#but did you see that fucking interview with the creators!!

[demadogs]

i honestly love shauna and melissa. they make me think of that one line from new girl thats like “i know this isnt gonna end well but the whole middle parts gonna be awesome”

[itzphynix]

I changed my mind. Hater behavior is undeserved, when it comes to works, & idgaf about holding creators accountable when their games are mid, anymore.

[room-surprise]

New Ryoko Kui Interview from Anime Expo 2024 (Summary/Commentary)

This interview is unintentionally hilarious. It's much shorter than the other interview, and every question was met with either a polite non-answer or a flat-out "No." Kui embodied this elf lady she drew for the entire thing:

Kui really wasn't having any of it. Every time the interviewer tried to ask a leading question about things the fandom thinks are extremely central to the manga, Kui basically answered no/I don't care/You're overthinking it/I wasn't suggesting what you're assuming I was suggesting.

My summary/commentary of the interview under the cut.

Please keep in mind these are my opinions, based on my knowledge of Japanese social conventions, and how I personally read the interview!

Q: Dungeon Meshi is about the power of eating in groups/family, do you have any food memories or recipes you can share with us that are important to you? A: No. (In other interviews Kui has stated that she doesn't like eating, other people seeing her eat, or watching others eat, and that she used to eat her meals in the toilet to avoid being around other people during meals. This is a common thing people who are shy, bullied, or socially avoidant do in Japan.)

Q: What meal in DM do you want to eat? A: None of them, I'm a picky eater.

Q: You obviously love TTRPGs. A: Uh...Not really... I've never played one, I just read about them for research purposes. (In other interviews Kui has stated she's never played a TTRPG because she doesn't have friends she can do it with. The fact that so many people in the world do have that many friends they are that close to was very shocking to her. She was amazed that people would actually role-play in front of other people. This, plus other things Kui has said in the past ("I'm not good at human relationships"), suggests that she's not very socially active.)

Q: Your fantasy ecosystem is so complex, how did you build it? A: I though about it, and then I used my imagination. (This is kind of an ice-cold burn. Like a writer saying "I wrote one word, and then another, and then I kept adding words until the book was done.")

Q: Do you love monsters as much as Laios? A: No. But I do like them a lot, and I've loved them since I was a kid.

Q: How'd you design Laios' ultimate monster? A: I used the childhood memory of wanting to design the coolest, strongest monster.

Q: A lot of fans think Laios is autistic, especially because of his fight with Toshiro. A: I wrote him to be a normal guy that anyone can relate to. I don't think he's special or unusual. Both he and Toshiro have problems and they both need to work on communicating better. (Kui saying she didn't write Laios as autistic doesn't mean you should shit on other fans who read him as autistic. All it means is that he's not canonically autistic, and you can't say "Laios being autistic is the foundation of the entire manga." Kui saying that she didn't intentionally write Laios as autistic doesn't invalidate the interpretation, it just means saying Laios is autistic is an interpretation, and not a concrete fact. Also worth noting that labeling Laios as autistic might come across as very rude for a Japanese person. Kui may not want to call Laios autistic due to social stigma.)

Q: Tell us about the Senshi fanservice. A: Calling it "fanservice" feels wrong to me. He's just an older man who doesn't care if people see his underwear, something I've experienced in real life. It might make some people uncomfortable but Senshi's just living his life, I thought that was funny. Laios is a bit uncomfortable seeing people in their underwear. (Holy shit. This answer is the equivalent of Kui firing a shotgun directly in the interviewer's face and screaming "it's not fucking fanservice." She's being VERY direct for a Japanese person, and implying that she doesn't like people calling the Senshi pantyshots fanservice, that she sees them as comedy.)

Q: But Senshi's handsome isn't he? A: All dwarves are handsome :) (This is a complete non-answer, and after that previous answer, it's very likely Kui is trying to brush the interviewer off. This is most likely Kui saying "Please stop this line of questioning/I don't want to talk about this anymore.")

Q: What inspired Marcille's dungeon lord dress? Her friends all make fun of her but I thought it looked nice. A: There's no specific reference. I made it up to look like her mom's dress and added a childish head covering. The dress is totally normal, her friends making fun of Marcille is a joke. They're just not used to seeing Marcille in that kind of clothing, so it seems weird to them. They don't actually think the dress is that strange or uncool.

Q: Did you expect the strong fan reaction to Marcille and Falin's relationship? A: I don't think about how the fans will react when I'm writing. (Another complete non-answer. She doesn't want to discuss the topic of Farcille and avoids it like a landmine. Honestly, good for her. She wants fans to feel free to think what they want and have their own interpretations.)

Q: Will you write a spin-off about Izutsumi getting revenge on the person who made her? A: Maybe, maybe not. Probably not. I think Izutsumi's pretty happy as she is and just wants to live her life.

In short, Kui's reaction to a lot of the fandom opinion questions was:

EDIT: Also, looking at the headline/page summary for the article, it's uh...insanely misleading.

"We sat down with Kui-sensei at Anime Expo 2024 to discuss the community of food, why Senshi is so sexy, seeing neurodivergence in Laios, and more." Kui literally said no in response to all of those questions, this summary of their own interview implies that there was anything discussed, and not just Kui telling them "no" to each question.

[sergeantbarnessdoll]

Oke, oke, imagine that:

Daddy Seb/Buck, when he shows you what he really wants after work🥵🥵

First off, let me start off by saying I love the idea of that🥰 secondly, I feel like this would work with both Sebastian and Bucky, but I’m going to write it with Sebastian cause I’ve been so excited to write something about him! Plus Seb looks so- 🥵 in those pictures. I hope this is the way you imagined it and enjoy!🩵

What Daddy Wants, Daddy Gets » Sebastian Stan

Pairings: Sebastian Stan x Reader

Summary: Daddy comes home from work and shows you what he really wants.

Warnings: Smut (18+), language, age gap (reader is in her early to mid 20s), dirty talk, kissing, hickeys, (m receiving), fingering, unprotected sex, daddy kink, praise kink, spanking, pet names (baby girl, sweetheart)

Written on my phone so sorry if there’s any mistakes or typos.

GIF IS NOT MINE! Credit goes to the creators.

MINORS! DO NOT INTERACT!!🔞

🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵

Sebastian sighed as he walked inside of yours and his apartment, closing the door behind him and put his keys on the little table next to the door. He took his jacket off, tossing it on the couch and took his shoes off. He frowned when he didn’t see you run and jump into his arms like you normally do.

“Baby girl, you home?!” Sebastian’s voice echoed through the apartment.

“Yes! I’m in the bedroom! I’ll be out in a second!” You shouted back.

You smiled as you checked your outfit in the mirror one more time. You opened the bedroom door and ran to your boyfriend, jumping into his arms.

“You’re home! How was the interview?” You asked, kissing his stubbly cheek.

“It was fine, but I missed my girl.” He says, pecking your lips a couple times.

Sebastian took a step back to admire your outfit. You were wearing a plain white crop top with a short black skirt.

“Did you go shopping today?” He asks, still looking at your outfit.

“Yes! Do you like it?” You asked.

“I love it. Give me a spin.” He says.

You gave him a full 360 spin. Your skirt fanned out. Sebastian felt his cock get hard at the thought of what he wanted to do to you. He gently grabbed your hand and led you to the living room. He sat down on the couch with his legs spread so you could stand in between them.

“You know, what daddy wants, daddy gets? Right, baby girl?” Sebastian says, rubbing the sides of your thighs.

“Yes, daddy.” You say sweetly.

“Well, daddy had a long day and all he wants is you.” He says, kissing the exposed skin on your stomach.

“Yes, daddy.” You say.

“You know what to do then.” He says, leaning back against the couch.

You got down on your knees in front of him. You unbuckled his belt and undid his jeans. Sebastian lifted his hips so you could take his pants and boxers off in one go. You licked your lips at the sight of his hard cock, precum was leaking from the tip. You wrapped your hand around his cock, licking the precum from his tip and moaning at the taste of it. You pumped his cock a couple times before put it in your mouth. You put whatever you could fit in your mouth and jerked off the rest in your hand. You bobbed your head up and down at a decent pace. Sebastian tilted his head back against the couch and moaned at the feeling of your tongue against the underside of his cock.

“Such a good girl for daddy.” Sebastian says, moving your hair from your face.

You moaned around his cock. You love it when he calls you a good girl.

“Keep doing that and daddy will reward you later, baby girl.” He says with a groan.

You moaned around him again. You decided to try something different. You took your hand off of his cock and put the rest of his cock in your mouth. You gagged a little when his tip hit the back of your throat.

“Relax your throat and breathe through your nose, baby girl. You can do it.” He praises softly.

You tried your best to relax your throat and you got the hang of it after a few seconds. This was something new for the both of you. Sebastian loved the feeling of your throat around his cock.

“Fuck, your cute little throat feels so good, sweetheart.” He moans.

You placed your hands on his thighs to steady yourself and to keep from touching yourself. You rubbed your thighs together for some kind of relief, but Sebastian caught you.

“Don’t do that or else you won’t get your reward.” Sebastian says.

“Sowwy, daddy.” You managed to say around his cock.

He felt his cock twitch in your mouth, nearing towards his orgasm.

“Fuck, baby girl.” He moans.

Not to long after that, you felt his cum shoot into your mouth. You took your mouth off of his cock and swallowed his cum, sticking your tongue out to show him that you swallowed all of it.

“Good girl, sweetheart.” Sebastian says.

“Thank you, daddy.” You blushed.

“Come up here.” He says, patting the seat next to him on the couch.

You got up off of the floor, your knees were red and sore from being on the floor for so long. You sat down on the couch next to him, facing him. Sebastian cupped your cheek lovingly and kissed you softly. He gently laid you on the couch. Your hands traveled down his body to his cock that was hard again. Your fingertips gently touched it when Sebastian grabbed your wrists and pinned your arms above your head making your whine.

“No touch or else I’ll spank you and I won’t hesitate to tie you up. Understand?” He says.

“Yes, daddy. I understand.” You pouted.

Sebastian took your crop top and his t-shirt off, throwing it somewhere in the room. He licked his lips when he seen that you weren’t wearing a bra. He placed soft kisses on your neck, sucking hard enough to leave hickeys behind. He moved his lips down to your chest and the swells of your breast. You gasped when you felt him rub his thumbs across your nipples and pinched them. One of his hands moved down your body and disappeared underneath your skirt.

“No panties, huh, baby girl?” Sebastian says, rubbing his fingers in between your wet folds.

His fingers easily found your clit, rubbing it in soft circles making you to moan. You so desperately wanted to move yourself against his fingers, but he said he’d spank you. “Is getting spanked really that bad? Screw it.” You thought to yourself. You moved your hips against his fingers, but he abruptly stopped making you whine.

“Hands and knees. Now.” He demanded.

You got on your hands and knees, placing your hands on the arm of the couch, squeezing it to prepare yourself for the spanks he’s about to give you. Sebastian rubbed his hands over your ass cheeks and gently squeezed them.

“Count ‘em, sweetheart. You miss any, I start over at one.” He says.

Sebastian raised his hand and landed a hard smack on your ass making you whimper. The sting from the spank made your pussy even more wet.

“I don’t hear counting.” He says.

“O-One.” You stuttered.

The second spank was a little harder than the first one.

“Two.” You managed to say without stuttering.

Thirteen spanks later, your ass was red as a cherry. Sebastian rubbed his hands over your ass cheeks to soothe the stinging pain.

“You took your spankings so well, sweetheart. Are you ready for your reward?” He asks, whispering in your ear.

“Mmm, yes daddy.” You say, biting your bottom lip.

His fingers rubbed through your wet slit and folds, ghosting over your entrance. He did that a couple times and finally he slowly slid his middle finger inside of your wet pussy. Your jaw dropped, moaning inaudibly.

“You’re so wet and tight for me, sweetheart.” He whispers in your ear.

His dirty words always made you wet and moan. He moved his finger at a decent paced while his fingers on his other hand rubbed circles on your clit.

“More!” You moaned.

“You want another finger, baby girl?” Sebastian asks.

“Yes please, daddy!” You moaned desperately.

He slid his ring finger inside of you. You moaned at the feeling of having two of his fingers inside of you. Sebastian moved his fingers faster. You moaned loudly when his fingers hit that one spot inside of you.

“Right there, daddy!” You moaned.

“Right there? Is that your sweet spot, sweetheart?” Sebastian asks, smirking to himself when he damn well knows that it’s your sweet spot.

“Fuck, yes!” You moaned.

His fingers continued to hit your sweet spot. Your toes curled at the feeling. Your pussy clenched around his fingers. You felt your lower stomach tighten as if a rubber band was about to snap inside of you.

“Mmm fuck, daddy! Gonna cum!” You moaned, biting your bottom lip.

Sebastian abruptly took his fingers out of you making the feeling in your stomach slowly fade away. You whined at the loss of his fingers.

“The only place your cumming is on my cock.” He says.

Sebastian bunched up your skirt above your hips. He rubbed the tip of his cock in between your wet folds and lined himself at your entrance, slowly sliding his cock inside of you, inch by inch. He placed his hands on your hips underneath your skirt and started thrusting.

“Feels so good, daddy!” You moaned.

Sebastian increased the pace of his thrusts. You dug your fingernails into the couch.

“I wanted to fuck you the second I saw you in this skirt.” Sebastian moans.

“I- oh fuck! Wanted to look pretty for you, daddy!” You moaned, tilting your head back.

“You always look pretty, baby girl.” He says softly.

Sebastian leaned down, kissing along your shoulder and jaw. You turned your head capturing his lips in a hungry kiss. You reached your hand back, placing it on the back of his head and tugged at his hair making his groan against your lips. His hand slid down the front of your body, stopping at your clit and started rubbing it in fast circles.

“Daddy!” You moaned.

“You make the prettiest noises for me, sweetheart.” He whispers in your ear, kissing just below your ear.

Your pussy squeezed around his cock making him moan.

“Fuck!” He moans.

Your lower stomach tightened again, feeling your orgasm coming back.

“Daddy, I’m- fuck!” You moaned, not able to finish your sentence.

“Gonna cum?” He asks.

“Fuck yes! Please let me cum, daddy!” You begged desperately.

“Go ahead, baby girl. Cum for daddy.” He says.

His fingers moved faster on your clit and the tip of his cock hit your sweet spot. That was enough to make you cum hard. You felt your juices dripping in between your inner thighs. Sebastian wasn’t too far behind you.

“Fuck! You always know how to make daddy feel good, sweetheart.” He moans.

His thrusts became sloppy and his orgasm got closer and closer. Soon he came inside of you. His thrusts came to a slow stop and he slowly pulled out of you. He laid down on the couch, pulling you on top of him and wrapping his arms around you.

“You ok, sweetheart?” Sebastian asks, kissing the top of your head.

“Mmm.” You hummed.

Sebastian rubbed your back soothingly.

“I love you, daddy.” You say sweetly, kissing his lips softly.

“I love you too, baby girl.” He smiles, kissing you back.

🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵

This is my first request and my first time writing for Sebastian Stan. Please don’t judge me.

-Bucky’s Doll

[eddiezpaghetti]

It has come to my attention that SOME OF YOU who read my last Byler post remain UNCONVINCED. So I'm gonna tack onto it this:

I'm older than fucking God and air, and I've been out and proud since 2007. Yes, I know what homophobia is, and yes, I know what queerbaiting is. I know about Supernatural and Teen Wolf and Sherlock and blahdyblahdyblah. No new ground is being covered here. I thought I made that clear in the original post, but, clearly, I did not.

I am aware of queerbaiting and homophobia, and I'm still wholeheartedly certain in Byler being canon anyway.

Okay, so there are three types of relationship I want to discuss when it comes to queerbaiting. They're all, like, "queer relationships that could have happened, but didn't".

First off, queer-coding. This isn't really a thing so much anymore, but it still crops up every once in a while. I'd argue it probably happens most with male-male relationships in family shows these days. First example that comes to mind is Mr. Smiley and Mr. Frowny from Steven Universe. You can't make a relationship canon because some shitty overhead bastard overhead said no, so you get as close as you can without compromising the show. Can't make someone gay? Well, now their comedy routine is a blatant allegory for a romantic relationship. Boom-shaka-laka. This is something I don't see being a problem with regards to Stranger Things, but I want it to be there as contrast, a demonstration of one of many things queerbaiting is not. However, one could argue that, thus far, Will Byers is, canonically, queer-coded. It's pretty fucking heavily implied in the show, and the creators have confirmed it, and you're gonna be able to see it if you're not FUCKING BLIND, but word of god is not technically canon which means that interviews don't technically make something canon, blahdyblahdyblahdyblah, technicalities, Robin has been explicitly stated in the text to be queer while Will has, thus far, not, outside of good ol' Show-Don't-Tell. Of course, anyone with two brain cells to rub together can tell that that's going to change by the end of Season 5, but, hey, for what it's worth, I'm throwing this out there.

Alrighty, Thingamajingama Number Two: "Oops, I accidentally made the greatest love story known to man." AKA, a genuine, honest-to-goodness mistake. Unfortunately, we do live in a heteronormative society. Sometimes people who don't think about being gay much write a friendship that's incredibly compelling and don't even consider the possibility that it could have been read as romantic. Something something Top Gun something. This is, again, not queerbaiting. This is Steddie, this is Ronance, this is Elmax, this is your favorite flavor of non-canon ship this week, this is not Byler. The creators know DAMN well what they're doing. They've talked about it. We know this. Nothing new here.

Which brings us to the topic of discussion here. Actual queerbaiting. This usually starts out as an "accidental greatest love story", and then reacts to fan response. And when I say "reacts", I mean like a goddamn chemical reaction. Like bleach and ammonia, bitch. It's noxious and it's gonna kick your fucking ass without mercy. This is when a creator is like, "Hey, let's get our queer audience invested, but we're not actually going to give them what they want because our straight audience isn't here for that/we personally think it's gross/we don't give enough of a shit to want to research a goddamn thing to write a real gay character," blah blah blah whatever excuse they want to come up with this time.

And when you think "queerbaiting", I want you to think "bullying". Because that's what it is. It's lucrative bullying, like beating us up and taking our lunch money, but it's bullying all the same. And it's a real goddamn thing, even if people misuse the word a lot, often when they mean one of the two above, sometimes when they mean "bury your gays", which is another homophobic thing entirely that I'm not going to get into here. Queerbaiting is the thing we're focused on, and it's real, and it's bullying. And here's the reason I want you to think of it as bullying:

They

Think

It's

Funny.

They are actively making fun of us.

That's why Dean had the "Cas, get out of my ass," line in Supernatural. It's why the "Do you like boys?" line happened in Teen Wolf. It's why "Lie with me, Watson," happened in the RDJ Sherlock Holmes movies. Because "It's just a joke, mate." "It was just a prank, bro." "You didn't really think it would happen, did you?" "You should see your face."

So here's probably the biggest reason I don't think it's specifically queerbaiting in this specific instance of Will Byers and Mike Wheeler.

Stranger Things has never, not once, made a gay joke. Ever.

Every single time queerness comes up, it's dead serious.

Lonnie calls Will a fag, and the show is not at all reluctant to show what a goddamn horrible person he is. And when Hopper latches onto that, it's not as "Hahah, is he gay, though?" It's because he's trying to determine a potential motive for Will's disappearance, and even if someone had interpreted it as a joke, Joyce immediately has a line that functions as snapping her fingers in front of the audience's face and yelling "FOCUS" when she says "He's MISSING." Basically outright saying "This isn't funny!"

Troy calls him a fairy, along with targeting Lucas and Dustin for their skin color and disability respectively, and Mike gets damn near murderous. Troy is portrayed as a goddamn monster and the show portrays it as justice when El makes him piss his pants and later breaks his arm.

Steve calls Jonathan "queer" as a slur and gets the shit beat out of him for it.

Billy's father is revealed to be homophobic and abusive in the same breath.

Mike says "It's not my fault you don't like girls!" and we're shown how devastated Will is and Mike immediately follows him to beg for forgiveness.

There is a joke in Robin's coming-out scene, but it's not at Robin's expense. It's at Steve's. Specifically for being heteronormative.

Jonathan has multiple scenes where he's trying so hard to tell Will that he's always going to love him as he is, whether he's gay or not, without pressuring him to come out before he's ready.

Even when there's a little bit of ribbing at Robin's expense, it's always because she's an awkward nerd who's nervous around pretty girls, just the same as Lucas and Dustin are teased when they both first develop crushes on Max, and even then, even then, it always comes as a package deal where they make fun of Steve's girl problems at the same time.

Stranger Things is an emphatically pro-gay show. It may not be the core point of the show the way it is in, say, Our Flag Means Death, but there is nothing less than respect for its queer characters. Its queer characters are always taken completely seriously. No one is making fun of us. They never have. That's why I have serious doubts that this is queerbaiting. It would come completely out of left field for the bullying to start in Stranger Things' final season.

So it's not at all likely to be queerbaiting because queerness is taken completely seriously. The creators have talked about Will's queerness, at least, so it's not an accident. And queer-coding would be silly to expect from this show when it's already on its final season. Like, what is Netflix gonna do? Cancel it? Not to mention all the explicit queerness that's in there already. And no one's gonna "What about the children?" a show that's had sex scenes in it since the first season.

There's no fakeout here. It's gonna happen. Breathe.

[weirdmageddon]

jackson’s words gave me goosebumps

i decided to sit down and list out the reasons why, what connections i have, and ended up deconstructing why the venture bros is so personal to me

i’m not sure if anybody else is interested but this is my blog so i can post what i want. it feels useless keeping this to myself trapped in my head.

i am from new jersey, born and raised.

i have a gen x new york city 70s-80s punk/post-punk/new wave/no wave college radio dj mom. she’s interviewed bands and just knows people. here she is

doc hammer has been to multiple of these clubs. my mom says his face looks familiar, like she’s sure she’s passed by him a couple of times, and she has good facial recognition.

mom and i genuinely bond over this stuff. she was a no wave new york city chick but didn’t hear about Swans until i told her cause i assumed she’d know and i was like WHAT? HOW and i sent her one song and caught her just listening through the discography for like the next week

i only got into the venture bros because i saw a clip from the Out of Context Violence twitter account. it was the one of younger billy hitting brock in the balls and jumping out the window and i thought he looked like claus from mother 3 (my deep special interest at the time) because of his parted orange hair and his metal hand.

started looking into the venture bros BECAUSE fucking billy’s design reminded me of something completely unrelated. that’s why. then i posted THERE’S ANOTHER CLAUS when i saw little rusty’s character modellll the yellow striped shirt and everything. it was genuinely so funny

so then i looked more into the show as a whole…. stopped in my tracks i literally went “JG THIRWELL????” cause i already was listening to foetus. and not even because of my mom either although getting passed her taste and finding that i genuinely shared it and loved it (i had way more deeply personal response to it than what my dad’s classic rock ever felt), it did open up many doors for me. it gave me a place to plant myself and grow around. and i just found it based on branching adjecently to whatever i was listening to at the time. i think someone might’ve recommended it to me on twitter. i don’t remember, but it was some industrial-related recommendation. once i got into foetus i was like oh shit he worked with coil on Scatology at the time under the alias Clint Ruin. who cares though this cartoon has JG THIRWELL DOING THE SCORE???? like i completely stumbled ass backwards into ALL OF THIS by myself.

same thing with instantly knowing i needed my hair to look like that after seeing triana the first frame she was on screen in s1e05. when i later listened to the post-punk podcast with doc hammer episode where he says “triana was based on people i knew. that’s it. she was this amalgam of people that i actually knew” i was like WOAH, because when i got that haircut, my mom went through old photo albums and showed me that same picture in the radio station booth which i hadn’t seen before and she said, “i had that exact same haircut at your age”. do you see what i mean by falling ass backwards into it?

it’s the fact that it wasn’t that i adopted my mom’s style like you’d expect it to go. i referenced it from a cartoon i discovered by complete accident that i ended up falling love with, the co-creator of which my mom happened to exist in the same generation, same punk/post-punk/no wave subculture, same time, and same place. i bet she could understand at least 98% of the references in the venture bros. and because my mom’s knowledge passively rubbed off on me i’m probably one of the few people my age who understands a large portion of the show’s references and can really get in on the humorousness about it. and my mom WOULD absolutely be one of those “references only 5 people in the world will get” to an impressive degree simply due to the proximity in time and space and subculture, but she doesn’t want to watch it because she doesn’t like cartoons which is such a bizarre hangup to me but whatever.

but ALSO …. THE ACTUAL PROXIMITY TO ME? SO I FEEL IN ON THAT TOO? the new jersey jokes were always like.. New Jersey Mentioned. i grew up in bergen county, i was IN on that shit.

“i mean what kind of supervillain lives in Paterson, NJ?” is legendary to me. i need you to understand. the scale this is on

(for cheeseburger people that cant convert metric to imperial in their heads that’s equal to about 6 miles.)

also see “Montclair” on the map, southwest of Paterson? that’s where my mom’s college was, where that photo was taken in the booth (WMSC).

fun fact: WMSC was the first station to play Soft Cell’s Tainted Love on US airwaves

most of these bands were first played on college radio stations. certain stations in big cities like in NY and CA. like NYU and UCLA had big ranges. big cities were the center of where stuff was happening. my mom could pick up WLIR (from long island) at college, but not at home which was out of range.

here’s what she tells me: when bands were first coming to tour in the US, they sent advance copies of new records to the college radio stations since they wanted to get air play, and these small groups of students who were actually interested in the “New Music” like my mom were also interviewing these bands. it really was a small group of people in this scene. if you look in the yearbook, only a select few students out of the whole bunch were involved in this. so it was like everybody sort of knew each other. they went to the same clubs, dressed similarly i suppose in order to identify each other. i guess it was about associating with people who shared your taste and being on the pulse of cultural developments. this was the crucial bottleneck, where it begins: locally platforming new music that would go on to influence others and break into mainstream culture like the butterfly effect. except it is YOU who is the butterfly flapping its wings, only concerned with what’s immediately around you and blissfully unaware that your flaps will influence a cyclonic system developing on the other side of the world. and i’ve come to realize that i have that effect too in my own way (e.g. real-time fandub). speaking of butterflies…

Monarch’s parents’ Newark home, too. my dad grew up in the outskirts of Elizabeth, NJ. (measuring bar is 2km at this zoom level)

my mom 🤝 dj patrick cusack 🤝 doc hammer. i also want to meet patrick too i want to see his music collection. maybe i can ask my mom.

in that Guild of Calamitous Podcast episode when jackson mentioned A Certain Ratio and doc pulled out Crispy Ambulance i’m like get the fuck out of here. both of them are on my “sara essentials” playlist. nobody talks about them but i like them. my mom just mentioned them one time in passing and since i trust her music taste i went to look it up and then just..got into it. partly because i knew crispy ambulance from when i was much younger before i knew its name.

you know, it’s like how many people actually can say the same thing. i wasn’t there, i wasn’t even born. how miraculous is it that i even know all this. i love my mom’s music because her taste connected immediately with what i always felt like i was meant to hear. my dad’s music taste didn’t have the same effect on me despite hearing it for as long as i could remember and way more often than hers.

my mom tells me my dad played led zeppelin while i was in utero like playing it on her belly but i didn’t pop out a zeppelin fan since birth. i’ve heard classic rock all through my house growing up. it never fused with my brain the way my mom’s music did.

and here’s the thing: my dad prioritized his own music over my mom’s. like in the car or in the house for instance, because he did not like my mom’s new wave new romantic post-punk music (but they could bond over Pink Floyd and The Doors). so i got much less exposure to hers. but when i did, like she took me out alone or something, her music stuck to my brain while my dad’s kind of just bounced off.

it sounds a bit harsh to say but in a certain way my dad dying absolutely opened up this can of worms when i was 15 that would later end up shaping me in a huge way. so now my mom could really properly introduce her stuff to me. a handful of songs were already deeply imprinted somewhere in my brain from childhood, and when i heard them again after so many years i was like OOHHH MY GOD. like it was just something significant for me. and again i want to emphasize that this is completely involuntary. why did i react that way to this music? i don’t know why this was my innate preference, there’s no rhyme or reason for it. it has nothing to do with nostalgia because obviously my brain wrinkles had a preference since before i could articulate it. why though? that’s the question. but it ended up being significant later in my life. i know like every single band these two are talking about and the general genre/scene they encompassed. i don’t listen to them all i have my favorites i cling to obviously but they have entered my cultural awareness.

certain songs on her Left of the Dial CD just stayed with me. and i was a little kid so i didn’t know anything about these bands but once my dad died we bonded heavily over this music.

some sparse yet formative ones for me i remember from my young childhood and would later find again:

Classix Nouveaux - Guilty (the song and the music video where he looks like nosferatu)

The Durutti Column - For Belgian Friends (VERY evocative, i might have been 3 or 4 when i heard this? because i always associated it in my mind with these particular images. the wooden stairs of the home of my babysitter(?) with the sun shining through the window and casting nice shadows and the grandfather clock they had. this is the ONLY thing that stuck with me about that house and those people, everything else about the existence of them has escaped my mind and the only proof i had they even existed to me was through the images evoked in association with this song since my mom played it in the car to/from there one time. it’s like her music made me gain consciousness.)

Echo & The Bunnymen - The Cutter

The Sugarcubes - Birthday (listening to it for the first time in years once i was older for me was like…OH. OKAY.)

Sisters of Mercy - This Corrosion

Aztec Camera - Oblivious

Crispy Ambulance - The Plateau Phase (the whole album. the song Simon’s Ghost really left an impression on me when i was very young too)

and as of now i’ve solidly made my musical home here. i’ve come to my mom about some band i’m listening to that was around during her time only to find out i know more than my mom in some cases because i took her initial pointers and just ran, like with Swans for instance. i fell ass backwards into finding my people because of my unexplainable and basically innate magnetism beyond my control to very specific things that just gel with me on a deeper level. i don’t know why that is.

partly explains why i’m like obsessed with psychology too, whatever’s at my disposal to explain it. neuroscience and jung and all that like, what is going on?? i want to figure it out. why did my brain wrinkles have a preference before i was basically conscious of what preferences were? and why does it lead me to people who are so similar to myself not just in terms of music taste, but in a cognitive-psychological way too?

on that note… doc hammer’s similarity to myself. when i listened to the post-punk podcast with doc hammer it wasn’t too far in that there were experiential parallels between us and how we thought about life in general. i recognized an identical psychological structure in him that could be explained by having identical types in socionics model A. even though i have talked to other LIIs he goes beyond that though. so it’s not just the socionics type, but that does seem to be a common denominator for a lot of things because like it predisposes you towards certain patterns since certain information aspects in the world are perceived with more clarity than others, and we’re the same in that regard. but similarity also depends on like where you were born and what you grew up with, etc. his taste in music and style! where he grew up!

he’s genuinely the closest person to myself i’ve ever known to just exist out there, and for me at least i’ve noticed that’s really fucking rare and hard to find. i mean it.

i remember actually kicking my feet listening to that podcast episode because i was so excited by hearing things he said that were realizations that i have had but they were so specific to me that i didn’t think i’d hear them coming from another person’s mouth. and then other realizations he’s had that would’ve otherwise take me years to have, but now that i’ve heard it i got a shortcut, like taking those bridges in candyland.

the things that he knows, his taste, and the fact that he “can’t escape being goth no matter what??” “this is the tribe you feel at one with, this is the music that makes you feel whole?” that opened my eyes. it resonated exactly with my own experiences. you read what i wrote above, right? that even from when i was a toddler and didn’t know shit about anything, hearing my mom play that music literally sat in my brain differently. i learned so much about myself listening to his own self-insight at his age older than me. it held this particular weight for me because of that. AND him being autistic too? you’re kidding me. i feel like there’s hidden connections tying this all together statistically by some features but i don’t know what they are

it wasn’t soon after that i realized the venture bros was made in LII-ESE dual partnership which is only partly the reason why it feels like home, too.

socionics is completely unrelated to all of this venture bros by the way. these interests of mine were found through completely different avenues of life.

i stumbled into socionics because personality differences and typology systems always caught my interest as a tool to explicitly distinguish people’s character and aiding in understanding how we can distinguish parts of ourselves. i have a sharp sense of where my self and my own experiences fits in relation to the people around me, both what makes me similar and what makes me different from another person. i want to know where i fit in relation to the world. wound up attracted to the same avenues that carl jung ended up spearheading in modern history. ¿coincidencia?

but it also explains why that amount of overlap with other people by sheer luck like this (from my perspective) feels so significant. fuuuckkk and jung came up with the concept of synchronicity too. it’s all related. i swear i feel like i’m poorly reinventing plato and jung’s wheel here discovering the patterns of archetypes by myself and stuff. glad that knowledge is already out there so i don’t feel like i’m insane and i have words to explain what i acutely experience to other people.

excerpt from augusta on Identity relations. this is exactly my experience listening to doc hammer. (and carl jung by extension since i’ve been talking about his ideas a lot lately):

“Individuals with an identical type of information metabolism act on the conscious functions of others and form conscious ideals, goals, and methods. Those who grow up with an identical type of personality use them as a goalpost. They walk through life much more confidently, with much less wandering and feelings of being lost, and realize their intelligence with more purpose.

It’s the same feeling people have when they meet a representative of their own type. They’re no better or worse than anyone else. But they’re transparent to you, and you’re transparent to them. You can’t pretend in front of him. You can’t quarrel with them. They speak in such simple, “your” words that it at first feels strange. The feeling of full understanding contributes to business communication and prevents empty chatter, when, in fact, there is nothing to say.

Writers and artists with an identical type of IM are perceived by the reader and the viewer as people of subtle intelligence, able to penetrate into the essence of things. But they do not uncover any mysterious things, nor do they reveal any secrets. It is just that the individual has not been where they have been and the individual has not seen what they have seen. [in the case of doc hammer, i happen overlap with much of the music he listens to, and grew up around the same general area which is why he feels so much like me to an even greater extent] That is why individuals with the identical type of IM are valued not so much as artists who decorate life in one way or another, but as explorers who open new horizons.

They’d do the same thing in your shoes. To others, you may seem like a legend or a failure. But to them, you are just a person and nothing more. Something you have failed, something you should have wanted but didn’t, and what you have achieved, as well as what you have not achieved, does not change your essence in their eyes. Perhaps because both of these are available to them to a certain extent. It is not the end result that matters, but the journey that you travel one way or another. People measure their efforts by the distance and obstacles they overcome on the way to their goal, not by the result. And the point is not at all about where the road led to. The fact that one person manages to find many helpers, while others have to wander alone, is an equal fate for representatives of all types.

Here we encounter one interesting phenomenon. With how discoverers of new truths evaluate those who worked in past generations. Everyone who made a discovery did not notice something about the discovery lying on the same surface level. Or articulated the discovered truth less accurately than was done 50 years later. It doesn’t matter whether it was Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, or anyone else. One thing that matters to us is that the identical type sees no “mistakes” in their work. They see work that’s started well and unfinished work that must be taken up and delved into in order to complete and improve it further. Any incorrect or insufficiently accurate conclusion is perceived not as an error or misconception of the author, but as an important step on the path of development of science, as an optimal conclusion from the material available at the time.

However, it should be remembered that only a person with an identical type of intelligence can go into their teacher’s work and check them. Even more than that: a person with an identical type does not take anything their predecessor has done by faith. And until they are convinced in practice, until they see with their own eyes what the theories were based on, until they probe in their own head for this “mental clarity,” and before this point they will not believe in it or repeat it. They see the premises that their teacher saw, they see the teacher’s train of thought and conclusions, but they do not memorize them. They have to experience them (which is quite different). There are no authorities in matters related to the thinking of a person of the identity type.”

and excerpt from augusta on Duality relations, since the venture bros is written by a ESE-LII dual pair (jackson and doc respectively), and that cognitive framing shows up in the show because it was created by a person with that type of intelligence (ESE is my dual).

“People relax while reading books written by their dual. Reaction to all other forms of art is the same. Relaxation, peacefulness, a feeling of fullness of life. Helping the dual is simultaneously helping oneself, it is a fulfilment of one’s own needs. What the duals give each other not only does not cost them anything, it is a necessary basis for mental and physical vitality. The partner is truly irreplaceable and precious because they allow you to reach self-realization.”

it’s also the type of the creators of the music i’ve come to regard as my “home base” as i described here.

continuing to find the things that makes me feel whole (and i’ve always felt alienated from most of the world btw) has seemed to me like a completely serendipitous process because it’s not happening on purpose. i am not seeking these things out on purpose because i don’t even know what exists that i’m looking for. it’s basically passive process and then i hold on to the things that resonate with me as a “benchmark” position and go from there.

animal collective [ESE] already wrote a song about this. basically the same thing but from the extraverted orientation. ESE sense of self is understood through bodies (extraverted), LII’s sense of self is understood through fields (introverted). (see for explanation of terms: https://augustaproject.wordpress.com/bodies-vs-fields/)

and seriously what is with the coincidences? i’ve thought about this before, how i’m usually a very lucky person and i don’t know why. or like ripple effects in time that end up just coming together in the end. sure part of it is external circumstances, like being born where i was and my mom being born around that time and place, and sharing the taste that she does. but what about internal ones? does it have something to do with the way i process the world too? because it’s remarkably different from most people that i know, and obviously i can sense that because of the violent way i reacted to doc hammer and went “oh this guy could actually be me.”

why did my brain have that musical preference before i even had the life experience to know any of this would turn out like this and be so interrelated? i was NOT a tabula rasa. i swear my innate preferences were already there. it was just a matter of it manifesting in my environment, exposing me to it a sensory way so my nervous system knew about its existence.

the early imprinting of my mom’s new wave/post-punk/alternative music in my brain, but not my dad’s classic rock music that i was exposed to way more, yet it held no real estate in my brain, wouldn’t be explainable if i didn’t have innate preferences. and again i was a young child so i had no life experience to explain this or have any reason to do so. and going back to what i said before, why did that innate preference end up leading me later in life to people who are so similar to myself not just in terms of music taste, but in a deeper cognitive-psychological way?

now that i’m older, and can consciously reason and build explanations upon my life experience, i keep realizing it all keeps going deeper and deeper. my interests from all these corners of life that barely interact with each other by themselves are all connected in some deeper way because i was there. i accumulate and take them with me wherever i go. i cross-polinate wherever i go. it’s freaky to think about.

this was curious to me and i filed it away in the back of my memory. when i first read it it felt correct just from the accumulation of my experiences. but now that i’ve just consciously realized that for myself in my own context, i really understand what it means

in recent memory from a conversation i had yesterday evening

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

You're saying that zutara wasn't supported by the writers and shouldn't have been an endgame. That's a lie! and you can verify this, for example, by reading this post. Zutara has a huge support of writers and actors, she was supposed to become a canon! We were just robbed.

https://www.tumblr.com/crienselt/744143410729041920?source=share

I can show you lots of videos of Grey Delisle saying Azula and Zuko are totally fucking (including one she recorded for my birthday), and there's an infamous clip of Bryke proposing Azula and "The Blue Spirit" as a potential ship in a pannel. Somehow I don't think you'll take that as meaning my OTP is canon and was just robbed of it's endgame at the last second - but apparently tumblr posts are solid proof, therefore my argument is perfect and all you Zutara fans are now gonna have to accept that you ship Katara with a guy that canonically (by the standards YOU GUYS are trying to set at least) loves incest even more than Jaime and Cersei Lannister did. And oh, would you look at that! During one of the times Grey mentioned Zucest, Dante said "The Fire Nation are a bit like the Lannisters." See the links if you don't believe me. WHERE'S YOUR GOD NOW?

The creators/showrunners, writers, and lead writer have all said a billion times "Kataang was always the heart of the show and by the time the first episode aired we were set on it being endgame. Some people in the crew liked BOTH Kataang and Zutara, but Zutara was NEVER seriously considered as a real possibility for endgame or even temporary romance. The only love triangle ever considered was Aang, Katara and MALE Toph."

It doesn't matter how many interviews yall fake, how many clips you take out of context, how many deleted scenes you claim existed without a shred of proof to back it up, how many times you go "but this actor whose job is ACTING not WRITTING says he likes Zutara" or "This writer that wrote tons of Kataang episodes said the word Zutara once when writting a scene between Zuko and Katara" - your ship is still fanon. That's not a dig at you or saying it's bad, it's just a fucking fact.

Write some fanfic if you like it so much, but don't turn the production of the series itself into your fanfic just so you can lie to yourself about how there was ever any chance of you getting what you wanted in the actual canon.

And for real, you're gonna try to use the LIVE ACTION as proof? The thing the creators disowned? Netflix's over-glorified cosplay session that everyone keeps saying "It's mid at best" is THE argument you go for? Have some goddamn standards, I'm begging you.

[absurdthirst]

Can't Fight Cupid {Max Phillips x F!Reader}

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 12k

Warnings: Human Max, sexism in the the workplace, insults, bickering, drinking, sexual harassment, mentions of drugging, drunk sex, impaired decision making but everyone consents, vaginal fingering, vaginal sex, unprotected sex, semi-public sex, cream-pie, angst, oral sex (male and female receiving), confessions

Comments: Your morning show co-host, Max Phillips drives you mad. Constantly annoying you and bickering with you. At the Cupid's Ball, the weekend before Valentine's Day, you get a little drunk and do something incredibly stupid. Sleep with him.

A/N: Happy Valentine's Day!

Co-written with @storiesofthefandomlovers

**Follow @absurdthirst-writes and turn on notifications to stay up to date on all new fics.

|| MasterList || Max Phillips MasterList ||

Click Keep Reading only if you have read the Rating and Warnings and understand the warnings may not be complete to avoid listing spoilers. As AO3 says 'creator chooses not to use warnings'. You also agree that you're the right age to be consuming anything here.

BEEP BEEP BEEP

  You groan, rolling over to slam your hand down on top of your alarm clock. 

It reads 3 am. 

“Fuck.” You huff, feeling exhausted after staying up late last night to talk to your agent, and you regret it now. There’s no choice to snooze, you need to get up. 

Moaning as you force yourself out of your comfy bed, you stumble into the bathroom, turning on the light, and it’s bright enough to make you wince. “God.” You whine, palming your face. Every day, you’re closer to being replaced by some teeny bopper with perky tits and an annoyingly high-pitched voice. You pee and brush your teeth before you start your morning routine. Treadmill. Weights. Protein shake. Shower. Get dressed.

The car pulls up outside your apartment building on time, and you get in to meet your producer, and she starts to ramble about the segments for the show.

You listen to her half-heartedly but stare out of the window. The street lights reflect as they twinkle overnight without anyone but you and a tired few to admire them.

When you arrive at the studio, you’re ushered inside and to your dressing room to get started on the exhausting daily routine of getting ready for TV. 

Your makeup artist is putting on your lipstick when there’s a knock on the door. 

“Goooood morning Vietnammmmm!” He shouts with enough energy to make you want to punch his stupid face. 

“Max.” You huff, turning your head to see him swagger into your dressing room with his designer bespoke suit.

“You ready for the Coleman interview? You sure you’re up to it?” He tuts, leaning over you as he checks out his reflection in the mirror.

“I think if one of us is prepared and able to interview a woman who survived sexual assault at the hands of a powerful man, it’s me. If you did it, she’d be traumatized all over again.” You scoff, crossing your arms.

Max snorts, “whatever, princess. Just don’t make us look bad.” He says, and you roll your eyes, “It’s not me who makes us look bad. You’re the one who flirts with anything that has a pulse.”

Your co-host leans in, a smirk on his face as he meets your eyes in the mirror, “I think you’re just jealous that I never flirt with you…off air.” He adds, his eyes narrow slightly, and you push him away from you. 

“In your fucking dreams, Phillips.” He chuckles, and you want to slap him, but he has already been in the makeup chair and Shelly would kill you if your handprint ruined her work.

Max chuckles again, slowly backing out of your dressing room, but he turns to look at you and says, “see you on the stage, wifey.” He teases and you growl under your breath.

You and Max are the darlings of morning news. The Daily News Show. You’re the “husband and wife” of daytime TV. You aren’t together. No, fuck no. You are both painfully single, unable to hold down a relationship when the show is your entire life. You live and breathe the news. Max has his liaisons, as detailed in every gossip mag from New York to L.A, but you’re the good girl. You could never get away with what he manages to do. You are held to a higher standard and it’s bullshit. You were called a “slut” when you went out with three men in six months. Max has ten flings - barely a weekend each - and he’s revered as “daytime’s most eligible bachelor.” 

You exhale shakily, trying to control your hatred towards Max before you go on air and put on your persona as the loving “TV wife.” You close your eyes and focus until Jimmy, the AD, comes in to tell you that it’s time to get on set. You nod, standing up to make your way through the halls to the set and Max is already sitting at the desk when you arrive. Shelly comes over to dust your face with setting powder and the producers are going over the segments one last time. 

“Right, everyone. Thirty seconds to live.” The director announces, headset on, and you swallow harshly, getting yourself in the zone.

“Don’t fuck up.” Max murmurs and you turn your head to glare at him. 

“You’re the only fuck up here, Phillips.” You hiss back and he chuckles, “at least I’m getting fucked. How long has it been again…? Last one was…that dude from Fallon?” He reminds you of your ex who was a writer over on The Jimmy Fallon Show. 

“Your last one still asleep in your bed?” You spit back, “you even get her name?” You ask and Max frowns. 

“Jessica? No, Jamie. No…shit.” He shakes his head and you roll your eyes. 

“As we are live in ten…nine…eight…seven…six…five…four…three…” The director lowers his fingers to be silent and then you straighten up and plaster a smile on your face.

“Good morning and welcome to The Daily News Show.” You introduce yourself with a grin. 

“And I’m Max Phillips. It’s three days until Valentine's Day. Are you ready for the day?” Max asks you as per the teleprompter and you chuckle, “is anyone ready? Our friends over at Saks have some ideas for last-minute gifts later on in the show. Max, did you already get my present?” You question him teasingly like the TV wife you are.

“Of course.” He responds like it’s obvious, “I couldn’t not get my gorgeous co-host something special.” He winks and you internally scoff at his slimy smile. 

“I guess I’ll have to wait and see what you got me.” You giggle and turn back to look at the camera, “let’s take a look at your morning forecast.”

You go off air while the weatherman takes over and Max leans in, “did you get me a present?” He asks and you snort, “you’re lucky I put up with you.” 

Max chuckles, “well, at least we got the Cupid’s Ball tonight.” You groan softly under your breath, having forgotten that was tonight.

You have to go. You need to go. But you desperately want to curl under your duvet with a glass of wine and forget that you will be spending Valentine’s Day alone.

****

You tug on the hem of your skirt as you walk through the hall to the bustling private area of a skyscraper restaurant that overlooks the city where the party is being held. You feel ridiculous in the short red dress your stylist had picked for you, styled with a pair of heels that make you question if they belong in a torture room in the rings of hell. They are insanely uncomfortable and you’re reminded again of why you wish you were back at home curled up on your sofa with a glass of wine watching rom-com movies and shoving chocolate in your mouth. You inhale deeply before you make your way into the room.

Leaning against the bar, Max is already a few drinks in, bored out of his mind and questioning why he has to attend these things. No one wants to talk to him, they want to talk to his morning show personality. The Cupid’s Ball is an annoying reminder that despite his popularity, no one was special in his life. At least no one that he really wanted. Taking a sip of his drink, he nearly chokes when he sees you walk into the room. The blood red dress calls to him and he smirks as he puts two fingers in his mouth and whistles loudly across the floor, catcalling you obnoxiously.

You roll your eyes and make a beeline to the bar where Max is, greeting people who are half drunk along the way. “You have one too many or you trying to make me doubt myself in this dress?” You question Max, trying to figure out his motive. You feel itchy in the dress now as his dark eyes trail along your form.

Max chuckles and waggles his brows suggestively. “You did get me a present.” He jokes. “Now put it on the floor where it belongs.” He knows that the network wouldn’t be happy with a sexual harassment lawsuit, but you wouldn’t file one of those. You enjoy cutting him down with scathing retorts too much. “Drink first, fuck later? Or fuck now, drink later?” He asks, offering you his own glass.

You wrinkle your nose, shaking your head, “in your fucking dreams, Phillips.” You huff and he chuckles, “if only you knew…” 

You shake your head and push his glass away, “knowing you, you probably roofied it.” You call the bartender over and order a Cosmo, wanting to enjoy the evening even if your co-star insists on annoying you to death. “What are you doing hanging by the bar? No pretty interns to harass?”

“Why harass interns when I can harass you?” He gives you a hurt pout and takes his drink back and takes a sip of it to prove that he hasn’t done anything to it. “Besides, if I didn’t bother you, you would think that I was body snatched.” He snorts and looks out over the throng of people filing in.

You snort, “that’s true. I would think you’d been abducted by aliens if you didn’t make my life hell every day.” You thank the bartender for your drink. “To being painfully single because we made our careers our lives.” You toast as you hold your drink towards him.

Max lifts his glass in salute and snorts. “You’ve still got time, sweet cheeks.” He tells you. “You can put those birthing hips to use.” He smirks when you glare at him and shrugs. “What? You don’t want to have rugrats attached to the tit?” His eyes drop to your chest. “Pity.”

Your eyebrows raise, “and you are thinking about reproducing? Good God. The world couldn’t cope with a miniature Max Phillips.” You chuckle and shake your head, “besides…you’re lucky. You could knock up every woman from New York to L.A and you would keep your job. Me? I’d be out the door as soon as I peed on a test.” You take a sip of your drink and shift from one foot to another, unused to this kind of talk directed at you from Max. Usually he’s boasting about his conquests and how much better he looks on camera.

“In the year of our lord, 2024?” Mad huffs and shakes his head. “No. The network would exploit it. Have ‘baby and me’ segments.” In reality, the only way the network would do that is if their hand was forced, but Max isn’t willing to give up his co-host. Despite your attitude towards him off camera, the public loved you two together. “All you’d have to do is announce it on air and tell viewers the special segments to come. A taped sonogram. Let our morning show viewers fall in love with the little brat.”

“The only way they’d do that is if it was our baby and to do that, we’d have to have sex and I know that you prefer them pliable and dumb.” You glance around the room, spotting the producers laughing together and the execs making a short experience before they helicopter out to their mansions.

Max scoffs. “That would never happen.” He agrees, although there’s a frown on his face as he turns back to the bar. “Better that we focus on our careers, right? That will keep us warm when we’re in our nursing homes.” He chuckles. “When we turn forty-five.”

“You’re closer to that than me, old man.” You taunt him, “forty this year. You gonna be able to handle getting older?” You nudge him, knowing that he prides himself on his looks and Devil May care attitude.

He shoots you a dirty look before glancing at the mirror behind the bar. “Don’t look a day over thirty-four.” He huffs before looking at you with a smirk. “Must be all the endorphins from sex.”

You can’t deny that he looks good. He always looks good. Must be the pussy and Botox he gets on the sly. “You gonna come out of my cake at my party like Marilyn Monroe?” Max asks and you shake your head, “no way, Phillips.” You snort and down the rest of your drink, gesturing for the bartender to get you another one. “Didn’t even know you were planning a party.”

He pouts at you again, looking hurt. “If I don’t throw myself a party, who would?” He asks, rolling his eyes. “Not like you would throw me one. You don’t even want to go out for that drink after work like I keep asking you to.”

You huff, turning to face him after you thank the bartender for setting your drink down. “Because it’s just to - to mock me. You don’t like me. I’m not your friend. We act like we like each other on tv but that’s it. I have a face for radio, remember?” You remind him of what he said to you the first day you met five years ago.

Max stares at you for a second and then laughs. Bending over the bar and laughing so hard tears come to his eyes. “You thought I meant that?” He gasps out, looking over at you and laughing again. “Sweetcheeks- that was- I was yanking your fucking chain.” He admits, calming down enough to speak. “You’re fucking gorgeous and you know it. Charming, witty. The whole package.”

You stare at him, shocked at his outburst. He’s flirted with you, especially on screen, but to hear him say he thinks you’re gorgeous…it takes you back. You pick up your drink, taking another gulp. “You gave me a fucking complex. I- I thought I wasn’t good enough.” You hiss at him, “I always thought - well, it doesn’t matter now. I’m going to go suck up to the execs before they leave. Try to keep my job another year.” You say and pick up your drink, striding over to Mr. Parker, the head of daytime tv.

Max shakes his head, watching your hips sway as you stride away from him. He had never imagined you would have taken him seriously. You always treat him like a joke, so why would you believe that? Of course you’re gorgeous, the network thrived on beautiful people and made it their mission to hire the prettiest talent in the business. Max orders another drink for himself and for you before deciding to join you. A little corporate ass kissing was never a bad move for the career.

You smile as Mr. Parker looks down at your cleavage. It’s not the healthiest dynamic at the network but you let some things slide in the interest of keeping your job. You giggle at his lame joke, trying to act like he’s so clever, when Max comes over and replaces your now empty glass with a new drink. “Ah Phillips, I was just telling your pretty co-anchor here about some changes we will be making to the outfits. I’m thinking we could get away with a couple of inches higher, don’t you?”

Max lifts his brows and pretends to consider it. It’s an insult and everyone here knows it. “Why don’t we have the weather girl in a bikini?” He suggests. “But for our hard hitting stories, I think the length of the dress won’t matter, we’re behind a desk.”

“I was thinking maybe our lady here could be standing up. Presenting in front of the screens like they do on other shows. That way she can show off those stems.” He says and you shake your head, “the whole point of the show is for me to be beside Max. That’s what the viewers like, that’s what they want.” You explain and Mr. Parker hums, “we shall see. I’ll speak to the producers…see what they think.” You nod, offering him a forced smile. You know the producers will have your back on this ridiculous suggestion.

Max glances at you and knows that you are unhappy with the idea and he will back you up. “So what’s your golf game looking like, Paul?” He asks, hoping to steer the conversation on to friendlier topics. “Every time I’m in the weeds, I think of your epic shot.” Paul puffs up proudly and nods, starting to tell Max about his latest game.

You down the rest of your drink and smile at your boss, “excuse me.” You say and make your way back across the event room to the bar, ordering another drink. You shouldn’t drink so much but between all the men in the room that look at you like a piece of meat, you’re ready to get drunk and forget the reality that your time is limited because of your age. They’ll want some twenty year old to take your place soon. You lean against the bar and thank the bartender when he sets another cosmo down. You sigh and turn to pick it up when you feel someone behind you. “Looking gorgeous as ever.” The voice of the foreign correspondent, Jack. 

You turn to face him, a stiff smile on your face. “Jack.” You greet him, hating how he leans in even closer. His disgusting cologne wafting over you. He’s always been a little intrusive.

His eyes are dark and his smirk is supposed to be charming, but it comes off as creepy. “What are you doin’ over here by yourself?” He asks. “Rarely ever see you off Phillips’ dick.”

“I’ve never been on his dick. Ever.” You clarify, “I’m just sipping my drink. Enjoying the party.” You hum and take a step back from him. 

“Nice to hear. You could be on my dick if you want.” Jack smirks, licking his lower lip and you recoil. 

“No. I- I don’t want that.” You say, shaking your head and trying to let him down gently.

“You know, you’d probably move up from the morning show if you weren’t such a stuck up, frigid cunt.” Jack hisses, a scowl on his face, pissed off at being shot by the morning bitch. He is a foreign correspondent, respected and revered. He shoots you a nasty little grin. “Pretty soon your tits won’t be perky enough to keep your job and you’ll be doing the weather in Kalamazoo.”

You narrow your eyes at him, “and I’ll be telling everyone about your unwanted advances to me every single time you’re near me. I will tell HR and get you fired.” You hiss and Jack growls at you, “you’re a fucking bitch.” 

You smile, “thank you, Jack.” You remain tall just as Max appears, his hand on your back. “Everything okay here?” He asks and you stiffen slightly, “everything is fine, isn’t it Jack?” You ask the correspondent, who scoffs and walks off. 

“What happened?” Max asks, a frown on his face. 

“Jack was being an asshole. As per usual.” You huff and turn back towards your drink.

There’s more to it than that, but you will never confide in him. Apparently he can’t even try to pretend to care. He pulls his hand away, and slips it into his pocket. “He’s an old drunk that thinks the weather girl is still picked on a casting couch.” Max snorts. “No means yes to him.” He warns you. “You say I’ll spike your drink, but I wouldn’t put it past that prick.” He scoffs.

You sigh, leaning against the counter, “you’re right. He - I’ve heard stories about the interns and some of the make-up girls.” You confess, rubbing your neck, “you know…you’re not as bad as him. You’re a good man really. I just like seeing that vein pop in your forehead.” You confess, starting to feel giddy from the booze.

Max snorts and rolls his eyes, his own alcohol consumption starting to make his body hum. “You just say that because you have to pretend to like me.” He huffs, sending you a pout before he slides into a grin to cover his hurt feelings. “You think I’m pretty though. No matter how much you don’t want to admit it.”

You scoff, rearing back from him, until you soften and lean closer again. “You are pretty. So pretty.” You confess, reaching out to run your finger down his cheek, “unfair how handsome you are.” You whine slightly, “I don’t have to pretend.” You admit with a whisper.

​​He shivers at your touch and leans into it the drinks clouding his judgment and making him speak before thinking about it. “You think I’m unfair?” He huffs. “I have to constantly hide the fucking hard on I’ve got around you.” He pouts. “Do you know how fucking distracting your perfume is? You don’t need perfume for tv, and when you’re near me, all I can smell is you and imagine….”

The booze doesn’t let you question the validity of his confession. You decide to revel in it and you lean in towards him, “imagine…?” You question, your eyes flicking down to his lips.

“Imagine you.” Max is too wrapped up in his confession to realize he shouldn’t say this to you. Shouldn’t say this at all. “Head between your thighs, tasting you, making you moan my name so sweetly before I slide inside you.” He pants breathlessly, cock twitching in his pants. “Watching you cum because of me, because of the way I touch you.”

You can’t stop the moan that escapes your lips at the thought. “Maxwell Phillips.” You gasp, your stomach twisting with arousal as you soak the lace panties you’re wearing. You glance around and are grateful that no one notices when you grab Max’s hand and drag him through the crowd and out into the hallway. “I want you to fuck me, Max.” You beg him breathlessly, grabbing onto his tie to pull him into the nearest empty room, a function room with tables and chairs.

“Wait, really?” His eyes widen and he’s not hesitant, he’s shocked as shit. But the way you are dragging him closer makes every caution sign in his mind filter away as you eagerly press your lips to his as you continue to back into the dimly lit room. “Fuck.” He moans, pressing against you when your ass hits a table and his hands are cradling your hips, helping you up onto it as your tongue slides into his mouth.

You don’t think about the consequences of this. Deciding to just feel for once, you groan as Max slides his tongue against yours and his hands explore your body. You moan echoes in the empty room as he kisses your jaw and he settles between your thighs as you open them for him.

He turns greedy. Hands filling themselves with your flesh, groaning into your mouth at the taste of the liquor from your tongue. The pure sense of you. The heat of your skin makes him twitch and groan again when he presses two fingers to the damp core of your lace panties.

You whimper, “please Max” into his jaw as he rubs your clit through the lace. He doesn’t deny you as he slides his fingers beneath the elastic of your panties and presses his manicured fingers against the bundle of nerves. “Oh God.” You moan, sliding your hands down his chest to fumble with his belt, trying to undo the stupidly expensive buckle until you can finally reach in and pull his hard cock out of his equally expensive pants. “Fucking hell.” You curse as you wrap your fingers around the girth.

He chuckles, kissing along your jaw. 

“Try hiding that all the time.” He jokes, breaking off into a groan when you squeeze him firmly and start to stroke his cock. “Fuck, baby.” He whines, hips jerking forward into your grip and he twists his wrist to press his thumb against your clit while starting to work two fingers inside you.

You pant as he pushes two thick digits into you. You hate to admit it but you’ve imagined his hands on you, inside of you, many times during segments where the camera is off of you. You jerk his cock, swiping your thumb over the head to gather the pre-cum that has gathered there. “I need - I need you to - oh shit.” You moan when he curls his fingers just right inside of you.

“That what you needed?” He groans, biting along your neck gently while he’s trying not to get too excited. Your cunt is so tight and he doesn’t want to cum too quickly when he finally gets to fuck you. “Fuck baby, you’re so tight. My cock is gonna feel so good inside you.” He moans, kissing along your chest and nudging his nose between your breasts as he pumps his fingers in and out of you.

“Yes. Oh shit. Max. I’m gonna - you’re gonna make me-” You cut yourself off with a squeal as you clamp down around his fingers. Your grip on his cock loosening as your orgasm hits you and you pant his name into his hair as he licks along the top of your breast. “Fuck me.” You beg, “need you inside of me, Phillips.”

He doesn’t even consider birth control, he’s listened to the segments where you’ve talked about your own choice and knows you well enough to know you don’t have anything. His fingers are soaked and he pulls them out with a groan of your name. Batting your hands away to wrap around his cock and soak it with your juices.

You spread your legs wider and watch him as he positions the head of his cock at your entrance, pushing inside of you with a low groan. “Oh God, Max.” You whine, throwing your head back as he pushes into you and stretches you out.

He hisses as your tight walls surround him. You’re so much tighter and hotter than he ever imagined and he imagined it a lot. Slowly bottoming out and groaning your name again as he tries to keep from cumming. “Holy shit babe.”

You slide your hands under his bespoke jacket, clawing at his back as he twitches inside of you. "I need you to move." You plead. You'll think back to this moment later and cringe at how needy you sound but for right now, you need him to fuck you like you've secretly wanted him to since you started working together.

“Fuck.” Max can’t resist you. One hand planted on the table beside your head and he draws his hips back to plunge into you again. Enjoying the sharp gasp you give him and craving more as he leans down and presses his lips to yours. Starting to thrust into you with harsh, sharp slaps of his hips that rock the table while you cling to him and writhe underneath him.

You slide your tongue against his as he rocks into you. Anyone could walk in. Anyone could hear you. The music is faint from the function room where your work event is being held but you don’t care, too busy focusing on Max and the way he’s thrusting into you like his life depends on it. “Fuck, this is - it’s so good, baby.” You whine and wrap your legs around him, your heels falling to the floor.

Max grunts, agreeing completely as he bites his lip. “So- fuck- so good.” He groans your name again and bites down on your lip hungrily. “Baby, fuck, you’re so tight. How- fuck, you’re so good.”

"Ke-Kegals." You reveal breathlessly, "gotta - gotta keep fit to stay on TV." You whimper when he hits deep and you lift your hips up to meet his thrusts. "Keep going, Phillips, don't you dare stop." You demand when his pace stutters.

“So demanding.” He huffs, flashing you a grin as he nods. Taking a deep breath and rocking his hips harder. “Fuck, it’s your fault. So fucking tight.”

You shake your head, closing your eyes, "you're so fucking thick, Max. God, I don't - no wonder you have so many damn flings." You pant and he drops his hips just right to make you gasp when he hits something devastating.

He chuckles breathlessly, not even bothering to admit that he doesn’t have as many flings as he might have led you to believe. You would never think he was telling you the truth. “You’re tight.”

“Shit, Max. I- I’m gonna- just like that. Keep going like that.” You demand and groan when he keeps hitting that spot. “That’s it baby. Oh shit. Max!” You cry out, clamping down on his cock as he makes you cum hard. Harder than you have for longer than you’d ever care to admit.

“Thaaaaaaat’s it.” He groans, eyes nearly rolling back and he has to put more effort into fucking you from how hard you squeeze hum. “That’s fucking it. Cream all over me baby.” He groans. “Soak my cock with that pretty cunt.”

His words would usually make you cringe if you weren’t practically shaking beneath him as he makes you cum. “Oh God. It’s so good. So good. I want - want you to cum.” You plead, pressing your heels into his ass to push him impossibly deeper inside of you.

“Gonna - fuck, I’m gonna cum.” He pants out breathlessly, sweat rolling down his forehead but he ignores it. Too lost in the sensation of your cunt. “Fuck, fuck you’re so fucking wet, baby.” He praises. “Gonna cum, fuck, fuck-“ he lets out a strangled groan of your name when his hips stutter and he thrusts deep one last time, painting your walls with ropes of cum.

Moaning in delight as he fills you up, you caress his back under his jacket, and tilt your head up to kiss along his jaw. “Not too bad, Phillips.” You tease breathlessly as he rocks himself through his orgasm.

He huffs out a chuckle and shakes his head, rocking slowly as he pumps every spurt of cum into you. “Not too bad yourself.” He grunts, leaning down and pressing his lips to yours once more before he starts to pull out of you to watch his cum drip. “Now that’s a pretty sight.” He hums, delighted to see his cum leaking out of your cunt.

You roll your eyes and sit up, standing on shaking legs to pick up your panties. “I’m gonna go to the bathroom. You’re gonna go back in there and act like this didn’t happen. We have to act like this didn’t happen, you understand?” You ask him, your eyes wide and pleading. If everyone knew you and Max had sex, you’d be branded a slut and he’d be revered for conquering you.

Max’s plan to ask you if you want to get out of here dies on his tongue and he adopts an easy grin. “No problem, sweet cheeks.” He chuckles and looks away from you as he tucks his cock back into his pants. “Can’t have anyone thinking that something happened. Might keep me from getting lucky with that new intern tonight.” He lies and starts to straighten his tie and smooth down his vest. Once he feels like he can look at you and not show you how upset he is, he tosses you a wink. “Thanks for the sex, baby.” He hums as he turns around and whistles while strolling out of the empty room.

You watch him walk out and you swallow harshly, ignoring the way your eyes sting with tears. It’s not his fault that you gave in and now you wonder what will happen to your working relationship. You let your guard slip. You can’t let that happen again. Walking out of the room on shaky legs, you make your way back into your work event, grabbing your clutch from the side and you don’t say another word as you swiftly exit the party, ignoring Max’s stare as his cum settles in your panties while you quickly leave before anyone notices what happened.

Sighing softly as you walk out of the party, Max wonders why you let him touch you. Was it a drunken mistake? A calculated ploy to get him fired for misconduct? He frowns as he turns back to the bar and motions for the bartender. He will pretend like it never happened and see if you do the same.

The weekend passes and you freak out about sleeping with Max. It’s changed everything. You don’t know if you’re going to be able to look him in the eye as your car travels to the studio. The producer calls your name, bringing you out of your thoughts and all you can do is nod. You have no idea what they were saying but soon, you’re entering the building and making your way up to the floor for the show. “Good morning.” Your intern, Natalie, greets you with your morning coffee and you thank her. Praying you don’t see Max until you get on set, you settle into your chair to review the segments and wait for the make-up and hair artists.

Max rolls his shoulders back and purposefully changes his step to one that is lighthearted and full of energy. “How are we doing this gorgeous morning?” He asks as he steps into the hair and makeup room, seeing you already in your chair and he hates how his heart pangs because he didn’t hear from you at all. Not that it’s surprising, just disappointing. “Everyone have a good weekend? Mine was amazing.” He boasts, waggling his brows playfully. “Didn’t get out of the bed, if you know what I mean.” He lies, knowing he spent the weekend depressed and wondering what the fuck happened Friday night. 

He breezes by you and settles down into his own chair, pulling out the eye mask he carries with him with the serum that costs an arm and a leg, the promise of less wrinkles meaning he will pay any price. “Need some more rest.”

You swallow harshly, keeping your eyes on the script. The ghost of his touch has haunted you all weekend and you don’t know how to feel about his nonchalant attitude to you and the artists in the room. You wonder who took up his bed after you, your stomach twisting at the idea of it being that young new intern that seems eager to please. You turn to look at him when he places the eye mask on his face and your expression is one of heartbreak and longing - at least that’s what the make-up and hair stylists will say later when they gossip over coffee. “Busy weekend?” You ask eventually, trying to sound lighthearted.

“Yep.” He pops the p and sighs with a nostalgia that is solely for you and the night he got to touch you. “You? How was your weekend? Anything fun and new?” He asks, tilting his head up and removing the mask now that his stylist is here. His eyes focus on you with a serious gaze.

You can’t tell him you sat around all weekend having a crisis about what happened between you. “Oh, I was busy. I went out. Had dinner. Some drinks.” You say vaguely, “had a late night on Saturday so spent most of Sunday in bed.” You smirk, forcing yourself to give the impression that you weren’t alone.

“Ohhhh ho! Someone got lucky!” Max plasters a cocky look on his face and waggles his brows even though he’s pissed you fled and apparently went to fuck someone else. “Was it good? Bet it was good, but I would have been better, sweet cheeks.” He teases like he normally would have, but the words taste slightly bitter.

“In your dreams, Phillips.” You spit half heartedly, not wanting to elaborate on your lie as you hate the fact that he’s ruined everyone else for you. You’ve never cum so fast and so hard. Most men finish before you can and then won’t even help you get off. You’ve never felt that kind of electricity. The artist's exchange looks behind you as you and Max are distracted by your own turbulent thoughts. “Besides, sounds like you were warm and cozy in your bed with a new floozy.”

“You know how it is.” Max shrugs carelessly. “Friday night plans fell through so I had to improvise.” He stares at you for a moment longer before turning his attention to the hair stylist. “Can you make my hair extra shiny this morning, babe?” He asks, dropping his eyes to his hair and reaching up to fix a hair out of place. “Want to look my best for the cameras.”

You huff, shaking your head, “always the same. Always wanting the spotlight and - and always being so goddamn selfish.” You growl at him, batting the brush away from your face as you stand up and mutter about needing the bathroom before you rush out of the room. You hate that Max doesn’t even seem to remember that you had sex on Friday night. You were just another notch on his belt.

Max’s eyes follow you out of the room and the frown on his face isn’t even registering to him, although it’s being noticed by the other people in the room. Their glances to each other pointed and the hairstylist finally answers him. “Sure, Max. No problem.” She hums, running her fingers through his hair and Max sighs. “Just do whatever.”

You stare into the mirror in the bathroom, preparing yourself to head back out there and act like nothing is wrong. One drunken night with Max and your world is spinning out of control. You’ve worked so hard, focused on your career, and now you feel like you’re losing it all because you can’t stop thinking about how he felt, how he smelt, how he sounded. His moan of your name seems to play on a loop in your head and it’s driving you crazy. Hands shaking, you gather yourself as you head back into the make up room, glad to see Max is gone as you get ready to go on air.

Sitting behind the desk, Max tries to shake off the feeling that you are upset at him. You are the one who had left. Fled the party after begging him to fuck you. He’s kind of pissed off about it now. Setting him up to look like an asshole. He shuffles through the notes for the upcoming show and clears his throat, trying to get the smell of you out of his mind, his cock refusing to soften.

You spritz on your perfume, just to torture Max after what he told you, and you step onto the set to sit down at the desk next to Max. The team comes over to adjust your mic and you pick up your notes.

As soon as you sit down, a cloud of your perfume settles over him and makes Max groan. His cock twitching in his pants and he drops his head into his hand. “Max. You good?” The producer calls out from beside the camera man and he has to lift his head and pretend he’s not incredibly turned on. 

“All good, just remembered I didn���t turn off the coffee maker this morning.” He lies.

You turn your head to look at him, eyebrows raised, and you think that the groan is in annoyance at having to sit next to you. “I should’ve called in sick.” You mutter and shake your head before the AD announces the countdown to live. When you are counted down to one, you plaster a smile on your face and straighten your back, eager to do a good job even if inside, you’re angry and confused at Max and his reaction like Friday night was nothing.

“Good morning and welcome to the Daily New Show.” Max tries to keep himself even more energetic than normal to make up for his turbulent feelings. “I hope everyone is having a fabulous Monday morning and we’ve got an impressive show for you today. As you know, it is Valentine’s Day so I hope you’re all prepared. I know I am.” He chuckles and turns towards you and introduces you as his lovely co-host. “Did you like those chocolates I put in your room this morning?”

You know Max didn’t put anything in your room but you play along, “of course. I’ll be enjoying some of those with my coffee later. Did you get my present?” You tease him playfully on camera, knowing you didn’t get him anything either but you want to make the viewers think you and him are the best of friends.

“No…” his eyes widen playfully and he tosses you a grin. “Whaddya get me?” He asks, knowing you didn’t get him anything. “Hopefully something good, because I’m worth it.” He winks at the camera and chuckles, knowing that you would not be thinking the same thing.

You shake your head, "you'll have to wait and find out. I'm sure you're gonna love it." You promise with a grin and turn back towards the camera. "Talking of gifts, let's go to Katie who has some last minute gift ideas for those who need something for the one they love." You smile at the camera and slump when they count you out. "Chocolates." You scoff, "you've never even gotten me a coffee."

Max rolls his eyes and snorts. “And? Not like you’ve ever given me anything either? Maybe looks of disgust, but I don’t count those, sweet cheeks.” The sad thing is, he had bought you some chocolates, the first year you were on air for your birthday, but you hand said you wanted no reminders of getting older so he hadn’t given them to you. “Only another fifty-six minutes in my company, you’ll survive.”

You sigh and sit up straight, unsure of what to say. You hate that you’ve reverted back to your old bickering, knowing that this won’t get you anywhere after what happened on Friday. You’re confused about how you feel. You wanted to ask him to come home with you after you slept together but you know you’d put your job on the line if something went wrong and Max would always be looking for the next best thing.

Max sighs softly when you don’t say anything and rolls his shoulders back as the countdown to the cameras being back on you starts. He should just forget Friday ever happened, it’s obvious that you regret it. “Thank you, Katie. Hopefully all the men out there without a plan can get it together and not disappoint their ladies, right?” He asks you, turning his head to look at you seriously. “Although I’m more of a romantic dinner at home, myself. Candlelight, soft music, bottle of wine.” He shrugs. “Nothing like a homemade carbonara.” It’s scripted, but true. He did prefer evenings in. 

You offer him a nod and a smile, “sounds like my kind of romantic night in, Max.” You wink and continue with the prompter. It’s hard to ignore the way he stares at you sometimes. The intensity in his look has you shifting in your chair and when you are countered out, you immediately stand up and remove your mic, making your way into your dressing room. It’s impossible to forget the way he felt inside of you, the way he sounded. You can’t forget him and it’s torturing you. You wipe your forehead and place your hands on your hips as the door opens and you turn to see Max standing there. “I can’t do this anymore.” You admit, “I can’t sit next to you every day and act like nothing happened between us.”

“You?” He snorts and shakes his head. “You are the one that left. Walked away without a word and you didn’t call me. So how am I supposed to know what you want? You want me to quit? Too bad.” He scoffs. “You will just have to deal.” He’s pissed off now. Pissed that it meant so little to you and now you want him gone so you don’t have to live with your mistake.

“I- I can’t. I can’t stop thinking about it. I can’t stop thinking about how you sounded. How you felt. I- it’s torturing me.” You choke, “I can’t pretend it didn’t happen. I thought it was for the best and I figured you would act like it didn’t happen and go back to your one night stands but - shit, Phillips. I fucking hate you for getting under my skin like this.” You hiss at him, pissed at yourself as well.

“I don’t have a lot of one night stands.” Max admits, shaking his head when you scoff. “You were- you don’t fucking see it?” He asks, lunging forward and pressing into your dressing room so the door closes and grabs your neck to drag you closer to kiss. “You don’t see that I’m crazy about you?” He hisses before he kisses you feverishly.

Your eyes widen at first contact until your brain stops working and you relax into him. Letting him kiss you, his fingers digging into the back of your neck, and you moan into his mouth until your senses return. You push him away, "stop. We - we can't do this. If it goes wrong. It will go wrong and then our careers - we can't do this, Max."

“Goddamn you.” Max hisses, stepping back and his eyes are filled with nothing but hurt. “You only give a damn about yourself and you’re fucking toying with me.” He clenches his jaw and turns around. “Happy fucking Valentine’s Day.” He spits, storming out of the room, humiliated that he put himself on the line again and you are rejecting him.

You stare at him as he slams the door behind him, your lips tingling from the kiss and your hands shake as you touch them as if trying to erase his kiss from your skin. It doesn’t work. You feel your eyes sting as you grab your things and change into your leggings and hoodie before you head home. Your head is aching and you try to think about the reasons why it would be wrong to give Max a chance.

Max berates himself the entire way back to his apartment. Hating how he had admitted to you that he doesn’t have flings. Knowing that you would just use it against him. His phone contacts land on his agent and he wonders if he should call him. Let him know what’s going on in case you decide to go for the throat and in the end, he can’t do it. He will quietly put in for evening anchor and let you have the morning show. It’s what you want anyway.

You bite your lower lip as you stand outside of Max’s building, the doorman recognising you and sending you up. You thank him and fiddle with the bag in your hand, the present you bought for the man you’ve secretly been in love with for years. You ring the doorbell and wait for Max to answer the door.

Max had changed from the suit he had worn to comfortable sweats and a t-shirt, figuring he would spend the rest of the day wallowing in self pity and order DoorDash for dinner since he was all alone for yet another Valentine’s Day. Groaning when the doorbell peels, he wonders if it’s the lady from the third floor who loves to come give her his opinion on the show. She’s old and her husband died last year, so he tries not to shoo her away too quickly, but he’s not in the mood for company. Dragging himself off the couch he opens the door to find you standing there, no make up and in leggings, looking more beautiful than you deserve. “What do you want?” He demands.

You stare at him, unused to seeing him in relaxed clothing, he looks younger. You sigh and shift from one foot to the other. “I was wrong. To push you away. I can’t - I can’t keep denying myself the chance to be happy because I am terrified that everything I have worked for will go up in flames. I have been in love with you since we started working together and that day I saw you speak to that old lady when we did the segment on Alzheimer’s and you were so sweet and kind. I had never seen you like that before, and it made me realize that I had fallen in love with you, but I kept that hidden because I was scared. I was fucking terrified Max, that you would reject me because you have the world at your feet and can have any woman you want, what would make me special enough for you to love me? then you kept mentioning all your flings and I knew that I would never get the chance to be with you. I didn’t want to risk everything but Friday, I put everything on the line and then realized that everything could go wrong and I got scared. I got so fucking scared and I am so sorry that I acted like nothing happened when all I want is to have you again and again until you send me away.”

Max stares at you, digesting the verbal book you’ve just thrown at him and he drops his shoulders. “Do you want to come in?” He asks, unsure if you are planning on running away again or if you want to actually talk. He opens the door wider and none of the normally sarcastic comments come out of his mouth, unable to put on a front any more.

You deflate, nodding as you step into his apartment, and you admire the decor. Masculine but warm and you know he probably paid an interior designer to help him out. He shuts the door behind you and you fiddle with the bag in your hand. “I’m sorry to just show up.” You murmur, glancing around his apartment.

“Not like I had plans tonight.” Max shrugs it off and sighs. “Can I get you something to drink? Water, tea, tequila?” He swallows and rocks his jaw before you can even answer. “Why did you leave? Did you regret it?”

You stare at him, wondering if he heard everything you said. “Did you not- I left because I was scared you’d reject me. That I was just a conquest and you’d go back to your flings. I didn’t want to ruin our careers by getting messy emotions involved. Because - because I was a coward.”

“But you aren’t a coward.” Max argues, frowning fiercely at the idea. “You’re fucking amazing. Powerful, confident, a real ball buster when you have to be. You push boundaries and demand respect - and earn it.” He tells you. “You’re gorgeous, smart, kind of funny, brilliant at reading an audience and you have so much compassion. But one thing you are not….is a coward.”

His words make your eyes widen and you swallow harshly. “I was - I am scared. Scared of getting hurt. Scared of reaching for you, for something that could ruin me. In every way in life. I love you, Max, and that night…I broke. I couldn’t hold back from what I wanted anymore and I was an asshole to run away. I don’t want to run anymore. I know what I want. I know how I feel.”

“I thought I had you that night.” Max admits quietly, your words scaring him slightly and making him wish this had happened years ago. “I thought I finally got what I had wanted for so long.” He sends you a small grin. “Was going to ask if you wanted to leave the party. Go get dinner that night.”

You shake your head, tears stinging in your eyes a little. “I shouldn’t have - God, I was an idiot. I should’ve stayed. I’m sorry.” You confess and he stares at you again. “I- I can go. I just wanted to give you your gift.” You say, handing him the bag.

“You- you got me something?” He asks, taking the bag and then reaching for your arm as you try to turn away. “Wait.” He begs quietly. “Don’t run away again.”

You don’t move, looking down at his hand on your arm, and you nod, turning towards him again. “I want you to open it.” You say, “and read the note.” You tell him and he nods, setting the bag down on the counter.

The box is one that he recognizes and he shoots you a confused look. “I don’t-“ he starts but you shake your head. “Read the note.” You repeat and he nods, diving back into the bag to pull out a red envelope.

You watch him open the envelope. You had them write on the note “to the one I adore” and you hope he doesn’t reject you. You wanted to show him how you feel, to show him that you know him. Even down to his dream watch.

“I don’t- I can’t believe you bought this.” He admits, looking up at you and looks at you with amazement. “It’s the exact watch I’ve been wanting.” He admits. “I just could never justify buying it for myself. How did you-?”

“Saved up. I got a bonus when I resigned my contract. Got myself a purse and I only made it this far because of you…wanted to say thank you for being there for me every day.” You tell him shyly, “I wanted to show you how I felt without actually telling you.”

“I can’t believe this.” He shakes his head and sets the card down before he steps closer to you. “I can’t believe you.” He reaches up and caresses your cheek. “I feel bad because I didn’t get you anything.”

You shake your head against his palm, “it’s fine. I didn’t know when I would give you this. I’ve had it for a while. Trying to summon up the courage to tell you how I felt, to not be terrified.” You bite your lip as his dark eyes burn into yours.

“You shouldn’t have been terrified.” Max scoffs quietly. “I’ve not actually slept with anyone in months, nearly a  year.” He admits. “Too busy being hung up on my co-worker.”

You lean into his palm and reach out to caress his cheeks with your hands. “Gladys the cleaner?” You tease and he chuckles, “damn. How did you know?” He asks and you giggle, leaning in to nudge your nose against his. “Please don’t break my heart.” You plead, “because it’s yours.”

“I sat home all weekend and sulked because you left.” He shakes his head and chuckles. “I don’t want something casual. If we do this, I want it to be a real relationship. Dates in, dates out in town, sleepovers and being disgusting together.” He smirks at you. “Everything.”

“People already think we are fucking. The unofficially married couple of daytime tv. I don’t see why we can’t make it official? I want to be disgusting with you, Phillips.” You grin, “I want everything with you.”

“Yeah?” Max grins back at you and leans in to nudge his nose against yours. “You know what we didn’t do Friday?” He asks teasingly. “I didn’t see how fucking hard you can cum on my tongue.”

You whimper, your hands sliding down to caress his neck and his chest, feeling his heartbeat beneath your palm. “You can find out if you want? I want to see how much you cum down my throat too.” You murmur, sliding your hand lower until you’re rubbing his semi through his sweats. “I gotta say, I love you in casual wear.”

“Yeah?” He groans quietly, hardening under your touch. “I think I love you in leggings. You like it for the easier access?” He twitches when you squeeze him and pant softly. “Baby. I- fuck, can I touch you?” He begs, a gentleman despite his bragging. “Please let me touch you.”

“I think I’ll have to kill you if you don’t touch me, Phillips.” You demand playfully, reaching into his sweats to pull his hard cock out. “God, I didn’t get a good look and - no wonder you’re so damn cocky.” You groan and let go of him to spit in your hand, wrapping your fingers around his girth.

Max would chuckle, but he’s too busy diving under your shirt to cup your tits. “Want you naked this time.” He moans, rocking his hips into your hand. “Touch you everywhere. Fuck, baby, I- should I eat you out first, have you sit on my face or kneel between those pretty thighs?” The good thing about getting up so fucking early is that it’s not even noon yet, he’s got the rest of the day to spend with you if you don’t run away again.

You whimper when he squeezes your tits over your bra. "Fuck, Max. However you want me. I am yours." You promise, "just touch me." You plead, pressing your thighs together to get some friction.

Max leans in and bites your jaw. “Come on, baby.” He coos, excited to touch you properly. “Want to show you my bedroom.” He teases. “Give you the full Max Phillips tour.”

You would normally roll your eyes but right now, you desperately need him. The ghost of his touch has been on your mind since Friday and you need it, you need him. He guides you into his bedroom and it's clean, the bed is made. “I like your style, Phillips.” You smile at him as he lets go of your hand so he can pull your shirt over your head.

“Can’t sleep in a messy room.” He admits, although he tosses your shirt to the floor with a grin. “But I will happily leave your clothes on the floor allllllll night.” He promises, unhooking your bra with two fingers before dragging it down so he can wrap his lips around one of your nipples.

You gasp and arch your chest into his mouth, your hand quickly finding purchase in his hair. “Shit Max.” You whine when he bites down and you love it, you love how he seems so hungry for you.

Max growls against your skin, loving how you start to tug on his hair. His hands tug down at your leggings before he pulls away to push you down onto his bigger than needed bed. Grinning when you bounce slightly and he goes back to attacking your pants. “Fuck.”

You help him by kicking them off and his fingers are hooking into your panties, dragging them down your legs. “Fuck baby. I need you.” You beg, dripping wet for him and his hair is not gelled, falling into his face and your heart clenches at the grin on his face as he crawls up your body.

“You’ve got me.” He promises, stopping to nip, lick and kiss different places on your body. Stopping and staring at you with a serious expression on his face. “You’re beautiful.” He murmurs softly before leaning in to press his lips to yours.

You slide your hands down to caress his back as his tongue slides into your mouth. His cock is heavy against your thigh and you grab his shirt in your hands, wanting to see more of him. “Take this off.” You demand, tugging on his shirt.

He chuckles, pushing onto his knees to comply. “So pushy,” he teases, grinning as he tosses it away and starts to tug his sweats down over his ass. “I like it. Order me around baby, tell me to lick your pussy until you cream in my face.”

You giggle at the enthusiastic look on his face. “Want you to lick my pussy until I soak your face.” You demand, grabbing his face to drag him down between your thighs, maybe pulling on his hair a little too hard but his resounding groan tells you he likes it.

Max loves when a woman is demanding, taking what she wants because he also loves to do the same. A true switch when it comes to the bedroom. “Fuck, you have such a pretty pussy.” He groans when he sees your wet folds. “So tight too.” He tells you before he lunges forward to bury his tongue inside you.

Your cry echoes in his large bedroom and you moan his name, your hips immediately thrusting up into his mouth as he slides his tongue through your folds. “Holy shit, Max.” You throw your head back as he sucks on your clit.

He chuckles against your clit, sliding a hand between your thighs and he starts to rub your entrance to gather your slick before curling two fingers inside you. Loving how quickly you clench down on them as he licks at your nerves expertly.

His fingers and his tongue are magic. No wonder he has the reputation he has when it's so damn good. You whimper and lift your leg onto his shoulder so his fingers push deeper. "Holy - holy shit." You choke when he curls them just right and his breath washes over your clit.

“That’s it, baby,” Max coos, completely obsessed with the way you whimper his name. “Be a good girl and cum for me. Cum all over my fingers and face, pretty girl.” He keeps curling his fingers and sucks your clit back into his mouth as he watches you intently, wanting to witness the moment you cum.

"Oh shit. Shit. Just- fuck - just like that." You whine as he sucks your clit like those stupid caramels he unwraps between segments. You can't deny him as he curls his fingers just right and you cum, clamping down on his thick digits.

You’re louder than that Friday, of course you are. You are in a private bedroom where you won’t be discovered if you scream his name. Plus, this orgasm is completely centered around you, Max continues to pump his fingers and suck in your clit to work you through it. Greedy for your sounds and the way you soak his fingers.

When it becomes too much, you push him away, gasping his name, and you grab his shoulder, dragging him up your body. "I wanna-" You don't voice your desires as you shift to push him back on the bed, shifting to kneel between his legs. "God." You murmur as you wrap your fingers around his cock. 

"Baby. You don't-" His protest dies on his lips as you lean forward to wrap your lips around the head of his cock. “Fuuuuuuuuck.” Max hisses in pleasure as your mouth takes his cock. Twitching and groaning your name when he feels you swallow around him. “Never-never thought I’d see this.” He admits breathlessly. “But I love the view.”

Your eyes crinkle as you smile around his dick, taking him deeper, and you love the way his jaw drops. "You are gorgeous." He murmurs and you slide your hand along his chest, caressing his skin as you start to bob your head.

It’s quite possibly the best fucking blowjob he’s ever had. Not sure if it’s because you are so eager to blow him, or that it’s just you, but you have him breathless and gripping the duvet quickly. “Baby, baby, you are so good. You’re gonna make me cum and I can’t do that right now.” He whines after you swallow around him again.

You reluctantly pull off of his cock, moving fast to straddle his thighs and you shuffle closer, sitting up until you can grip his cock and notch him at your entrance. You look into those dark eyes and sink slowly down onto him.

“Shiiiiiiiiiit.” Max grabs your hips but he doesn’t try to control you, just hanging on while your walls surround him. “Can we do the show just like this?” He pants out, “you sitting on my cock? Fuck, baby.”

“We’d either get no viewers or a ton of viewers for daytime tv.” You giggle, caressing his chest and you lean in to kiss his neck. “You feel so good inside of me, Max.” You murmur, kissing his jaw as you lift your hips until you’re sinking back down onto him.

Max blows out a loud breath, sliding his hands up and down your back. “I’m trying not to blow my load here, sweet cheeks. Don’t mistake that. Fuck, you feel so amazing. Like a fucking glove.”

You moan, loving the way he twitches inside of you. “All yours. Yours baby.” You promise and lean in to kiss him softly before you start to rock your hips, taking him deep inside of you every time you sink down onto his cock. He’s so deep and you aren’t in a rush for this to be over.

The pace is slower than before and Max groans every time you rock your hips. “Fuck baby.” He whispers, turning his head to kiss along your neck. Loving how you are slowly unraveling him.

You rock back onto him, caressing his neck and sliding your fingers through his hair. “God, I love you.” You murmur, shifting to press your lips to his, your hands cupping his cheeks.

His breath catches, hearing you say it like that for the first time. “I love you too, baby.” He promises, lifting up to kiss you thoroughly. His hand slides up to your neck and he drags you closer, loving how your tits press against his chest and he slides his tongue into your mouth to deepen the kiss.

You savor the kiss, moaning into his mouth, and you whimper his name as he kisses along your jaw. You bounce on his cock a little faster, wanting him to cum for you. “Fuck, baby. I- I want you to fill me up.” You murmur, nudging your nose against his.

“Shiiiit.” Max hisses. “That is so fucking sexy.” He admits with a breathless laugh. Watching your tits bounce and he reaches back to slap your ass.

You groan as he helps you bounce harder on his cock. “Fuck baby. Yes. Yes! Just like that. Oh God. You’re hitting just right.” You ramble, lost in the sensations as he rocks you on his cock and the coarse hairs at the base of his cock rub against your clit.

Max chuckles at how desperate you sound, how greedily your cunt clenches around him. Groaning as he rocks you harder and plants his feet to thrust into you. “Want you to cum.” He grunts. “On my cock this time.”

You whimper, "gonna - oh God. Ma- Max. Oh fuck. Maxxxx." You squeal. clamping down on his cock and you cry out as he thrusts up at the right angle and sends you over the edge, making you shake against him as you orgasm.

Max chokes out your name, wrapping his arms around you and starting to thrust up into you wildly. Letting his own desires overtake the sedate pace and chase his own orgasm now that you’ve cum.

You let him thrust up into you, making you moan as he extends your climax. “Baby. I need - I want you to cum for me.” You beg, kissing his neck, and you end up biting his earlobe. “Cum for me, Max.”

“Ohhh shit.” You biting him throws him over the edge. Squeezing you tight, he rocks his hips up to bury himself inside you. Groaning as his spurts of cum paint your walls.

You caress his neck, running your finger through his hair as you kiss all over his face. His fingers dig into your flesh but you don’t care, loving how he feels surrounding you. “I love you, Phillips.” You murmur, enjoying how he feels surrounding you. “I’m sorry I ran away.” You murmur, knowing you aren’t running now.

“I love you too.” Max hums softly. “If you run this time, I’m coming after you. I don’t give a damn who knows it.” His arms loosen slightly and he looks into your eyes when you lean back. “Will you go to dinner with me? Not tonight, because we couldn’t get reservations anywhere, but I want to take you out properly.”

You nod, unable to say no to him and you lean in to kiss him again. “I’m not running away. I want the world to know about us. It’s - I’ve been thinking, this could make our career. The TV husband and wife that become husband and wife.” You tease and Max’s eyes widen. 

“Marriage? Slow your roll baby.” He says and you giggle, rolling your eyes. “I’m joking. I want to marry you. Shit, I’ve never said that to anyone. I want you baby. I’m in this for the long haul.” He promises and you nod, leaning in to kiss him. 

“Mrs Max Phillips has a ring to it.” You murmur and he chuckles, “who says I wouldn’t take your last name? I’m a modern man.” He winks at you and you snort, leaning in to nudge your nose against his. You don’t know why you’ve been running from your feelings and now that you are here with Max, you’ll never run again. He’s now your home.

****

“It’s that time of year again.” Max grins into the camera as the red light reappears. “Valentine’s Day. The day where men either panic as they figure out to impress their partners or prepare to take the next step.” He clears his throat as he looks over at you. His girlfriend of a year, even though the public was still guessing at how serious the relationship was. There had been plenty of photos of dinners out and cozily walking around town together. While you weren’t discreet, you both decided to be mum about the status of your relationship. Especially after a closed door meeting with the producers. Everyone at the station knew, and that was all that mattered. “Tell me, Valentine’s Day proposal, tacky or romantic?” He asks you. “I personally think romantic if done right, but what do you think?”

You hum, not picking up his reasoning for the question when it's on the teleprompter. "I think...if it's done right, it's romantic. If it's a 'shut up ring' then it's tacky." You explain, turning back to the prompter. "So today, we have a big surprise. Someone is going to be getting engaged on the show." You grin, still not suspicious as the producers told you about a guy who was going to surprise his girlfriend. "Look at Max." You read the teleprompter and frown, turning to see Max out of his chair. "What are you doing?"

“Baby, honey, sweet cheeks, I don’t think there’s anything tacky about the way that I feel about you.” Max tells you as he takes your hand and kneels down in front of you. “I couldn’t think of any place more romantic than the place I met you, the place I fell in love with your laugh, your heart, your brain and everything that makes up my partner at work.” He smiles at the shocked look on your face. “I wanted to propose today, since one year ago, we finally confessed how we felt and it’s been a magical year. So now I just have one little question.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a ring box. “Will you be my partner in life? Marry me, darling, be my wife please?”

Your eyes widen and you glance around at the crew who are grinning at you and Max. You inhale shakily, tears stinging in your eyes as the man you love kneels in front of you. "Baby. I - yes. A million times, yes!" You squeal and shift to kneel down in front of him, cupping his cheeks to kiss him without even caring about the ring, you're more excited to marry the man you love.

Grinning against your lips, Max knows that you’ve just made history, a morning show host proposing to his co-host on live tv. It will be the talk of the town. He doesn’t care about that or what the executives think. All he cares about is that Valentine’s Day is the day you became an official couple, the day you agreed to marry him, and next year - you’ll get married on Valentine’s Day. He will make sure that every Valentine’s Day you spend with him will be one to remember.

[poeticsandaliens]

Aight so I keep seeing these discussions about what the Arcane creators did and didn't say and whether that means Jayce and Viktor are canon platonic or romantic or some secret third thing and I would like to make a case for ignoring irrelevant things that writers say in an attempt to clarify their creation. And I say these words as a writer who peppers my AO3 shit with random endnotes commenting on my creations, which you can feel free to throw in the trash.

I'm not arguing that we should all just clamp down our ears and go lalalala, nor am I arguing for full-on Death of the Author. I just think if a storyteller has to clarify a textual detail in an interview or on Twitter (looking at you Joanne) then it doesn't actually matter. Because if the creator CARES that much about how we as an audience interpret that detail they should put it into the fucking text. If it matters that much to the text it should be in the text. And if it's not in the text then it doesn't really matter and I'll go on interpreting. This especially goes for taxonomizing murky relationships. We often desire taxonomy, but ambiguity can say compelling things about the way we navigate human connection.

Like there're shades of gray to this. But specifically with respect to Arcane I'll argue that a creator actually gets no bearing on whether you read Jayce and Viktor as erotic or platonic or whatever. Because they chose to tell a story about the power of love and part of that archetype is its slipperiness. Love to the point of literal cosmic singularity. Soul-bonding shit. It doesn't matter to the text whether they're having filthy lab sex in our imaginations.

Normally I wouldn't write a little thesis about it, but I adore love stories where love is hard to pin down. And this reminds me of Achilles and Patroclus. Classicists will argue forever about whether or not they were fucking, and we'll get into historical context, and Athenian traditions that post-date them, and so on. And it's a fun conversation but it's also deeply not the point. I read Achilles and Patroclus as a complicated slippery relationship where war and love and lust get their wires crossed and you've known someone so deeply for so long you can't HELP but cling to them body and soul. But what's so interesting is that clinging body and soul can be any combination of sexual/erotic/platonic/worship/etc. I read them quite erotically but what matters to me in the end isn't whether they're fucking it's how wholly and wildly they loved each other. What matters isn't the taxonomy; it's that when Patroclus died, Achilles dragged Hector's mangled corpse behind his chariot in a fit of grief and feral rage.

Anyway I feel very normal about this.

[chaggie4ever]

Ok I can’t help it - I gotta talk spoilers/leaks. Don’t worry I’ll keep it to very clearly marked posts and make it so you have to expand to see anything. Please lmk if I’m missing anything 🥰😘🫡 (and I will delete any lectures - I’m desperate for content and while I don’t support the guy who did this, I’m still gonna eat cause I’m starving XD also they caught him and jailed and fined 100k 🍻)

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

Official:

- Creator Viv summarized season 3 as “revelations” and season 4 as “family” and likes season 3 the most, alluding to this being where more Lilith is revealed

- We get a sexy pop Chaggie song

- Vaggie’s bow “suits her” per her voice actress - maybe backstory?

- Charlie will question her worldview and work on her powers

- More Vox as main antagonist

-Nifty gets a fast paced song

-Baxter finally appears - replaced by sir Pentious in final story edits, he’s basically a fishy mad scientist who wants to study redemption - there’s an official clip a few seconds long but also longer leaked where Charlie cannot stop calling him Pentious

-Erika (VA) accidentally said that Charlie would be talking to Lilith at some point

Leaked:

- Lute is losing her shit and hallucinating Adam with a super badass solo (see TikTok Gravity) - she alludes to killing Vaggie and I’m fucking terrified but the song is fire 🔥

- Lute has a gold arm prosthetic that seems fully functional; can Vaggie have an eye please? 🙏

- Lute is very openly arguing in court against Sera and Abel and there’s a hilarious exchange when she learns she’s not head exorcist + she begs Sera more after the trial too

- Abel is the leader of the exorcists even though Adam didn’t like him - he’s a pacifist and either dating or besties with St Peter

- Pentious was a coward who watched a Jack the Ripper-esque character kill women in the 1800s and didn’t report it - he redeemed himself by trying to save his friends (this whole scene is on TikTok with Sera and Pentious crying and Lute being a brat)

- Pentious wants to go back to hell with his friends and Emily tries to get him happy there and makes heavenly egg bois for him (song is on TikTok and the worst of those released - kinda welcome to heaven like in quality… least favorite so far)

- The Sailor moon esque character referred to in some interviews is the speaker of god, who resembles Stolas and his family… leaving many to speculate if they are fallen angels

- Alastor was a serial killer who promised a mysterious task for Rosie, who owns his soul until he completes it - he was mistaken for a deer and shot but became the most powerful sinner in hell in return - they have a super catchy cute 1920s duet (also on TikTok - mimzy cameo on top of his piano in his flashback too)

- Awesome banter with Lucifer and Alastor (Cheri and Angel watching and Angel tells Lucifer he should have moved in sooner)

- Vees giving hotel bad press and somehow potentially involved Charlie hitting Velvete and harping on how she didn’t “closed fist hit” her while Vaggie tries to get her to let it go and stay at the hotel + cute I love you exchange but also more steamrolling by Charlie not listening to her GF…

- there’s official art of Alastor restrained and I’ve heard things about Vox threatening to rape him but I’ve not found this myself and heard it was a fake Russian hack? Idk

- pilot from 2019 is NOT cannon, with Charlie meeting Killjoy for the first time and reaffirming that she is bisexual (lots of homophobia) + she has nifty with her!

Ok what am I missing? I didn’t find anything for husk and only those single scenes for Angel, Lucifer, and Vaggie. I’ve heard it was mostly the first two episodes but I hope these three don’t get neglected and it’s just that the first 2 eps are more Heaven/Lute/Alastor focused

[gjsxj0]

the dragon prince's last season was below mediocre, the finale was terrible and the major reveal was the worst thing i have ever witnessed. this post is long and strongly worded and typed up at midnight.

harrow being in pip was predicted since s1. everyone knew because they laid it out clear as day. it was intentionally set up and like all good bits of writing, the audience sees it and knows what is coming up.

why 6+ years into tdp's lifecycle was it made canon. after years of not answering it or just giving "half truths" (aaravos much?) all to just say "screw the audience" and make it confirmed in a scene that has its own issues and it was AFTER A TWO YEAR TIME SKIP.

not only that, it ruins harrow's and viren's relationship to such a degree i can only assume the creators just hated these two in the end. harrow being in pip implies:

viren intentionally did it without harrow's consent, costing harrow his autonomy whilst also making viren never actually caring about harrow in the end (which the canon does not support, i have eyes and reading comprehension). this begs the question: HOW COULD VIREN NOT HAVE UNFINISHED BUSINESS aka show up in the inbetween? harrow was the one relationship he cherished and then they pull this stunt and said "actually no viren is terrible even tho he DIED saving a kingdom that never deserved him."

viren did it and harrow WANTED it to happen which makes harrow look even WORSE than he was already set up to be. a king who struggles with the responsibilities and weight of his crown and is tired of these issues that he... kind of lets happen. it was interesting to see where it goes but wow this makes harrow an asshole if he just flew out of that window and did NOT come back to katolis for over 2 years.

viren... didn't?? do it??? which doesn't make sense because this show never has a mage unless its callum or its for plot convenience (and they die or are a one off character) and we are just back at square one. if they go this route, i will have to applaud the audacity for them thinking their audience is really that stupid.

not to mention the whole "black person spends a good chunk of time in an animal form" trope, which they should have just dealt with early on.

pip theory being canon in a two year time skip... let's pretend i accept this for a second:

they said arc 3 would be another time skip. 7-12 years possible. what the fuck. so harrow is never coming back (he said fuck katolis or he is DEAD EITHER WAY) or its gonna be relegated to a graphic novel or book (if they even complete the draft in time for publication YEAH WE KNOW WHY BOOK 3 NEVER HAPPENED). and even then. the original 2 year time skip. there is not going to be any actual explanation for it just like there was no good reason for rayla to leave callum bc there will be nothing to show for it.

they really couldn't just let this one theory never get addressed. it could have been a poorly done red herring but no. this is a massive fuck you to everyone that watched the show since day 1.

that interview on cartoon universe's youtube page where they just admitted they were tired of being asked where harrow was for so long they just did it. it was intentional and it was to spit in our faces.

their relationship means barely anything now, its too late in the story for them to fix this NOT LIKE THIS SHOW COMMITS TO ANYTHING ANYWAY and i hope aaron ehasz and justin richmond never write another cartoon again.

[hope-you-brought-kneepads-bitch]

Agatha all along spoilers

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Okay okay sure

First off! I’ve seen people on Twitter already going mad but I think I need people to understand, this show was never targeted at a specific lesbian ending, yes! Very queer show and of course lots of Agathario but Rio is death, I always thought a kiss of death would happen because otherwise we’re being silly with ourselves it’s not queer baiting and it’s not helpful to be mad because marvel wont want to do things like this again if we start getting angry, the cast and crew were so proud of this and we should be too (we can vent a little and I plan too but I won’t tag actors or creators because I’m not weird)

But! I will say dying for Billy (technically I know she did because of Nicky because Billy got into her mind like a loser and a bitch and she wanted to redeem herself or whatever) is a bit strange I guess I get people saying ‘oh well of course lesbians get screwed over’ but you know for a marvel show to have actual canon lesbians who are kissing, yeah it’s scraping a barrel but if it’s received well I have no doubt they’ll do it again, I mean in the comics agatha gets resurrected and who’s to say that won’t happen? Anyway I’m ranting and yeah a little sad about the ending because it does feel like the killing eve ending but! Let’s get into the two episodes

Alice! My love, my baby I’m so sorry! Rio was right you died doing your job as a protection witch but it still hurts! I hope the afterlife is good to you and treats you well I love you 🥰

Jen! My beloved you did it! You got your powers back, I can’t believe agatha bound her that’s so funny and messed up! God agatha were you that low on cash???

“He’s an abomination” Damn right Rio get him!

Also the change in agatha a little about not wanting to see Rio when she died like yeah it’s a quick change but I think it’s Agatha putting her shields back up, she does want Rio back she definitely does but also it’s like ‘oh actually I’m putting my guard back up because I’m scared and you did something that hurt me’ (she is my scar!)

Rio being pissed off that agatha doesn’t want her and that she loves it when she’s like this unfortunately ladies this foreplay went a little too far and got ruined by a man (fucking typical) them basically flirting through their whole fight was great too

Also going back to episode 1 where Rio said ‘so take my power’ and Agatha replied ‘cute, but you know that would kill me’ BECAUSE SHE HAD TO KISS HER TO TAKE HER POWER! Did I get it right? Pretty sure I did so I declare that in their private moments agatha never kissed Rio but just started at her neck so not to accidentally kill herself during sex (dramatic lesbians)

Also in ep 4 when Agatha tries kissing Rio but then Rio stops her, I have a depressing feeling that Agatha was so upset at being reminded of what happened to her son she was willing to take the kiss of death I guess? Or maybe Rio can control stuff like that and kiss Agatha fine if she holds her power in but thinking she’s death I think it’s the first one

Rio cutting the road and stepping through I’m not gonna lie I was shocked! I gasped guys and I don’t do that often like obviously they knew was fake but I didn’t I love just thinking about Rio stepping in and out of the road but also where is the ‘road’? Is it just Agatha’s house? Have they been walking around in circles this whole time, god the citizens of westview may need to start looking for other places to live

The Salem era! I loved it (I do want more backstory but I think we’ll get some interviews explaining it so that’ll be fun) ‘born from scratch’ beautiful line Rio turning up I was like ‘oh daddy’s here to help with the birth’ then I quickly remembered she’s death and agatha begging not to take him and then I realised daddy isn’t here to stay for good reasons (like most dads)

Little Nicky was adorable! Such a cute kid and helping his mother trick witches? Putting him to work agatha, I like it! Start them early I say

Also they created the balled! So cute and heartbreaking since Agatha had to sing it all the time when killing these witches constantly being reminded of her son

Also her killing everyday then the one night she doesn’t rio takes their son??? God Rio give her a fucking day don’t you have like billions of other souls to take?? Just walk very slowly 🙄

Billy carrying the trauma of killing three (that’s right I count Sharon too!) witches because he created the road makes the ending worth it actually (not by much) because he has to suffer the consequences and deal with ghost agatha, get recked!

Rio and Agatha will definitely reunite (source: Me) Rio says she hates ghosts but only because she’s death and ghosts probably don’t want to move on, be a bit like trying to round up cats. HER AND AGATHA CAN FINALLY WALK TOGETHER FOR ALL ETERNITY

Anyway I have work in an hour and I’ve been up since 4 it’s now 6 and I’ve slept about 3 hours soooo if this is all ramblings I’ll try to add things later but yeah I loved the last two episodes yeah we could’ve gotten a bit more Agathario but I truly think they didn’t anticipate the overwhelming reception for them (Kathryn and Aubrey did though definitely)

I’m up for any discussion too I love talking about this stuff but works been hectic recently hence why I’m watching the episodes before work because after I’m just knackered but I’m off this weekend so I can reply properly to people

[adayladoorwalt]

This is a bit of a rant. Something that feels so wrong to me on twitter is the fact that people genuinely think that the end of the dsmp meant the end of anything related to the series, when the dsmp ended people left because of their own personal issues and feelings. The fans moved on and then the stories that could have happened were lost. Think about the stories that because of the fandom’s response to even seeing dsmp, were lost. I think back to how when Ponk expressed interest in doing projects on the dsmp, her fans fucking freaked, thusly they stopped any mention of a new dsmp project.

The DSMP isn’t lost media because of lost streams or lack of content, it’s lost media because the streamers never came back to something that they enjoyed doing.

I think of the creators who actually credit their time in the dsmp as a way to grow their audience and now don’t mention it because it’s not a project that is still happening. I think of Eret just occasionally talking about the fun they had on the server, what their plans for their story and them actually acknowledge the existence of their time on the dsmp. Fundy had an interview a few months back and he fully acknowledged that he used clickbait to make it in the mcyt bubble. There are former dsmp creators who acknowledge, express admiration for being on the project and then leave it be. They are few and far between.

More and more I see creators who were in the space are stupidly trying to get the high of 2020-2022. Trying to get to those extreme heights and now they figure that dissing the dsmp as it’s no longer ‘cool’ and ‘popular’ to have any positive thoughts on it. Philza in particular is the one that comes to mind with the ‘i’d rather gauge my eyes out then ever go back the dsmp’ comment which he later went back on like ‘oh I actually had a good time’. I never have appreciated any of the comments considering my favorite person from the dsmp often talked about how much he enjoyed playing on it. How he died not thinking he wouldn’t be able to finish his storyline but he did. The storyline he started became buried in the sands of the dsmp.

Techno’s legacy as a member of the dsmp is one that had a great impact on so many people who now don’t even have that. The creators who decided clout was worth more than being able to be able to communicate with each other.

Complain all you want about Dream’s ‘lack of communication’ but it seems now knowing about the fuck show that has been about any fucking drama that has happened in the past year, everyone of these fuckers can’t fucking communicate.

Now creator want come back pretending to have enjoyed the project and now their fans are being annoying about how much they thought it ‘could have been so much better if x,y,z’ and really it’s their creator’s fault. It’s their own fault for not just realizing that they may have not actually enjoyed the dsmp. The fans are the reason the dsmp was dead. Because to dteam+munchymc fans we desperately miss the dsmp. Techno fans do too. The fans of the dsmp are not the ones that are coming back, it’s the ones that stayed.

I just am having so many issues with the current ‘dsmp discourse’ and it stems from idiots being idiots.

[trubbishrubbish]

New Raincode interview confirms something that I was not surprised to see.

Highlighted part was translated with DeepL.

Basically, Kodaka did not intend for Halara to be non-binary or be a positive LGBT rep.

I'm not surprised this is the case becuase Kodaka is still a cis guy and he really did not take to heart all the criticisms people had about Danganronpa when he made Rain Code. A lot of his bad writing choices are still in Rain Code like perverted jokes involving minors and racist character designs, of course when it comes to writing about gender, Kodaka would not write with a progressive mindset.

That said, Halara is still sending a social message, despite Kodaka not wanting it to be that way. Everyone in game respects Halara's gender. they never refer to them with he/she pronouns and there is never a point where they reveal that Halara was lying and they are actually a man/women.

Even when Shinigami, who calls Halara, "Hellara," pokes fun at if Halara is a man or a women, still respects their gender and pronouns

When Yuma is wondering about Halara's gender, he doesn't ask them because he thinks it would rude to suddenly spring this question up on them.

All this is sending the message that even if you question a person's gender when it isn't clearly defined as "male" or "female" you should still respect their identity no matter what as it's the polite thing to do.

And Halara's gender being unspecified means it can be anything from non-binary or agender or even a gender Halara themselves made to suit them.

It's funny how Kodaka can't write a good LGBT character on purpose, it has to be by accident. He accidently wrote Halara to be a positive nb rep.

So while referring to Halara as non-binary may technically be against the creators intention... Who fucking cares, the creator can't force people think about the characters he made in same way he does. They are going to think about characters in the most fun and LGBT positive way.

Sometimes craft even better versions of the character that the creator did not.

Link to the full interview:

[foxes-that-run]

The Last Time

Taylor's least popular duet has a special place in Haylor history. I am quite fond of it, like many I think of it as Exile's past self. The theme, overlaid deep male vocals with Taylors and repetition is very similar between them. I love this Taylors version visual, the flame continues to go back and forth, before faltering and it never truely goes out, even when it is embers before it, (or the screen? we don't know) fades to black.

When it was written

The hidden message in the Red album booklet for “The Last Time” was “LA on your break.” there's details of Harry's trip to LA 20 May 2012 then in the EHC post. The Haylor lore comes in when Jacknife Lee said to Hot Press (x) 23 MAY 18 that Harry and Taylor were together in May 2012, when they wrote Something Great, The Last Time and Gary did backing vocals on Everything Has Changed.

“We met through Gary’s friendship with Ed Sheeran,” he recalls. “Taylor was a fan of Ed’s. They were on tour I think. Taylor came to Topanga. Body guards, big black car. We wrote a song in a couple of hours and sang it sitting on the sofa. She had a handheld microphone. Then we had pasta for dinner and hung around with my kids.“She left and I finished the song off. Owen Pallett [Arcade Fire/Final Fantasy] did some strings very quickly. Went to see her live a couple of times with my daughters who were fans of hers then. Now they like Snail Mail and Tyler the Creator.“It was out of my field of expertise and interest, but I was intrigued and my girls were thrilled. Taylor was nice and very professional. She knew what she wanted and there was no fucking about. She was seeing Harry Styles at the time, so he came to Topanga on her recommendation. She wrote a few songs with him, and it was the same thing – quick. But this time it was more directed by the management and label. They were after something specific. I wanted more acoustic and gentle, almost Americana, and they wanted bombast. They got what they wanted, and that was the extent of my foray into teen-pop territory. It was fun.”

Gary Lightbody talked about The last time also including that he met when they recorded Everything Has Changed (20 May 2012) and The Last Time was a later writing session, but soon after as in June Red was complete in and Harry left for tour.

In an NPR interview shortly after Red’s release, Taylor explained that “The Last Time” was inspired by an experience with an “unreliable guy” who kept leaving and coming back, it sounds so similar to Treacherous and Come Back.. Be Here:

“There’s a guy on his knees… outside of a door. And on the other side of the door is his girlfriend, who he keeps on leaving — and he keeps coming back to her, but then he leaves again. He’s saying, ‘This is the last time I’m going to do this to you.’ And she’s saying, ‘This is the last time I’m asking you this: Don’t do this again.’… It’s a really fragile emotion you’re dealing with when you want to love someone, but you don’t know if it’s smart

The title is also the name of a Rolling Stones song about Mick coldly telling a girl it is the last time. I wonder how much Harry's love of the Stones played into the title.

Lyrics

Verse 1 (Gary)

Find myself at your door / Just like all those times before / I'm not sure how I got there / All roads, they lead me here

This opening sets a tone of inevitability. Taylor is repeating a cycle against their better judgment. “All roads” implies that no matter what choices he makes, he ends up here—at her door. Door is also a Haylor theme and in visuals too

Verse 2 (Gary)

I imagine you are home / In your room, all alone / And you open your eyes into mine / And everything feels better

There’s a longing here—a romanticized version of the reunion. He imagines her still waiting, and the connection is so deep that it brings comfort, even if it's fleeting. Home being an important Haylor theme

Pre-Chorus (Gary)

And right before your eyes / I'm breaking / No past, no reasons why / Just you and me

Here, he’s emotionally exposed. There’s a desire to push aside the history, the explanations, and just focus on this raw, immediate moment between them.

Chorus (Both)

This is the last time I'm asking you this / Put my name at the top of your list / This is the last time I'm asking you why / You break my heart in the blink of an eye

The repeated “last time” is both a warning and a plea. The speaker is desperate to be chosen, prioritized, but it’s tinged with the pain of knowing they probably won’t be. The heartbreak is recurring, and devastating. Something Great, written with Gary and Jacknife at the same time also talks to this theme, while in The Last Time the male is flakey in Something Great it doesn't work out - the theme is the same though.

Verse 3 (Taylor)

You find yourself at my door / Just like all those times before / You wear your best apology / But I was there to watch you leave

Now the roles reverse. Taylor gives voice to the one who's been left behind over and over. She’s skeptical, guarded. The apology feels rehearsed, like part of a tired cycle she’s already lived through.

Verse 4 (Taylor)

And all the times I let you in / Just for you to go again / Disappear when you come back / Everything is better

She admits to complicity—she keeps letting him back. There’s a toxic comfort in the familiarity, but also a resignation. It gets better when he returns, but it never lasts. This reminds me of the lyric video visual.

Pre-Chorus (Taylor)

And right before your eyes / I'm aching / Run fast, nowhere to hide / Just you and me

She echoes his earlier vulnerability. Both are in pain. She’s hurting but cornered emotionally—no escape, just the two of them repeating the same emotional spiral. This also reminds me of Run, a Red Vault track.

Bridge (Both)

This is the last time you tell me I've got it wrong / This is the last time I say it's been you all along / This is the last time I let you in my door / This is the last time, I won't hurt you anymore

The bridge is an emotional reckoning. They are both to blame, deep-rooted love, and a shared desire to break the cycle. This is also which reflects the Rolling Stones The Last Time the most remincinet of the theme, especially in Boyfriends:

You love a fool who knows just how to get under your skin You, you, you still open the door

[nerdby]

Okay, so the bank robbery episode of Daredevil Born Again.....I feel like that was the first bad episode I've seen so far in the series. I know people are upset because Foggy is dead, but y'all have got to remember that if you yell at Marvel loud enough they will bring a character back in some form or another. And that's because they care about what their fans have to say and also because comic books were not always a multi-billion dollar industry. Marvel almost went bankrupt in the 90s, remember?

The only reason why they didn't is because the former chairman of Marvel Comics Ike Perlmutter sold off film rights of Marvel properties. That's how Fox ended up with X-Men, Hulk ended up with Universal, and Sony got Spiderman. Fox did not invent X-Men. Look it the fuck up -- please, I am begging you. Cause every time some idiot says Fox invented X-Men even though there are behind the scenes interviews with STAN FUCKING LEE on the DVDs -- the creator of the X-Men and one of the moguls of the Marvelverse itself -- I die a little inside.

Marvel and DC -- cause they do this too by the way -- had no choice but to resurrect dead characters way back in the 1960s before the MCU had been even thought of. Because people stop buying books when their favorite characters die, and you cannot print the books without a roof over your fucking head. It's not so much a capitalistic ploy as much as it is a way to AVOID HOMELESSNESS. Because making comics like any career in the arts doesn't pay well, and comic book writers and artists get very little respect for their work because of asshole art snobs and book snobs who think comics are beneath them.

So I'm not upset that Foggy Nelson is dead because I know that he will be back. We will see him in a dream sequence or in a flashback or some random cameo somewhere, but he will be back. That being said, the bank robbery episode felt completely out of place in the Born Again series. It's meant to be a pointless filler fluff episode and that's exactly what it is in the worst way possible. There's very little tying it back to the central plot of Mayor Fisk and the serial killer Muse.

And I can't help but wonder if that episode was salvaged from the original script that got scrapped and rewritten. Cause, from my understanding, that original script was a water downed and more family friendly version of Daredevil. That's basically what that was.

I also don't love how they are making Kamala Khan and the female superheroes the new face of family friendly Marvel. Like that's insulting and misogynistic on multiple levels because it implies that women and girls not only don't like action and gore but that we are also incapable of watching it. So thank you, Moms 4 Liberty and helicopter parents everywhere, for perpetuating that stereotype.