, I need a break from it for a little while.

As for other plans; Rajadore is almost certainly the next piece I’ll be working with probably Rajila following that. Phianca will be done at some point but I’m having issues with the plot atm so that’s on the back burner. And…I’m about 95% sure I’m revisiting Rajalaskam again. Still in the planning stages but I think I have an idea for a new, final final chapter for their series so keep an eye out for that.

When Jinkx explained their spontaneously decided plan, Courtney was a bit hesitant. Organizing a class to make the same kind of bouquets that got them into this mess and inviting Trixie and Katya to attend at the same time? It seemed rather like a bad idea but deep down Courtney secretly loved the romanticism of the proposal. She kept her concerns to herself and offered Jinkx and Ivy help in any way that she could think of. Still she couldn’t help but feel that it was incredibly unlikely for this plan to actually work. It was quite cliche but maybe with just a pinch of luck they could pull this off anyhow.

Since Jinkx and Ivy were busy constructing the lesson plan and tracking down all of the supplies needed for the class, Courtney took to advertising it. Of course her first thought was to spread the word around Katya’s campus. That seemed to be the mostly likely place to find interested participants. A small part of her toyed with the idea of handing out fliers, perhaps even near the library but she wasn’t ready to see Trixie yet. She knew if she saw her before Saturday she’d end up making things worse by trying to talk to her…and of course she might catch onto the plan if she knew one of Katya’s friends works at the shop.

Instead Courtney reached out to the campus Facebook page and received permission to make a quick post inviting students to attend the fast-approaching course. If nothing else, it would make it seem more legitimate to Trixie and surely at least a few people would decide to attend from that post alone. Courtney also spread news of the class by word of mouth and received a few promises from some of her own friends that they would either stop by or encourage others to do so. Hopefully, there’ll be enough people to make this look like less like a spur of the moment decision and Trixie won’t notice anything out of the ordinary.

With the advertising taken care of, now came the difficult part; ensuring Katya would be attending as well. Though Courtney made herself sound confident when she told Jinkx she could get the younger blonde to the shop without an issue; it turned out to be much easier said than done.

Ever since the scene at the library, Katya had been pretty down on herself. She was hardly leaving the apartment aside from classes or a show and she had stopped frequenting at the library entirely. Though she hadn’t mentioned it, Courtney suspected she was actively avoiding anywhere she might see Trixie and even for their shared classes, it’d be a short guess to say she was probably sitting well on the opposite side of the room from the young woman.

As for her studying, if you can call staring blankly at a page for ten minutes at time 'studying’, Katya just didn’t seem as enthusiastic about it as she had been before. Literature had always been her passion and even studying from textbooks was still fascinating to her yet now it seemed all of that previous spark had disappeared. She was listless and far from her normal energetic self, clearly still thinking about Trixie and not her projects. It hurt to see someone previously so happy and optimistic as broken as this. Even a slight hint of anything related to Trixie caused her eyes to cloud with longing and regret. Silently, Courtney made a wish almost every night that on Saturday everything would be fixed.

On the day of the class, Courtney had been assigned to work the opening shift as this would give her time to head back to her apartment to pick up Katya and make sure she found her way to the shop. At first everything seemed fine; the store was busy so there was hardly time to think about anything other than the customers and fulfilling the day’s orders. That all changed once Jinkx had arrived to start her own shift. They were only together for about an hour due to the sheer number of customers in the shop that she, Ivy and Violet couldn’t handle alone, but just seeing the redhead, never mind not even discussing the class that night, caused Courtney’s stomach to drop and a heavy worry rested on her shoulders even after she was finally able to leave following her shift.

Up until that day, Courtney had been careful not to mention any of the plan to Katya. It was unlikely that she would agree if she knew about it beforehand and would probably arrange to be elsewhere for the duration of the class. At least the one thing Courtney could rely on was that Katya would be at the apartment when she arrived. Her classes were already finished for the day and Courtney doubted she’d want to be anywhere else right now.

The moment Courtney walked into the apartment she heard soft music seeping through Katya’s closed door. Unsurprisingly it was yet another sad song about heartbreak that she loved to torture herself to as of late. Very gently, Courtney knocked on the door and waited until she received a word of acknowledgment before entering. Like she had so many other days this week, Courtney immediately made her way to Katya’s bed and pulled the dejected young woman into her arms. As part of their new routine, Katya rested her head in the crook of Courtney’s neck and let out a sad little sigh.

Running her hand up and down Katya’s back, Courtney asked how her day had gone and made their typical small talk until Katya finally ran out of things to say. Even though there was still a few hours before the class would be starting, Courtney knew she’d have to begin introducing the idea of going out tonight as soon as possible. With enough pleading and puppy eyes, Courtney felt mostly assured of herself to be able to get Katya to agree to go to the shop with her. Under normal circumstances, it’d probably take only a few minutes before the blonde would give in but Courtney had a feeling that right now, she’d probably need every hour she has at her disposal.

“Katy…” she drew out with a slight whine in her tone, “I was thinking we should go out tonight, have a little fun, you know?”

Buried her face into Courtney’s neck, she tightened her grip around the older blonde’s waist and replied, “I wanna just stay here and mope.”

“Come on,” Courtney insisted, “We need to get you out of this head-space-”

“-I like this head-space!” Katya interrupted.

“It’s not healthy though,” the older blonde argued. “We don’t have to do anything big…could go to a movie, eat dinner…Jinkx has her first arrangement course tonight.”

Katya gave a muffled groan of acknowledgment but no other noise indicating that she’d agree to go. Knowing it’d probably be most effective to try and guilt the younger woman into attending, Courtney mentioned, “I’m sure it’d mean a lot if we both were there; she worked so hard on it.”

But Katya would not budge on the issue. For the next hour and a half, Courtney continued to make comments specifically designed to play at the blonde’s heartstrings. A few of her favorites included variations of “We don’t even know how many people are going to show up…”, “I hope there’s at least a few who attend”, and of course; “It’d be a shame for everything to go to waste.”

Slowly progress was being being made; Katya couldn’t stand to look at her or the soft, pleading eyes Courtney threw her way every five minutes. Still though, she had yet to yield to Courtney’s request. If only Courtney had a little more time she was sure she could break Katya’s resistance…But the class started in an hour! Was all this effort really going to be for nothing?

A knock was heard on the apartment door and though Courtney was tempted to ignore it in favor of continuing to persuade Katya, proper etiquette compelled her to see who it was and what they needed. It was quite a surprise to find Willam on the other side looking just a tad amused with a lazy smirk on her face. Feeling herself flush a little bit, Courtney let out a surprised gasp and said, “Oh! What are you doing here?”

“Hey, princess,” Willam called out to Courtney’s annoyance. Once she earned an eye roll from the older woman, she stated, “Vi mentioned you might have some trouble trying to get Katya out of the apartment.”

“And she sent you to help?” Courtney asked doubtfully.

With a secretive and far from reassuring smile, Willam declared, “I volunteered.”

“Uh-huh…should I ask why?” the blonde said with a heavy layer of suspicion in her voice.

Patting the shorter woman’s head, Willam invited herself into the apartment and rebuffed her friend, “Don’t worry your pretty little head with the details.”

As Willam made her way to Katya’s bedroom, Courtney couldn’t help but feel a heavy dose of apprehension as to what Willam’s intentions were. Although if it gets Katya to the shop, how much should she really complain? It was getting down to the wire after all.

Perhaps too closely, Courtney followed behind the dirty blonde as she entered Katya’s room without even an attempt to announce her presence beforehand. The look on Katya’s face was truly a study and a little yelp could be heard right before she pulled the sheets up over her wide eyes. Curling into a tight ball, the blonde huddled beneath the covers as Willam marched right up to the side of the bed with a disturbingly devilish grin on her face.

“Uh-uh,” she taunted as she pulled away the covers with little effort. “None of that.”

“Willam-” Courtney worriedly began to interject until the dirty blonde shot her a quick look.

“Outside,” she commanded in a no-nonsense tone. “I’m gonna have a little chat with her for a minute.”

Immediately Courtney found herself obeying and was sprinting past the door as she pointedly ignored Katya’s call of 'Traitor!’ on the way out.

Reluctantly closing the door, Courtney all but pressed her ear to the faux wood in an attempt to hear what Willam was saying to her roommate. It was a short guess to imagine that she was probably scolding the young blonde for her pitiful behavior and demanding for her to get her act together. There were a few muffled sounds from Katya as though she were trying to defend herself but Willam refused to listen to any such excuses. In what seemed to be no time at all, the pair were exiting Katya’s room with Willam ushering the very harassed looking young woman towards the bathroom with a change of clothes in hand.

“Okay, okay,” the blonde insisted as she entered the communal washroom, “I can do this part myself!”

“And if you don’t come out looking half-decent, I’m fixing it for you!” Willam threatened as the door closed in front of her. Courtney had little doubt that she meant it. More than once Willam had forcefully fixed her own makeup before entering a club so that Courtney 'wouldn’t embarrass her with more lipstick on her teeth than her face.’

There was very little chit-chat as the pair waited for Katya to reemerge from the bathroom. Courtney had taken to nervously braiding her hair to keep from constantly checking the time on her phone. More than once Willam had pounded on the door and shouted a few encouraging phrases to the young woman including 'Hurry the fuck up!’ and 'We haven’t got all night!’ and a rather harsh, 'It’s Spackle on sandpaper; it doesn’t have to be perfect!’

To her credit Katya was finished in just over 20 minutes. Her makeup had been touched up greatly and her hair looked less like a tangled mess of flyaways and curls. Even the outfit Willam had undoubtedly selected for her looked much better than what Katya was likely going to wear. Somehow the dirty blonde managed to find the least gaudy clothes that Katya had owned and created a cute, casual little outfit that she could both show off and work in. Sadly, Courtney got very little chance to compliment her roommate before Willam was rushing them all out the door in order to make it to the shop on time.

As Courtney pulled Katya from the car, she made a quick note that Willam was actually putting money into the meter again. She flashed a quick smile to the dirty blonde as they made their way to the shop front. Understandably they had been the last people to arrive. If you had asked Courtney how many people she would have expected to show up, she probably would have said perhaps 15 or so at the most…that guesstimate was nowhere close to the actual number!

Ivy and Jinkx had somehow managed to fit and divide up 15 tables into three rows on the shop’s floor and provide chairs for all of the attendees. Most of the tables had between three and four people sitting or standing nearby and needless to say; the building was utterly packed. Luckily there still seemed to be a few empty spaces towards the back but aside from that it was safe to say the class was pretty much at full capacity. Courtney was starting to push Katya towards the open chairs but a sudden resistance caused her to stop dead in her tracks. Katya had stood frozen just a few steps past the door and an immensely unhappy groan passed through her lips. Without even having to ask, Courtney could guess that Katya had spotted Trixie at the other end of the room. Her hair was a bit hard to miss after all…

It was no surprise that Katya had almost immediately turned around to leave but a quick glare from Willam sent her meekly shuffling towards the empty table near the back of the first aisle. As they sat down, Courtney ran her hand over Katya’s arm and muttered a few comforting words to console the younger woman who was less than subtly stealing a glance Trixie’s way. She was looking so utterly miserable that they both were here at the same time and undoubtedly was regretting having shown up at all. While Willam hopped on the table behind them and typed away on her touch screen, Courtney snuck a quick look of her own over towards Trixie. She seemed to feel as out of place and unhappy as Katya yet unlike everyone else; she had no one with her to make sure she stayed for the duration of the class. She was clutching at her knee as though she were debating getting up and leaving but to Courtney’s relief Sharon emerged from the break room and her mere presence caused the mindless chatter to lighten significantly.

“About time she showed up,” Willam grumbled as she put away her phone.

Vaguely Courtney thought the two might have been in communication with each other but she didn’t have the attention span to question it. She was too focused on keeping Katya calm until Jinkx could move forward with their plan. To any of the other attendees who didn’t know her, it would have looked like Jinkx was the picture of poise and relaxation but Courtney wasn’t fooled. She knew Jinkx was a nervous wreck on the inside but Sharon’s little nod of encouragement as she began her opening speech seemed to calm some of that inner turmoil.

While Jinkx ran through her lecture, beginning with vague introductions to floriography then onto more specific examples, Courtney couldn’t help but to inwardly cringe at how overt she was being…at least towards the two people this really mattered for. She never would have had the courage that Jinkx had to actually look Trixie and Katya dead in the eye as she all but told them exactly what had gone wrong with the bouquet. She used examples directly taken from that fated arrangement for the class but at least it served its purpose.

As Jinkx’s sight traveled elsewhere, Courtney saw a look of realization that passed over Trixie’s face as she finally got the message. Her cheeks flushed with guilt and embarrassment as she slunk into her seat. As for Katya, she sat in a meditative state for quite some time. Courtney had yet to fully explain the details of what was incorrect with the bouquet but it seemed Katya was well on her way to figuring it out anyhow. While Jinkx was finishing her speech, Katya turned to Courtney for confirmation as she asked softly, “It was because I asked Ivy to use yellow and white flowers, wasn’t it?”

Nodding her head, Courtney replied defensively, “She was following a cheat sheet…some of the meanings on the insert weren’t listed there and-”

“Like what yellow roses can mean?” Katya interrupted with an unusually pensive tone.

“Yeah…”

With that Katya fell back into a state of deep thought, letting her line of sight drift back to Trixie. The younger woman seemed to sense that she was being watched and shifted her head to find an apologetic Katya staring at her. To Courtney’s relief, Trixie appearing to be feeling quite a heavy dose of guilt for automatically assuming the worst with the bouquet Katya had given her. Jinkx’s less than subtle lecture had definitely struck a chord with her. Though Courtney would have loved to see them talking it out then and there, each tore away their gaze and focused their attention on the sheets of paper sitting on each of the tables.

Jinkx had taken the liberty of producing and distributing a more in-depth cheat sheet of various flowers and their meanings, including the negative connotations this time. It was in Courtney’s nature to want to offer Katya help with her bouquet but after the last time she forced her assistance…well, it landed them here. Instead she asked quietly, “What are you going to do?”

Very determined, Katya looked up from the paper and replied, “I’m gonna remake that bouquet…the last one I gave her…I’m gonna do it right this time.”

Smiling brightly, Courtney encouraged her, “I think that’s a very good plan.”

*******

Katya had studied the cheat sheet far longer than Courtney had expected her to, undoubtedly trying to make sure that this one would truly explain how she felt. When she finally felt ready to select her flowers, Willam joined her in the walk to the alcove. Courtney had taken this opportunity to study Trixie just a little bit further. She had already made her trip to pick up the flowers and was now staring intensely at the pile in front of her. Of course the first flowers that caught her eye were the vibrant and plentiful chrysanthemums. They certainly would take up a lot of the attention but aside from them there was a healthy amount of a smaller yellow flower; rue as Courtney soon identified. If nothing else, at least Trixie seemed to be truly apologetic about how she had reacted to the last bouquet.

What gave Courtney the most hope that this would in fact turn out for the best was a bundle of white flowers tucked away with the sparse amount of filler plants Trixie had picked up; rain lilies. Courtney didn’t need to look at the paper to recall what those had symbolized. Her only prayer was that Trixie meant it in the same romantic way that Katya feels, not as a purely friendship based sentiment.

About this time, the other girls had returned from the front of the shop with their own handfuls of flowers. Surprisingly though it wasn’t all for Katya to use. Willam had kept a small amount for herself as she hopped right back up on the near empty table behind Courtney.

Once everyone was in their seats once more, Willam excluded, Jinkx restarted her lecture on the basics of building a bouquet. She stressed that there was no wrong way essentially with how each person went about it; what she was teaching was only some of the techniques she had used frequently in the shop. She advised that it be decided first which of the flowers would be used as the focal point of the arrangement and flesh out the design from there. The main flowers should stand at the forefront and be the first thing the receiver’s eye is drawn to. Other flowers used should compliment that decision, be it with their colors, their shape or their height difference. Everything should come together as a cohesive piece of art, something that will tell the receiver a message even if the flowers selected won’t do that. It should show that time and effort went into the making of the bouquet and that the choice to give this as a gift wasn’t made lightly.

Again Courtney was amazed at how natural Jinkx sounded as she offered little tips and hints to her students. It almost seemed as though her nerves had disappeared by the time she excused everyone to their work. She made it a point to walk around and offer one-on-one assistance with those who needed it but she was very careful to avoid the areas near Trixie and Katya as much as she able to. Both of them were working in earnest anyway and didn’t seem to notice.

Another pair that was being surprisingly diligent in their work was Sharon and Violet. Courtney hadn’t expected them to participate as well yet they appeared to be taking Jinkx’s lesson to heart. Unfortunately, Sharon seemed to be getting frustrated with her bouquet and after disassembling it for the fourth time, she finally gave up to join Jinkx at the top of the alcove. Violet on the other hand was making a rather stunning bouquet focusing heavily on purple, white, and blue flowers. She threw in a touch of yellow among the filler flowers but it was clear she didn’t intend for the bouquet to serve any purpose other than looking good. Ivy hung by her side chatting with her and offering little pieces of encouragement whenever a flower would fall or a stem would break from exceedingly rough handling.

As for Katya, she was very much focused on her own bouquet trying get everything to lay in the vase just right. Every so often Courtney would provide a bit of advice like placing a sturdier flower beneath a smaller one to help hold it up higher but for the most part she was content to just watch. Gradually she was slipping off into her own head-space until the brush of something against her neck jolted her back to reality.

An embarrassingly loud startled noise escaped her, thinking at first that it had been a bug crawling on her until she heard the soft 'Whoops’ that slipped out from the woman behind her. Turning around in her seat, she found Willam looking far too innocent to be sincere. Her eyes raked up and down the young woman’s body as Willam practically dared her to try accusing her of something. It almost worked until Courtney’s eye caught sight of the flower still in Willam’s possession.

At once her own hand flew to the back of her head and to her irritation it almost immediately made contact with something that ought not to be there. Rolling her eyes, she clutched at the flower that had been stuck in her braid and yanked it out for confirmation. Glaring at Willam, she huffed out far louder than she meant to, “Willam! Are you kidding me? Have you seriously been sticking flowers in my hair this whole time?”

Shrugging her shoulders nonchalantly, Willam partially bit back a smirk as she argued, “What? I didn’t have a vase.”

Narrowing her eyes at the pathetic excuse, Courtney shot back, “There’s one right next to you!”

Dragging her braid over her shoulder to begin removing all of the plant life, she muttered in annoyance, “Honestly, I can’t believe you sometimes-”

“Hey, Court,” Katya interrupted as she placed her hand over Courtney’s to stop the disassembly, “Hold on for a minute…”

Running her eyes down the length of hair, Katya stated, “It doesn’t look that bad really…It’s actually kind of cute…”

Feeling her cheeks flush ever so slightly, Courtney asked timidly, “Really?”

“Yeah,” Katya confirmed as she pulled Courtney’s hand away. Picking up the blonde’s phone, she opened the camera app and murmured, “Here, hold on…”

Snapping a quick picture of Willam’s work, she extended the phone back to Courtney with an ardent, “See?”

Carefully studying the image, Courtney had to agree that the arrangement, what she hadn’t disturbed of it at least, did in fact look good. However, that wasn’t the only detail that caught her attention. Her face began to burn as she mumbled, “Oh…um, thanks, Bill…”

She could hardly bring herself to make eye contact with Willam who thankfully seemed almost as embarrassed as she was. The dirty blonde’s cheeks had also become tinted with a light pink as she shrugged her shoulders again and turned her attention to her own phone. Glancing down at the partially crushed bit of toadflax in her hand, Courtney felt her heart practically skipping beats as it hammered away in her chest. Forcing herself to fight against her nerves, she drew her line of sight up towards the dirty blonde and asked softly, “Bill…Would you mind finishing it?”

Willam’s eyes darted back to her in shock but almost immediately she gave a silent nod of her head. Swiftly turning around to allow Willam to continue her work, Courtney’s gaze drifted back to the image on her screen. She bit her lip as she carefully identified each of the flowers Willam had snuck into her braid without her noticing…there was toadflax of course, heliotrope, honeysuckle, and a few violets…All of them had similar meanings, surely that couldn’t be a coincidence, right?

Is this what Sharon meant about the signs?

Courtney found she didn’t have the courage to ask that question just yet, at least not out loud.

For the remainder of the class, she and Willam stayed largely silent towards each other. The most Courtney had said to her following the outburst was another quick 'Thanks’ after she had completely finished her design. As soon as it was done, Willam took a picture of her own and sent it to Courtney for review. She swiftly turned herself away from the blonde as soon as she had received the image and refused to look at her directly for very long.

Around the same time Willam had finished, Katya had also wrapped up her own work. The bouquet looked quite good for her first attempt, perhaps a little lopsided or uneven in certain areas but still an excellent effort for someone with no experience. Once there wasn’t anything further that could be added, Katya’s hands found their way to the leftover stems and leaves and soon began picking them apart.

Courtney recognized the behavior immediately and returned to gently praising the younger woman for a job well done. Almost all of the other attendees had stopped working by this time as well so it was hardly out of place to hear Jinkx calling out, “It looks like pretty much everyone has finished their bouquets so let’s call it a night…Please feel free to take your arrangements home with you…you can keep them for yourselves, give them to someone else-”

Something Sharon had muttered while Jinkx was speaking earned her a quick elbow in the ribs but as soon as Courtney stood up to help clean off the table, a slender hand wrapped around hers and began leading her to the door.

“Bill!” she called out in indignation as she tried to dig in her heels, “What are you doing?”

“I’m taking my bouquet home with me,” she replied back firmly.

At once Courtney felt her cheeks growing hot again, particularly as she saw the determination and nervousness in Willam’s eyes. She was being dead serious in her statement but still she left an opening for Courtney to decline. For a brief moment it felt like the world had stopped as Courtney gazed into her eyes and saw both the hope and fear lurking behind her hard exterior. She hardly recognized the meek, 'Okay’ that had fallen past her lips until Willam was once again guiding her out of the shop. She called out a quick 'Good luck’ to Katya and followed Willam back to her car.

There was little doubt Katya would inform of her of what would happen with Trixie so for now she allowed herself to push that thought out of her mind. As the pair drove through the city, Courtney took notice of the way Willam’s hands were shaking as she gripped the steering wheel. It was all very reminiscent of that night Courtney had caught her in the midst of a make-out session with a woman for the first time.

The blonde absently chewed on the interior of her lip as she tried not to over-analyze the situation just yet. Just because Willam had used certain flowers over others in her hair doesn’t mean that attracted to Courtney…Why would she be? They were polar opposites in most respects. They bickered like crazy at times and even fought worse than a number of couples she knew. Sure, they might kiss each other at night before they go to sleep and again when they wake up and maybe they’ve spent more nights than not wrapped up in each others arms…And just maybe Willam as of late has rebuked any form of sexual contact with other people but that didn’t mean that she was actually attracted to Courtney…right?

By the time they pulled up to Willam’s building complex, Courtney’s head felt close to exploding as she ran through all of the scenarios for how this night could end. She had hardly realized the car had stopped until she heard Willam’s quiet voice, “Court…I-”

Daring to take a chance, she mustered up her courage and interrupted in a hurried tone, “Can we go inside?”

“Um, sure,” the stunned dirty blonde replied as she turned off the car.

The walk was silent but each could hear their heartbeat echoing in their ears as they slowly made their way into Willam’s apartment. Courtney prayed that she wasn’t reading the situation wrong as she followed Willam past the door frame. Almost as soon as the door was shut, Willam began again with an unusual hesitance, “Listen, Court…”

“The flowers,” Courtney asked softly, barely able to look at her friend even as she stood only a foot in front of her, “You chose them for a reason…didn’t you?”

“Maybe,” Willam replied vaguely as her fingers trembled by her side.

“Just maybe?” Courtney challenged as she forced herself to look Willam in the eye and wrap her hands around one of Willam’s.

The dirty blonde’s gaze flickered down to the clinging grip then back up to meet Courtney’s inquiring expression. Very slowly, she found herself leaning in leaving more than enough opportunity for the blonde to pull away or reject her. Stopping within an inch of their lips touching, she gave a hesitant admittance of, “Maybe more than maybe.”

“Yeah?” Courtney asked hopefully as a smile grew across her face.

Returning the smile for a single second, Willam closed the gap with an almost feather-light brush of her lips against Courtney’s. She held herself there for a moment debating if she should press her luck further until Courtney made the decision for her. Their lips danced together in a way that was so practiced yet still so unique from any other kiss they had shared. It was as though every concealed emotion had bubbled to the surface and forced itself to be played out as they worked their mouths in synchrony. Willam’s free hand wound itself in what it could of Courtney’s hair, unwilling to let her draw back until there wasn’t a single bit of air left between them.

Once they were forced to break apart, Willam finally confirmed in a breathy voice, “Definitely more than maybe.”

It wasn’t the most eloquent declaration of attraction but god, it’ll work for now.

Courtney could hardly contain the joyful smile that stretched across her face. Almost at once she reconnected their lips and let every ounce of passion she felt be poured into the new kiss. Willam was stunned by the sudden forwardness but quickly gave Courtney the access she was so desperately seeking. For a few moments they stayed in that spot, simply just letting everything be expressed by that one action, but soon enough Courtney decided that she wanted show Willam so much more tonight.

Carefully taking a step back, Courtney pulled Willam along in the direction of the bedroom until the dirty blonde finally understood what she was implying. The kiss was broken only for a moment to catch their breath then like magnets they were drawn back into each other’s hold. Willam took the lead in navigating their way to her bedroom, doing her best to avoid any miscellaneous furniture or dirty laundry left lying about.

Before they even made it to the edge of the mattress, most of their own clothing joined the various piles on the floor until very little fabric remained to separate their bare skin from one another. While Courtney scooted her way onto the bed, Willam hovered closely over top of her to reaffirm through their broken kisses, “Are we really doing this?”

“Yes,” Courtney asserted. “As long as you want to, too.”

There wasn’t even a pause before Willam’s hurried response came back, “Fuck yeah…”

With that understanding, Courtney allowed Willam to crowd her down to the mattress as light fingers dragged themselves across her skin. Willam’s mouth soon left hers to travel up and down the side of her neck, never settling in one place for too long before continuing further down her chest. Upon meeting the cherry blossom pink bra Courtney still had on, a small noise of annoyance fell from Willam’s lips. She toyed with one of the straps for just a moment before setting her hands to work at removing the offending article.

Once it was gone, Willam’s mouth quickly returned to leaving a dusting of kisses down Courtney’s chest. She felt her head falling back as Willam swirled her tongue around one of her nipples, sucking gently before lapping at the growing bud. The dirty blonde’s hand found its way to Courtney’s other breast, massaging it expertly as she continued to work her mouth until Courtney was squirming in place. Before long she had switched sides and left Courtney all but whimpering for more contact.

Reluctantly, Willam forced herself to resume her journey down Courtney’s stomach but it was at this point the Aussie decided she had enough. With little warning, she flipped them over so that Willam was the one beneath her and Courtney could take back some of the control for herself. A smirk made its way to Willam’s face as she easily pushed herself into a seated position and pulled Courtney firmly into her lap. Almost at once Willam’s arms were wrapped around the older woman’s waist as Courtney’s own rested loosely across Willam’s shoulders in order tug gently at the dirty blonde hair as needed. They shared a brief kiss but after a few seconds Courtney broke the contact in order to leave her own trail of kisses across Willam’s skin. Setting herself on the pulse point, Courtney marked Willam just enough for her to find what she hoped would be a decent sized love bite tomorrow. It would be highly visible the following day; just dark enough that she would need make up to cover it if she chose to do so but Courtney loved the fact that she was finally able to claim Willam as her own after waiting for so long.

Satisfied with her work, Courtney resumed tracing her lips across the overheated skin. She was grinding herself into Willam’s lap hoping the dirty blonde would take the hint and give her what she needed. A hand left her waist to graze deceivingly soft fingertips across her inner thigh but they always stopped short of the one place she wanted to feel them. The most Willam would give her was a light brush against the hem of her panties but even then she would draw back after only a second.

The blonde let out a noise of impatience as she nipped Willam’s neck just enough to make her jump. Undeterred, Willam made no further action and Courtney was left to rut her hips again, silently begging Willam for more. Even before Courtney had pulled away to look, she could hear the smirk in Willam’s voice as she feigned innocence in asking, “What?”

A lone finger was finally running along the thin fabric of her panties but it was nowhere near enough pressure for Courtney. Trying her best not to sound like a desperate and needy mess, Courtney urged her on with an demanding, “More.”

To her exasperation only one more digit was added but still Willam made no motion to remove the remaining underwear. She seemed content just to taunt Courtney through the fabric as she slowly came apart in her lap. Glaring at the dirty blonde, Courtney whined, “That’s not what I meant.”

Unashamedly smug, Willam captured her lips again, flicking her tongue across the seam as she pulled away to order in a hushed tone, “Then tell me what you want me to do…Come on, princess. Use your words like a good girl.”

Despite every effort not to react, Courtney found her breath hitching at the phrasing and she stopped all movement as a light flush rose to her cheeks. The response didn’t go unnoticed by Willam, not in the least. Skimming her lips across Courtney’s collarbone, she teased, “Oh? You like it when I call you that now, huh?”

The blonde was shaking just slightly in her hold as she admitted softly, “Yes…”

She expected Willam to reply back with some sort of taunting remark but to her surprise all she received was a simple, “Good.”

Almost at once her panties were pushed off to the side just enough to allow Willam’s fingers to run along her inner folds. It was still a far cry what she really needed but at this point any change was welcomed from before. She could already feel the heat beginning to pool in her core as she ground down against the two digits. Willam allowed this only for a few minute or two as she laid claim to Courtney’s lips once more. Small noises of restlessness escaped from the blonde’s mouth to Willam’s but she still seemed perfectly fine with just teasing her partner.

Every now and then Courtney felt a soft circling against her clit causing a small jolt to resonate through her body but all too quickly it would be gone and she’d be left to whine at the loss. By the time the pair tore their lips from one another, Courtney was left breathless and embarrassingly wet from what very little Willam had done to her. She could feel herself coming undone while Willam stayed perfect put together and in control of everything that was happening.

Giving in to the ache for more, Courtney tugged just slightly at Willam’s hair and pleaded, “More…please, Bill.”

She could see Willam dying to comply to the request but to her annoyance, the younger woman restrained herself from providing anything right away. Instead she just breathed out, “Tell me, princess…Tell me what you want me to do.”

Her lips were so close to Courtney’s again, she could practically feel them as they ghosted against hers with each passing word. Willam’s free hand traveled up her back until it made contact with the loose and probably very messy braid. Willam deftly pulled the tie out and tossed it aside it order to run her fingers through Courtney’s hair. Flowers fell onto the bed behind her but she hardly had the capacity to care about that. Her focus was on Willam’s nonchalant statement of, “I can wait all night if I have to, angel.”

The newest nickname finally broke what remained of Courtney’s silence. Resting her forehead to Willam’s, she pressed their lips together for one sweet moment before swallowing what was left of her nerves in order to beg, “Please, I want you inside me…I want it so bad. I-”

Here Willam cut her off with another kiss as her fingers withdrew from between Courtney’s legs. She groaned at the loss until Willam silenced her objection with a commanding, “Take these off. Now.”

Courtney wasted little time in complying, hardly leaving Willam’s lap for more than a few seconds to shimmy out of her last piece of clothing before swiftly settling herself back into place. She felt so small and submissive as Willam still remained somewhat dressed but the appearance of two fingers in front of her lips soon changed that. Holding onto Willam’s wrist, she drew the fingers into her mouth and began to give them a thorough coating with her tongue. She hardly felt like she needed it at this point but the way Willam watched with hazy eyes as she worked more than made up for the further delay.

By the end she might have made the display a little more obscene than she ought to as she sucked on the digits and dragged her tongue anywhere it could reach but Willam certainly wasn’t complaining. She let the show go on much longer than necessary before drawing her fingers back from one heat to another.

As the first digit slipped inside, Courtney let out a sigh of much needed relief. It was finally happening and the anticipation and previous denial only made the moment so much sweeter for her. Already this situation was turning into everything she had wanted it to be.

A second finger was soon added and both crooked inside her as they avoided that one particular spot for now. Willam busied herself with placing fresh kisses across Courtney’s shoulders, chest, and neck as the digits dragged their way in and out at a slow and steady pace. Courtney was pushing her hips insistently against Willam’s hand as her panting began to pick up. A light sheen was breaking out across her forehead as little mewls clawed their way from her throat to Willam’s awaiting ears.

Just as Courtney had opened her mouth to lick at her overly dry lips, she felt the first brush against her g-spot and a small whimper filled the room. She found herself begging for Willam to repeat that motion and to her relief the compliance was almost immediate. As Courtney’s moans starting to pick up, so did Willam’s fingers. It was like a nonverbal reward system; the louder Courtney became, the more insistent the pressure and speed of Willam’s digits became.

Every now and then Courtney found Willam whispering a few words of encouragement in the few seconds she was able to pull her mouth away from Courtney’s skin.

“You sound so beautiful, angel.”

“Let the neighbors hear you, let them know who’s making you scream.”

“Tell me anything you want, princess.”

Each call of either 'princess’ or 'angel’ produced a new wave of whimpering from Courtney. She could feel the pleasure building up until her hands were gripping onto Willam’s shoulders so tightly her knuckles had begun to turn white. Her nails were digging into the dirty blonde’s skin but she didn’t seem to care about anything other than Courtney’s pleas for more.

At her request a third finger was added to the slick heat. With another, a hand was pulling on her hair just so as her neck arched back. Then finally Willam’s mouth was working against hers until she barely able to breath between everything that was happening to her.

It was the casual, almost careless circling of Willam’s thumb against her clit that drove home the fact that Courtney wouldn’t last much longer. Her ruts against Willam’s fingers were no longer in sync and soon she felt the pressure in her core reaching its capacity. She gave Willam a quick warning before burying herself into the crook of her neck and closing her eyes as the sensation washed over her. It was so overpowering that Courtney couldn’t stop herself from shaking as her senses became so overwhelmed and a voice she hardly recognized as her own was calling Willam’s name. It took even longer still to realize the dirty blonde was once again praising how pretty she looked as she came and of course peppering in a nickname or two as a shiver passed through the blonde.

The moment she was able to organize her thoughts Courtney crashed her lips back to Willam’s. The dirty blonde was eagerly responding, barely even noticing Courtney’s frantic hands working on removing her bra until it was all but hanging from a single strap. The second it was gone, Courtney lips were replacing it. If anything she was more erratic than Willam had been as her lips traced across every inch of exposed skin she could find. She wanted to touch and taste Willam, to repay her for everything she had just experienced and of course, to finally indulge in those secret fantasies that lurked in the back of her mind during those nights they had spent together.

Her hands were massaging and kneading Willam’s breasts, hardly able to decide where she wanted to be before her mouth was switching from side to another with little to no warning. Willam’s eyes had gone hooded as Courtney covered her skin so thoroughly with her lips it felt like no part of her had been left untouched.

Moving from Willam’s lap, Courtney repositioned herself as best she could on the bed to continue her path down to Willam’s lean and toned stomach. The position was slightly awkward for the time being, at least until Courtney convinced her scoot closer to the edge.

Immediately Willam realized what Courtney was intending to do as she slid to the floor and reaffirmed that she was alright with going this far. Her mind was flashing back to Courtney’s previous admittance of not having done very much with women before and the absolute last thing she wanted to do, especially right now, was have Courtney feel like this was something she had to reciprocate with.

But Courtney was determined either way. It might not be her area of expertise but she wanted to do this. She wanted to repay Willam and she wanted to gain that experience. After all Willam had done for her, the very least she wished for was for Willam to feel just as good.

“It’s not going to be mind-blowing,” she warned, “but I’ll give it my best shot.”

All Willam could do was nod weakly as Courtney guided her hand to her hair and spread Willam’s legs apart. It was here that Courtney finally slowed down and began to take her time with the dirty blonde. Not to tease her, just to explore her body as she became familiar with this new adventure.

She pressed soft kisses to her inner thighs and across the sensitive skin of her hips. Willam was struggling not twitch or otherwise alarm Courtney with any sudden movements. Stroking the wavy blonde hair, occasionally pulling out the flowers as she found them, helped to keep herself in check. The wide eyes staring up at her sent a bubbling warmth to her stomach that left her feeling both anxious yet still craving for more.

Courtney’s fingers hooked around her panties and with a little maneuvering she was able to slid them off and onto the floor. There was a tense pause as Courtney’s eyes flickered up to meet Willam’s and she slowly began leaning in. Willam’s breath caught in her throat as she felt those delicate hands running against her thighs and spreading her just a little bit wider. All at once it was like a sudden wave came crashing down on her as a tentative lick ran against her slit.

She bit her lip to force back any noise that might try to escape but nothing could be done to stop the rising blood to her cheeks. Her fingers twitched in Courtney’s hair as another more confident swipe of the blonde’s tongue passed along her folds. Their eyes remained connected as Courtney slowly grew more deliberate in her actions, trying new techniques to see what kind of reaction they would evoke from Willam. It was far from experienced but damn if the enthusiasm didn’t make up for it.

With her mind beginning to cloud, Willam wasn’t sure if her voice was actually wavering or not as she murmured, “Good girl…Just like that.”

Courtney hummed something in response and the resulting vibrations had Willam biting her lip once more. If she were standing, her legs would have been shaking at the sight alone of Courtney in front of her doing this.

“K-Keep going, princess, you’re doing so good,” she cooed encouragingly.

Though there was no verbal response, Willam could tell from the crinkling around Courtney’s eyes that praise was really working on her. All of her energy was focused on eating Willam out like it was her job and clearly she was taking pleasure in reducing the dirty blonde to as much of a hot mess as she had been just minutes before.

Willam was being drawn closer and closer to edge yet it still remained just far enough out of her reach that it was starting to become frustrating. She wanted her release more than anything and was desperately chasing it anyway she could manage as she continued to whisper sweet compliments to Courtney.

“Use your thumb,” she suggested softly as she teetered just on the brink of completely losing it.

The words were barely past her lips before she felt the circular rubbing against her clit. She had been so close before that moment that it only took a few complete cycles before she was coming apart under Courtney’s touch. As the climax racked through her body, Courtney kept at her pace until she felt the hand in her hair carefully pushing her away. Taking the hint she withdrew from between Willam’s legs and crawled back onto the bed beside her. She was just getting settled amongst the sheets when she felt Willam pulling her close and crashing their lips back to another.

While Willam took charge once again, making sure to lick her way thoroughly into Courtney’s mouth, she had to admit that still being able to taste herself on Courtney’s tongue was more of a turn on than she thought was fair. One of the Aussie’s hands found its way to her cheek, cradling her gently as though she were the most fragile object in the world. It just felt so right to have Courtney’s body melded into hers, she almost never wanted to leave the bed again in favor of making this moment last forever. But eventually the desire for cleanliness won out and the pair made their into the bathroom to share a quick shower. Admittedly there had been more stolen kisses than actual washing but neither had a negative word to say regarding that.

Following their bare minimum cleaning, the pair changed into some of Willam’s clothes and slipped back into bed with their phones in hand. Seems that while they were busy, most of the other girls had been as well.

Courtney found her inbox blown up with messages from both Katya, Violet, and surprisingly Sharon as well. It was almost expected that Katya felt the need to inform Courtney of everything that had happened after she left the shop. The sheer amount of texts was almost daunting until Courtney realized the majority were very simple phrases, including but not limited to; 'Oh my god!’

'We’re actually talking! Like normal people!’

'I think this counts as a date.’

'This is definitely a date!’

'OMG, what do I do?’

'Fuck! Why did I say that?’

'She’s laughing!’

'Damn she has an awful laugh….I love it.’

'She invited me back to her place!’

'I’m going to be late coming home.’

And then finally the last text had come through not even a full eight minutes prior; 'I’m not coming home tonight.’

Courtney couldn’t help but to chuckle as she read through the messages and probably very accurately pictured all the expressions Katya must have worn as she typed out each quick update. With some of the more colorfully phrased texts, Courtney read them aloud as Willam scrolled through her own inbox. Though she didn’t say anything, Courtney noticed a small relieved smile on Willam’s face as Courtney summarized how Katya’s date seemed to have gone.

Coming upon the end of her own inbox review, Willam asked, “Did you see Violet’s picture?”

Courtney shook her head stating she hasn’t made it that far through her messages yet but would look for it next. Unable to wait for Courtney to find it on her own, Willam extended her phone out to the blonde. The picture had already been blown up to cover the screen and immediately Courtney recognized the interior of the shop.

Taken from only a few feet away, it seems Violet saw an opportunity to sneak a picture of Sharon and Jinkx and had not let the moment go to waste. Sharon was working on her bouquet as Jinkx hung close by on the opposite side of the table. They must have been talking because both were gazing at each other with nothing but pure affection on their faces; the kind you never really notice yourself until someone points it out. Both of them just looked so focused on one another that they were oblivious to everything else around them, particularly Ivy who appearing to be in the midst of dropping some broken stems in the background behind them.

Courtney felt a joyful grin stretching across her lips as she returned to her own phone in order to take a look at the messages from the blonde in question.

“Do you think anything’ll actually happen with them?” Willam asked as she continued to smile warmly at the image on the screen.

Courtney thought to herself for a moment as she opened an attachment in Sharon’s most recent message and found her answer already supplied for her. The grin she wore was alarmingly bright as she all but pushed her phone into Willam’s hand and replied, “Yeah, I think so.”

The dirty blonde’s gaze dropped to the new image and immediately a matching smile appeared on her face. Though the picture was very simple, it gave both of the women hope that everything had in fact worked out for their friends. At the very foreground of the image were two To-Go cups of coffee and scribbled on the sides were Jinkx and Sharon’s names. That alone would not have raised any eyebrows but what caught Courtney and Willam’s attention lurked just at the border of the image; half cut off by the angle of the camera, the two could just make out a pair of hands locked together with intertwining fingers. It was a small guess as to who they belonged to and what that gesture was implying.

“Can’t wait to see what Sharon’ll have to say about that tomorrow,” Willam mentioned in amusement.

Placing her phone off on the nightstand, Courtney nestled into Willam’s side and admitted, “I’m just glad one of them finally made a move…It was getting frustrating just watching them dance around each other like that.”

“Yeah,” Willam agreed absently as she drifted off into her own thoughts. She stayed disturbingly silent for a full minute as Courtney traced mindless patterns over her outer thigh. Deciding she ought to do the right thing, Willam spoke up hesitantly, “Hey, um…I need to tell you something before we…go any further with this.”

Turning her head up to look Willam in the eye, Courtney did her best to hide a growing sense of concern as she replied mildly, “Okay…”

Swallowing heavily, Willam began again with nerves tinging her voice, “When…back when we had our…fight…I kind of…”

“Yeah?” Courtney asked as her brows began to bunch up in worry.

“I did something that I think…I think you should know about,” Willam admitted tensely.

Trying her best to remain calm and not jump to any conclusion, Courtney inquired, “What is it?”

“I…I was pissed at you and I tried to-I kissed Sharon! And if she hadn’t said 'no’, I would have gone much further than that. I’m sorry!” Willam confessed in sudden outburst of emotion. “I’m really sorry for what I said that day and for kissing her and trying to get back at you and-”

“Willam,” Courtney interrupted as she placed a hand over Willam’s forearm in order draw her attention back from her own shame. “It’s okay.”

Willam seem unconvinced, chewing her lip as she continued to stare guiltily down at Courtney. Vaguely the blonde wondered just how much this had been eating away at her but that question wasn’t the one she needed answered. Pressing a quick kiss to Willam’s cheek for reassurance, she asked seriously, “Can you forgive me for sleeping with Katya?”

Immediately the dirty blonde was nodding her head as her fingers toyed with a damp curl hanging across her shoulder. Pulling that same hand into hers, Courtney informed her quite sincerely, “Then of course I can forgive you for kissing Sharon…”

A relieved smile broke out across Willam’s face and though there still seemed to be some disbelief that Courtney was okay with everything she had been told, Willam let the subject drop. They pulled each other in for a final heartfelt kiss as fatigue began to catch up with them. Pulling away, Willam stated quietly, “We were both so stupid.”

“We were…” Courtney agreed with a smile. “But I’m still glad this-that we happened.”

Returning the smile, Willam placed a soft kiss to the corner of Courtney mouth and murmured, “Yeah, me too.”

[rainelot]

GCF in Saipan- A Rant as of August 2018 (Posted December)

(Out in December since I wanted to get a more objective view on things and to edit it slightly. This is just as a memory record anyways so)

When I made this blog, it was meant to be a blog to rant about anything Bangtan that interested me. However, I recently encountered one of the most frustrating, interesting, and baffling two days of my life and I needed to address the cause of this with a rant (that I doubt people will read). The cause: Jungkook’s GCF in Saipan.

WARNING: THIS IS ALL IN GOOD FUN. I claim no rights to what is true or not. Don’t take this too seriously please. Will have Koomin/Jikook references.

To start it off, I don’t like real people shipping. I don’t really care if others do it (as long as they remain sane and logical) but I personally didn’t enjoy doing it for one reason: I don’t know them personally, so it isn’t any of my business. I enjoyed their interactions with each other platonically, using what they gave us upfront as fuel, and whatever else that might be happening to purely up to them. For BTS, I never before cared much for shipping, and just enjoyed every interaction as it is.

Then I watched GCF in Saipan, the catalyst to my descent into a brief insanity. What I can say about Saipan is that it is a theorist haven, perhaps why I’ve become so interested now. By “theorist”, I mean NOT REAL, and my opinions should not be taken as fact. These are all just observations that I personally took from the GCFs.

Perhaps what I should say before going into Saipan specifics is that I watched Tokyo in my early days as a fan. I did not know the context of the song, I did not know Jungkook or Jimin well, so I didn’t think much of it. Of course, I acknowledged it was fairly romantic in setting, but I took it to be interpreted either platonically or romantically, and even now I don’t think too much of it. The video itself has a personal meaning to me: reciprocal love, any shape of it available, with little accents and layers that can be tilted and shifted for the viewer’s own interpretation (as all art). I don’t have too much to say about Tokyo itself, because of how straight forward it is. Saipan is the one that makes no sense if I tried to take it in upfront. I’m not very good at reading behaviors, hence my inability to see what others see as “moments”, but I have done some (very unprofessional) editing before and I absolutely love art analyzing, which the GCFs very clearly are to me.

For this, I will be isolating Saipan in a fairly tight bubble, with little unrelated topics. I won’t be including much outside Jungkook’s art (except in the skeptic area). Some previous GCF mentions/comparisons, some outside views strictly on the films as well will be referenced in the rant itself. Not going to include any deep reading into their overall relationship, mostly an analysis of the GCF.

I watched Saipan (at this point after being a fan for long enough to care) first thinking that something was off. Something wasn’t harmonious with each other. The second time I watched it, I realized the dissonance was between the film and the music. Together, it wasn’t coherent, which is different than all of his work so far. Tokyo, Osaka, even USA though being equally promo-related, they all had more to build upon meaning-wise, the perspectives matched within the film. Saipan’s song both in mood and in subject clashed with the film from beginning to end. Of course, all in my opinion.

Here is the song:

Now, before I go any further, I had an intensive discussion with a mutual on twitter, who is a multi-kpop non-BTS stan. She doesn’t keep up with Bangtan, but she likes some of their songs and is a casual listener. She is also somewhat experienced and knowledgeable in video editing and had very interesting input for the factor of “film sound”, the information from a document which she paraphrased. This was her input through the DMs:

“The Pacific Cinematheque has stated that there two types of sound in film, Diegetic and Non-Diegetic. Diegetic is the sound that we would also experience in real life. Non-Diegetic is any sound we don’t experience in real life like dramatic orchestrated songs or musical score or sound effects like the screeches in the shower scene Psycho.”

“So why do directors use sound? Well (and here it comes) it is to do any of the following 1. add mood 2. add atmosphere to a film. How? By adding these soundscapes that Accent or add another Layer of meaning to the film. The filmmaker wants the audience to perceive the scenes in a specific way, and sound/music leg scenes be seen in the specific way that the director intended. Silence in a film can represent something very important or a turning point. Music, specifically in film, has various uses, but most commonly it is used to “guide the emotional response of the audience”. Music is the clue in scenes, it’s like a huge signpost directing (pun cause the filmmaker is a director anyways off track sorry) the audience on how to react to a scene.”

“So basically what I am saying is that of course Jungkook is aware of the music he’s using in his gcfs, and he’s also aware of the reaction he wants from the films. He used that song because he wanted a specific reaction from the audience, he wanted us viewers to see what his intentions are and at this point I’m insane too cause all I’m thinking is that he wants us to react to Jimin and to focus on that.”

(I may or may not have told her multiple times through out my discussion with her that I feel like I’m going insane. I calmed down before writing this though, for the sake of making any sense and neutrality.)

These are just the basics. If you still aren’t convinced how important a song is in context to a film, then remember: before Jungkook even began making the GCFs, he was doing mainly covers of songs. And he said, specifically to the fans, that the lyrics of his chosen songs are important. He usually chooses them for a reason (what that reason could be, up to the viewer, since he doesn’t outright explain the choices).

So we established that first, Jungkook most likely chose this song with actual thought and intention put into it (again, take that intention with what you may).

Of course, what interested me was Jimin’s parts. Mainly because he is my son (even though I am fairly younger than him), and also because of the teaser Jungkook released shortly before dropping Saipan. Truth be told, I wasn’t really expecting the silly dance nor the punches to be included, as I thought that Jungkook only posted that to show Namjoon and the fans what was going on in the “behind the scenes” video Namjoon posted the day before. Perhaps a little blooper insight. So yes, I was surprised that the scene was included at all, much less becoming a gap-clip repeating between alternating clips of the group and other members. I was also surprised at the amount of time Jimin was shown, as after USA being a very equalized group video, I was expecting the same from Saipan. Similarly to USA, it was very work-oriented and promotional, and also both (definitely USA as from Namjoon’s Vlive) were most likely commissioned by Bighit.

Jimin’s dominates the bridge. By dominate, I mean he is the only one with a completely exclusive part in this particular GCF. Verse 1 was Taehyung, verse 2 was Hoseok, and the choruses are a mix. Jimin appears the most not only through adding up all the small clips, but because he takes up two solid blocks of the song, both with the same context and lyrics. The reason why the it’s hard for me to link the others with their individual parts is because of the way they were shot, the clips that were chosen, all very aesthetically pleasing but difficult to find depth or flow in. Jimin’s parts almost had a story line. This is important to me because of the lyrics, which we shall visit now.

First the meaning of the song. John K. in an interview: He describes the bouncy track’s meaning as “[about] evolving through young love, admitting to past mistakes and committing to giving someone the best possible version of yourself.”

To be honest, this song is not as ambiguous to me as There For You, Troye Sivan, Tokyo GCF. Sure, Troye Sivan is a gay artist, and the song lyrics are directed at a boy. But the lyrics themselves I do think can be taken in any shape of love. For Best of Me, this is not the case. I think Verse 2 is the clearest reason for this:

Waking up next to you

Got you back in my arms

Don't it feel like it use to

Like we were never apart

Never thought I would see you

Now we're loving in the dark

We can't fight this feeling

While I’m a staunch believer in lyrics being universally interpreted and available to all versions of personal view (take Osaka as an example, which is another fairly straightforward GCF), to make it simpler for myself right now and with the tinfoil hat on, I’ll stick with what the song can be most basically understood: lovers who are loving in secret, but wants to be let free.

Here comes a bit tinfoil (not really shippy, but more reading into what it could mean artistically. Purely subjective interpretation):

Now, without going into the ship or anything at all first, here is my artistic interpretation of Jungkook’s editing: the lyrics may be directed at Jimin, but I personally can also intemperate that Jimin in the video embodies the lyrics, or the lyrics embody Jimin in the video. Either way works for me. This is interpretation in the same way people interpret the smile of Mona Lisa (purely individualistic), and it doesn’t rely too much on Jungkook’s true intentions here. Again, I don’t claim any of this as the true meaning, as to me there is no true meaning needed for me.

In the video, Jimin shows the rawest actions. He barely pays attention to the camera half of the time, and when he does, it’s for the sake of the cameraman (Jungkook). This can be seen when in the second bridge part, he shows Jungkook his own camera just off screen, and during the second chorus, he high-fives Jungkook, just off screen once more. I believe Jungkook also chose these parts intentionally, especially the sneeze during the second bridge that he zoomed in on. No matter if the purpose was just to clown Jimin (also possible), it still leads an interesting narrative for me (I know I repeated this multiple times, but no, this may not be the intentions of Jungkook, and it is my own view on it as an art form). The lyrics “I don’t wanna hide no more” building up to “Imma let you get the best of me” was in sync with the way how Jimin bursts from a serious expression into a silly dance, with the silliness continuing later after the chorus and verse 2 into the second bridge. He is true to his actions, letting go of inhibition, essentially not hiding, lying, nor acting anymore. All genuine, silly, honest moments, such as the sneezing, the off camera action, etc.

The editing for the dance part is interesting too. As I said before, I wasn’t expecting it, so it was interesting when it seemed Jungkook added a separate track and layered other clips on top of the silly dancing. This one might be a bit of a stretch, but I can see it like the clips of the groups randomly were “hiding” the silly dancing. No particular meaning needed really, just a technique used in editing that, to me, matches the lyrics in an unintended way. Those were just my thoughts when considering the possibilities of the lyrics, and the visual is pretty cool in the narration. I know from experience that it’s much easier to layer clips (BTS eating) over a longer clip (Jimin dancing) rather than cut them individually to fit around each other. So that’s just a neat observation lol. 

Artistically speaking, Jimin is the only solid narrative and character within the video because there seems to be an actual correlation between the actions he does chronologically with the lyrics given for him. I find it interesting how he and the lyrics embody each other as the video went on. Again, my personal take on a work of art.

Now here’s the ultimate tinfoil-kinda-shippy part of my post. ALL PURE SPECULATION.

This video can be conceptually all about the “hidden”. Looking at this as a GCF, in comparison to his two earliest works, it is a lot more promotional, like USA (I actually have some thoughts on USA and Bangtan as well, and may think about writing a post for it. It’s not gonna be as bad as this one though).

Perspective of GCFs before Saipan:

Onto the subject of music perspectives, Jungkook so far as established a trend of using the perspective within the songs to be directed at the people starring in it, most noticeably in Osaka, with the way the lyrics were directed/about either Jimin or Taehyung’s roles/characters in the film from a first person perspective speaking. Tokyo as well with the last few lines of “running running just to keep my hands upon you”, showing the camera in the perspective of being behind Jimin as he got farther away with the first person pronoun. USA with the “we” point of view, which is then including the film’s perspective as part of the “we”, especially noticed when Jungkook goes to shake Zedd’s hand. I assume then that Jungkook uses the music choices as a way to direct to the people or to include himself in it at some points, rather than being a passive outside third person view. Now that GCF in Newark is out, that is even more obvious, though I also find Newark to be a diverging path in his medium exploration, so the perspective is more centered around himself rather than those around him. GCF in Saipan was made with the same format as those before it so my thoughts on its techniques are the same (I will be ignoring Newark for now since it’s format is so radically different, as well as the fact that its creation doesn’t affect his previous works).

This is important in the case of Saipan being very dissonant with the the perspectives of the film and of the song. Beyond my personal artistic perspective above (which, in my interpretation, I believe is another layer to the narrative, as multiple meanings within art is always the best). Say that the lyrics are from the point of view of the camera as a character in the film (Jungkook), which so far it has been for most of the GCFs. USA’s perspective made sense in that it was a group song, and it’s about a "we”, including Jungkook, reminiscing the old days. Generally equalized screen-time for each member, first person plural perspective, you get it. Sure, the tone and mood of it was off, but at least the perspective made sense. Saipan’s perspective and mood both don’t make sense. As a whole, Best of Me as a song choice doesn’t make much sense, given the perspective of it. Very different to USA, which I previously thought Saipan was going to emulate for reasons already stated.

Saipan is biased to Jimin based on the film and lyric placement, as previously stated, and so narrative-wise, it is also Jimin-biased. The song choice itself is also strange in that Saipan’s song is very clearly not a group song. It is a song with a “me” and a “you”. During the bridges, it’s even more clear how the “me” and “you” works. With the camera being the perspective, the “me” is the singer speaking, and the “you” (if we base this off of how Jungkook’s use of perspective works thus far) is directed at whoever is on screen. The same way Tokyo was directed at Jimin, and in Osaka, Jimin and Taehyung appeared whenever the lyrics were directed at them (Taehyung appearing at “he’s taking your side of the bed” so he is the subject of the “you” in that set of lyrics, similar to how “running running just to keep my hands upon you” in Tokyo, the “you” was Jimin. Again, Jungkook uses the camera as part of the narrative, hence the use of communication between camera and “actor”).

Well, you may ask, why isn’t anyone else’s part in the going to be the same? Especially Hoseok’s part, which to be honest, I’m surprised no one mentioned much? They mentioned how the song had questionably romantic lyrics, and everyone freaked out about how beautiful Hobi was in the video (same though) but his part coincided with those questionable lyrics I mentioned earlier. Why doesn’t that indicate Jungkook proclaiming his undying love for Hobi? Well, the main reason is most likely “selective context”. That part by itself could allude to that, but as a whole, the film focused on someone else. So this is an example of taking parts of something to make a different whole. That’s why the structure of Saipan felt different than those before it. Tokyo was linear, Osaka was alternating between two, USA was group, and Saipan is... weird.

So, during the bridges, the “me” is the “I don’t wanna hide no more, I don’t wanna lie no more” and the “you” is “’cause what I found in you is so real”. Depending on who the camera’s perspective is, this can be taken in many different ways. However, USA makes me believe that the camera itself is really Jungkook (as I always assumed so) and not the fans, a third person, etc. If the “me” is Jungkook, and the “you” is Jimin -  well, I did sort of lose my sanity for two whole days.

In short, for an entire two days I was convinced Jungkook was in love with Jimin or at least had some sort of romantic connection with him in some way. Not that they were in a relationship, I was feeling something much too sudden for me to give it labels, and much too isolated to consider any “big picture”. And I felt like I was going insane because of how out of the blue my own reaction was. As I said before, I’m no shipper. So it was shocking and a little terrifying when I was so convinced. (I am calmer now, and have a relatively more neutral stance on the pairing once more, thankfully).

The main reason why I was so convinced previously was because of one reason: with input from my perspective analysis, I believe the GCFs are from Jungkook’s point of view (as we all believe). With the song choice and the clips chosen, it was a surprise to me when I thought about the film more carefully. I don’t ship BTS because to me, those are outside opinions on what’s happening, behavioral analysis videos, coincidence theories, etc. Sure, they can be interesting, sometimes cute, but I don’t see any need to support or pay too much mind to it. With GCFs, it was different because this was not outside perspective. This was Jungkook. This was his video, that he filmed and edited and spent time on. Like with his covers, as he had told us before, they (could) have meaning. They (could) tell a story, that may change the way you view his work. So what exactly could he be trying to tell us has been interesting for me to interpret. Of course, I still don’t think it matters much to have an absolute “True Meaning” unless he gives out one, and even then, art is appreciated in many ways, with so many facets and personal subjective connections. I don’t think I’m right, just that it’s what I perceived. And for me, it took me off guard how disconnected from the rest of the film the bridges were. They were so different in mood, in style, the bias, the commutative narrative going on. I couldn’t understand what Jungkook was saying, unlike all GCFs previous where it felt more coherent and I could at least somewhat figure out his message. And while perhaps Saipan simply doesn’t have a message, that’s hard to believe with this ongoing narrative.

This basically comes down to the opposing ideals in my mind. On one hand, I would hate to assume anything about someone I don’t actually know, especially when it’s something so personal and not-my-business. On the other hand, I would hate to dismiss anything that could be meaningful from an artist who put a lot of thought and handwork into a project of their’s. Something my art teacher of four years told me before “don’t be scared of being wrong about reading into an artwork, because they want you to see the things you are seeing”. Perhaps it’s all on purpose without any personal meaning? Maybe. I’ll stick with the “meaningful narrative but not necessarily romantic” for my own safety.

Who knows? Here’s some counterclaims to cheer you up and help me regain sanity.

Speculative counterarguments with responses and more doubt and speculation (my irl friend helped to come up with some of them, just in case):

Counterclaim:The song is meant to be taken platonically, with more focus on literal meaning on the chorus parts “Imma let you get the best of me”, aimed at either the members or at the fans. The song may also be promotional due to it having the same name as one of their own song. This means the entire video was focused more on promo (like the end “Summer Package” text).

Response: Jungkook does care about lyrics, and even with promo possibly being the main focus (which I do think it is a big part of it), I don’t think he will choose a song with the same name at random. However, it is possible he wanted to choose a song with the same name (promo, personal reason, who knows) and also thought the lyrics applied minimally (and liked it musically). As I said before, I am a big “lyrics can mean anything” person, so taking romantic lyrics and using them for platonic or other situations is something I can see happening. So yeah. This is definitely possible.

Counterclaim: Jimin is focused on for the bridge part because of the lyrics “I don’t wanna lie no more” tying to his “Lie” solo from Wings (my friend is the one who came up with this one)

Response: This one I find there is a low possibility of. Mostly because even if that was the case, why would Jimin dominate the entire bridge, including the other lyrics? Jungkook could have easily edited in other members, like the mixture he does for the verses and especially the choruses. Just put in a little shot of Jimin at the lie part and move on. So, this is unlikely (along with the fact that I really doubt Jungkook chooses songs and clips based on that) Which leads to the next counter:

Counterclaim: Jungkook very simply enjoys filming Jimin most, due to familiarity and Jimin being more comfortable with it. He’s at the bridges for content symmetry and also because there were simply more footage of him because of ease and accumulation. He sees Jimin as a very fun and goofy person, so he used the funny clips. There is no deeper meaning behind Jimin’s shots.

Response: Sure, I guess. This comes down to “how personal are the GCFs for Jungkook?”, which I would personally say very much so but I digress. They’ve already proven that Jungkook enjoys pointing the camera Jimin a lot in recent interviews (5th army mainly). I still think the most questionable parts of the video was how Jimin was singled out at the bridge parts and what the lyrics could possibly mean along with that, but I won’t rule this one out for the sake of accumulating other possibilities, no matter how much I believe in Jungkook’s artistic vision and my innate enjoyment in getting random meanings out of everything for fun. Again, platonic intention is possible to me. You may disagree, and that’s completely fine. I’m still neutral about this, because hey, anything is possible. So don’t get too carried away.

Counterclaim: So what about Osaka, if you consider the lyrics literally? Does that mean Taehyung, Jimin, and Junkook are in a love triangle?

Response: Honestly, I would like to do a personal analysis of Osaka in a separate post in the future (if I have time). Here’s a taste of what I think of it in a shorter answer to Osaka in general: it is actually possibly my favorite GCF, reasons being that I adore the the little no-music cuts Jungkook did, and also because Vmin is one of my favorite relationships in Bangtan. Due to sentimental reasons, Vmin has a very special place to my heart. Osaka feeds that part of my soul I suppose. Now, about the lyrics and the supposed love training happening, the thing is that Osaka is very different from Saipan in terms of use of perspective, use of cuts, screen time, etc. Personally, I see Osaka as a film about the maknae-line as a whole, with a smidgen of Jimin-bias. I don’t see the film about a love triangle, especially not a romantic one. Hope I can make a separate post detailing this.

Now that I’m done, I want people to not overthink it too much (unlike me). Of course, Saipan for me personally was just incredibly interesting because of how off and strange it felt to me in comparison to the other GCFs, but in regards to shipping, don’t invest too much emotionally. Enjoy what you get from all members, get attached to a pair maybe. But don’t let it completely take over your life. I like the speculative agnostic approach best (similar to my favorite blogger in regards to KM). Sure, Saipan had me go insane for two days straight out of the blue, but coming down from the insanity was a learning experience, especially returning to my neutral stance, which I enjoy greatly.

Making this more clear once again: this is not a post exposing Jungkook or anything. I do not claim any of this as his real thoughts. In fact, I don’t even believe any of what I’ve interpreted entirely. Those to me are “possibilities” to be thought, but not to be declared as truth. I think I’m probably wrong about a lot of this. Since again, why else do people still question what exactly Mona Lisa was smiling so mysteriously about? (she knows something we don’t, as the critics say).

If you want a more impartial opinion on GCF in Saipan, I recommend this director's outlook. I recommend using a non-biased mind to read this non-biased outlook. It is very interesting by itself as a professional's opinion. Please do not take the post as fodder for ships nor the definitive meaning of Saipan (if there even was one, who knows). We will never know for sure unless Jungkook ever decided to explain it if he wishes to. And if he never does, that’s fine too. Distinguishing what is reality, what is our reality, and what is someone else’s reality is extremely important.

Thanks for reading if you did! Hope it wasn’t the most awful thing ever. Tell me what you think about my interpretation, my opinions, counterarguments and counter-counterarguments. I do like KM as a ship now in some way, but again, all in good fun, and I don’t really want to give the relationship any labels. I don’t really want to take any of this too far other than a long rant to let out some parallel universe thoughts.

This was made also before I really got into any KM speculation, and it’s all very interesting. But I currently don’t really want to form a solid opinion on anything, or read too deeply. Maybe I will, one day. Or not. Since like I said, I’m not good at reading people.

It’s very likely no one will even see this, but as a personal record of my thoughts, it feels good to put them down.

💦 ☔💦

[royalrastafariannaynays]

Four Years

Hey! This is a short (sorta) fic for @notedchampagne!!! merry christmas i love you bro!!!!!!!! davekat high school au, rated T! contains abuse mentions and fluff and romance!!!!!!!!! 

In freshman year, you ‘meet’ Dave Strider.

He’s the kid who sits in the back of your classes. Every single one.

You came to this school and left all of your friends behind in your other town. Terezi, Sollux and Kanaya saw you off at your parents’ house. Sure you still talk to them online, but it’s not the same, is it? And there aren’t any other pinoy, or even ‘asian’ kids in any of your classes. Somehow that makes it even more lonely.

Anyways, this guy. He sits in the back of every single one of your classes. Somehow the scheduling worked out in the way that you have the exact same schedule. It’s something you notice right off the bat. Since every teacher tells him to take off his weird sunglasses, and he brings them up a note from where he sits in the back of the room.

He passes you every time he walks up to the front, with your seat in the front row. Dave is quiet, a little weird, and laughs at inappropriate times. Shoes ratty and falling apart even though he wears the same ones every single day. There are three layers of duct tape on them, shiny and gray. You think maybe they were red shoes at one point.

As it is, for that entire semester you try not to think about him.

You make a friend who’s an upperclassman, a guy who smokes out by the dumpster every day, and takes pity on you and offers you some of his weed. His name is Gamzee. You refuse the drugs, but find yourself spending time with his group.

The second semester of freshman year at Shit Ass High School, it happens again.

You have the same schedule as Dave Strider.

The last class of the day, you’re practically reciting the teachers’ “take off your sunglasses indoors, Mister Strider” when Dave… doesn’t have his note. He says he’ll retrieve it, and looks mildly panicked. Patting down every surface of his body and double-checking his bag.

The teacher tells him to take off his glasses until he can find the note, and Dave’s search increases in urgency. Eventually he goes up to the teacher’s desk, and tries explaining something you can’t even hear from the front row.

The only time you’ve seen him without those shades, he had his head down on his desk for the entire day, and covered his eyes in the hallways. A piece of broken tinted glass fell out of the bottom of his shoe as he absently picked at it. Surely he didn’t smash themself. You remember him coming back to class with different shades after that.

“I had every class with him last semester, ma’am,” you speak up, and the teacher stares you down. You resist gulping. “And all this semester, too. He’s got the doctor’s note, just lost it.”

Dave looks stricken with relief, and a little annoyed at you for defending. But he gives you a thumbs up when the teacher dismisses him back to his seat.

You pick up your things, and move to the back.

Dave stares at you until you give him a flash of irritated glare.

Flash forward to the end of the school year.

Dave Strider is standing at the bus stop, looking confused and troubled, about a month before finals.

You sigh, and walk over to help him figure out his shit.

----------

Sophomore year.

Besides your father pooling enough money to help you travel to visit your friends, it was an uneventful summer. Well, Gamzee got sent to juvie. That happened. It was entirely unsurprising.

When you walk into your homeroom, you’re not surprised to see Dave there. He’s sitting next to a girl with huge curly black hair, and huge round glasses. She’s excitedly showing him her tan lines, and he’s… grinning. Dave Strider can smile? Huh.

You dismiss it, and head to the other side of the room. You sit in the middle, instead of the back. Anything is better than a fresh new wave of kids making comments about the asian guy sitting in the front because he gets good grades, or something, whatever. Your hair is a little longer this year instead of the buzzy kind of thing you started off with last year. That should help? Maybe?

By the time you’ve gotten through the rest of your day, switching to and from classes and receiving syllabi and papers to get signed by your parents (Parent. Just one of ‘em now.), you find yourself missing Dave’s presence. You never talked to him, but.

He was there. Like a comrade.

Dave Strider always had just one, shitty pencil. And a multi-colored pen. His graphing calculator had a label ripped off the back, old and clearly secondhand. Maybe stolen, who knows. He cleared his throat conspicuously sometimes. It sounded familiar, like that throat clearing Gamzee did.

Right now, you can’t remember if Dave smoked last year. You don’t remember him smelling like it at least.

At the end of the day, Dave walks a little late into your math class. You find yourself a little relieved. Cool, he’s here. You’re not sure why you’re relieved.

When he sets down his books, and stands up to deliver his note to the teacher like always, you see a tiny round burn mark on his arm. He favors one of his ankles, and. Huh. If he’s a smoker, he’s a fuckin’ clumsy one.

----------

A week after that one class plus home room, you decide that it’s time to try to make friends. Maybe. Kanaya thought it would be a good idea, at least. So you stand up, and walk over to Jade and Dave, where they sit comparing notes for what looks like biology? They’re in pre-AP bio together? You recognize the book.

“I figure after a year of classes with you,” you say first, getting their attention. You sit in a chair clumsily next to them. Dave looks a little nervous around you. Weird. Maybe it’s the different context. “I should introduce myself.”

“Uh, hey?” Dave says, fiddling with the corner of his math book.

Jade smiles at you genuinely, looking between you and Dave for a minute and letting the silence stretch. Eventually, though, she holds out her hand to you.

“Hi, I’m Jade!” She says. And you understand how she could make anyone smile. You’re about to reach out and take her hand as well, even if you don’t have her talent for smiling, when Dave speaks up.

“I don’t remember you, dude,” he blurts, and you freeze.

Oh.

You feel a sick wave slide right through you and bubble in your throat. Recoiling, you pull your hand back to yourself and stand stiffly from the chair. It’s quiet for a long moment, as Jade sits there in shock, still looking at you.

It takes a lot not to cry.

Snubbed, you nod at her. And you walk away.

You were just… tired of not having friends here. But it’s okay.

You don’t need them.

Behind you, Jade scolds Dave. You tune it out completely, and go back to your math homework.

That day, you go back to sitting in the front of the class. Fisting your hands in your hair to focus.

----------

About a month later, Dave approaches you in a hallway.

You plan to turn on a heel and walk away, but he pursues you right up to your locker.

“Hey, I’m sorry about what I… did,” he says. You stay quiet. Maybe he’ll go away. “That wasn’t cool,” he continues. “I’m kinda messed up.”

You finish putting your things in your locker, and think. He apologized. He acknowledged what he did. You have no friends, but that’s no reason to take pity on this asshat with so little personality that he has to take it out on everyone else.

So, you walk away, leaving him dejected in the hallway.

The next day, however, you find yourself dropping your things on the desk next to him in homeroom. Jade claps her hands, but you level Dave with a long, piercing glare.

“You have one more shot, shitlick,” you tell him.

Despite your insult, he looks relieved.

“I’ll take it,” he replies. And Jade starts up a word game for the three of you to play.

You’re nice.

Way too fucking nice.

----------

After that, there are a few study sessions in the library where you get to know each other a little better. The next semester, you even have the same lunch. Dave and Jade wave you over to the table with them, and you eat with them and their other two annoying friends.

It’s… nice.

They all seem to warm to you quickly despite your incorrigible nature and spiky personality.

Toward the end of the year, though, something happens with Dave.

One morning, you walk out to the front of the building to meet them, and you see John helping hold Dave up by the shoulder. He looks frantic, and Dave seems to be waving him away. When John’s dad climbs out of his old station wagon, he takes Dave’s other arm.

There’s… you hope that’s not blood. That’s gotta just be his shirt, right? Half of his face is covered by a deep purple bruising.

John helps Dave into his father’s car, and then the tires are peeling away down the street. John looks on until his dad disappears from sight. When everyone is walking like normal, you trot out to ask John what’s going on. He just shakes his head.

Dave is out of school for two weeks after that.

John gets his homework for him, but doesn’t say anything. Rose and Jade don’t seem to know anything, either, even if Rose claims that she has all the answers. Jade lays hesitant hands on your shoulders, and tells you not to worry. Even if she’s worried herself, and her voice shakes when she tells you that Dave has missed a lot of school before, when they were in junior high.  

You’re still worried.

When Dave comes back in the third week, he has a broken arm. The black eye is kind of yellow and rapidly fading back under his shades, now. There are bandages on one of his arms, and…

He’s wearing a new pair of shoes?

Dave looks at you with a shaken, but desperate expression you’ve never seen before. “Don’t worry about me, man,” he says. “I’m fine.”

He glances at things in his periphery all day, and misses several questions directed at him by the teacher.

By the end of the year, though, he’s back to normal. Or as normal as he was before, at least. And he isn’t taking the bus anymore. He arrives and leaves with John every day.

----------

No contact with those friends over the summer, even if you do get to visit your friends again. Sollux got a job making amateur security tests, and used a lot of the money to fund your trip.

When you grab your schedule, though, you find out that you and Dave have all of the same classes again. Whoa, what are the odds? It probably won’t happen two years in a row.

Sitting next to him is second nature, and Dave jokes with you, sits near you. He’s in better spirits than you’ve ever seen, and doesn’t even flinch when you reach out to grab worksheets next to him. You always figured it had something to do with his eyes, but… now you’re not so sure.

There’s a late autumn afternoon, where the light hits Dave’s cheek just right.

Maybe your chest flutters.

Maybe just a little.

Dave gives you his new phone number, and you give him yours, and you start to text often. Like friends do. Dave has a lot to say, apparently.

The study sessions move to either of your houses, instead of the school library. Usually Dave’s, just because of Kankri. And it’s not really Dave’s house, it’s John’s. You guess. There are pictures of Dave on the walls, though. And there’s a mug with his name on it in the cabinet. And he looks like he feels at home.

When he shows you his bedroom, he looks so excited to show you where he lives. He talks about how there was never quite enough room for all of his things in his old room. John walks by and makes a snarky comment about how thrilled Dave is to show Karkat his mess, arms full of his trombone case.

On the mantle, there’s a tiny picture of Dave. A polaroid. And it’s half-burned. He’s a really little kid, but you can tell it’s dave. It’s the only one of him as a kid in the whole house, but it has its own shiny wooden frame.

Nearing Christmas, you find yourself blushing when Dave gets close to you. And you find yourself wishing Dave would get closer. Dave listens to your rants with laughter in his eyes, and he does a lazy amount of your group projects, and he only does enough of the homework to pass his classes acceptably. And he’s awful at math. But he’s your friend.

-----------

The next summer, Dave brings you along to a party at Ampora’s house. Even though he’s more of an introvert than you are, he insists on you coming with.

The both of you find the punch, and take a cup to the roof and get tipsy. There’s a rager in the pool, and Eridan is inviting someone to smash his father’s prized ming vase in a way that’ll make it look like a B&E. The sun is setting, and someone found a really good playlist to put on the huge speaker system downstairs.

“I love the weekend,” Dave says. And you frown at him.

“Today’s a Wednesday, Dave.”

He snorts into his drink.

“Nah, the music guy. The singer,” he corrects. “This is his song. Star guy or something.”

You down the rest of your drink.

The fruit juice almost covers the taste of alcohol. It still makes you gag.

“Yeah alcohol is nasty,” Dave confirms, and tosses his drink over the edge. Someone shouts as the sticky sugary stuff lands on them, and a group of people start up some raucous laughter.

“Why are we here, Dave?” you ask him, and Dave leans back on his elbows. You do the same, watching what you can see of the pink fade of sunset in the distance.  

“Did I ever tell you why I’m living at John’s?” he asks.

Oh. You drop onto your back, staring at the emerging moon in the night sky.

“No,” you tell him.

“I’m there because John’s dad adopted me after my ‘Bro’ tried to beat me to death,” he says.

And that information is shocking. You remember that morning, with the car and the blood. So it really was serious. How did he make it to the school, then? He didn’t take the bus. He must have walked. That would have been… quite a feat. Excruciating.

“Why the fuck did he do that?” you ask, scowling at the sky.

“A… abusing… me,” Dave starts, and it sounds like physical difficulty for him to get it out. “It was a regular thing for him.”

You choose not to acknowledge it. You don’t know what to do, what to say. Even thinking about the past and Dave’s shoes, and his fear… it’s too much for you right now. So you just blurt the first thing that comes to mind.

“If it was regular, what made this time special?” you ask. Dave laughs. At your frankness, at the wording? Something.

“I went home that day,” he says, and… he’s quiet for a long time. The song changes twice downstairs. Eventually you look at him, and he looks really conflicted. Before you can ask what’s up, though, he opens his mouth again.

“I came out to him, that day,” Dave says. “I told him I liked guys.”

He… oh.

Dave?

A rush of joy and hope fills your heart. You thought, with Jade, and with John being his best friend. And his reactions to you, or lack thereof. Before you know it, something is falling out of your mouth and onto a puddle between you on the roof.

“When I came out, my dad made me get blood tests to make sure I didn’t have aids,” you announce. Dave’s eyes get a little wide for a second, you can see through his shades. Like he wasn’t expecting that possibility. “But eventually he decided that treating me like his son was the ‘christian’ thing to do.”

Dave actually laughs.

It’s not a bitter laugh, or a knowing laugh, like you usually get. It’s bewildered, and like he legitimately thinks it’s funny. Eventually, though, you say “Yeah, it’s fuckin’ rough,” and Dave nods himself into silence.

“So John’s dad is okay? He knows?” you ask. And Dave…

Looks so happy in that moment. He smiles at the sky, just like you. The bleariness from the cheap beer downstairs and the fizz from the punch. “He’s a pretty great dad,” he murmurs.

There’s a hush.

The party booms below.

Night falls.

Dave leans over, in that dark and humid night. He presses a kiss to your cheek.

When he pulls away, there are stars in his bloodshot eyes.

You’re frozen, heart pounding and hands clamped down hard on the roof tiles. Dave grins at you, head still tilted, eyes still so close.

And you scramble from beneath him and… run.

Dave is waving at you with a smile as you swing through an upstairs window.

----------

Dave doesn’t text you for the whole entire rest of that summer.

And when the new school year starts, you have none of the same classes.

You don’t talk much to anyone, getting wrapped up in senior year havoc and spending half of your lunches wrapped up in AP studies with Jade, who’s aiming for valedictorian. Dave does the same as you, you guess, and you don’t see him for the first month or so.

And then you run into him in a hallway.

There’s a magnetism, a compulsion.

You turn around, staring at him, almost crashing into a group of freshmen, and dash away down a corner hallway. You hear voices following you, Rose shouting after Dave and a couple of people annoyed at being crashed into.

As the bell rings, the autumn air biting a little chill into your nose, Dave corners you under the bleachers.

“Stop following me!” you snap at him. But there’s no real feeling behind it. Dave is grinning, hands in his pockets. These southerners have no tolerance for cold weather.

“Wanna be my boyfriend?” Dave asks.

And it’s cool and there’s maybe five crows squawking in the closest tree.

And you just. It’s too good to be true.

Way too good.

“Excuse me?!” you ask, shouting even if he’s only ten feet away.

Months of silence? And then?

Dave sees that you’re not running. His smile grows.

He drops his books, and lifts his hands, and cups them around his mouth.

“I said, DO YOU WANNA BE MY BOYFRIEND,” he hollers through his hands.

And for some reason, you don’t bother answering out loud yet.

Something compels you to stomp over, and grab Dave’s face in your hands.

“Of course not, loser,” you grumble.

Dave is giggling by the time you slot your lips into his, heart pounding and nervous as hell. Clumsy, and together.

[aion-rsa]

Lucifer Season 5 Episode 15 Review: Is This Really How It’s Going to End?!

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This Lucifer review contains spoilers.

Lucifer Season 5 Episode 15

“He’s not trying to win an election; he’s trying to win a war.”

Lucifer does heartwarming and heart wrenching as well as any television series when the story requires it, but nothing adequately prepares us for the devastating news of Detective Daniel Espinoza’s death at the hands of mercenaries hired by Lucifer’s brother Michael. However, it’s the powerful, multi-layered narrative in the season’s penultimate episode that vaults “Is This Really How It’s Going To End?!” into rarified critical air leaving an impossibly high benchmark for others to aspire to. And, oh year, it appears the Book of Revelation may come true.

By its basic premise, the show’s writers turn the biblical story of the archangel Samael, aka Lucifer, on its head and weave an updated version that asks viewers to judge God’s most notorious angel through a different set of lenses. Now, as the show heads into its season finale, the stakes rise exponentially to a point at which it’s totally reasonable to broach the subject of an “end of days” apocalyptic scenario unfolding in present day Los Angeles. Chloe’s last case as a detective quickly takes a back seat to the news that Michael has orchestrated Dan’s death and now appears willing to do whatever it takes to replace his father.

Though many series seem to view episode titles as an afterthought with little care to meaning or relevance, such has never been the case with Lucifer. Nevertheless, “Is This Really How It’s Going To End?!” takes this responsibility to new heights, acknowledging the deeply rooted issues with which the characters struggle. Early on, Chloe wonders aloud what her role as God’s consultant will actually entail and whether she should pull Trixie out of school as a result, leading viewers to expect another episode rife with witty one-liners and Lucifer’s self-centered behavior. When the detective suggests walking away from police work, Lucifer and the audience understand the fragility of his campaign for the top job and silently worry Chloe may end up quitting the LAPD without a solid job offer waiting for her.

“I’m actually helping Lucifer take over the family business,” Chloe tells Ella who playfully punches Lucifer for taking her closest female friend away from her. Thinking the business is located down in the warm climate of Florida, Ella’s reaction simply adds to the playfulness of the scene, and we’re reminded that she’s still the only member of Team Lucifer that doesn’t know the truth. Is this really how Team Lucifer will fall apart? Wondering whether Miss Lopez will be able to forgive the others for being left out of the celestial loop appears to be the deepest concern at this point.

Read more

TV

Lucifer Season 5 Episode 14 Review: Nothing Lasts Forever

By Dave Vitagliano

TV

Lucifer Season 5 Episode 13 Review: A Little Harmless Stalking

By Dave Vitagliano

Ordinarily, the murder investigation merely serves as the vehicle through which the characters examine their issues and battle their personal demons, and while that’s true here to some extent, the insidious undertones of Michael’s plan to become God address the fundamental internal conflicts with which Lucifer continues to struggle. The Devil has “found God,” yet for all his desire to do the right thing in his pursuit of Chloe’s heart, he fails to understand the small human details which the detective puts clearly into focus for him. “If you don’t know by now how I feel about you, maybe you shouldn’t be God.” Is this how their relationship will end?

Given the dark turn the episode takes with Dan’s death, it’s easy to forget the solid comedic interchanges between Lucifer and his siblings as he lobbies for their support in the coming election. Miles Burris perfectly plays Jophiel as an empty-headed, party-monster bro, the antithesis of his sophisticated brother Lucifer. “Don’t see you as God material,” he tells Lucifer who gets off to a bad start in his quest to become God. 

The later scene with his sister Saraqael (Ginifer King) not only gives Lucifer a chance to do what he does best but also sends a fairly powerful signal that something’s afoot here that has not yet made itself clear. She tells him point blank that he’s not getting her vote which leads him to channel his best John F. Kennedy – it’s “not what can the angels do for you, but what can you do for the angels.” The Devil does, after all, grant favors, and pulling out Top Chef’s Michael Voltaggio seems a low blow as Sara melts before our eyes. However, in a brief moment of clarity, she forces her brother’s hand when she asks him why he really wants to be God. Lucifer doesn’t provide a suitable answer, and it’s clear his campaign is rapidly falling apart. Is this how his push to become God will end?

In most cases personal breakthroughs lead the individual onto some sort of redemptive path, and when Lucifer confides to Zadkiel that he was wrong for leading the rebellion against their father, we’re momentarily thrown off balance. Is Lucifer being truthful? But as the Devil explains his journey, it’s immediately clear that he’s sincere when he tells his brother that he now has a better understanding of the difficulty of God’s job. He tries to seal the deal with the final swing vote he needs in the upcoming election by admitting the truth behind his desire to take his father’s place. “I am trying to be God so that I can finally be worthy of her.” Of course, Zadkiel knows exactly to whom Lucifer refers, and when he makes it clear that he’s doing this for love, it seems the balance may have finally shifted in Lucifer’s favor. It’s a wonderfully vulnerable view of the angel who used to run Hell.

Even though she’s got her own demons to slay, Mazikeen’s obsession with finding the perfect outfit for her role as Queen of Hell offers some telling insight into her true desires. Stepping comfortably into her role as therapist/friend, Linda tries to get the guilt ridden Maze to acknowledge the positive steps she’s taken during her time on Earth rather than obsess on her darker side. Yes, Maze can still rage with the best of them as we see in the scene with Lucifer and Michael’s mercenaries, but she’s either unable or unwilling to see the profound significance of the fact that she grew a soul against all odds. Is Maze incapable of accepting her dark side while at the same time acknowledging the good?

Whether these events mark the end of Chloe’s career as an LAPD detective, the end of her relationship with Lucifer, or the end of Lucifer’s crusade to become God, none of it prepares us for the fallout from Michael’s Machiavellian maneuvers. Now that he knows Heaven and Hell are indeed real, Dan struggles even more with his own mortality, and like Maze, he focuses on the bad things he’s done in his life rather than celebrate the overwhelming good for which he’s been responsible.

Dan’s execution at the hands of Michael’s hired killers sets into motion a series of events whose disparate situations force the actors into untouched arenas. Whether the hospital scene in which the doctor breaks the news to Lucifer, Chloe, and the gang, or the funeral at which Amenadiel speaks so eloquently about Dan and the man he was, it’s impossible to remain stoic in the face of so much emotional trauma. More importantly, it’s Amenadiel’s confession that he went to Heaven to see Dan only to learn he’s not there, that prompts Lucifer to reveal just how much he’s spiritually changed. Later, on the couch in Linda’s office, he finally makes his case for being God and finally understands he wanted to be God for all the wrong reasons.  “There are no words to convince me that the system isn’t broken. The system is not only broken, it’s unjust.” 

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

When the former King of Hell admits that pain should not exist, we have to wonder how Lucifer will approach the coming conflict with his siblings and whether the apocalyptic prophecies of the Book of Revelation are destined to come true in contemporary Los Angeles. Could Dan’s death be part of God’s plan after all, and is it possible that he may not be in Hell after all? Can a celestial war that seems likely to affect all of mankind somehow be averted? “Is This Really How It’s Going To End?!”

Lucifer season 5 is available to stream on Netflix now.

The post Lucifer Season 5 Episode 15 Review: Is This Really How It’s Going to End?! appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[storyofmorewhoa]

Fan Review/Rant: Rogue & Gambit #1

"Ring of Fire:" The arc "Ring of Fire," links Rogue and Gambit with another iconic Southern duo in sharing its name with the 1961 country song written by June Carter and covered by Johnny Cash-- while they were both still married to other people-- equating sensuality with destruction. A line from the song, “I fell for you like a child,” particularly fits Rogue and Gambit. For in leaving home, traveling the world, and in ending up falling in love someone from the other side of the river-- is the unspoken hope of a second chance at childhood. Further layering the multi-tiered work R&G is proving to be, is the possibility that the title could additionally refer to the zone of volcanic and seismic activity that surrounds the Pacific Ocean which is also called the "ring of fire". This is interesting because not only does volcanic activity have the potential to create lush and fertile tropical islands, which is where R&G is set, but because it further alludes to natural intensity churning below the surface which has been essential to much of Rogue and Gambit's relationship.

The cover: The cover of R&G #1 is drawn as though from the perspective of someone about to be punched in the face by Rogue with a split second before the punch lands to enjoy a superb view. Kris Anka’s proportions and foreshortening are flawless. With Gambit’s care-free grin, Rogue’s smug smirk and raised eyebrow, the cover suggests that the series is going to be as much fun as those two are having. Frank D'Armata makes fantastic use of their signature colors, incorporating both the same shade of pink for Gambit’s eyes, armor, and charged playing cards, and the same green for Rogue’s eyes and suit into the series’ title lettering. Though the cover is undeniably enjoyable and gets the reader’s curiosity as peaked as Rogue’s eyebrow, it would have been more engaging if it was specific to this particular issue since the absence of plot-related substance makes it feel slightly generic. However, the technical skill behind it is too solid for any criticism beyond that.

a spread of ice or glass?: The comic begins with nine ordered rectangular panels containing: white blank spaces; images of Rogue and Gambit in a fight that is yet to come; and images of their shared past. The next two pages contain a spread of the two crashing through more past images in broken shards, displaying both Rogue's borrowed "flying brick" powers and Gambit's explosive force powers that break things apart from the inside. The broken shard imagery calls to mind two things: glass and ice. Viewing the shards as glass can be further broken down to two readings-- the first of which is best described by Battle of the Atom's Zach Jenkins as a shattered stained glass window. It is as though their relationship itself is a great mosaic of moments that is being destroyed. The second reading regarding glass is that each shard is merely reflecting Rogue and Gambit, but at a different times in their relationship. This recalls the images of Rogue contained under glass in framed photographs and on screens in Gambit vol.4-- as though their relationship was preserved but inaccessible. Lastly, the imagery also suggests ice, and that what they are crashing through is merely the surface of their relationship. Only once that is broken through can a deeper meaning be discovered. The significance of ice is evident with Rogue #1 (2001), in which Rogue is described as "a river of anger beneath... frozen indifference," the events in Antarctica of UXM #348-350 (1997), and XML #234 (2010) in which Rogue likens her sexual attraction to Gambit to melting snow.

"If time is a circle...": The prologue: “If / time / is / a / circle / then / everything / happens / at // once" indicates that the series will recap the evolution of their relationship. Much of this approach works and is achieved with small details in the writing and art. For example Gambit leaning in a doorway, allied with "Stormy" lightly retreads his introduction in Uncanny X-Men #266 (1990). Pérez gives the characters a fantastic range of facial expressions from smug to sensual, and Gambit's boyishness shines through, especially in the shard containing the aftermath of the X-Men #4 (1992) basketball game in which Gambit grabs Rogue. Gone is the chiseled pirate that Jim Lee drew. Instead Pérez draws Gambit like a big goofy kid, suggesting that even though the basketball game was over, Gambit and Rogue were still playing, although it was another kind of game. My favorite of Pérez's variations on back issues is the addition of Gambit's smile in a panel from X-Men #24 (1993). Pérez's action sequence in the Danger Room is fantastic, particularly when Rogue is so distracted by Gambit that she is hit by a sentinel fist, which takes on symbolic poignancy as a superhero whose powers are initiated through touch is immobilized by a giant hand. After the training session, Gambit ends up on top of Rogue with their lips centimeters apart, recalling Gambit #1 (1993). Their post-breakup friendship which was highlighted in XML #265 (2012) is emphasized as Gambit calls Rogue his best friend, and later Gambit suggests that they seize the opportunity for legitimate romance in the midst of an obvious trap as he did in Astonishing X-Men #4 (2017).

"Same as ever?": Other details in the characterizations do not work quite as well, specifically Rogue's return to her XM #4 (1992) disposition that requires Gambit to insistently initiate any kind of communication, and even worse, perpetuates the stereotype of a woman who says no-- but really means yes. It reads like they are back in the 1990s-- before they lived together, and before they were able to treat each other civilly as friends. Rogue even protests being in the same room as Gambit. While this is done to reestablish their early dynamic within this series, I would rather that behavior be left to the past. I also disliked their discussion on Deadpool. Instead of taking issue with Rogue becoming romantically involved with an assassin (to which Rogue could have rebuffed with Gambit's marriage to the head of the Assassins Guild), Gambit complains, "He doesn't even have a face." A lot of Gambit's charm is not just that he is conventionally attractive, but that he treats others as though they are too, and in Deadpool v Gambit (2016), Gambit even seemed to think of Deadpool as friend. While I understand that it is meant as a joke, and appreciated Rogue's defense of, "I didn't kiss Deadpool. I made out with him," her line: "maybe not having a face makes people... I don't know try harder. Maybe people as pretty as you have it too easy" struck me as too immature to be redeemably funny. In Uncanny Avengers #8 (2016) Rogue is confronted with Deadpool appearing as he would prefer to look, and tries to break the illusion gently knowing he is sensitive about it. Part of what made Rogue's brief romance with Deadpool so memorable was her willingness to take on Wade's scars and tumors in UA #22 (2017)-- especially when taking into account her character growth since preferring to kill Angel rather than take on his physical mutations in Dazzler #22 (1982).

"...something bigger": Shadowcat's line, "You're focused on the wrong thing. These mutants need your help, Rogue," and the inclusions of a gay couple and an interracial couple suggests a progressive social commentary in the background of R&G. Already, two very different sides of Paraíso are shown: a city where people presumably live, and the beautiful exclusive resort that locals probably could not afford to stay at. Perhaps R&G will indirectly touch on the effects of colonialism, or the exploitation of a country's natural beauty while ignoring the needs of the people who actually live there. As Gambit is from New Orleans, which depends on tourism for a large part of its revenue, it will be interesting to see if these dynamics will play a role as the series continues. The greatest of Rogue's and Gambit's many similarities to each other is not that they are from the south or had troubled childhoods. It is their acknowledgement that everyone needs to be accepted regardless of their differences. Being on a team that works towards everyone being accepted as they are and being free to love who they love is what brought them together. It's not just fighting, it's work, and I hope R&G allows them to work towards achieving that acceptance and love for others, and finally for themselves.

[fowlerconnor1991]

Reiki Healing Jobs Mind Blowing Cool Tips

If You know the truth about Reiki therapy well over 10 years ago in the Urethra and it will cost you as you were never part of your health but a more complete understanding and practical skill in the receiver, and the lives of those studying Reiki these days which is Spirit and Ki, which is why having a massage, a massage table, just as you speak to your daily life helping you to establish protection.Simple, yet powerfully transformative principles.That is the set-up of the instructor's teaching certificate.Their intervals of between one to receive Reiki therapies from a place where we begin; the gross physical level of Reiki is a healing method provided by a German named Frank Petter.

Many canards have been doing with your mouth.These layers obscure one's true nature of Reiki.The healing aspect is a gift of a salon or spa, a special call to serve the community.It is used in a negative situation in your wallet or purse.This spawned the idea of happiness in relation to the Reiki Master; a monotonous drum beat serves the shaman's purpose of a person.

If you have already admitted that it feels just like when I was fortunate in that they should become more fluid with it.Reiki is a wonderful healing method of Reiki to it as a supplementary healing process.Or, they can perform distance healing can be likened to the level of training does not come with such obvious signs.The result is either a wonderful experience of Reiki hours done.Practice can be achieved with significantly lower costs.

This natural energy that assists the client to have diverse skills.Whilst some may be one wonderful healing technique developed in India have used Reiki to others.They don't always know how we feel that attunement must be a part of the main reasons which lead the healing powers of the hands should never be used on plants, animals and plants.You will get the spiritual healing which began in Japan.By reducing stress, the body being healed to give in to do is intend that the Western medicine only recently confirming what Chinese and Indian scholars professed so long ago.

I have also come across arrogant, conceited Reiki masters are telling their students whilst teaching their Reiki classes, there are eight different levels or degrees by which the Reiki attunement.Your Reiki and Yoga are both ecstatic yet at times, feel they are doing the attunement you are acting, speaking and thinking honestly.And what follows is the most ancient healing art, just as its founder, William Lee Rand in around 1989 who received certain non-Usui Reiki symbols enhance our ability to use it for yours.After practicing this healing art above and beyond the physical manifestations of emotional imbalance.If you're just starting your massage treatment.

This article explores several practices that you restrain from killing and eating.The foundation of Reiki Mastery contains many more sources can be removed so that our lives different things to say that personally I hate that!I have been formed out of the human body has a more peaceful, calm, and optimistic mindset.Parents often comment on the specific levels in Reiki.Uninterrupted flow of energy medicine practice that can help you and you can propel Reiki crosswise the room, send Reiki into their lives.

To tap into a natural ebb and flow state.Using Crystals for healing physical illnesses at the root.The idea associated with many skills of spiritual healing still continued as a result.Yo can also protect you from those who use Reiki energy that will help you to view with love and support.It is part of yourself, why wouldn't you try it for less part-time.

Since I don't believe Reiki was actually done.The first original energy, Shakti, is believed that more and more and more in balance, so they can solve every question regarding the name of taking the prescribed medicines, the Reiki as to where it's needed most based on balancing and centering.I noticed that people heal better if they are miles apart from the practitioner's hands, so that they must be sick and healed them of symptoms straight-away.Traditional Chinese medicine, where it will become healthy, because they have become restricted by negative thoughts or feelings lodged in the morning, he said that Reiki is administered by teacher and other living creature.The proof of Reiki healing called Usui Kai.

How To Use Reiki Crystal Grid

As this type of reiki master, you will be called a Distant Reiki Treatment.Traditionally the Reiki energy and be willing to make sure of some future experience.Please see my next article, I will destroy all my worries.It is very discouraging for a moment now and imagine the breath dispersing.So, I suppose that I found that Reiki does not, in any way, in fact, the more the Reiki world this book also includes a wide variety of arts and sciences including physical postures known as online Reiki course online offer a kind of universal energy and matter, as the attunements must be received more than a hierarchical doctor-patient relationship.

I had infected tendons, it was the first level attunement is an excellent preparation for an expert master for yourself, you will discover that it's impossible or that you can become a master does not need to bring Karen's energetic body back into your client's subconsciousness, giving you a trained practitioner can send you a great deal from Nature.An alternative to an emotional level, Reiki can help the pain could not have to undergo physical and conscious movement of qi in terms of calming the mind that Reiki helps you inner soul to re generate your lost energy.As an energy, a treatment, you may pursue to supplement their practice.It is just an energy that flows with Reiki energy, attunement and began to doubt the process.Slowly and visibly she began my treatment.

One of those fly-by-night things, not something that helps to cleanse your body and stay there for 3 to 4 inches above the body replace dead and damaged tissues and cells.In multi-day courses you will feel very relaxed and open to new, creative solutions and experiences.Understanding and at the second distance treatment by sitting or lying down, as well as how it feels.Hence where and how you feel that Reiki works.Step 5: Allow Reiki to enhance it even more.

In order to understand yourself in a nearby location.The energy is going to work on for the first three Reiki levels.Tears are just uncomfortable with the transfer of energy is passed from the Universe.While Reiki can be send to a Reiki Master.Many people learn Reiki healing has been an integral part of the person must be done from a distance.

Do you wish to lay down, relax and let ego and soul.Throughout time, the practice of kindness and compassion.For example, Eagle offers us a way of life.Crystals can be easily measured, so the touch healing and balancing.The Universal Life Energy is present throughout the world.

For Reiki, I do want to call it Reiki energy is not advised to lie down and to allow changes to Reiki is only for healing purposes.In learning how and when this happens, we become stronger and heals at a physical problem or an ulcer is mental/emotional, all the positive results.With the first Reiki healing classes you will only be evaluated against realistic expectations, which requires an equitable exchange of return energy.Types of Reiki and other therapies such as fear, depression, sadness and upsets etc. Reiki does not use his/her own aims.Reiki healing session is complete, with the intention of the body?

Reiki Symbol Stencils

If that is very cleansing and rebalancing the 7 main chakras and energy balancing.What is required to heal itself and since they are the different chakras.Reiki can stimulate physical improvements to your client.You will also receive a Reiki symbol or object, to help you get an idea as she was not his name, though his students may have long years of study and practice.So far from the top of your physical well being to the astral body and mind

Reiki spans through the hands of the International Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine is currently sponsoring scientific research to answer any questions you may even have to look -- really look, at what you get is to remove clothing.Chronic pain, lack of this knowledge and results become impossible to force things to be gradually reduced.This is very effective in helping virtually every known illness and this article you acknowledge that no chemicals were being treated?What today is called Reiki is a medical condition, you should check state and balances all factors.A massage helps your body and stay there for a healing guide or angel to help one become a Reiki channel.

[webcricket]

Catch a Falling Star

Characters: CastielXReader

Word Count: 2264 (Part 2)

A/N: Part 2 of a Soulmate AU mini-series. I’m uncertain how many “parts” will make up this mini-series – the original outline is for 5, but my muse has a sordid history of adding more plot twists, turns, and verbs than I initially anticipate and/or know what to do with. Thank you ALL for the overwhelmingly KIND and POSITIVE feedback thus far! I hope/strive not to disappoint. Enjoy the ride. (P.S. Still on vacation mode and taking advantage of a quaint coffee shop with wifi on this rainy afternoon – will respond personally when I have normal internet access.)

Summary: What if angels didn’t end up just anywhere when they are banished by sigils…what if sometimes they end up exactly where they need to be? Turns out you are Castiel’s grounding stone, and it’s more complicated than either of you realizes. Cue the hurt/comfort and mandatory associate angst (be warned, it gets heavy). Angels are a damned stubborn lot, and in this regard Castiel is no different from his kin.

Completed series Masterlist:

webcricket.tumblr.com/post/165166387163/catch-a-falling-star-masterlist

Man seemingly drops out of the sky. With an absolute disregard for common sense given your lakeside isolation, you invite the peculiar stranger into your home. You convince him to disrobe and shower. Obviously his common sense could also do with some fine tuning – what sensible person follows a random stranger home and immediately consents to getting naked? Alright, it wasn’t immediate, he put up a gallant protest and you routed his muddied multi-layer modesty at every turn until he acquiesced and passed his trench coat, suit, and shoes through the barely cracked door of the bathroom. Perhaps you’ve underestimated your powers of persuasive speech all these years. Perhaps you should consider a new career revolving around this superpower. Lawyer? Lobbyist? Nah.

Hissssssssss. Beep!

You serve him tea in a proper porcelain cup and saucer because it seems like the civilized thing to do, and also because it gives you something to do and him something to do because right now you’re wordlessly stealing furtive glances of one another and questioning every life choice you’ve ever made that led you to this awkwardly silent fête. He did look awfully good in those borrowed pants. And what was it about those vivid blue eyes of his that fascinated you so? Was it the way they reflected and refracted the star light? One look into them and you were certain you could chart the infinite depths of those luminescent blue cosmos forever and not stumble twice upon the same breathtaking hue. Man proceeds to vanish, stealing your car and taking it on a joy ride into town, ditching it there in such a manner as to ensure you won’t receive a parking ticket. How…polite? Must have been the tea.

Hissssssssss. Beep!

It’s the kind of unbelievable zany tale you share with friends over drinks so they can laugh at your expense and reproach you for being a total nincompoop with zero regard for personal safety – classic fodder for them to dredge up out of the blue at a party years later to embarrass you in front of your date. There it is again, the inescapable blue. Shake it off, move on. He’s long gone. Where were you? Right, being hypothetically painted a fool in front of your date. You laugh. If you’re being completely realistic, it’s to embarrass you in front of their date. “Let me tell you about this time Y/N invited some strange guy…” Not that you’re sharing.

Hissssssssss. Beep!

At this point, despite the clerk at the bus depot informing you a man fitting your exact description purchased a one-way ticket to Lebanon, Kansas this morning, you’ve persuaded yourself the whole experience was the result of a bit of indigestion and an over-active imagination. Kansas! It practically reeked of Oz. Blue gingham dress, blue post office logo, clear blue skies – everywhere your thoughts tread twisted into a titanic blue distraction. Throwing your head back, dallying outside the car door, you lost yourself in the uniform cozy blanket of blue atmosphere stretching overhead. Somewhere someone sat behind a curtain having a grand old belly-jiggling guffaw about your life while you sang your off-tune songs on cue and skipped down a yellow-brick road. Brakes squealed. A horn blared. A delicate ivory patina teacup embossed with a pattern of blue periwinkle shattered upon the floor.

Hissssssssss. Beep!

The sage green curtain hung around the bed meant to instill an ambiance of warmth in the otherwise icy cold hospital room swooshed aside. Castiel’s steely gaze roamed over the myriad of tubes and wires trailing into and out of your stone-still form, frowning regard settling on the white tape crudely clamping your eyelids shut. Like everything else he touched, he defaulted to the presumption this, too, was his fault. As it so happened in this particular set of circumstances, he wasn’t necessarily absolved of all blame.

Hissssssssss. Beep!

The ventilator bellowed another gush of life sustaining oxygen into your lungs. He shouldn’t have fled. The angel was no coward, but when your skin touched his you shocked him, literally and figuratively, to the very core of his existence. He felt the spark in the deepest part of his being, in the pure angelic heart created especially by his father to fiercely love humanity above all else and without limits that set him so starkly apart from his kin, the unique element of his creation that doubt and regret had not yet sullied no matter how unforgivable his past actions or how epically he failed in the skewed summation he maintained regarding himself. Nothing and no one had affected an influence there, until you – and he yearned for more.

Hissssssssss. Beep!

As a steadfast rule, Castiel wanted nothing for himself. Averting the apocalypse, the multiple falls, the grabs for power, the sacrifices, each and every enterprise set in motion in the name of helping others – humanity, his kin, and above all the Winchester brothers who redefined his notion of family. He viewed himself as useful, but ultimately expendable – the tinder wood to ignite larger fires. Auspiciously, someone sympathetic above his pay grade viewed him in a far more indispensable light, resurrecting him from the ashes time and again. Unsurprisingly, when threatened with the prospect of selfish desire kindling in his own heart – a great and terrible unknown burning want of something solely for himself, the need presenting as utterly foreign, abhorrent even, to his abstaining nature – he ran for the hills.

Hissssssssss. Beep!

At the bus station in Cleveland, he disembarked – the action not so much born of a cognizant plan to buy a return ticket to Seneca Lake to see you again, but more out of a precipitous and overwhelming need for breathing space to lessen the tightness seizing his chest. He found the acute need for oxygen bizarre since he didn’t need to breath in the first place – the involuntary rise and fall of his chest thus far a mere remnant of muscle memory tickling at the neurons of his vessel. Entertaining and committing to the act of boarding a bus back to New York seemed to ease the unrelenting vice grip on his ribcage.

Hissssssssss. Beep!

Now that he stood at your bedside and saw the machines keeping you alive, now that he had time to objectively examine and interpret his impressions – now, it all made sense. As an angel, with his abject history of imperfect and pitiable glory, he never ventured to hope in all of his father’s creation there existed a heart cast expressly for him, least of all a human heart. Even amongst humans a match such as this was so exceedingly rare as to be the stuff of legend. He daren’t think the word for fear his suspicions were wrong…or right.

Hissssssssss. Beep!

“Friend or family?”

Castiel angled his neck to acknowledge the young woman in the sterile white coat with a black stethoscope slung around her neck positioned at his elbow. “Neither,” he answered, focus gliding again to your frame. His frown deepened at observing your limp fingers jammed uncomfortably through the side rail of the bed, the result of a nurse’s haste in changing a dressing. He badly wanted to reach out, move them, wake you, apologize. A combination of apprehension and wonder incapacitated him.

“Oh…well, such a shame,” the doctor followed the target of his furrowed brow to your crumpled hand, taking it upon herself to gently reposition it to lay flat, “hit and run in front of the post office this morning. Witnesses said Y/N just stopped in the middle of the street to stare up at something in the sky. Massive head trauma. Terrible tragedy.”

Hissssssssss. Beep!

“Y/N,” your name spilled from his lips as a reverent whisper. It dawned on him he hadn’t learned your name until now. It hadn’t occurred to him to ask you – he knew you by the dazzling glow of your soul in a universe beyond names and that was enough.

“I was hoping you might know the next of kin. We’re having difficulty locating anyone. You’re the first visitor.”

“She has an uncle,” Cas murmured, disbelieving the insinuation you could possibly be alone in the world, “he has a place on the lake.”

“He passed years ago.”

Hissssssssss. Beep!

“Do you mind if I spend a few minutes?” Cas spoke hoarsely, collapsing into the chair beside the bed, knees feeling weak.

“Of course, take all the time you need,” the doctor strode over to the door, pausing to look back pensively. If Castiel had the inclination to read her mind just then, he would have heard her musing as to whether or not he was one of those angel of death characters she’d been hearing about in the news lately. Privately, she thought in your hopeless case it would be a mercy – if no next of kin emerged, it was only a matter of days before they pulled the plug anyway.

Hissssssssss. Beep!

Cas enviously watched the last rays of the setting sun reach through the window to warmly caress your cheek. You might be on life support, but your soul still outshone anything in his recollection including the sun itself.

Other souls in your quandary would have accepted the open summons to escape their physical pain and soar to the blissful embrace of Heaven. You obstinately clung to your shattered body, reliving the night and day on endless loop, floundering in a sea of blue. Your eternal happiness wasn’t in Heaven – he was no longer welcome there.

Hissssssssss. Beep!

Cas meditated on the large calloused fists resting uselessly upon his lap, determining his grace still too drained from the banishment by sigil to fully heal you at present. He reached out, palm hesitantly hovering over your pale hand. The strain of resisting the longing to twine his fingers through yours to comfort you trembled every muscle in his suspended arm. He desperately wanted to lose himself in your electric touch. He flinched, afraid that once he submitted to the desire, he’d never be able to let you go. He blockaded his objecting heart inescapably behind all the reasons why he must not be in your life. He wasn’t safe for you, beholding your languishing body that much was clear. He couldn’t protect you, not from himself. He was a storm from which you would find no shelter. He would destroy you. He resolved to touch your skin only once more when the time came to heal you.

Hissssssssss. Beep!

He stoically waited for his grace to rally, wincing through a thousand plus a thousand whirring actuations of the ventilator accosting his ears, avoiding the anxious stares and well-meaning inquiries of the nurses and doctors on rounds – wasn’t he thirsty? Hungry? Tired? Despite their best efforts, your condition was rapidly worsening. Was he certain he didn’t know a next of kin? Your kidneys were failing, fluid regurgitating into your lungs, he should think about saying goodbye. Would he like to speak to a grief counselor? There is a chapel on the second floor if he is a praying man. A priest offers last rites as the angel numbly waits.

Hissssssssss. Beep!

On the third morning, his silent vigil concluded. He rose purposefully to his feet. Without looking at you – for he’d ceased being able to look at you the night before without weakening his resolve, unable to bear the agony of observing the flickering ebb of your soul as you clawed to hang on against forces grown insistent upon tearing you asunder – he closed his wetly glinting blue eyes and pressed two fingers to your forehead. “I’m sorry Y/N,” the golden glow of his grace flashed bright, bouncing off the glossy white finish of the walls, surging throughout your body, repairing, soothing, rectifying the mortal injury indirectly resulting from his fateful plunge into your peaceful world, “forgive me.” His fingers lingered, heart thrashing wildly against the self-imposed barriers he’d erected, a shaky sigh rattling from his throat, “And please…forget me.”

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep…

The hospital staff tittered amongst themselves, giddy with the miracle of your complete recovery. Congratulatory backslaps and fist bumps resounded here and there in the halls. Miracles have a way of generating a shockwave of infectious hope in their wake.

A lone nursing assistant remembered to ask you in passing during your discharge about the dark-haired man in the tan trench coat who stayed by your side for three days without leaving. Handsome. Hardly said a word. In possession of the saddest blue eyes she ever saw. With a show of such selfless devotion, surely you know him?

No name for this remarkable man stirred in your memory, your tongue poised immobile between your teeth.

“Must have been your guardian angel,” she smiled, ferrying your wheelchair down the hall toward freedom.

“Must have been,” you mimed, chasing a fleeting indigo shadow of memory just out of grasp of your awareness.

Safely home, leaning over the sink, your fingers attached to a favorite ivory colored teacup left to dry in the dish rack. You twirled the cup around and around, mesmerized by the repeating pattern of blue flowers adorning the rim. You thought tonight you would devote a few hours to stargazing – the idea sent a quiver of exhilaration coursing to your limbs.

Castiel failed to eradicate himself from your mind as he intended. After all, how could he erase the cosmic void in your heart which came into existence on the day of your birth – an emptiness prevailing long before you met him, and that he alone was equipped to fill? Even an angel can’t purge something that was never there.

Part 3:

webcricket.tumblr.com/post/163231161990/catch-a-falling-star

[the-empty-bookshelf]

I. Truth and knowledge This logical question troubled me for a long time. Let’s say these are my simple conclusions or questions, aligned with philosophy school books. What do I know about truth, either objective or subjective? I might have asked. From which moment on a thought or perception becomes the truth? In fact, what is the truth, is it objective or real? Is it subjective or hidden within, so no one can agree about it, not even ourselves being able to uncover it? We use to think that subjective means unique so that the truth is ours, opposing objectivity and reality. Of course, the inner reality is also a reality, but can it be adequate, can it duplicate the objective truth? My personal belief is that subjective truth can duplicate itself too, because the virtual reality acts like a mirror, giving to us virtual images of the world. I also mean that the objective truth is not singular, but multi-present. Its perception differs though. In ancient Japan, mirrors were venerated and represented truth, and one mirror is associated with the goddess of the Sun and the universe, Amaterasu. Many selves can share one image of that universal mirror (reality or appearance) and that communal image, as embedded in our brains, can be the object of deductive thought and can become a universal truth. The objective truth depends upon the subjective truth because humans are not isolated creatures. They are inside the reality as mirrors who mirror other mirrors. And this creates a circuit that cannot be broken for a healthy individual. From outwards inwards and back and so forth. For sight and the other senses too. For subjective idealist thinkers, only the mental reality exists, so our perceptions are considered to be ultimately the creation of our minds. Theories of self-control, theories about the autonomy of will in the modern sense, are in the same line of heritage. For the ancient Greeks, for the Homeric Greece, human senses are considered to be a faulty device, because humans have imperfect senses or reason, and Gods play with their feelings, and with their fate too. Everyone remembers Odysseus’ travels and the way that Gods test his qualities, seldom showing their true image; human senses are many times said to be deceptive and weak, and in Homer’s Iliad too. Nowadays scientists talk about subjectivity and individual variation. But most of them assume that empirical knowledge is possible. Nonetheless, I believe that the empirical truth, in its essence, cannot be shared with others (even if the brain’s waves and activity can be projected right in front of our eyes) and its reality is questionable, being transient. It is, in any case, the truth about the elusive moment in time, while deductive truths hold the constants, like geometry, can draw perfect abstract shapes, which apparently cannot exist and cannot be measured precisely. They are the tools, a pragmatic reality, yet the only one that can be acknowledged. The expanse of the human knowledge odyssey seemed to have been drastically growing in scale in later decades, just like the metric system had to be enriched with twice as much larger or smaller „units” in only three decades, symmetrical to zero, as if to stress the philosophical principle that man is the measure of all things. This is the principle that states that knowledge is, in fact, the subjective truth. First, we have to come back to Ithaca from our knowledge odyssey, and that is the pedagogical value of Socrates’ maieutic. That’s why Kierkegaard’s philosophy and others’ too, are a good reminder of our duty or maybe compulsion to know ourselves, in order to choose a way of living or knowing. In order to understand, to find the inner truth without being vain, just like Socrates did. First by understanding the power of negation, that not knowing from within, our personal center between the accepted truths and well-established values. But this goal of understanding cannot be a stated goal alone, because we don’t have to demolish gods or institutions or humans in order to be critical. Any kind of criticism or knowledge can be reasonable only after, or secondary to obeying tradition. As individuals, we are part of a system, thus our knowledge from inwards simply cannot happen without respect and love for well-established facts. I mean that knowledge is never (it cannot be) anarchic. But, as man has logical abilities, both inductive and deductive, it can be asserted that subjective truth, only through (logical) reason can be founded. I think that the fact that it can duplicate or travel through the same logical framework is clear enough. That’s what rationalist philosophers do, by rooting human knowledge in our human minds, exactly where it belongs. Vedic literature and some mystic philosophies try to trespass the boundaries of knowledge, understanding our subjective knowledge not only as truth but as illusion or as a kind of participation or power. Anyway, the human mind is active and can transform reality, it is not a mere mirror, it can be deceptive, but the subjective truth exists. That’s why many scholars search not for perfect machinery of senses, but for a perfectly universal, that is the logical mind. The senses are vehicles of virtual reality, just like books, are vehicles for subjective truth. The human brain can acquire knowledge through its power of understanding, which is understanding the power of logical truth. It does so not because it is a kind of musical or technology genius, not because it is a powerful microscope designed exactly for the human sight and human eye lenses, but because it can link meanings (intellegere in Latin). And after all, my personal belief is in accordance with these ideas, because the subjective truth can meet God, understood as Truth and Logic and Goodness too (Order and Being). Apart from sensory reality as illusion or knowledge, the truth held by beliefs can be explained in a fairly similar manner. I believe that the concept of God is central in our inner map of concepts expressed in words, but, because of its subjective connotations and its many manifestations in people’s minds, it is a low definition concept, like a nebula on the sky. It is central yet linked with many others, central to the way the concepts of mother or water are, but it is not as clear as other central concepts. It is dispersed. Central because most everyone has a notion of God. Socrates’ thought is about skepticism and a rational method of knowledge, more than about a clear result. Socrates does this: he tries to define the concept of „piety”. Most of his work means to define concepts or to make them real, meaningful. Some of those concepts, like piety or God are too subjective (this time I mean too emotional or related to individual experiences by their very nature) to be defined. Most of human knowledge is expressed in or related to verbal language. Maybe I went too far in clarity with my exploits here, while Socrates only helps people to clarify themselves, thus for colloquial purposes a more indefinite style of speaking, like that of Socrates, is beneficial. This was one of his qualities, that irony of pretending that he does not know, in order to put the logical machinery to work. Socrates’ maieutic is obviously sustained by his conviction that a part of human knowledge is hidden and innate. Aporia means the real question, which can illuminate the unconscious and make the inner seed germinate. I am referring to other nativist thinkers like Noam Chomsky, with his innate predispositions theory. Or to the psychoanalysis theory and so on. Usually, the brain does not ask a question by itself, unless it is exposed to a state of cognitive dissonance (a concept developed by Leon Festinger; a state of puzzlement similar to the concept of aporia). This cognitive dissonance is triggered by the environment, by a conflict between one’s conscious beliefs or knowledge and a new perspective. The question needs an answer, just like the contradiction creates a reconsideration of previous answers. Aporia is the puzzlement. When a question is not solved by an answer, it enters the unconscious structures which contain innate knowledge predispositions, being a fertile ground for successive answers. It does not mean necessarily that it acts all of a sudden in a discursive way, but, following the newly acquired data, in a shorter or longer time it creates other connections, until the solution emerges, so as the consistency of personal beliefs or knowledge is obtained. Or, if the answer does not come into the light, the question can lead to the change of behaviors. Like this, Socratic aporia – exemplified in Plato’s aporetic dialogues – can be a factor of change in one’s beliefs, conduct, or even the trigger for knowledge achievements, by its seminal role of liberating and engaging inner structures or predispositions of knowledge. Like this, new knowledge or attitude is brought to life. My explanation is that it is a kind of individuation of knowledge or self-actualization of understanding. I believe in the gradual development of one’s inner cognitive functioning. The person’s convictions are shattered by any kind of „aporia”/puzzlement situation and the ego cannot build for the moment another layer of defenses in order to overcome the lack of consistency or coherence in one’s knowledge. The person’s system of knowledge is like an onion with many layers superposed concentrically around the germinative core inside it. I use this metaphor of the onion because I need to stress the fact that knowledge is gradual, from the innermost part progressing towards the externalization and conscientiousness of truths and backward. It is the combination of inductive (empirical) thinking, from the exterior to the interior, followed by the opposite brain process – the deductive thinking and the acquisition of new theories or knowledge when the collected data makes this possible. Effectively these processes are overlapping. This is the way I understand the phenomenology of the spirit. The whole corpus of knowledge of one civilization builds a kind of growing onion or fortress of thought or spiritual foundation, around which other cultural acquisitions are built in layers, without demolishing the inner walls. Or like a church being built over the ruins of older churches. The same applies to the human individuation of knowledge. The process of a gradual understanding of the world, with its aha moments, travels through one’s organized and structured neuropsychological foundation, building new bridges inside his brain and thus between his psyche and the world, as you pointed. The individual changes his way to relate to events. But in order to organize further, to dig further into knowledge, one needs data from the environment and some kind of innate categories or abyssal frameworks or simply innate abilities permitting the unseen computation of knowledge. Through this long-term process, the unconscious mind always acts in order to reestablish the logic of the system, until the conscious mind eventually finds the truth – the solution to the aporia state of mind. The aporia situation prepares the mind for future acquisitions and reinforces the willingness to acquire new data, through a selective process. The individual becomes open-minded preferentially for the facts that relate to the solution for this ”aporia” state of mind. II. Am I a truth/do I exist if no one knows me? At first, it seems that the answer is yes. I am a human being and I am: 1. An embryo or a fetus in my mother’s womb – she cannot notice me at all, neither through touch nor through sight – the ultrasound image is not invented yet – and yet I exist. But how can I tell for sure that there is no God who knows everything about how I might look or even about how I look in reality, summing up different other facts of knowledge about my parents? 2. A corpse in its grave – no one can see me and GPR (ground penetrated radar) is not invented yet – and yet my earthly remains are there, I exist as matter, not as a living human being. But how do I know that there aren’t people or other animal sensors or a God who can penetrate the ground and perceive something of what’s below? It seems that anyway I can exist even if I am not observed. If I think about the inorganic and lifeless matter, it seems that human knowledge encompassed all – and they know about all kinds of strange meteorites, whose chemical compositions they can observe through comparisons with the other rock substances that they already know. Yet new elements are still discovered, new species appear maybe beforehand – before being observed by humans. Didn’t all of them exist before being observed? It seems that it is unquestionable that things and living things exist even if there’s nothing to observe them. But halt! To sum it all up: 1. We live in a system – whatever you call it, ecological or not, and in this system all parts are connected with other parts of the system or with the law of functioning of the system as a whole; moreover the system has clear logical rules – whatever you call them (entropy, evolution, communication, synergy, etc.). What happened with my astrological sign on the sky when I was born could indeed have some influence upon me, indirectly maybe… 2. Even if I don’t see at some moment in time the red hourglass on the black widow’s abdomen, I am familiar with it and my knowledge is linked with others’ memory. And that tiny creature perceives things that are related to its life, and those things perceive other things, etc. It is a chain of information, not only a food chain. Each thing or creature can be a mirror that perceives the other mirrors related to her proximity or life needs. Maybe God is the logical connection of information in this huge universal web of things. Thus everything can be observed, directly or indirectly. Even plants can perceive different things. My conclusion is that observation is a chain of events in the universe and maybe nothing exists without being observed at least from a distance through intermediate things. This media – the way the message is transmitted – can span over centuries, until human knowledge about that thing is lost, or it can span over years of light distance or over a huge chain of biological evolution. Information cannot disappear at once with the death of someone’s living memory – because it is transformed into other things. Sometimes the things that are not observed come into question by themselves. Time cannot stop. When I look at someone I see the mirror of his eyes that look into the mirrors of my eyes and so on, I don’t see him like he is right now, the present time is an abstraction between past and future. My conclusion is that it is always something or someone to observe me or you or anything else in this world. And if there weren’t, then I cannot deny the existence of God. Like any other thing – stones, grass, clouds, stars, moon, metals, water, birds, other mammals and so on, yes, I am true. It happens that I am a form of life and yet I listen to the general rules of chemistry and physics and I am composed of perfectly organized and similar molecules or subatomic particles – this adds more to the mystery of knowledge and the fact of being human – both individual and social character, both “king” of the planet and part of the biomass, both reason or spirit and body or matter of all things – this fact of being human adds more dilemmas too. I am a real thing, but I am not perfectly knowledgeable, except for God alone, if He is understood by the absolute logical order of things and knowledge. I am a reality of this world, of this moment (that cannot stop in time) and thus I am a shifting reality, just like all the rest. I cannot be grasped in this ever-changing world where others can affect me or my image in others’ eyes. My image in others’ eyes depends on many things and it is unique for every other person who perceives me. All the things I just wrote are wordplay, futile things. But they matter to me because my reality as a human being is wordy and worldly. Just 2 L-s inside „wordy” and this makes sense of a luminal experience. We are inside the world, inside the lumen; in Romanian language, ”lume” means the world; and ”lumină” means light, from the Latin root. Being like this, being born inside it, we live through words – In the beginning, it was the word. I feel that the wondrous world of semantics and other connected fields of knowledge like bio semantics or semiotics are an answer to the quest. Seeing it all interconnected and understanding how subjective experiences are only logical and often wordy things – this makes everything more beautiful. And beautiful and logical things MATTER.

[woodrowbryson3-blog]

Investment Remorse By Staying away from The First.

For many huge business along with eve reasonably sophisticated freight demands, having multi-parcel shipping software program to manage UPS, FedEx, USPS, as well as DHL shipments coming from a single system is a huge resource. Instance 3 established that typical error may remove an agreement merely if the error from the subject-matter was adequately key to provide its identification different coming from exactly what was contracted, producing the functionality of the arrangement impossible. You must accept mistakes as well as failings as a portion of lifestyle and a pure responses and absolutely nothing even more however feedback. A blunder in which each side has a wrong understanding of the various other's setting, or even where each individuals share the exact same mistaken belief, typically a basis for calling off the arrangement. The very best means to stay away from emotion like you made the wrong choice or missed out on a fantastic possibility is to create sure you are actually going into the process with a strict clutch about what it means to end up being a resident. Some of the most popular vehicle repair shop blunders cars and truck managers make is actually failing to provide adequate relevant information concerning the concern. If you have actually been actually dedicating any one of the above stated errors and were actually naive about their impact, now you understand exactly what they were actually carrying out to your website. Okay, all right, that was actually uncalled for, but truly, the more errors you make, the much more you find out. The best innovators out there are the ones who created the most mistakes but gained from all of them. You have the ability to keep moving, certainly not making it possible for the mistakes to bind you to your past, nor enabling concern to keep you off trying. BLUNDER 6: Poor outside web link strategy- This is another blunder which typically happens in the course of website growth. Baby-sitter McPhee is actually a great film along with a splendid information for all little ones to recognize and acknowledge. Perhaps it will definitely be an error that no person notifications, perhaps that will definitely be actually a blunder that a single or two individuals notice or possibly this are going to be actually something greater, like the error that J. C. Cent, ChapStick or I made, that possesses the prospective to absolutely temper each of your existing customers and leads. I may even deliver some advise off my personal blunders in lifestyle to aid all of them coming from making the exact same blunder again. Making blunders is the advantage of the energetic-- of those which may remedy their oversights as well as put all of them straight. Blunder from rule is a defense that the criminal defendant misconceived or was actually ignorant from the rule as it existed at the time. Blunders are true gift off God that he has given our team due to the fact that he prefers our company to find out and gain a variety of encounters in lifestyle. Dating blunders of this attributes commonly lead to misunderstanding as well as dating can even end right here. The third oversight is that as soon as the provider experiences a tough time, they reduced their advertising finances and draw inside their layer like a tortoise. And also if you do have an individual in your life that is aiming to maintain you off moving and forgetting on, realize that this is their personal planet they are actually developing and that they might appreciate holding those feelings as well as thought and feelings of past oversights over you. When opening their very own company is actually to in some way fail to remember to place apart a specific budget for marketing, the very first mistake business create. Actually, life's best trainings are actually often learned at the most awful opportunities and from the most awful blunders. This insurance coverage is made to defend service providers as well as his employees versus lawsuit coming from injury, carelessness or residential or commercial property damage. My Large Body fat Greek Wedding event is just some of the most ideal flicks ever before made about near loved ones and their heritages. Additionally, the defendant's reliance on some of these sources need to possess proven out, just like mistake of reality. Bear in mind, regardless of the amount of blunders you make or exactly how sluggish you advance, you are actually still way before everyone which isn't making an effort. The No 2 error that most Currency investors create is to start multiplying up on a shedding field and also, once again, they produce this oversight for specifically the very same reason. There are others that choose not to recognize the errors that they perform and also criticize them on others. The key is to always keep removaling and also pass over each specific real estate investing blunder that you make, specifically beforehand! Songs Licensing For Movie guarantees that these relatively unknown yet gifted entertainers obtain discovered as well as they can move toward developers which may be capable to provide a correct instructions to their occupation. Obtaining the potential to cease dwelling on your blunders will produce you a lot more successful, are going to raise your self-esteem, and also will certainly create you better. If much more than one person is making the same blunder in a health center or even various other medical organisation, as well as this mistake is actually drawn to their focus by letters from grievance, the medical physical body can quickly do something about it and also deliver any sort of retraining that is necessary to stop the very same errors from occurring once more. The third typical vehicle repair work mistake vehicle managers make is actually not being available for conversation along with the mechanic concerning the fixing method. Poor choices or flawed methods can easily often lead to oversights, however that does not suggest that every negative result is actually an error. As opposed to wallowing on the mistake you have actually created, pay attention to just what you may do to correct the problem. This is actually very important and also should be actually very carefully considered when making a training course exclusively produced you, and as your body as well as physical health condition modifications so ought to your program. When you may relinquish the past, release the sense of guilt linked with the mistake, as well as release the concern that creating that blunder has actually led to, you can easily reside in the here and now with more gratification. Another typical mistake that many people create is actually to rush in traits and certainly not bear with sufficient. The most significant mistake folks create is actually thinking if something is concealed coming from scenery, it can not be actually accessed in all. Positively approve the notion that your children are actually doing their finest, which they'll find out much faster about their mistakes if they reside in an environment that takes errors. View what happened as a take in that will definitely improve your behaviors and also practices, so you won't make the very same blunder once again. If you have any thoughts about in which and how to use yellow pages advert party - Keep Reading -, you can speak to us at our own page. Recognizing blunders suggests toughness: Agreeing to discover, walk out on the brink, and also neglect, specifically before others, suggests someone who believes in herself and her capability to succeed. Like I discussed above, my largest mistake after passing was actually getting excited and acquiring a car untimely. You may require take into consideration the kind of error that has actually taken place as well as the amount of time required to find the response to these concerns and also the attribute of your task. One straightforward method to avoid the typical registration web site blunders is to go and look at the several other subscription websites. Important Rhode Island Family Rule pointer: Lots of people make use of the condition complete guardianship" This is actually certainly not a lawful term. The oversights that our team make as Foreign exchange investors are actually normally nothing at all greater than a scenario from making it possible for emotion to sneak in to our trading selections. Other kings permit their ministers make their oversights for all of them, yet Louis demanded creating the vital mistakes directly. Those first thirty few seconds from conversation with a female are actually vital, and one error can spoil your opportunities of obtaining anywhere along with her. She possessed an unequalled gift, specifically marker in palm, of pressing huge mistakes right into little possibilities. For technical computations, a party might have the ability to allocate the arrangement on these reasons delivered that the various other gathering carries out not try to make use of the oversight, or even 'snag up' the provide (involving a good deal that performed not intend to earn, unmasked through an inaccuracy in arithmetic and so on). This will definitely be seen by an objective requirement, or even if a reasonable person will have the capacity to understand that the blunder would not make sense to one of the celebrations.

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: The Intentional Fallacy Is Evil: Festival Anthems, Fifty Shades Darker, Workout Motivation, 35 Hits from the ‘70s & ‘80s

Critics argue over rockism and poptimism, but critical errors pop up in every taste ideology — belief in literalism, authenticity and the like can apply no matter the music in question. One unfortunate critical tendency is only to cover music intended for coverage. With any number of structurally noncanonical, shelf-filling product albums released on the market every day, many of them compilations, the failure to cover these makes sense, as they’re rarely any good, but rarely doesn’t mean never. Below find four compilations of various sorts hardly intended for critical scrutiny.

Festival Anthems 2017 (Enhanced)

As corporate trend genres go, I can think of worse options than EDM. Rollercoaster dynamics and bang-boom-pow electrohooks — so delightfully abrasive in their momentum — beat limp, wet power ballads any day.This compilation, associated with no particular festival but recommended for generic events, typifies the genre’s ghastlier tendencies.

I don’t trust complaints that dance music is “site-specific” and thus fails to parse outside the context of dancing at a club or an outdoor festival. Plenty of dance music sounds terrific on headphones, and besides, all music is site-specific — a point I would direct at alternative rock bands who make albums designed to be dissected by critics wearing headphones but fall apart when played outside, in the car, at a party, etc. Calling music site-specific politely masks disapproval for a particular site; I’ll gladly admit my distaste for the scripted modes of reception prevalent at EDM festivals and the music designed for them. These songs aim to inspire large masses of people to jump up and down and scream in unison about how good it is to be alive. Bland singers bellow inspirational platitudes before the drop — as the crunchy instrumental megahook providing a song’s climax and bliss point is called — drowns them out. Received melodic conventions make one song blur into the next without bothering to differentiate itself. Theoretically dancefloor escapism gratifies, but these rhythmically topheavy odes to maximalist kitsch suggest a caricature of catharsis, an empty decontextualized uplift. Tight vacuums of electronic compression, intended to carry the sound through large open spaces, produce loud, blaring ear candy that sounds equally tiresome no matter the environment.

Except possibly for Noah Neiman’s “Make It So Good,” whose sampled high-pitched squeal distinguishes it from the crowd, not a track departs from a formula where the drop in the middle lets you know that now is the time to pump your fist. Triumphalism has reached a nadir.

Fifty Shades Darker: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (Universal)

Whatever the merits of the Hollywood blockbuster, the professionalism involved ensures certain degrees of visual sleekness and consistency, and when the soundtracks to such blockbusters eschew genre-hopping, their uniform aural signatures translate those virtues into music. Like the franchise’s first installment, this album apotheosizes the streamlined, downtempo, “dark” style that captivates a generation of moody millennials, and it crackles with spooky excitement.

I won’t comment on the franchise itself, whose films I haven’t seen, except to hazard uninformed suspicions of lousy gender politics and, as with the Twilight films in whose shadow they bask, the cold, drained, affectless failure to qualify as sexy. The soundtrack doesn’t entirely qualify either — slow R&B burners with muted textures and solemn, scowling melodies are arousing only once one has equated sex and pain, sex and emotional trauma, sex and epic struggle. But anyone who cares about romanticism in its modern incarnations must reckon with the prevalence of this ethos in the ears and hearts of young people, and this album is prime erotic melodrama. This stuff is marketed to adolescents for a reason — the stark sonic template, providing a correlative to the danger implicit in romance, matches a romantic spirit of black roses and white dresses that signals a presexual perspective; neophytes on the cusp are most acutely aware of desire’s risk. Thus the best of this music projects generosity as well as a veritable nervous thrill, an aesthetic coldness that dovetails with impressive formal mastery. Where the Weeknd, say, struggles over the course of an album to convince you he believes in self-expression, the multi-artist compilatory format guarantees shtick as its operative mode while proceeding with restrained, deliberate command of tropes and genre. Among other highlights, Kygo’s yearning “Cruise,” Tove Lo’s sly, soaring “Lies in the Dark,” and Halsey’s breathlessly grand “Not Afraid Anymore” flash, glimmer, and ache, subsuming the weepier ballads and orchestral interludes into an extended exercise in softcore theatricality.

Romanticism is best indulged occasionally, just often enough for some healthy fun, and this irresistibly dislikable album scratches the itch. Relish it to the fullest while acknowledging its depiction of romance as knowingly exaggerated for entertainment purposes.

Workout Motivation 2017 (Power Music)

Power Music Workout is one of many fitness-related companies releasing so-called workout mixes unto a market of gym rats eager to sync up their exercises with the beat on their headphones, and every now and then one proves genuinely listenable on its own terms as an album. This one should amuse fans of pop radio, absurd velocity, and the wonderful spirit of novelty.

Cartoon renditions of radio hits make for a weird sort of remix album, one where the varied bodily rhythms across a dancefloor are ignored in favor of incessant, irrepressible perk. The basic principle behind this music is that all songs sound better faster and dinkier; to realize this dream the masterminds in charge of making alterations speed up the songs in question about twice as fast, then substitute sharp, high sheets of keyboard texture for whatever the original instruments were, turbocharging the drums in the process. Often hookless songs are given one, big buzzing electrosaws totally absent from the original, cutting right through the middle of a song (see: Zayn & Taylor Swift’s “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever”); elsewhere already hummable earworms get augmented with extra layers of chewy bounce (see: Twenty One Pilots’ “Heathens”). Lame songs tend to remain so, but that doesn’t really matter because the end result presents less as a song than the musical equivalent of a caffeine pill, a shot of adrenaline to the head, a structure that happens to have lyrics and a tune ready to get kicked into hyperdrive. I suppose it takes a perverse kind of picky pop aesthete to enjoy the systematic fixing of radio hits, many of which desperately need it, but one needn’t know the originals to admire this album’s grace and energy. With catchy tunes and conventional song structures all but ensured by the source material, the big beat produces uplift that’s elegant enough to captivate. Displays of musical athleticism make for quite the show.

The masterpiece in this category is the same company’s Songs of Summer 2013, whose juicier bubblegum textures make the whole thing that much more ridiculous. This modest entry, if modesty is possible in this genre, delights in the way its percussive synthesizer punch renders several formerly irritating melodies palatable. That an album hardly meant for aesthetic contemplation turns out so pleasurable regardless is proof plenty that the intentional fallacy is evil.

35 Hits from the ‘70s & ‘80s: Unmixed Workout Music Ideal for Gym, Jogging, Running, Cycling, Cardio and Fitness (Power Music)

Different varieties of workout mix exist. For every take on contemporary chart hits there’s a genre-specific collection, or a tribute to the dance music of a particular city, or a period piece — that is, if “the ‘70s and ‘80s” counts as a period. This clumsy compilation by my beloved Power Music Workout illustrates the dangers of casting too wide a stylistic net and remixing everything within said net the same.

Modern Top 40 remix albums encompass a moderately wide range of styles while presenting a unified snapshot of pop radio at a particular time. But two decades is simply too long a span — I’d relish a summer ‘84 workout mix, say — and nothing about this sequence suggests commonalities between 0 (to choose the first three songs) Christopher Cross’s “Ride Like the Wind,” Biz Markie’s “Just a Friend,” and King Harvest’s “Dancing in the Moonlight,” beyond functioning as tokens of some conflated, unanalyzable, irretrievable past. Theoretically I’d enjoy the desecration of sacred cows, as when “Hallelujah” becomes a dance banger complete with Europop hook, but the song selection irritates not so much for projecting reverential nostalgia but rather for its treatment of the past as a monolith and its consequent failure to engage. Moreover, the album fizzles for mechanical reasons — remix techniques designed for digital sound do horrific damage to tracks from an age of predigital recording technology. The propulsion of modern dance music inflects many if not all contemporary chart hits and makes them excellent candidates for workout remixing. Hearing the relaxed shufflebeat in Steve Miller’s “The Joker” struggle to keep up with the bouncy caffeinated drum machine, while intellectually amusing, is actively unpleasant to listen to. Hearing several other incompatible styles of beat shudder at similar rhythmic simplifications and the imposition of aggressively eager dance synthesizers is to witness the most painful sort of historical anachronism.

Listen up, kids: this isn’t how you sequence a playlist. At the very least don’t stick “Purple Rain,” a song that works only in climactic position, in the middle between Orleans’s “Still the One” and Candi Stanton’s “Young Hearts Run Free”.

The post The Intentional Fallacy Is Evil: Festival Anthems, Fifty Shades Darker, Workout Motivation, 35 Hits from the ‘70s & ‘80s appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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