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thunderheadfred · 3 years

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🦅Hawks HC’s🦅

This is SO unnecessarily long. Some NSFW. Minors do not interact.

- - - - -

General

Has zero social life or hobbies outside of work. He knows it’s unhealthy, but like, who has the time?? Oh? Lots of people do?? Haha what are healthy work/home boundaries? He desperately wants to retire and always talks about a world without heroes, but the truth is he would have no idea what to do with himself if he got his way. Take him to a park at midnight and watch him turn into a giant repressed child on a swing. He’ll do a standing-360 and it will be terrifying.

Listens to music way too loud in his headphones to drown out wind noise. Probably half deaf at this point. His musical taste is wild; listening history all over the fucking place. Algorithms have no idea what to do with him.

That visor? It’s prescription. Wow is he far-sighted. He wears glasses. He’s not blind without them (rather the opposite) but they help him see things directly in front of him without massive eye strain. Yeah, he looks really hot in glasses.

Prefers communicating via text. Sometimes it’s a lot of dumb memes, but mostly it’s sincere. He can say what he means when he doesn’t have to put on a public front.

Smokes like a chimney. Self medicates with stimulants. Coffee, tobacco, sugar. Fidgety, likes things in his mouth or hands. Gnashes on toothpicks and popsicle sticks. He really should go back to therapy, huh? His teeth are sparkling white for the cameras but his breath could use some work. Chews gum a lot to compensate, and always does it really loudly with a big shit-eating grin.

Impatient as fuuuuuck. Rude about it. If you take too long doing anything, you’re going to hear a foot tapping. He’ll smile and laugh it off, never ever directly criticize you about it. But lord, the dramatic sighs. He WILL nudge you out of the way and take over in order to finish a task faster, and it’s truly fucking annoying.

LOVES food. Has the metabolism of an actual bird. Will seize upon any excuse to eat. No need to be self-conscious about eating in front of him; he wants you to enjoy it. Steals bites from you and talks with his mouth full. Prefers street food and take-out, usually eats while walking or flying. Sit-down restaurants are an invitation for gawkers.

He’s one of those celebrities that looks way taller on TV. In real life, he’s small and compact. So you’re surprised the first time you see him in person. He has a big head. Literally.

If you’re taller or bigger than him, he does Not Care. He treats everyone like they’re four feet tall, even Endeavor. Everything you do is cute. If you’re actually short, he’s going to carry you around all the time, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Collects big chunky overpriced watches. All the better to tell you you’re late.

Half his clothes are brand fucking new. Sometimes he forgets to take off the tags. (Don’t look at the prices, do NOT) He never seems to wear the same thing twice. He also never seems to go shopping. Brands just give him stuff, and he shrugs and goes “yeah okay.”

The other half of his clothes are old, faded, and patched up. Every item he acquires for himself has deep sentimental value. If you tell him to throw away that nasty ten-year-old pair of frayed cargo pants, be prepared to find out how wrong and evil you are for even suggesting it.

He doesn’t snore; he coos. Loudly. Like a fucking pigeon trapped in a megaphone.

- - - - -

Dating

Gift-giving is his love language. Bringing your favorite snacks. Leaving novelty magnets on your fridge. He found a copy of that book/game/movie you mentioned like a month ago, don’t you remember? If he has to go out of town on a job, he’ll bring back the ugliest possible souvenir, just to annoy you.

He likes gifting jewelry especially. Covering you in shiny baubles, little golden things. Not expensive, but unusual. Antiques or handmade, even bizarre vending machine crap. Gets really handsy if you wear or show off his gifts.

Since you’re the first person who has given him The Feels, if you are resistant to his advances (like, say, because he’s way too famous and you’re terrified he’s gonna break your heart) he’s going to go fucking nuts trying to woo you. Doesn’t have a single patient bone in his body but will wait as long as it takes for you to come around. He’ll act like he’s cool with just being friends at first, just hanging out, haha. Oh you’re busy today? That’s cool. Inside he’s shrieking like a tea kettle. Go ahead, make him wait.

Don’t bother giving him a key to your place. He’s coming in through the bedroom window or patio door. Just put out a damn welcome mat on your balcony... or a bird feeder.

A bit of a voyeur. He likes to watch you do your normal routine without interruption. He can see from miles away so if you’ve got your lights on at night, he’ll creep for a while before he comes in. It comforts him immensely, seeing a little slice of the world that isn’t constantly in need of saving.

Is super talkative and funny but a terrible communicator. Makes more jokes the worse he feels. Will almost never tell you what he needs. Most of the time, he doesn’t even know. You will learn to read between the lines and gradually notice his tiny unconscious cries for help. Back rubs make him emotional.

He shows up at your place at the weirdest times. All hours. You’re never ready. At first it was infuriating, because you wanted to look your best and have time to prepare, but you figure out pretty quickly that seeing you in your natural state is his favorite thing. He never gets to be around normal people, doing normal things. A boring, lazy afternoon is his idea of paradise.

He’ll pick through your things and ask a world of invasive questions. A medicine cabinet raider. He wants to know every fucking tiny thing about you, live vicariously through you.

He actually lives in a top floor penthouse. Because I mean, where else? Never spends any time there; mostly he seems to roost on the balcony. He has used the front door maybe once. He much prefers your place, and will only take you back to his after months of dating. It’ll take like, an entire emergency. You’ll end up in his bed by mistake.

Because when you finally come over, he’s embarrassed. Its sparse. White. Things in boxes. A new furniture smell. Like he’s not done moving in, though he’s lived there for years. He wants you to move in So Bad but doesn’t want to be pushy. If you don’t start leaving your stuff there, he’ll steal things from your apartment. Where the hell is your favorite t-shirt? Or that pillowcase you like? Dammit Keigo.

He’s a decent cook, a habit he made himself pick up because he thought it might make him feel more normal. It... didn’t. He never actually cooks until you give him an excuse. He’ll bring you breakfast in bed and watch you eat every bite with big hungry eyes.

He’s got a separate wardrobe for his hero costume and all his feathers. Yeah. His feathers. Because he can detach and control his feathers at will, when he’s alone at home he kind of just... shucks off his wings. The first time you see him do it, your eyes fall out of your head. He walks around in a tee shirt and boxers with these ugly little stumps covered in brownish, blood-red down. It actually looks kind of gnarly, like he got mauled by a bear.

He’s never dated until you. No one has ever been in his apartment until you. No one has called him Keigo until you. He has some bigass intimacy issues. Because. Y’know. The trauma. But god, he wants you in his life so bad, even if he has no idea how to make time for your relationship.

He’ll want to keep you to himself for a while. Once you go public he’s going to have an arm around your shoulders at all times. Publicly Displays his Affection way more than is socially acceptable in Japan, and gives precisely -100,000 fucks.

His fans either love you or hate you. There is no in between. He will immediately take your phone and threaten to drop it from a great height if he catches you reading shitty gossip about the two of you. Does NOT care about his public image anymore, doesn’t want YOU to care about it either. He’s gonna retire soon anyway, remember? That’s a lie.

Being a charming motherfucker is the core of his public persona, so you will get jealous. A lot. He will flirt shamelessly without realizing it. He will get photographed in compromising positions with gorgeous people.

Once you accept that he’s basically an actor 80% of the time and that Hawks and Keigo are separate identities, you’ll both feel better. When he comes home (to YOU) and falls over exhausted and stops being Hawks(tm), when he scratches his ass or burps in front of you, when he yells to you from the bathroom, when he groans childishly about his shitty day while laying face-down in your lap, you’ll know you have nothing to worry about. Keigo is all yours.

Boundaries? Never heard of ‘em. He’s either a million lightyears away or he’s glued to your hip. The whiplash is astounding.

Absolutely says “I love you” wayyyyyy to soon. It thrills you but scares you off at the same time, because there’s no way Hawks - The Hawks - can actually mean it, right? (He does)

Rings? Nah. When things get serious, he will make a necklace out of a feather for you, and if you ever take it off, you better be asleep or in the shower. Even then you’re on thin fuckin ice. If you’re not wearing it he knows. He’s never mean about making you put it back on, it just makes him nervous if he can’t feel your heartbeat.

- - - - -

SPICY CHICKEN NUGGETS

High sex drive. Horny like 25/7. Probably a symptom of having way too much pent up stress.

Often takes care of it himself when he doesn’t have the emotional resources for anyone else, even his S.O. Figures you don’t want him coming on to you as often as he would like to, but he’s too stupid to talk to you about it first. Morning masturbator.

Yes he’s fucked around a lot but he’s not exactly a playboy either. People have always thrown themselves at him, and before he met you he let them do it. Especially when out of town and staying in a hotel. Whatever happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, etc.

He’d never be unfaithful to you though; his loyalty and dedication are frankly a little unsettling. Sometimes you feel like the only thing in his life other than hero work. Teach this man to knit. Make him join a book club. Christ. Anything.

Does in fact have seasonal mating patterns and it’s super embarrassing.

An underwear-sniffing perv. He’ll definitely hump your pillow.

Gets a sick thrill out of breaking in and startling you. Coming up behind you in the dark, sneaking into your bed. It’s probably his worst habit, and even he hates that he does it. If you get better at detecting him he’ll be so proud. Land a slap on him and he’ll be a horny mess.

Dog-whistles at you. Often from rooftops, and you have no idea where he is but you know he’s leering.

He will call you a lot of really stupid pet names. He likes the way you blush when he finds a newer, stupider one. Calls you angel when he’s really far gone.

Likes to scratch you with his stubble until your skin turns raw and sensitive. If it annoys you or hurts a little? Even better. Making you squirm is his new favorite thing. Especially when going down on you. Your inner thighs are always exfoliated.

His cock is average in every respect. This is not a bad thing. He knows how to please you with every totally normal inch of that cock. He has some kind of homing beacon installed on your sensitive spots.

Goes absolutely insane for blowjobs. Any time, any place.

Likes to bend you around in all kinds of positions with an assist from his feathers to hold up an ankle here, an arm there. Get used to floating mid-coitus. It just seems to happen.

Spanky.

His number one priority is making you feel adored and at home in his bed. Ohhhhh he likes to make you smile. But if you encourage him to get pushy and dominant with you, you will have a good, good time.

He’s switchy, and will lose his shit if you initiate or take control. Again, he’s always horny for you, because he can finally let go. Breathe in his direction and he’s hard.

Doesn’t moan much, but Babe, he’s a dirty talker. He’s not smooth or deliberate about it, it’s more like he can’t fucking believe you let him do whatever he wants to you. You like that huh? Like he’s in stages of shock. He’s singing your praises to high Heaven and muttering oh shit oh shit oh shittttttt and laugh-crying as he cums. He never talks about his feelings; he fucks about them.

After. Care. King. He loves pampering and clucking over you anyway, this is simply another excuse to do it. He knows exactly how much water you drink in a day. Can’t take care of himself for shit, but you? You’ll never have a need he won’t try to fill. What’s all that hero work for if not this? Yeah, soak it up. You deserve it.

#hawks #takami keigo #hawks headcanons #hawks x reader #hawks x y/n #hawks x you #gender neutral #smut #bnha #mha #mha headcanons #bnha headcanons #mha fanfiction #bnha x reader #mha x reader #fred writes #no idea why I’m writing these #guess I’m just in a Mood

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sarahjkl82-blog · 3 years

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Artistic Instinct Chapter 7

Header thanks to the lovely @yespolkadotkitty

Summary: Marcus Pike and OC Anushka Pierce have been selected to work on a 5 eyes (Australia, Canada, NZ, the UK and US) intelligence team to track down art forgeries as a part of taking down an international white terrorism cell. Marcus is trying to escape his broken heart, Anushka is just trying to escape what the world expects of her.

Word count: 7,150 (being succinct is for wimps)

Warnings: Language, SMUT - this is your warning, no under 18s please.

Pairing: Marcus Pike x reader (OC)

This comes with a MASSIVE THANK YOU to the lovely @yespolkadotkitty , who read, re-read, pointed out the constant flipping between tenses and gave me the confidence to try to write something!This is the first thing I have written since angsty poetry as a teenager. Apologies if it is shit!

What the artist owes the world is his work, not a model for living.

Harry Crews

Chapter 7

Waking up comes to you slowly and languidly,as if the day was kind enough to filter softly into your eyes through a vaseline focussed lens, not unlike the ones shone onto Ingrid Bergman’s face and projected through Marcus’ iPad last night. Unlike your usual routine of falling out of bed and drifting with eyes still shut tight, in the direction of the kettle to make that all important cup of tea as your alarm sounds, you have instead woken as the first light of day paints the room in soft Degas pastels. Your sleep is normally quite fitful and filled with dreams that you wish didn’t cycle through your head for the rest of the day - but today feels different. Maybe it’s because your pillow is breathing.

Hang on, your pillow is breathing.

Shit, you fell asleep on Marcus.

How fucking professional, you absolute numpty!

Somehow during the night it was no longer just a case of you leaning into his shoulder but rather that your limbs had become confusingly entangled. From what you can work out, you must have both slid down the length of the sofa as whilst your head is still nestled on his shoulder, your forehead has now edged closer to the constellation of freckles on his neck. The steady percussion of his heart cradled within the gentle rise and fall of his chest is directly pressed against yours. Not crowding you despite the precariously narrow ledge you’re both huddled on, just fitting together like the most exquisitely cut puzzle.

For fuck’s sake, woman, what have you gotten yourself into this time?

You have one of the brightest minds in art history and are renowned for solving criminal activity but right now, you have zero idea as to how you will disentangle your limbs without both you and your boss showing willing.

But do you really want to?

There’s also a part of you that just wishes you could stay here- warm, safe and snuggled deeply in his chest. Jasper had always been so bony- all sharp edges and lean whereas Marcus offers a softer and more solid warmth as his body curls languidly around yours. His sleepy strokes and unconscious squeezes send little tingles throughout your body and whilst you’re utterly certain that nothing has happened other than the sheer exhaustion of two adults completely wiping out, you don’t feel ready to shatter the illusion of there being something more.

With the freest limb that’s slung over Marcus’ back, you try to wriggle some feeling into your fingers- psyching your body up to move. In an exchange of roles from the previous day, you stroke his cheek, tucking a curl of hair behind his ear before murmuring gently in his ear,

“Hey.”

Thick eyelashes start twitching before you notice an eye opening, darting around the room before coming in to focus upon your face, “Hey,” a shy grin slowly grows on his face, “I guess I didn’t get to put the comforter on you last night.”

“What?” In utter confusion, you push the back of your head into the cushion of the sofa so that you can angle your head to look more into Marcus’ face.

“I heard your breathing getting heavier last night n’ I thought of how you covered me the night before. Kept thinking I’d manage to do the same for you but you were so soft and warm, that I must’ve drifted off soon after,” his chuckling morning voice still painted with a sleepy rasp.

Giggling and grinning broadly at Marcus’ almost sweet gesture, you gently tease, “Well look, the quilt you nearly put on me, stayed on all night! Didn’t kick it off once.”

“Listen, thanks for not making this as awkward as it should be. No, no, no, I mean it,” Marcus emphasizes emphatically, his forehead wrinkling as his eyes implore you to believe him, “Not sure there are many people, who can wake up next to their new boss after less than 48 hours together and still crack jokes at their expense.”

Finally, working out a way to partially wriggle yourself free, you manage to push yourself into an almost seated position. A small groan and a flush runs through Marcus’ cheeks. And just before he flings his arm across his face to try to obscure his expression, you catch a look of embarrassment in his eyes.

In a low, gentle voice, you try to comfort him, “Come on, you have nothing to be embarrassed about- it’s a normal reaction. I’m going to shuffle across you, if that’s ok? I think it’s the only way we can get out of this tangle without both of us ending up on our arses on the floor.”

You take the small nod from Marcus as confirmation for the manoeuvre and start to crawl over him. Aiming to lift your hips up and away from the source of his embarrassment as possible, you end up overbalancing and tumbling to the floor in a heap of awkward limbs and laughter.

“Hey, you ok?” Marcus’ sleep creased face peers over the edge of the sofa down at you.

It’s now your turn for embarrassment to flush through your very being as you lie there staring at the ceiling rose and cornicing, “Ah I can’t ever pass up an opportunity to demonstrate just how clumsy I am,” you admit thickly through your eyelashes. Perhaps your limbs hadn’t been quite as ready as you’d hoped to carry your weight as you slowly shuffle yourself into a seated position on the deliciously deep pile rug that had cushioned your fall to the floor.

“Although, I may need to ensure that these rugs are kept around me at all times as at least there are no bruises this time. I swear my body is a map of mystery bruises,” you admit as you inspect the skin under your pyjama legs, pointing out inexplicable yellowing bruises.

“Well, Andy can look into that for you around the office,” Marcus says playing along with a wink, surreptitiously enjoying the little flashes you were revealing of your body, “Shame we’ve gotta leave today. I’m beat - but it’s been fun.”

“I’m not sure I’d have ever returned if it wasn’t for your insistence,” you admit, surprised at how the pain in your throat has already lessened to a mild dull ache.

“Guess we’d better get packed up and head off to the airport then.”

You observe Marcus’ bottom lip drop into a small pout, that delicious crease in the middle jutting out as if he was a petulant child rather than a man in his mid forties.

Oh how you’d love to suck...STOP IT! HE IS YOUR FUCKING BOSS, ANUSHKA MEERA LEAH PIERCE!

With an awkward wave and a quick turn of pace to hide the heat coursing through your face, you hightail it out of his room, stubbing your toe as you yank the door open far too viciously,

“SHIT ON IT!” You loudly curse, hearing the sofa creak as Marcus’ weight lifts from it. Not wanting to stick around for his latest sweet gesture when you don’t bloody deserve it, you painfully hop into the cool anonymity of the corridor to nurse your swollen toe.

Fucking smooth, Nush. REALLY fucking smooth.

✪✪✪✪✪

SLAM!

Marcus stands there, still slightly bleary eyed and dazed after experiencing some of the worst emotional whiplash he’s ever felt. How do you go from being genuinely sweet over feeling the morning glory of someone you barely know poking you in the belly to virtually running from the room and hurting yourself in the process to supposedly go pack your suitcase? Your words and actions seem so divergent- in total opposition to one another. Almost as if your brain and being are constantly at war with each other.

In one breath, you’ll tease him mercilessly, amaze him with the depth of your knowledge and the next you’ll shut off completely as if sharing even the time of day, would destroy you. You jump away from him as if it wasn’t the coffee that burns you but his touch and then, you lean into him, snoring sweetly with your face buried into his chest. He wants to shake you and scream WHAT DO YOU WANT in the same way that Ryan Gosling does in The Notebook, but life isn’t a romantic film. Something he’s never truly accepted.

Scrunching his eyes and scratching his head, rubbing the deep crevices that littered his brow, Marcus wonders what his next move will be. Should he run after you to check your foot? Wrap you in his arms and tell you that it will all be ok? Risk you running further from him? Unsure of whether your door would even open to him, Marcus sighs deeply before taking a few steps away from the sofa and tumbling face forward towards his as yet unslept upon bed.

Get it together, Pike.

How much of your constant pestering pushed Teresa away? It’s not a cute quirk, it’s fucking needy - and you need to stop before everyone runs from you.

Burying his face into the comforter, Marcus releases a deeply frustrated growl into its thick squishy noise-absorbing softness before using the springs of the bed to flip himself onto his back. Feeling his pulse throbbing a nervous beat in his neck, he shuts his eyes. All he can see is you. He can smell the tiniest imprints of your perfume and shampoo upon his t-shirt.

You’re fucking feral, Pike.

Feeling the blood rush to his groin as images of your face, bra strap and legs dance through his head, Marcus slides a hand under the waistband of his joggers to give himself a soothing stroke. He enjoys playing with himself as much as the next man- rubbing, stroking, cupping- but right now, all he can imagine is your hand being wrapped around it. Your hand gripping his cock - your skin so fucking soft - building up a rhythmic pleasure as you stare deep into his eyes.

Oh, fuck it.

With a quick arch of his hips, Marcus pulls down his pants in one smooth motion to allow himself full access to his dick. The immense pressure building and tightening as he works the shaft developing a pleasing rhythm whilst he is thinking of you. Filling in the gaps of the parts he hasn’t yet seen of you. How when you’d drifted off last night, he’d patted your hip and realised after feeling no ridge from where the elastic should have been that you had no panties on under your pyjama bottoms. The thought of your pillowy soft, warm, wet flesh so close to his fingers had made him grimace and groan last night when he couldn’t act upon it.

Now by himself, he gives into his basest wishes. Imagining licking, biting and stroking down your body, sucking on your nipples before lifting your hips to lower you onto his dick, sinking deeper and deeper inside you, feeling your warmth and wetness encase around him. Scraping his nails lightly across his balls, up the shaft and across the tip, he throws his head back as he thrusts harder into his fist. The first wave crashes over him pumping jet after jet of cum over his belly as his back arches up away from the soft mattress, his mouth crying out your name.

Dazed. Spent. Marcus lies there for a while, his hands and belly sticky from his release. Allowing the tiredness to wash back through him, his eyes close again- torturing his brain with images of you lying back with him. Being able to stroke your hair and press kisses into your sweetly almond scented skin. Hugging you tightly to him.

Never letting go.

Oh, you are utterly fucked, Pike.

✪✪✪✪✪

Lying upon your tummy, head resting on your arms, you rest upon your bed thinking over the events of the past two days. Burning yourself, burning others, coming back to France, panic attacks, confessions and oh, finding a piece of well faked art- nothing too taxing. The exhaustion is so exquisite as it courses through your veins. There is one thing you’ve tried to exclude from your list- the Voldemort of kindness- he who shall not be named.

Marcus Fucking Pike

When you’d seen his bank card, you’d noticed the F sitting between the M for Marcus and his surname of Pike. It had momentarily tickled you to think of what the F could stand for. You totally know that with his track record for openness, he’d have told you in a heartbeat but it was more fun to wonder. For now, it will stand for Fucking as from what he’d demonstrated of himself he can be really Fucking nice, a Fucking tease about your totally non-existent snoring and Fucking hot.

Stop it, Nush.

You’ve been there, seen that, done it and got the fucking t-shirt. You do not want to go down that road again.

Rolling yourself off the bed, landing with a little more grace than you had off the sofa previously, you set to grabbing everything- throwing it all into your rucksack haphazardly. You’d underpacked, not wanting to cart a wheelie suitcase with you, leaving you with fewer clothes than you actually needed for this trip. You don’t have a clean outfit for the office today. Shit. The dress, although pretty smart for work, wouldn’t be terribly comfy on the flight back and there are some small splatters decorating it from where your coffee shot out of your mouth from laughing hard. You’ll have to head home before travelling into the office today, meaning a later night to catch up with the work you’d not complete earlier. Cursing your inability to pack well and organise your life, you throw on your dress and hope that your cardigan covers the worst of the stains.

Dragging the Tangle Teezer through the motions of pretending to tame your mop before securing it in a high ponytail, you head towards the bathroom that is situated on the adjoining wall between Marcus’ and your bedroom. The old fashioned tap handle with its smooth enamel touches spins easily between your fingers with none of the guttering, spluttering and sudden gushes of cloudy water that yours does at home as you wet your toothbrush, ready to brush your morning breath away. Buzzing fills your bathroom as you set about starting your day, your eyes dancing around the room looking at the cool tiles, the elaborate cistern on the toilet- all very fitting of a Victorian era bathroom. Not your style in the slightest, but it suited the styling of the hotel well. You hated when buildings were stripped and gutted of their original features, fitted with cookie cutter IKEA furniture. Chairs should be a little creaky, floors uneven and tables a little rickety- no perfect lines. A bit like that gorgeous missing bit of beard from Marcus’ face- perfection in imperfection.

Stop it, woman.

Spitting the foamy bubbles into the porcelain of the sink, you turn on the tap to rinse it away. Spinning the handle to the off position, you grab the cleanser that Claire, your eldest brother’s wife, had convinced you to start using and to be honest, it certainly helped the hormonal breakouts when it was that time of the month.

Tearing the cotton pad packet open, you grab two of them, squeezing a blob between them, then squishing them together so that it makes a cleanser pad sandwich. It reminds you of those potions you used to make as a child out in the garden mixing any berries, leaves and soil, or in the bath where you used all your dad’s shaving foam and your mum’s stupidly expensive creams, oils and lotions, mixing wild concoctions that would stop your brothers from coming into your bedroom or your mum rolling her eyes at your grades.

Rubbing the cool ointment in soothing circles over your skin, a strange sound seems to come through the wall. From Marcus’ side. It’s muffled but did it sound like your name, or were you imagining it? Confusion creases your forehead- why wouldn’t he just call or text if he needed you, unless he’s hurt? Deciding that the only way to put your mind at rest is to ring and make sure that he’s ok, you scroll through the names on your phone until you hit Sir Agent Marcus Pike. Hitting facetime, you gaze around the room as you wait for him to pick up. A lopsided smile on a slightly flushed face arrives on your phone, “Hey! You ok?”

“Yeah, I was just ringing to check if you were- I thought I heard you say my name when I was in the bathroom,” you gently question, noticing Marcus’ face twitch awkwardly as his eyes widen, “I was just worried that you might be bleeding out in there. Can’t really have that happen twice or people will start to think it was me that did it!”

Covering his mouth, scratching his scruff with his fingers, Marcus tries to think quickly, “Urm, I was… just trying to um get packed up and I stubbed my toe. You probably heard a pained grunt- sorry,” Marcus shakes his head, flaming cheeks giving away his lie.

“Oh we’re a matching pair, now!” you giggle watching Marcus’ uncomfortable twitching and the way he keeps running his hand through his hair, not entirely convinced by his story but glad it isn’t anything more serious.

“Anyway,” you announce wanting to move the conversation along, “I’ve booked us a taxi to the airport- you’ve got about twenty minutes until it arrives.”

A genuine smile creeps across his face- his eyes creasing into half crescents, “Thanks Nush. Hadn’t actually considered how we’d get there. I promise I am capable of running this team.”

“No worries, Marcus. See you down in reception?” that delicious smile and a slight nod greets your question before a quick goodbye on both sides.

He bloody hadn’t stubbed his toe but what the fuck had he been doing? Eyes widening as a realisation crosses your mind.

He hadn’t, had he?

Giggling away to yourself at the very thought, you finish grabbing your things before flicking the switch on the kettle and opening those beautiful French doors so their gauzy curtains float like ribbons in the slight breeze. One more coffee on that glorious balcony before you head back to London. So that’s two major developments you have gained in regards to work- one faked picture and that Marcus Pike is a shit liar.

✪✪✪✪✪

The journey back to the UK had been pretty uneventful other than Marcus trying to take your bag from you whenever possible. A sweet gesture but entirely unnecessary when it is literally a rucksack with five light items inside and you are more than capable of carrying it unless he was secretly worried that you’d injure someone else by swinging around too quickly or something. In the end, it was just easier for him to hold it rather than bickering like an old married couple in the middle of Stansted airport.

“Just gimme it, Nush. You can concentrate on working out where on Earth I’ve parked my car- this is the info I’ve got from the email ticket,” Marcus pointedly says, passing you his phone screen.

“You don’t have to give me a lift. I have to go home first as I didn’t pack enough clothes to cover me for today too,” you own up, “You get yourself to work and I’ll meet you there in a couple of hours. I promise I’ll work late tonight to make up for it.”

Marcus shakes his head, “You hardly strike me as someone who does half a job. You’re in Blackheath too, aren’t you? To be honest, I could do with grabbing a few bits from home before going back into town, so it won’t be going out of my way.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want to take any more of your time than necessary- I know that I’m not the easiest person to be around and you’ve had to pretty much live with me for the past twenty-four hours,” you check noticing Marcus’ wince when you mention your difficult personality, “Ooof that bad huh?”

“You should stop talking about yourself in that way, Nush,” he gently soothes, lifting your chin with his thumb so that he can pick your eyes up from where they have fallen to the floor, “From what I’ve learnt about you in the past couple of days, you are an incredibly intelligent, occasionally clumsy but warm human. It has been a pleasure to have this opportunity to get to know you better and get to see the level of your skills so early on.”

Shifting uncomfortably in your coffee stained clothes, a smile crossing his face as he adds, “Can’t take a compliment can you? Ah well, that’ll have to be in your performance management plan- something for you to work on.”

“Ah hah! I’ve worked it out- your car is in the third bay, second row in Green Zone,” you triumphantly cackle.

“Lead the way, Nush. Let’s head home.”

✪✪✪✪✪

Roughly forty-five minutes later, you are kicking the base plate of your door to get the damp to release its powerful grip. Realistically, you had no need for a lock as the fluid retention of the wood would stop the most committed burglar in their tracks and unless you angled the kick just right, ah that’s it- home. You lean over the edge of the walkway to wave at Marcus, who is waiting below for a signal that you were in. He flashes his lights in acknowledgement of your gesture before smoothly reversing from where he has pulled in, watching his car disappearing from your estate, there is a tiny ache but you try to push it away as realistically, it is utterly ridiculous. You’re going to be seeing him in an hour for a lift into work.

After a scorching shower, a squirt of perfume and donning a pretty wrap dress with brightly coloured tights and your trusty cherry red Docs, you’re ready. Lying upon the sofa with your head upon a cushion, your knees bent and feet up on the arm rest, you flick through the various emails and messages that have slowly trickled in over the course of the morning. A sharp rap at the door, shakes you out of work mode.

“Hang on,” you yell through the door giving it the special shake and wiggle before muttering a prayer to the door gods to open first time, “Sorry, it’s the damn damp!”

A very smart, besuited, booted and bespectacled Marcus has a look of total alarm, “I’d say to get that checked but I’m guessing you already have?”

“Oh multiple times of pestering my landlord- apparently it’s on a list. Has been for at least three years,” you answer irritatedly, “Anyway, it’s my best security feature- no one can get in or out.”

“I didn’t realise you wore glasses. They look good on you,” you admire the black frames enjoying the flush being brought to Marcus’ cheeks before teasingly adding, “Ohhh, now who can’t take a compliment!”

“Get down your ass down those stairs, Ms Pierce, I’m pulling rank,” Marcus winks, lopsidedly grinning at you, “We have to at least pretend to do some work today.”

✪✪✪✪✪

Marcus opens the door to the office for you- ever grateful to his wonderful manners, you slide into the office first and inwardly groan at the pile of files that have seemingly made themselves at home on your desk.

“Oh there’s my girl!” Andy’s arms wrap themselves around your shoulders, encasing you in a bone crushing hug, “Missed your face yesterday but I’m guessing you’ve had no time to think of us poor souls slaving away here whilst you’ve been gallivanting across the French countryside? How was the hotel room? Enjoy the view?”

Feeling a little ambushed by your friend’s questioning, you blink hard to steady your thoughts of the glorious view you awoke to this morning, “Yeah, it was lovely!”

And warm. And soft. Snored quite sweetly too.

“I know what a mardy bum you can be if you don’t have something nice to look at when you wake up,” Andy adds with a gentle shrug. He then turns his attention to Marcus, who’s shifting uncomfortably behind you, “Welcome back, Sir. Good to have you back here.”

“Thanks Andy. Um, I’m going to get set up,” Marcus says as he steps out around from behind you, placing a hand on the small of your back. The warmth exists there for a moment before he’s already passed your desk and opened the glass door to his office.

“Coffee’s already waiting for you on your desk,” Marcus swings back to look utterly amazed at his PA, so Andy qualifies this, “I get reception to let me know when all of you arrive so that you can focus on the important things.”

“By the way, Nush and Marcus, before you get swallowed by case files,” Andy addresses you both as you lower yourself onto your chair, “we’re all heading to the Model Market on Friday to find some food and drink before drunkenly throwing some moves to my cousin who’ll be behind the decks. It’s only Wednesday and it already feels like a week!”

Dian sneaks over to your desk with a pastel de nata, “I heard these are your favourites so here’s something sweet to start off your day right.”

Your lip trembles and tears start to form as she passes you this sweet treat, “Thank you. They are my favourites. You are a truly lovely human, Dian.” You reach across the table and squeeze her hand.

“Oh I’m alright, I guess,” she winks one of her anthracite eyes at you, beaming widely, “I am just looking forward to finally spending some time with you in a context that doesn’t involve work. It’s so hard leaving a place that you’ve got your people who you vibe with and then you upend yourself to live somewhere new, where you’re totally on your own and have a job where you work odd hours!”

A sudden hit of guilt pumps through your veins, “I am so sorry, Dian, I hadn’t thought of that. I am so lucky to be from the same city that I now work in- I should have taken you to Borough. I will, and I promise I will show you all the little nooks you won’t have seen around there.”

“I was very jealous of Marcus stealing you away. Ridiculous when it was just for a day but I’d really like to get to know you. I feel like we could be friends,” Dian squeezes back, “Harper has family and friends here already, and I swear I overheard Kiri talking about a rugby team he has joined and meeting up with some mates from uni.”

“Yup- that’s probably true- plenty of Aussies and Kiwis in London but sadly not so many Canadians! Right, we’ll do this old school- come over to mine at seven on Friday, I’ll put some wine in the fridge and we can pretend we’re teenagers getting ready for a night on the town,” you quickly scrawl your address on a piece of paper, pushing it across the table towards Dian.

The smile on Dian’s face is the prettiest thing you've seen for a while. It seems to extend from her eyes to the very depths of her soul. Her reaching out to you makes you think of Marcus. Perhaps he could do with a friend here too- maybe another pizza and classic film night? Even though it had only been two nights, you feel a pang of disappointment at the thought of him not being there with you this evening. Ridiculous. Get a grip before you risk curling up on a sofa with him again.

As Dian returns to her desk, you are faced with the mountain of paperwork from yesterday’s adventure. Shutting your eyes to try and focus your brain, you try to figure out where to start- the report? Logging the video feed? Filing the pictures? Writing up the notes from the meeting?

“Already napping on the job?”

You open one eye to be met with Marcus’ amused face.

With a slight shake of your head, you dismiss his teasing inquiry, “Trying to figure out where to start. I’m not sure quite how we managed to achieve so much in a day but it allllll nowwwww neeeeeeds to be loggggggged, bleurgh!”

“Let’s start at the very beginning,” Marcus says with a mischievous glint in his eyes.

“A very good place to start,” you sing along, channeling your best Julie Andrews, highly amused by Marcus’ reference, “Actually- as my brain’s not quite in work mode yet, I should ask you before I forget. I was thinking- do you fancy making the pizzas and classic film night a thing? While London is always full of people, it’s easy to feel quite lonely until you find your group of friends.”

A genuine smile slowly crawls across Marcus’ face as he drinks in your offer, “I mean, it's just a thought. Of course you don’t have to and I’m not sure that my old sofa is anywhere near as comfy as the one in Lyon…”

“I’d love to,” Marcus grins at the fluster in your voice, was he happy to spend more time with you? “Let’s get something in place…”

“Nush- sorry to interrupt, Marcus- I have a highly animated woman called Élodie on the phone asking for you. Can I put her through?” Andy asks, “Seems like she has the lab results back for the possible Soutine.”

Lifting the receiver for your phone whilst whispering to Marcus that you’d catch him later, you lean into the backrest and spin yourself comfortingly from side to side, « Coucou chérie, ça va? Vérifie si mon numéro de téléphone fonctionne? » Hi my love! How are you? Already checking if my telephone number works?

«Coucou mon chouchou! Bien sûr- tu ne peux pas me quitter encore! Il a été complètement falsifié. Sur la toile, sous la peinture, se trouve une autre image qui me rappelle quelque chose qui a été peint par un ado troublé! » Hey my love! Of course- you can’t leave me again! It was completely faked. On the canvas under the paint, another image was found that reminds me of something a troubled teenager would paint! The words tumbling hurriedly from Élodie’s mouth into her phone.

You giggle remembering the angst-ridden art and poetry you’d created as a mopey teenager and are filled with amusement that someone might improve them by putting faked masterpieces on top.

« D’accord! Donc la radiologie l’a prouvé - mais qu’en est il des échantillons de peinture? Une joie avec ceux-ci? » Ok! So the X-ray proved it but what about the paint samples? Any joy there? Now spinning on your chair as far the cord would allow you, your mind wonders how on Earth it could ever have ever been thought to be real.

« Tous les échantillons montrent des peintures modernes telles que la phtalocyanine bleue et verte. Les résultats de la datation au carbone sont attendus plus tard dans la soirée, mais j'avais hâte de t’appeler! Je t’enverrai les résultats par e-mail dès qu'ils apparaissent» All of the samples show modern paints such as phthalocyanine blue and green. The carbon dating results are due later this evening but I couldn't wait to ring you. I’ll email you the results as soon as they appear. Élodie continues, « Comment s'est passé votre dernière nuit et le voyage de retour avec votre magnifique patron? » How did the last night and journey home go with that lovely boss of yours?

« Je raccroche le téléphone maintenant, femme ridicule, » I am hanging up the phone now, you ridiculous woman. You reproach your friend playfully.

Hanging up, after sending hugs and kisses to Jacques too, you see that your computer has now decided that no more updates need to be made. Perhaps it’s time to get started on that report…

When you read you begin with ay bee cee…

✪✪✪✪✪

The flurry of activity continues to hover around your desk and slowly your colleagues peter out in search of lives lived outside of the office space. In fact, you don’t notice the ageing of the day until Marcus goes to leave the office, “Hey, are you planning to sleep here tonight?”

“Had more sleep last night than I usually do so I am riding this high until I drop,” you snort without removing your eyes from your screen as you furiously type away, “You off home?”

“Gym first- gotta burn off the pancakes I’m going to have for breakfast tomorrow,” Marcus says as he fiddles with the strap on his laptop bag.

“That’s not the way that food intake and exercise should work. Food is for nourishing your body and exercise is for making it strong. Don’t get sucked in by that bullshit, Marcus,” you wag your finger at your boss, still hammering the keyboard with your other hand, “You have nothing to worry about, the way you look.”

You finally look up to see Marcus shyly smile, rocking from heel to toe in his highly polished brogues, his eyes on the toe of his shoes. Drawing a deep breath, he looks back up at you, nodding towards the report on your screen, “D’ya think you’ll be able to present that to the team tomorrow?”

“Yeah, just had the results from the carbon dating come through so I should be ready to speak to everyone tomorrow morning at the briefing, if that works for you?” You answer just as tiredness starts to take a grip on your body.

“Perfect. Can I offer you a lift home or are you staying a bit longer?”

“Staying,” you confirm, glueing your eyes back to the screen.

“Well, goodnight Nush,” Marcus wishes you warmly, as he makes to walk away from your desk.

“G’night Marcus. Try to sleep in a bed tonight.”

A throaty chuckle fills the cool office air before disappearing as the door shuts behind him. Bathed in the blue light of your screen, you try to jog your memory of which point you were about to make in your report but sit there utterly stumped due to the distraction.

Marcus Fucking Pike.

✪✪✪✪✪

“So what’s the big deal about this colour exactly?” Harper cuts directly to the chase, “Explain it like I’m five because as you are well aware, this is not my area of expertise.”

You always wonder how far back people need to know of a colour’s history to explain it well enough. Do you take it back to cave paintings or perhaps start in the Renaissance? Perhaps somewhere between the two?

“There was a blue that was known as the colour of the heavens. It’s called ultramarine and is created by crushing lapis lazuli. Now, lapis is only found in one country- Afghanistan, but it’s been used since antiquity to create this beautifully, insanely intense blue. The blue that you see in Tutankhamen’s mask, that’s lapis. Having been used by the Ancient Egyptian and Babylonian empires, lapis then fell out of favour as the Romans associated it with the woad used by Barbarian hordes.”

Tapping his pen on the table, Kiritopa nods in agreement,”Like Braveheart?”

“That’s a wee bit later in European history but a similar idea. Think more Boudicca- the Iceni tribes uprising against the marauding Romans,” Dian points out kindly before nodding encouragingly at you to continue.

“The use of ultramarine then slowly diffused through Europe thanks to the Crusades in the 13th and 14th century but even then, it was still an incredibly precious commodity and solely available to the richest of the rich. That’s why you only ever see it in pictures of the Virgin Mary, emperors, popes and other dignitaries. When a patron requested Ultramarine to be used, the contract would have to be super tight specifying exactly where it would be used and how much.”

“So over the years, scientists have attempted to replicate this paint to create a substance that’s more commercially available but when we try to make paints, we’re dealing with chemistry. When manufacturing paint, you’ve got to make sure that it’s a stable, preferably non-toxic product because well, we all know what happened to the Radium Girls.”

“It took until the first half of the twentieth century for the scientific community to create CuPc. I think it was 1927 when they first created a reaction between copper, cyanide and 0-dibromobenzene, finding that one of the byproducts was an intensely blue powder. This blue powder ended up being first manufactured in 1935 but it still wasn’t readily available until the sixties because Yves Klein tried in the fifties to create the blue used by Giotto and still didn’t manage to produce anything nearly as stable or non-toxic.”

“How does this all link up to this forgery in France?” Harper questions bluntly, clearly desperate for you to get to the point.

Blinking hard, you take a moment to steady yourself as Marcus’ eyes flit between you and the Australian agent.

“Kind of wishing that I’d asked you to explain it like I’m twenty five, might have reached the point by Christmas,” she mutters under her breath.

“Stop packing a sad, Harper. Nush has heaps of skills in this area,” Kiritopa shoots a glare in the Australian’s direction, “Keep going Nush.”

You go to open your mouth but Harper just can’t help herself, “There’s a skill in being succinct.”

“There’s also a skill in not being rude but you’re not managing that are you?” The look on Kiritopa’s face announcing that he is pretty much ready to kill.

“Whoa - guys…” Marcus chooses now to join in?

“Look,” you acquiesce- your heart racing in your throat, raising your hands to try and calm the situation, “Harper’s right, I’m blathering. I should have gotten to the point far sooner. The crux of the situation is that the paint found on the canvas in Grenoble dates from the sixties whereas the artist died in the forties.”

“All of the evidence points to it being a fake- carbon dating, x-rays- the lot. This was an easy find but I think we should be prepared for harder to spot ones,” after throwing paper copies of the lab results in the centre of the table for everyone to grab, you sit back in your chair. Your posture screams for everyone to leave you alone, burying your face in the agenda. Multiple sets of eyes look upon you but you refuse to meet them, feeling furiously obstinate and wholly uncommunicative in the moment.

As the meeting grinds to a close, you finally lift your eyes to find that Marcus’ regard has barely left you- only looking away when you catch him. Urgh, he’s going to be nice about this too. But it isn’t Marcus, who reaches out to you. It’s Kiritopa. Kiritopa, who wordlessly reaches his bear-like arm across the table and squeezes your hand before getting up and leaving the room. The gesture fills you with a grateful warmth and you decide to scarper from the meeting room before Marcus says something and makes you cry.

Time to put on my big girl knickers and get back to work.

✪✪✪✪✪

Friday passes in a blur of calls about a new possible forgery meaning that you can only pull silly faces at Dian from across the room. Kiritopa seems hugely excited by the prospect of a night out, chattering about how he’s invited some of the guys from his rugby team to meet up with him there later. Harper is her usual distant self, head down, beavering away- not really paying much attention to anyone or anything around her.

Where’s Marcus?

You throw a scrunched ball of paper at the PA’s head to get his attention, but entirely miss him, “Andy is Marcus not coming in today?”

Picking up the paper and without even looking up, he throws it back, hitting you square in the forehead, “Car trouble. Any issues, message him.”

Eventually, you hear his confident gait walk into the room. Looking up, you send him a smile which soon fades when you see what a mess he’s in. Hair sticking up all over the place from a stressed hand constantly running through it, a slight gleam of sweat across his skin and an oily mark on one cheek, shirt untucked, jacket draped over one arm, tie askance and lowered due to the top two buttons of his shirt being undone. All of him, in fact, looks undone and defeated.

Without thinking, you jump up from your seat, walk over to him and hug him tightly. With this action the other agents look up and see the state their boss is in. Marcus, whilst initially surprised by your gesture, leans into the hug and lowly whispers, “Thanks. I needed that,” before giving you a tight squeeze, releasing you and slowly trudging towards his office.

“Shit start to a Friday, Sir,” Kiritopa offers, “I’ll get the first round in tonight- you look like you could do with a beer.”

“Fuck, yes, I need a beer but as your boss, that’s my job,” Marcus forcefully asserts, “You can get the second round in.”

You make to slink off back to your desk but Marcus catches your hand, rubbing the skin lightly with his thumb, “You ok?”

“Yeah- just wanted to check on you. You look a fucking state,” you declare through an amused grin.

Marcus chuckles at your observation. “Not the best start to a day,” he grimaces, “I miss anything major this morning?”

“Not apart from the boss arriving at midday looking like he pushed his car all the way here,” you gently tease, “You know we have something called public transport in London- you should try it some time!”

“Yeah, I’ll have Andy look into that for me,” Marcus nods in mock-contemplation, “Hey, um, are you coming out tonight? With everyone, I mean?”

“Uh huh,” you concede reluctantly, “I’m not really a fan of nights out with colleagues but I think we could all do with a glass of something and some good street food in our tummies. What time are you getting there?”

Marcus scrunches up his nose, “Around seven but you know this job- it might be then or some time in September!”

Giving you a wink as he buttons up his collar and straightens his tie, Marcus turns towards his office and you head back to your desk- both with a renewed wish to get finished up and out of the office tonight.

Taglist: @astroboots @silverwolf319 @yespolkadotkitty @agirllovespancakes @danniburgh @lunaserenade @leonieb @tardisfangurl @mouthymandalorian @disgruntledspacedad @zukoyonce @pedropascalito @absurdthirst @mrsparknuts @sirowsky @bison-writes @the-ginger-hedge-witch @green-socks @lv7867

#pedro pascal #josé pedro balmaceda pascal #jose pedro balmaceda pascal #pedro pascal characters #pedro pascal fanfiction #pedro pascal��#ppascaledit #the mentalist #the mentalist fanfic #pedro pascal smut #pedro pascal x reader #marcus pike #marcus pike x reader #the mentalist fanfiction #marcus pike x oc

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queer-crusader · 2 years

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So as some people may know, I've been attempting to write a book for like. 12 years. (Don't @ me) Anyway it's medieval fantasy set in Scotland, focusing on a girl who becomes a healer and faces magic, the faer folk, corruption and a prophecy she wants absolutely nothing to do with. And over the years I have amassed some books, partly out of my personal interest in the middle ages and how life (and medicine) was back then, and partly for research purposes. Here's my wee collection!

So these are the books that are actually relevant to my writing. The ones on the left image describe describe what medicine was like in the Middle Ages. The first book focuses more on the remedies used, why, and symbolism in those remedies, while the second focuses more elaborately on what the medical world looked like throughout the Middle Ages (a broad term that spans a 1000 years), what bits they got (surprisingly) right, how culture and religion influenced people's views, and also the representation of the human body in art. The focus in both books lies mostly on Western Europe but the second book also notes the universities in the Middle East. That book is divided into body parts, scanning the body from top to bottom and listing what ails and thoughts were commonly associated with these parts, while the first book goes from plant medicine to bestiaries in its chapters. Personally, while it may not be quite as useful as the second book, I have a great fondness for "The Wisdom of Nature" as it is the first one I got out of all these. Also because we went to Hay-On-Wye, a little town in Wales known as the the secondhand bookstore capitol of the world. (For good reason - every street has at least 5 bookstores. I shit you not.) And the first store we went into, which was literally someone's converted living room, I was hoping for maybe a book on medieval medicine, knowing I should not get my hopes up - yet there it was. Right among the gardening books. It felt kinda fated and really cool. So yeah, that one has a nostalgic little place in my heart.

The second image is of three books that are about medieval Scotland, ranging from the life of ordinary farmers and peasants to city life, as well as a separate book about clans throughout history. I've only managed to get partially through the first one, "Puir Labourers and Busy Husbandmen", but can tell you it is fantastically well put together, with clear references, and a list of locations under Historic Scotland that you can visit to learn more about the specific topics in the book.

On to books that aren't directly relevant to my writing, but are still relevant to my interests - whether it's historic medicine or historic Scotland. You see, there are more books in the "The Making of Scotland" series, which I had to buy of course. I think I'm missing two which weren't available when I bought these, that or they were stupidly expensive bc it's not a very common series? Idk. Anyway in the 3rd pic you see the rest of my collection, which are all pre-Middle Ages so not relevant for my writing but still hella interesting. The 4th image is some extra books in Dutch that align with my interest. The left book I picked up myself and is about a monastery in Amsterdam, right on the river Amstel, that grew a MASSIVE apothecary in the Middle Ages. The right book I got on my 25th birthday (clearly my mum knows me), which is called Nature's Apothecary, and lists medicinal uses of plants and certain foods and has tonnes of recipes, including for face masks, so it's modern and varied. (Sidenote: modern medicine is your friend. This isn't a "what medieval peasants thought was good for them" book but a "modern era homeopathy" book, which is mostly of interest to me through personal and magickal curiosity. I may make things with it, but never as a preferred cure over what my GP may recommend. Don't dick about with pharmaceutical drugs in combination with homeopathy, and always consult your doctor if something is up. Don't just go into your garden and make your own meds.)

Anyway, I thought this would be fun to show :3 I still need to read the majority of these books, but I love them dearly and they actually do come in super handy for my writing. I especially love the "The Making of Scotland" series, as I've never been into royalty etc which a lot of general popular history wants to focus on, but absolutely adore learning about daily life of your ordinary working person in the Middle Ages. These books seem to create a really good image of what daily life looked like! (It was really surprising to read "Puir Labourers" and see how many things I'd actually gotten pretty right in my first drafts, based on logic and my general knowledge of the relevant era in the UK. Still, feels really good to make it more accurate, more respectful, more Scottish, and generally just better!)

[Image description under cut]

[image ID of the first photograph: this image shows two books. One is called "The Wisdom Of Nature", subtitled "The Healing Powers and Symbolism of Plants and Animals in the Middle Ages" by Werner Telesko. Its cover is a medieval painting of five people in a garden picking roses. The second book in this image is titled "Medieval Bodies", subtitled "Life, Death and Art in the Middle Ages" by Jack Hartnell. Its cover is an amalgamation of medieval art collaged into an anatomical model from the torso up. End first ID.]

[Image ID of the second photograph: three thin square books are shown, two overlapping the middle one so that they can all fit in one image without obscuring the titles. All three have a header reading "The Making of Scotland", which is the series of books they are a part of. The left book is titled "Puir Labourers and Busy Husbandmen", subtitled "The Countryside of Lowland Scotland in the Middle Ages" by Piers Dixon. Its cover is a medieval artwork of three farmers harvesting wheat. The middle book is largely obscured bar its title and author. It is titled "The Age of Clans", subtitled "The Highlands from Somerled to the Clearances", by Robert Dodgshon. The right book has a medieval map of a town on its cover. It is titled "Burgess, Merchant and Priest", subtitled "Burgh Life in the Scottish Medieval Town", by Derek Hall. End second ID.]

[Image ID of the third photograph: four thin books laid out in a square, all four part of the "The Making of Scotland" series. Top left is a book titled "The Sea Road", subtitled "A Viking Voyage Through Scotland", by Olwyn Owen. Its cover shows a cloak pin, a medieval drawing of men in a boat, and an artistic rendering of people on a beach building boats. Top right is a book called "Angels, Fools and Tyrants", subtitled "Britons and Anglo-Saxons in Southern Scotland" by Chris Lowe. Its cover shows some artifacts as well as artistic renderings of a settlement, a standing stone, and a battle. Bottom left is a book titled "Farmers, Temples and Tombs", subtitled "Scotland in the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age" by Gordon Barclay. Its cover shows a dig site, an axe head, and artistic renderings of a Neolithic hut, a spear, and a longhouse.

The bottom right book is titled "Settlement and Sacrifice", subtitled "The Later Prehistoric People of Scotland", by Richard Hingley. Its cover shows photos of a dig site and a shield, as well as artistic renderings of a roundhouse and what may be Pictish royalty. End third ID.]

[Image ID of the fourth photograph: two books are lying side by side, one large, the other small. The left book is purple with four squares of medieval drawings and Latin text. Its title is in Dutch, reading "Kruidenier aan de Amstel" (which translates to "Pharmacist on the Amstel"), subtitled "De Amsterdamse Hortus volgens Johannes Snippendaal (1646)", (translating to "The Amsterdam Garden according to Johannes Snippendaal"). It comes from the Amsterdam University Press, under editing of Ferry Bouman, Bob Baljet and Erik Zevenhuizen. The right books is black, with white and reflective orange sketchings of flowers, insects, pots and flasks. It too is titled in Dutch: "De Natuurlijke Apotheek", subtitled "Recepten, Medicinaal Gebruik en Folklore" (translates to: "Nature's Pharmacy", subtitled "Recipes, Medicinal Use and Folklore") by Christine Iverson. End fourth ID.]

#anne speaks #my writing #research #middle ages #healer trilogy #which is the book series im trying to write #history #scotland

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madlori · 3 years

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Coming soon: “Strike Anywhere”

Sooooo like a month ago I had a fun lil plot bunny and banged out a short Schitt’s Creek fic called “Burn Out the Night.” In it, Patrick is a firefighter and David is a city engineer and they do Not Get Along, in fact they are infamous for their fights at calls. Except this night, a warehouse fire goes badly, and in the course of the situation Patrick is injured, at which point it’s revealed that these two bitter enemies are in fact married. Everyone is SHOOK. SEEKRIT HUSBANDS. It’s also super fun to have both these guys really lean in to their latent troll tendencies.

People were into this concept, and I jibed so much with the premise that I launched into a prequel story about how these two met and came to be seekrit husbands. I expect to finish it in the next few days and start posting soon (one chapter per day). So I thought I’d post a lil trailer!

Title: Strike Anywhere Fandom: Schitt’s Creek Rating: E Length: 65K Tags: David Rose/Patrick Brewer, Firefighter AU, Enemies-to-Lovers, Secret Relationship, First Responders, Hurt/Comfort, Patrick Brewer/OMC, Patrick Brewer Is Gay (and has been out for awhile), these are just temporary tags the real ones will be on the actual story with content warnings (none of the Big Four)

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Patrick Brewer would always remember the first words ever spoken to him by the man who he would eventually marry, because they were “What the fuck are you doing? Are you an idiot?”

He straightened up, blinking dust and grime out of his eyes, a futile attempt given that he was standing in the middle of a destroyed store with a car through the front of it, holding a pneumatic cutter. The man who’d just called him an idiot was lurking on the sidewalk, peering in through the jagged hole in the storefront, dressed in expensive-looking shoes and massive white-framed sunglasses, his impressive eyebrows halfway to his hairline. “I’m baking a cake,” Patrick said, dryly, and went back to what he was doing.

-----

Once the woman in the car had been extracted and whisked off to the hospital, Patrick left the scene to the police, the tow trucks and the insurance adjusters and toted his equipment back out to the fire truck parked outside. He stowed the pneumatic cutters, spotting David Rose standing with Ronnie by her truck. Pique rising in his chest, he stalked over to them. “Okay, somebody wanna explain to me who this guy is and why he gets to barge into my rescue?”

Rose turned to face him, tipping his sunglasses up on top of his head. “Who are you, sturdy wee man? An intern, or something? Does the fire service have interns?”

“I’m Captain Brewer of the 315,” Patrick said, flatly. “I’m in charge here.”

----

Patrick went back to his truck, tossing his helmet into the back with more force than was probably recommended by its manufacturer. Shit, he thought. This is going to suck, a lot. Having someone hovering over everything he did, second-guessing every decision he made, would be bad enough. But that wasn’t even the worst part.

The worst part was that he’d be suffering the unwanted interference of possibly the hottest guy he’d ever seen, and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do to make that not true.

----

“Ugh, I had the worst day. I spent three hours driving around with that snotty Captain from the 315.”

“You mean Brewer? The one you won’t shut up about?”

“Complaining about! Bitching about!”

“Sure.”

“He’s a self-righteous prick and I deserve some kind of peace prize for not flinging myself across the car and throttling him to death with my bare hands.”

“I’m sure that keeping yourself from, uh, flinging was a real struggle.” Stevie picked up David’s tablet and started Googling something. “You know when you told me about this horrible Captain Brewer, your arch-nemesis, I pictured some grizzled, crotchety old guy. You neglected to mention...this,” she said, brandishing the tablet with a flourish.

On the screen was an article from the paper with the headline “Toronto Fire Services Promotes Youngest Captain in its History,” above a very nice photo of Patrick in uniform, arms crossed, smiling and looking like a recruitment poster.

“What, exactly, did I neglect to mention? Young guys can be grizzled and crotchety.”

“You neglected to mention that Captain Brewer is a snack.”

“If he is, he’s one of those tasteless low-carb sugar-free snacks full of xylitol that’ll give you explosive diarrhea and make you wish you’d never been born.”

-----

“Why’d you do it, anyway?” David suddenly exclaimed, coming off the wall to stand right in Patrick’s face.

“Do what?”

“Save my life, you fuckhead!”

“That’s my job! What was I going to do, just stand there and let the truck fall on you?”

“Great! Except now I have to, like, be nice to you.”

“I am begging you not to be nice to me, I might drop dead of a heart attack from the shock!”

David’s lip curled in a sneer. “I don’t know what kind of carnage I committed in a past life to deserve this. Look at you with your fireman outfit and your respectably-gay undercut and you probably have a modest tattoo somewhere under there and I could axe-murder you, I really could, you just had to be the big damn hero, throwing me to the ground like some damsel in distress, and that isn’t even the worst part!”

“What’s the worst part?”

“That a guy I can’t stand saved my pointless life and it was so goddamn hot that I might have to jump off a cliff!”

------

...coming soon!

#schitt's creek #madlori's fic #strike anywhere

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darkdevasofdestruction · 4 years

Text

The Idiot ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky

In which the reader is the last Russian princess from our contemporary times and Fyodor is there to watch, observe, analyse and write a novel while being the reader’s sort of guardian/mentor, all while reader finds herself in an impossible, almost-Anna Karenina-like situation that drives her to desperate decisions.

And yes, I’m very much basing this story Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot” novel, Tolstyi’s “Anna Karenina” and Katyusha, both the Russian song, and the “Resurrection” novel from Tolstoy that has Katyusha as an unfortunate, yet important character.

Also, a little nod to our dear Ana Lesko for her song “Anicyka Maya”, which will serve as a cute little nickname for our dear reader, although the song is Romanian, and it’s about a seductive woman.

Other nicknames will include: Kiska ( kitten ), Zaika ( bunny ), Kroshka ( little one ), Krasotka ( gorgeous ).

I’m not Russian, I don’t know about Russia’s culture, history and language as much as I know about my own, obviously, but as ex-commie & ex-USSR, we still have a shit ton of similarities. Nevertheless, I will try not to get into too many details that will compromise authenticity.

Luxury, glamour, wealth, gold, jewellery, diamonds, class, facades, masks, masquerades, social gatherings, lies, marriages, politics, horses, deals, gambling... These represent some of the few words people from everywhere around would describe the royal family.

Why do some still exist, anyway? Shouldn’t they have just completely disappeared at the same time with the Romanov family? ...Stupid cartoon movies and their resurrection of Anastasia...

Nobody truly cares about these rich rats who worked naught for their wealth, and would never understand the struggle and poverty of the normal citizens of Russia...They just live in their abnormally huge palace, having more servants than the population of Moscow and eat at one meal more than normal people do in one week altogether.

How utterly ridiculous.

Their lives are all perfect, they marry themselves to keep that ridiculous purity and their infinite wealth in the family...How atrocious! What about charity? Kindness? Altruism? Helping out the common folk?

All these thoughts, and you’d think a very bitter and vindictive, very poor and malicious person came up with, and yet, the reality was rather distorted.

From the top stair of the palace, in a dark room, sitting on the windowpane, a gorgeous young woman cast her dull eyes over the snowy city and the people hurrying down the roads, hoping to go home before it got too late and cold.

Maybe they were poor and hateful, and rightfully so, she’d say, but perhaps they can also be deemed happier, if they can take into account their freedom...As much as the government provides them, at least - Yet even so, even the poorest person held more freedom than this caged bird, forever trapped and shackled by fate from the second she was born...As if she had any choice, that is.

Perhaps she deserves this treatment, this hatred, this...Manipulation from her own family, who only see her as a political and financial pawn, planning her marriage from the second she first cried into this world... Like a martyr, she will accept all torture and live on, never knowing what ‘living’ truly means, only imagining it by reading all day and all night long, or when she plays the piano one of the many songs she learnt.

As the grandfather clock rang to 7 times to announce dinner time, Y/N dressed in a simple, yet elegant dress, put on a pair of classy black stiletto shoes, and went down to the luxurious dining room, sitting in her usual seat, only for a brunet stranger dressed in white to grace the sight with his unexpected presence.

She didn’t dare speak to him, yet her eyes couldn’t leave his form, no matter how her meek demeanour made her hung her head to avoid showing anything other than her demure expression.

Thankfully, her parents arrived, along with the waiters that served the food, so it saved some of the awkwardness of the unknown.

“Y/N, darling, this man here is Fyodor Dostoevsky. He is here as a writer, wanting to learn more about us and about people in general. As a compromise, he agreed to be your personal guard...Considering the other one was a sacrilege to our dear daughter...What a lecherous man, making advances on you...But, anyway, let us toast to the success of this young man’s writing career!” the mother raised her champagne, and the four of them clinked glasses. “I thank you for the unique opportunity to learn and understand society and people better. May you live a long and prosperous life.” this new stranger held a charming smile on his face, trying to impress and buy everyone’s trust. “Do you have yet any idea about the theme of your novel? Or, perhaps an idea for a title?” the father asked, making the brunet shake his head softly. “No, not yet, unfortunately. I prefer to study hard, and only then, when I am educated enough, to allow the flow of creation to take over me.” this Fyodor nodded in acknowledgement, while the girl kept completely silent for the duration of the dinner, waiting for everything to be over so she could escape back to the little faux haven she created and called ‘safe’. “Y/N, show Mr. Fyodor to your room, he will be sleeping there for now on. The butlers already brought a spare bed there, so it’s alright.” the mother waved her hand dismissively, and the girl could only bow quickly and go back to her room, making sure to point out what each of the rooms represent, before reluctantly inviting him to her bedroom. “Please, make yourself at home, Mr. Dostoevsky. I hope it will be comfortable and to your liking. Should you need anything, please do not hesitate to tell me so we can make your stay as great as possible.” she spoke to him in a soft, meek voice, not daring to make eye contact in any way. “Call me Fyodor, no need for formalities. We are going to room together, might as well become friendly. What don’t you tell me about yourself? Your hobbies, your interests, your dreams, your aspirations.” the brunet paced around the room, observing all of her personal objects, which, turned out, except for jewellery, books, a small, pink Gloxinia, and a pickup with 1920s British vinyls, there was nothing to represent her...Which was, in its own way, an intriguing peculiarity. “I...Like reading, flowers, music...And I wish I could get a dog and learn how to play the violin too. There aren’t many interesting things about me...I’m not special or anything out of the ordinary. I am not allowed to put myself out there in any way, so this is the little I could do to express who I am.” so tried to be as vague as possible, fidgeting on her feet uncomfortably, knowing that the punishment for embarrassing the family would be grave, should it be known. “Hmmm...I see, I see...Ah, you’re a Tolstoy reader, I see. Anna Karenina...Very interesting, yet tragic, wouldn’t you say?” he asked, picking up a book that was supposed to be hidden. “N-No! Don’t take that out of there...Nobody can know I have it. I was strictly forbidden from reading it...Please don’t tell anyone I have this book.” the princess snatched the book from his hands, hiding it further back in the bookshelf. “Ohh~? Why would you not be allowed to read a Russian book? You’d think the Russian princess would be urged to read Russian literature.” he stepped in front of her, picking her chin and raising her head slightly to allow him to look deep into her fawn-like eyes. “Because of the ending...And the controversial decisions Anna made, some of them even contradictory to her own beliefs, and yet, she made her own decisions, at some point in her life. When your fate is decided from before you are born, having opinions is the worst enemy of a puppeteer...Wouldn’t you agree?” she muttered, walking away from him, taking her nightgown and walking towards her bathroom.

This made the man think more about how dysfunctional this supposed perfect royal family actually was. The illusion of a flawless individual, living together, forming a flawless family, a flawless life, in a flawless palace.

Perhaps facades aren’t as obvious to see through, or understand, for while the parents are completely bland...This girl...So much potential locked away in a timid chest of massive oak wood, embellished with overly expensive jewellery, clearly unwanted. She could be a genius, shining in her happiness, glowing like her dazzling smile, and yet, there she is, eclipsed by chaff, when she could be burning brighter than the morning Sun.

Those parents of hers think he wants to be here and get dazzled by the infinite stream of diamonds that keep flowing around the whole place - And yet, perhaps they are the ones living in mental poverty, considering they believe financial wealth and fame is the sole reason for being alive - To uphold a certain kind of status that they worked naught for, but received hereditary, from one lazy deadbeat to yet another generation of useless people for this society.

They truly are like the plague, incredibly rare nowadays, but completely fatal once you fall grasp to their dark claws that drag you to hell to succumb to their completely fictional utopian world that they create only amongst themselves, as if whatever lives beyond these golden walls is putrid and deserves to rot to pieces.

As his mind wandered farther and farther away down the country, snowy roads he created with his own imagination of thoughts, he heard the bathroom door softly open, and the angelic creature garbed in a thin - Possibly silk, snow white nightgown - Stepped back into their now shared room, and just as before, her demeanour resembled that of a small, frightened fawn, or a bunny.

When you have to deal with such a pure being that could completely shatter, it’s difficult not to impulsively break down all walls around and snatch her away - It’s close to impossible not to attempt to test all existing boundaries and see the limits where she would break...Or, almost, at least.

However, abstinence makes for a great suspense and greed...You want more...And more...And the more you wait, the harder it is to resist, but the satisfaction you get when the frail creature trusts you enough to eat from your own palm, and you finally claim it as yours...

It’s Heavenly.

“Sweet Dreams, Fyodor.” she spoke softly, putting on a Tchaikovsky vinyl and picking up a book, getting in bed and reading it, the only light still open being a dim lantern on her nightstand. “How would you like to show me around the city tomorrow?” the brunet asked so casually that it shocked the girl enough to drop her book on her lap. “O-Oh...U-Uhmm...I’m not exactly to go out of this place unless it’s for Christmas shopping...I’m sorry I can’t properly do as you wish...” she quickly took her book back, hiding her face to hide her embarrassment and disappointment. “Well, then, what a gorgeous coincidence, isn’t it? In barely two months, Christmas shall come, and then, you can properly show me around, correct?” the man mused, the ghost of a smirk playing on his face. “..You’re right! My, you’ll get to see the beautiful fairy light and Christmas decorations all around the city! I can’t believe it, you truly chose the perfect time to come here. Oh, and, the ballet, the opera and the national orchestra are going to perform...I believe The Nutcracker is going to play this year...And Traviata. It should be beautiful, don’t you agree?” Y/N asked with a soft smile on her face, sparks gleaming in her eyes, and for the first time since he’s met her, it felt like she was finally alive. “Yes, yes, I would have to agree. And if you are there with me, the experience will be even better.” he hummed, teasing the poor girl who had no idea what else to say to such bold affirmations. “O-Oh...W-Well...Th-Thank you...I-I think...Your presence there will also make the going out more interesting...And nice.” she offered a comeback that pleased the man well enough. “Good night to you as well, Printsessa.”

What a lovely young woman, he thought, as he closed his eyes and let his mind fly at different aspects of life and of humanity, trying to decipher each and every person he met that day and wondering if his assumptions were correct, as they always are.

Morning came by faster than expected as a shy ray of of Sun creeped inside the room through the window, but Fyodor was already awake, writing at the desk rather rapidly - Most likely, he had some inspiration hitting him, so he proceeded to pour out his conflicting thoughts on the paper, all while stealing a peek from time to time at the girl sleeping peacefully, almost as if she was a Disney Princess.

The way the soft light caressed her face had him take the stray streak of h/c hair and pull it back so it won’t tickle her awake, while also being allowed to watch her peacefully inhale and exhale, a small smile on her face...Perhaps she was having a beautiful dream? Was that why she told him to have sweet dreams? Were her dreams her only lovely escape from this horrible reality she was forced to live in?

There were so many mysteries yet to be unveiled, but all in due time, as Fyodor noticed the gentle flutter of her lashes, and with a grace only reserved to a Swan Princess, she raised and stretched with a sweet hum, and the brunet man watched as his eyes felt absolutely blessed seeing such a beauty...

If people complained that Disney Princesses weren’t relatable, since they have messy hair when they wake up, just like Anna, they clearly haven’t seen how perfect Y/N looks, even as she blinks her sleepiness away.

“I see you slept well, Printsessa. Good morning.” she heard him speak, and she noticed it wasn’t as en garde and...It almost seemed...Pleased to see her. “Fyodor...You woke up before me. You should have woke me up. Please wake me up next time, I wouldn’t want you to feel lonely or upset. This place is like a piranha tank...Thread carefully, otherwise, you’re like a little animal who fell in.” she quickly got up, rushing through her daily routine so she could be by his side, not only because her parents assigned her to that, but also because this Dostoevsky man is the only little thing that could rip her out of her completely dull routine and show her a little bit of insight into what could be something out of her imagination entirely. “Aww, the little songbird wishes to spend time with me, how adorable. Very well, Printsessa, what is it that you want to do today? My job here is to observe and write, after all.” he asked, crossing one leg over the other, resting his chin on his fist, watching her with intense interest. “Oh, well, I have to practice the piano today, but other than that, I have nothing in my schedule.” she explained, guiding him to the music room that very much resembled a whole orchestra surrounding a place - Not too small, yet not too big either - Meant for ballroom dancing. “I bet the national orchestra isn’t as fancy as this place is.” he mused, walking up to the cello and tracing his fingertips across the chords. “...Do you know how to play it?” she asked, walking up to him, having the curiosity of a baby fawn exploring the world. “Would you like to hear?” he asked, sitting on the chair and expertly hugging the cello, he grabbed the bow and teased the girl with a mischievous look in his gleaming purple eyes. “Oh, yes, please, if it’s not too much to ask! It would be absolutely splendid.” Y/N clasped her hands together, grinning widely as she stepped a few feet away to give him enough space so he could start playing. “It would be my pleasure, Printsessa.” and with the nod of his head, he started playing the famous Sugar plum fairy song, making the girl gasp in surprise at how gorgeous it sounded.

She crouched to reach the perfect eye view of the bow gliding along the chords, her mouth slightly agape and she gazed with absolute wonder, not even realising when the song was over, for she was much too mesmerised.

“Well, Printsessa, how did you like it?” he rested his arms on the curves of the cello, leaning forwards for a better look at her. “That was better than even our national cello player! It was absolutely stunning, woaw...Just...You left me speechless! You’re...You’re...You are...Perfectly splendid!” she clapped for him rapidly and incredibly enthusiastic, making him chuckle in amusement at her cuteness. “Why, thank you, Printsessa. How about you entertain me now, little Anicyka Maya?” he carefully put the Cello in its place, stepping in front of her and caressing her porcelain skin, quenching his thirst for discovery by seeing her rosy cheeks. “Well...I can’t say I’m anywhere as great as you are...But, sure. I hope you will like it.” she looked down, fidgeting with her fingers as she hurried timidly to the piano, and taking a deep breath, cracking her fingers, she liter her fingers skillfully dance over the keys, as her voice followed every word of the song called “Katyusha”. However, she wasn’t expecting him to applaud and whistle to her, congratulating her for being such a beautiful nightingale. “You clearly underestimate your hard work and talent. Perhaps we should play together one day. I’m sure it would put a smile on your parents’ faces.” Fyodor bowed to kiss Y/N’s hand, only to hear the door opening. “Yes, Mr. Fyodor, we would quite like to hear the two of you dueting together. Since Y/N will have to perform both dance and a song at the piano, as a Christmas tradition, it will show how much she’s improved...If at all. I have to tell you the truth, Mr. Fyodor, over the past few years, she has been exceptionally disappointing...Well, perhaps you coming here will prove to give her a jolt in the right direction.” Y/N’s mother came out of nowhere in the music room, almost as if she was stalking the pair, and Fyodor could see how the Princess’ behaviour changed 180 degrees, and from the excitable and lively young girl, she went back to hide in her guarded shell, trying to protect herself from the numerous blows everyone throws her way.

And just as he expected, once they started playing, despite throwing in one or two intentional mistakes, while she had none of her own, the mother reprimanded her daughter, while praising him. He thought, at first, this was going to be some kind of tough love encouragement and determination she was trying to give the girl, but truly, it was nothing more than unrealistic dreams of an already flawless performance.

This family was nowhere close to being the perfect, or the most loving one, that was without a doubt. But being so horrible to your own daughter, humiliating her in front of a complete stranger, making her tremble softly while trying her best to keep herself from bursting into sobbing fits, was a whole different kind of cruel and unnecessary malice.

For some reason, Fyodor felt a certain kind of warmth in his chest...But not the same kind of warmth he feels when he is around Y/N, but something...Similar to fury. To rage. He was sure he never felt such a personal sort of offense, despite not being him that was belittled.

A terrifying sort of justice bubbled inside him, and he smirked, thinking about just one sole thing.

Crime and Punishment.

Fyodor hoped dearly that it would be only the maternal figure that was the problem, yet it seemed to be much worse, and the toxicity levels that kept vibing all over the place seemed to be equivalent to that of Chernobyl at the time of the explosion.

All throughout the week, he noticed the dirty looks all the staff was giving the Princess, possibly because she was being a shy and quiet pushover...But it went completely beyond his understanding how these servants would even dare be so rude to her, considering she is always so sweet to them, always forgives their mistakes and shares her whole allowance with them in equal parts...

But they complain it’s not enough. They complain others get more, or less, but clearly, they don’t care about that, they just want more and more money...They are greedy jackals who don’t care about the life or soul of a poor little lady who just wants to be happy...

But perhaps happiness isn’t meant for royalty.

A week until Christmas, and Fyodor was ready with the quick draft, and he left it on the desk for Y/N to read, and he couldn’t help but admire and drink in each and every emotion she would express on her lovely face with every word she read, every action, every chapter that stirred more and more conflicting feelings and thoughts battling together - Conflicts that she was trying so hard to hide, no doubt feeling his burning, hawk-like stare on her, analysing her as if she was a new specimen under a microscope.

She was great at hiding what she truly felt, yet her eyes betrayed her inner self, the sparkling of nostalgia and sadness crawling out, shrieking at the top of her lungs to be discovered and taken out of this well of darkness she was drowning in - She wanted to be saved, she was at her breaking point, and clearly, she was afraid.

Afraid of life. Afraid of people. Afraid of her family. Afraid of this society. Afraid her own self. Afraid of her actions.

And most of all.

She was afraid of spiritual, mental and emotional imprisonment.

As Christmas approached with rapid footsteps, Fyodor could notice how Y/N stiffer, more silent, flinching more, keeping herself in check, alone, barely speaking to anyone...Clearly, she was being stressed out and afraid of the consequences of screwing up anything.

Perhaps, the problem here was the fatalist and completely out of her control destiny she was thrown in, and she knew from the very beginning that, no matter how flawless her performance was, she would still be reprimanded and punished, so she resigned herself to this kind of treatment...The same as every year.

“It’s so beautiful outside...And it’s snowing...! So soft and cold...It’s almost numbing you entirely, but the beauty of Christmas still melts down even the most frozen of hearts.” she spoke with such sadness dripping from her tongue, that Fyodor felt the need to take his fur hat and put it on her head before taking a hold of both of her hands, rubbing them together and kissing her knuckles. “It’s not the day or the decorations that are supposed to move a person, but the kindness and altruism of people. From what I’ve seen in the past weeks, the only consistency in this place is the beauty of your heart and the cruelty of everyone else that keep eclipsing you. You deserve better than this, kroshka.” the man spoke simply, waiting to see the way she’d react. “...I didn’t choose this life, nor did it choose me, yet here I am, trying to keep my head above the water in a whirlpool. I have all my life planned and written ahead of me, and there’s nothing I can do about it. From the very beginning, since before I was even born, they knew they will sell me out to some old, rich man, just so they could benefit, but they cared naught about my well-being, as long as I could keep him entertained in any way possible. The least I can do is try to enjoy the little things...Even if they are nothing more than just that...Little things.” she admits to him, taking away her hands and holding them to her chest, too afraid to trust her own heart. “You let the servants make a mockery out of your kindness. You let your family humiliate you in front of everyone. You let common folk bash you, even if you tip them greatly...Tell me, krasotka, have you read the draft to my book yet?” they continued to stroll down the cobbled streets, looking up at the snowflakes gently dancing in the light of the lamposts, as Fyodor carried most of her shopping bags that held Christmas gifts for everyone but herself. “Yes...I did...But I did not finish it. I was much too afraid to read the ending of it.” she nodded to him, biting her lip nervously. “Afraid? Why ever would you be afraid of reading some words made of ink on a piece of paper?” the man frowned in confusion and interest, hearing such a peculiarity of an answer. “Because...Because I know that Prince Myshkin actually represents me...And how life treats me...So I’m afraid the ending will hint to Anna Karenina’s ending...And I don’t want that. I don’t...That’s why I’m afraid...I’m scared that...I’m scared that I won’t be able to endure this madness anymore, and sooner, rather than later, I will shatter into an unrecognisable version of myself that not even I will decipher...And I will do scary things that I would otherwise be afraid of even thinking about. You know I read the book, I wouldn’t put it past you to tease me like that.” she smiled ironically, shaking her head to stop herself from shuddering at such a dreadful thought. “Congratulations, Printsessa, you are surely insightful. However, I must advise you to read it, and keep in mind that you are not entirely wrong in your thinking. While the ending isn’t identical to Tolstoy’s novel, it isn’t on the complete opposite spectrum either. What you read is one of the possible outcomes of your life, should you choose to remain a passive onlooker and let everyone control you, like a little, pretty doll. Should you, however, choose to take fate into your own hands and finally make your first choice of your life...I can promise you, you are going to be much happier.” Fyodor kissed her forehead before leading her back to the palace so she could take the day off...For tomorrow, she must perform.

But the author wasn’t lying, Y/N realised as she spent the last hours past curfew to finish the book, and she realised that while Myshkin didn’t kill himself, he was still dead inside, and just like the catatonic state he was stuck into, she has been living a life of complete comatose herself. Fyodor was right all along - A life without choices is not a life, nor is it one without freedom and happiness - And maybe, for the first time in her life, she would make the most difficult decision the universe threw at her, and that was to choose between Duty and Happiness, something every royal member, especially women all over the world, who were seen as nothing more than political and decorative objects meant to create heirs and nothing more, had to pick, and dutifully chose to sacrifice themselves to keep the family and the nobility going.

But not anymore....

“You look beautiful today, my little zaika. This velvet colour of your dress, the way it highlights you stunning silhouette...And this jewellery...And your hair and make up...You are above and beyond the most beautiful person to ever grace this life. How are you going to enchant us today?” Fyodor pat down his white suit so he would look completely impeccable...Or, perfectly splendid, as Y/N would say. “Does it truly matter, in the end? Nobody but you will pay attention, and at the end of the day, I will only hear critiques. It’s the same every year, so there is no point in bothering to stand out, have any particularity or give a name. It just...Is. So...Let me get this over with so I can go to my room and pretend this day never happened...Again.” she muttered, hooking her arm to his, entering the big ballroom together.

A ton of people were there, not only family, but enough family ‘friends’, all of them incredibly rich, with a combined fortune great enough to buy the whole Russia somehow...And all eyes were on her. She didn’t mind. She was used to the nervousness and the either critical or lustful stares she received - But only during these kinds of events, and because she was a Princess, otherwise nobody would have cared about her existence or her feelings...

Nobody...Except for Fyodor.

Until the time of his arrival, nobody cared about her, nor did they bother trying to understand or talk to her, and yet, here he was, always by her side, and frankly, she fell in love with him. She, for the first time in her life, cared naught about everything surrounding her, and she thought solely about him and their time spent together. That is all that mattered to her.

So, with that in mind, and a warm heart, she performed the Waltz of Flowers flawlessly at the piano, along with a few other songs, adding some festive ones. Fyodor was absolutely captivated by the spells she put on people whenever she radiated with such pure gentleness, just like Christmas’ true angel.

Her fingers glided so gracefully over the keys, as she hummed along the music, not even bothering to look at the sheet, for she new everything by heart - But somehow, it all sounded even more magical than before, and nobody could tell why.

But Fyodor knew, and he smiled, figuring out her trick. And he was going to call her out for that when this whole charade was over. But for now, he allowed himself to enjoy bathing in her radiating warmth, for she was shining brighter than the Sun itself.

By the time she finished her little repertoire, she did a pretty courtesy and walked to the man in the white suit, taking a glass of red wine and sipping from it, that gentle smile never leaving her face.

They exchanged no words, but there was no need for that, as the look in their eyes spoke more than anything else, and they danced the night away, together, in graceful and intimate waltzes, or swaying together, keeping their hearts glued together, beating in sync and feeling each other’s heat.

She might not have wanted to end up like Karenina, but she wasn’t too far away from her situation, and she knew very well, should she leave with this man, she was going to break down every rule, and find an identity for herself, after all these years.

But happiness is emphemeral in the life of a Princess, and just before the Christmas Ball ended, her parents dragged her to the table of this old man, so they would share gifts. This old man, who so happened to be the man chosen to be her future husband, and had fewer hairs on his head and teeth in his mouth than her age.

Most of the gifts were pretty basic - Jewellery for women, cigars, fedoras, watches for men...But for her...She received some of he oddest gifts so far - And yet, she thought life couldn’t surprise her anymore.

Several little outfits, fit for babies, were neatly folded in all boxes, sans one - The sole box being a small, velvet box, which revealed a sapphire ring that expressed the definite bond of marriage that must be officiated very soon, through papers and a church ceremony.

Frozen was the clock, frozen was the time, and frozen was life itself, for the shock was great - Being put on the spot is scarier than the anticipation and fear of venturing into the unknown - Yet here she was, with her supposed fossil of a husband, with several babies promised to be born, and a very angry author, watching the disgusting exchange of pleasantries between the elder people.

He noticed Y/N doing a little courtesy, excusing herself with a nervous smile, and rushing out of the ballroom, the clicks of her elegant heels giving away her location at all time. Following her, he saw her on the edge of the rood, barefoot, her back to the empty space, as she hummed, looking up at the clouds pouring snow, and swaying to her tippy toes occasionally.

“You sure like the feeling of being alive, don’t you? Otherwise you wouldn’t be staying there after being faced with such a disgusting situation.” he pointed out, clasping his hands behind his back and carefully stepped towards her. “Life is full of surprises. But it is not called life, unless you have a say in the paths that you go down by. Today, I realised what I have to do in order to achieve true bliss and happiness...Something ethereal, although utopian in its quintessence. I have to make a choice. And right now, I’m making it.” she smiled, extending her arms to the side, resembling a Goddess, as a few stray tears streamed down her face - But they were tears of relief, not of fear, anxiety of depression. She was happy. “You said you didn’t want to choose the path of Karenina, nor of Myshkin, and yet, there you are, on the brink of death, as the way to show that you are no longer a caged bird. Is it truly worth it, in the end?” Fyodor asked, frowning at the delusional words she was spewing. “Death is but the beginning of a new adventure, and with me falling, I will find out what freedom is, unlike all the other Princesses before me. It is not death I’m choosing, nor will I regret it as soon as I step into this free fall hazard, like Karenina, and, as you can see, I chose to wake up from my catatonic state, unlike Myshkin. I know what awaits me as soon as I reach the ground...But do you?” Y/N hummed in amusement, watching the conflict painted all over his face - And it was for the first time that Fyodor showed such confusion and inner turmoil, that much was obvious to her. “Stop this, Y/N, I don’t understand your reasoning, but don’t kill yourse- “ but he couldn’t finish his sentence, for the girl uttered just a few words - Words that changed even the rotation of the Earth around the Sun - And as she pushed herself on the tips of her toes, she embraced the cold wind of Winter being her guide down to the ground, as she watched the snowflakes following her down.

And she smiled.

Because love won, and life won, and she knew she chose correct - These weren’t the times to choose everyone else over herself anymore, and nor is she a saint, a martyr, an angel, or some perfect Christian role model. She was just a woman thirsting for happiness and for the tangible sensation of life and of flying, and with this jump, she got completely wasted.

The secure embrace of a white angel made sure she lived for another day, but not quite, for her guardian angel jumped to save her, yet had no idea himself that he wasn’t the only special one, after all, and just as they were going to reach the ground, time seemed to stop, and they reached the ground gracefully and softly, like two linked feathers.

She lay down on the crystal blanket of snow, laughing mirthfully, almost with a childlike charm, as her long hair was sprawled all over her, and Fyodor’s arms were fiercely holding her, and he looked down at her, his eyes wide in understanding.

“I didn’t choose death. I chose life. I chose love...I chose you, and I chose me. I knew you had an ability too, and that you were confident in it, so I was sure that, should you choose to, you could jump from the roof of the palace to save me - Which you did. I never really have the opportunity to use my ability, but it’s rather useful in some situations, if I can say so myself. So, by the way you’d respond to my feelings and actions, I’d know whether I chose right or not...I think we both know the answer now, don’t we?” she grinned mischievously, extending a hand to his face to caress it gently. “That’s the most idiotic, most reckless thing anyone has ever one...And yet, you strategised everything, as if we were pieces in a game of chess. How did you get the courage to reach such a conclusion?” his voice was low, like a murmur, trying to understand her impossible, labyrinthine mind. “Life offered me a Christmas gift today, and that was serendipity, so, I used it. Everything else was a perfect strategy of a game of chess I played myself - The White King versus the Black King - And, was far as my luck and the universe brought about, I believe I won. But you must still answer back, otherwise, the magic will vanish.” Fyodor noticed a smirk growing on her face - One that somehow resembled his, and he almost felt conflicted seeing her mimicking him in his demeanour, in a way...But he also felt incredibly proud. “I cannot take you with me, Y/N. The part I walk is dangerous, it could even be fatal, and I would rather you not walk down a boulevard of broken dreams. You just now achieved happiness, don’t throw it out of the window. It a world full of crimes, I choose to be both the justiciar and the executioner of the unworthy. In a world of crime, I shall inflict punishment upon the evil-doers and paint this world red with the blood of the guilty.” he wanted her, he truly didn’t want to leave without her, nor did he want to leave her alone, here, with these hyenas, but could he really have it in his heart to endanger her so? “Fyodor, my darling, it matters naught for me whether I live or die, as long as the journey is by your side, and I’m not shackled anymore. I want to see, I want to hear, I want to touch, I want to taste, I want to smell, I want to learn. Everything. Without exception. There is a whole world out there, open, waiting to be explored and unveiled, and I shall be its explorer. As long as I have you by my side, I will surely be fearless. Being a hero, being a villain, or anything in between is of no concern for me...However, I cannot deny that I would be rather...Interested in seeing you deliver the sentence down to...Some specific people.” she giggled, winking at him, as she obviously hinted towards her kin and the unlimited amount of gossips she has heard about so many people, over the years.

With a wide smirk on his face, Fyodor Dostoevsky helped Princess Y/N on her feet and gave her a passionate, fire-like kiss, before picking her up bridal style and making their way to her room, so she would start packing and leave at the earliest convenience.

There may still be a bit of official work to do at the palace, and as his ability is called, there is no crime without punishment, he was going to make sure of that. Until then, there was one thing certain, and one alone, that was going to guide the both of them to a path of exciting uncertainty and thrill.

“I love you, my dear Y/N.”

#bsd fyodor #bsd anime #bsd #bsd x reader #bsd imagine #bungou stray dogs x reader #bungou stray dogs imagine #bungou stray dogs #fyodor dostoyevsky x reader #fyodor dostoevsky imagine #fyodor dostoyevsky bsd #fyodor dostoevsky #bungou stray dogs fyodor #bungou stray dogs fyodor x reader

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lockefanfic · 4 years

Text

Business Trip - Pt 12: Answers

Mina’s eyes finally lift from her notebook, and you are struck the beauty of the young woman - it is a beauty that would not be out of place in a fashion magazine or in a painting in some Japanese history museum. The young lawyer is wearing a short black dress with a plunging neckline, and you found your eyes wandering a little towards the delicious looking cleavage and the creamy, pale vanilla skin of her upper chest.

“I’ve already told you this, but boys aren’t my preference,” she says with a soft tone, “although I do make an exception here and there for… special men.”

“This is our proof.”

At your nod, Park Choa clicks her mouse, bringing up a picture on the large flat screen TV mounted to the meeting room wall. Seated around the large table in the middle of the room are yourself, Choa, Momo, Seolhyun, and Mina; sitting opposite your team are Tzuyu and Sana, the former with an unimpressed, arrogant look on her young features - the latter with a blank, emotionless look on hers.

On the screen is a picture of a battery pack - one of relatively common design, at least externally. But on the side is a small label; such a small thing, but something that would have a massive impact on the fate of two companies and the lives of many dozens of its employees.

“This device,” you continue, “was lent to me by one of your employees several months ago. As you will see, the label reads: Minatozaki Sana.”

A hush falls over the room at the revelation. There it was, clear as day - proof that Tzuyu’s company’s tech was stolen, and proof that Sana was complicit in the theft of said data from Seolhyun’s company.

“We have reason to believe that this device actually contained a hacking program that used the connection my cell phone had to our network to break into our servers and steal the intellectual property that you presented as your own yesterday.”

“That’s not proof at all,” Tzuyu retorts, “that could be any battery pack. There’s no proof whatsoever that it’s any sort of data theft device. For all I know, you bought that this morning and slapped a label with my employee’s name on it.”

“I figured you’d say that,” you answer, and you nod once more to Choa, who switches the display to show a Skype window. On the screen is a young woman, her blue-green hair and circular rimmed glasses making her look a little like she stepped out of an anime or video game.

“This is our IT analyst, Yoo Jeongyeon,” you say, “and she has had some time to retrieve the device from my apartment and analyze its contents. Jeongyeon?”

“The battery pack has been modified to house a hacking device,” Jeongyeon begins, adjusting the large glasses on her nose, “it’s been programmed to hack into the network of any portable device it’s plugged into, before identifying, copying, and transmitting selected data from the host device’s network to a secure server.”

“Jeongyeon, was there any specific data on the device that indicates where the data was sent to?”

“Yes. Server records indicate it was sent to a secure server in Taiwan. I’ve contacted internet service providers both here and in Taiwan, and they have corroborated the transfer of data. The secure server is housed in a building that is owned by Chou Tzuyu’s company. This is all indisputable, unedited hard data that I can send to anyone who wants to see it.”

All eyes turn to Tzuyu, and it was obvious that the young woman was expending a significant amount of effort to remain composed in the face of her accusations.

“Thank you, Jeongyeon,” you say, and the aloof young woman on the screen nods before taking a swig of what appeared to be an energy drink and closing her connection.

“This is preposterous,” Tzuyu says, dismissing Jeongyeon’s statements with a wave of her hand, “and downright offensive. We don’t have to sit here and listen to your baseless accusations. We came here out of professional courtesy, but we don’t have to sit here and simply take this.”

The young woman rises from her chair, anger twisting her youthful features into a scowl.

“Let’s go, Sana,” she says, looking at the seated Japanese girl next to her, who thus far had been silent and wearing an expressionless mask.

“Before you go,” Seolhyun says, the anticipation of revenge palpable in her voice, “you should know that we are planning to sue the shit out of you for hacking a private server, intellectual property theft, and whatever else the fuck it takes to make you regret ever messing with me and my company.”

“Miss Miyoui, if you will,” you add, and at that Mina, who is also present, reaches into her folder and produces a thick stack of paper, which she slides across the table.

“We will see you in court,” Mina says, her tone as confident as ever, “and I will beat you.”

“You? You think you can beat a multi million dollar team of lawyers in court? You, alone?” Tzuyu says, the words almost a hiss.

“Yes, me,” Mina retorts, her face as serene and calm as ever, “I will wipe the floor with you and your company, no matter how many stuck up, expensive lawyers you throw at me. And when I’m done, your company won’t want anything to do with someone who did something as stupid as steal a rival’s tech. Not only will you never work in this industry again; I’ll also make sure you end up in jail.”

“Not to mention that public opinion will against your parent company very quickly,” Hirai Momo adds, “we’ll put our proof out into the public. Social media will take it from there, and not only will your division lose any sort of foothold you may have gained in this industry - your entire parent company will take a reputation hit it probably won’t ever recover from. You’d be making some powerful enemies.”

Tzuyu’s hands have balled into fists. She is furious now, the last remnants of her discipline struggling to retain her composure. Beside her, Sana has not moved an inch, her face still expressionless.

“There is a way out of this,” you begin, “a solution that will result in a favorable result for all parties involved.”

“Oh yeah?” Tzuyu retorts, “and what might that be?”

“We will buy out your division of your parent company. That includes your entire staff and intellectual property, including, of course, the intellectual property you stole from us. We then announce the acquisition of both your division and FNC Inc. at our presentation tomorrow.”

“If we buy your division, we promise not to divulge your little theft to the public,” Momo adds, “and we gain a new division of staff and an office here in Taiwan. You gain the privilege of, well, not going to jail for intellectual property theft.”

“That’s blackmail. You still haven’t proven that we did anything. You can’t force us to sell our division to you just because you’re accusing us of theft,” Tzuyu says, although the desperation in her tone betrays the cracks in her initially impenetrable armor of confidence.

“We’re giving you the opportunity to get out of this scott free,” you answer, “everyone in this room knows you stole the tech, and we have ironclad evidence to prove it. Your choice is simple. Either throw away your entire career and face possible jail time, or swallow your pride and join our company. Who knows, you might even like it.”

The young woman bites her lip, looking very much like a cornered animal. Her fists are still clenched, her brow furrowed as she contemplates her options.

“We’ll get back to you in two hours,” Tzuyu says, and without further word, she gathers her laptop and bag before storming out of the room. Beside her, Sana rises, her face still blank - but when you lock eyes with her for a split second, you notice that her eyes have an unbearable sadness about them that breaks your heart.

The Japanese girl walks slowly to the door and leaves the room; involuntarily, your hand rises as if to beckon her to stay. But then she is gone, leaving you staring at a closed door once again.

“We have those bitches!” Seolhyun exclaims as soon as Sana leaves, “They’d be stupid not to take that deal. I really wanted to make introduce the tech myself tomorrow… but I’m just happy they’re not getting away with what they did to us.”

“Me too,” Momo agrees, “speaking of which, we need to get some logistics ready for tomorrow - assuming they take the deal, of course. We’ll need to set up the presentation to introduce both FNC and Tzuyu’s division as our new acquisitions.”

“We’ll also need to take care of the legal paperwork,” Mina adds.

“Right. Momo, you take Choa and Seolhyun and work on the presentation. Mina and I will stay here and wait for Tzuyu’s decision. In the meantime we’ll work on the legal paperwork and have a contract ready for them to sign.”

“Roger that, boss,” Momo says with a smile and a mock salute, glancing at both you and Mina before adding, “you two have fun.”

You catch a hint of suggestiveness in your girlfriend’s smile and the weighted look in her eyes - but you don’t have time to question her as she takes Choa and Seolhyun and leaves the room.

You let a sigh out and lean back in your chair as the three girls exit the room. You weren’t enirely sure how Tzuyu would react to your claims, but you were thankful that it at least looked like she was going to consider your offer.

“Well, I’m glad that’s over and done with - the rest is up to Tzuyu now,” you say.

“Agreed,” Mina replies, her expression as calm and stoic as ever as she jots down some notes in her notebook, “that went as well as we could have hoped. There’s no way they reject that deal. They’ll accept it.”

“A lot of it will be thanks to you, Miss Miyoui. You scared them out of taking us to court.”

“It wasn’t scaring them. It was a promise. I would have beaten them, no matter what they threw at me.”

“I believe it.”

“And also,” she adds, “please. Just call me Mina.”

“Sorry, Miss- err, Mina. You’re not officially an employee of JYP, so I didn’t want to assume anything. And while we’re on that topic, I know you were hired to take care of the legal matters related to our acquisition of FNC, but I’m sure you could have a job with JYP if you wanted it.”

A slim smile appears on her lips, but Mina’s eyes don’t leave her notebook.

“Why, so I can join your little group of women that you fuck at will on a daily basis?”

You are taken aback slightly by Mina’s frank statement, although at the same time you weren’t surprised given her forthright nature.

“My relationships, personal or otherwise, with my colleagues are purely consensual.”

“I’m sure they are,” Mina replies, “and I didn’t say I have a problem with it.”

“I’ve already told you this, but boys aren’t my preference,” she says with a soft tone, “although I do make an exception here and there for… special men.”

“Is that so,” you answer. You smile slyly. You liked where this was going.

“Tzuyu says we have two hours. Better make the most of it.”

“And what did you have in mind, Mina?”

Mina rises from her chair, a slim smile on her perfectly shaped lips as she approaches your chair. With no further prompting or pretense, she reaches for your tie and with swift movements, she undoes the knot and slips the tie from around your neck.

You are wondering exactly what she has in mind when she folds the tie in half and presents it to you, as though she were giving you a gift.

“If you impress me, I’ll consider joining your company,” she says, “Tie me up. Strip me. Make me wet. And then, you can fuck me.”

You weren’t exactly a bondage enthusiast, having only indulged here and there with light experimentation in your younger days, but you weren’t one to turn down a gift when it was given to you, and certainly not a gift from a woman as beautiful as the one right in front of you.

You take your tie from Mina’s hands as you rise from your chair. Her eyes meet yours, and notice that her eyes are beginning to show signs of something other than businesslike indifference - there is a little bit of lust there, a little bit of need beginning to show beneath her prim, proper exterior.

You can’t resist anymore; you lean forward and bring your lips to hers. Your lips press hard against each other for only a moment, before Mina’s tongue slides against your mouth, and before you know it your tongues are duelling, pressing and swirling around each other. Her kiss is frantic, fierce, the complete opposite of her demure personality.

Mina breaks the kiss and you lock eyes with her for a moment before you are suddenly very aware of the tie in your left hand, and with a quickness and aggressiveness that surprises even you, you grasp the young woman by her slim shoulders and turn her around. Grasping her wrists, you bring them behind her back and begin to tie up her hands.

“You like being tied up, do you, Mina?”

“Mina?” she says to your surprise, “It’s Miss Miyoui to you,” she finishes. The smile on your lips widens.

“Do you like being tied up, Miss Miyoui?” you ask, finally finishing the double knot that is binding her hands together behind her back.

“Yes,” she answers, her tone a little breathier than usual.

You bring your hands to her shoulders, relishing the feel of her soft, blemishless skin - like perfect vanilla, smooth and pale. Mina’s head falls backward slightly, and you hear a soft breath of air escape her lips.

“Strip me.”

Your fingers reach the neckline of her thin, black dress, and you slowly draw the fabric down her shoulders.

“Do you like being undressed, Miss Miyoui?”

“Yes,” she answers, her tone now a soft gasp, desire building and threatening to break down the last vestiges of her demure exterior.

Finally, you draw the dress far enough down her shoulders until it is just barely covering her nipples - and with one last pull, you draw the flimsy dress down past her breasts, her soft, small mounds escaping the fabric with a small bounce.

Mina is squirming now, her arms still bound behind her back, her naked shoulders and small, perfect breasts now exposed. Your arms snake around her small frame, and you grasp both her breasts in your palms, enjoying the feel of her warm flesh in your hands. You smile as you feel her nipples hardening, her buds poking against your palms.

You capture both of her nipples with your index finger and thumb, and give the hardened buds a slight pinch.

Mina moans - the first outright sound of pleasure she has allowed to escape her mouth since you started.

“You’re mine now, Miss Miyoui,” you whisper softly into her ear.

You press forward on the young woman’s back, bending her forward until her upper body is pressed against the table. Wasting no further time, you grasp the hem of Mina’s dress and pull it up over her upraised ass, revealing more perfect, vanilla skin - and the absence of underwear. You take a moment to burn the image in your mind of the young woman bent over on the table, her hands bound behind her back, her naked save for her black dress bunched around her waist.

“No underwear, Miss Miyoui?”

“No,” she answers, pausing slightly before adding, “Eat me.”

You weren’t one to keep a woman waiting, and you drop to your knees and admire the soft, glistening flesh of Mina’s pussy for a split second before pressing your mouth to her lips and giving her a long, slow lick.

The moan that leaves Mina’s mouth tells you that she has finally cracked - gone is the demure, reserved young woman you knew from meetings and office presentations - the woman that you were currently tongue deep in was a new woman now. A wanton, lustful young thing.

Her moan encourages you, and you dive in the same way you did with the other women in your life, pressing the flat of your tongue against the lips of her pussy before dragging it up and down, stimulating her sensitive flesh with long, broad strokes. You bring a finger up to her crotch and, with your middle finger, search for and quickly find the hardened, erect bud of her clit.

The dual stimulation has turned Mina into a mewling, moaning mess, every vestige of her demure exterior now long gone - there was only pleasure now, emanating from your tongue and fingers and coursing throughout her young body. Her naked breasts are crushed against the table, and she rubs her chest on the cool wood of the table in some attempt to stimulate her nipples given her bound hands.

“Fuck! Fuck you’re so good at that,” she says, “now I know why Momo loves when you eat her out.”

You want to answer, want to tell her that wasn’t the only thing she liked about you, but you decide instead to redouble your efforts, driving your tongue as deep as you can inside her pussy and bringing your ring finger up to join your middle finger in stimulating her clit. Her juices are flowing freely now, and you gladly gather them on your tongue, the bittersweet taste of her body staining your mouth.

Your eyes are closed as you dive into her pussy, focusing all your attention on tonguing her pussy, but when you open them your eyes are drawn to the tightly clenched ring of her asshole, not even inches away from your eyes.

“My asshole,” Mina hisses, as though reading your thoughts, “my ass. Do it…”

You give Mina’s juicy, heavily leaking pussy one last lick, savoring the juices on your tongue one more time before raising your head slightly and angling your mouth to match Mina’s rear entrance. And with no further hesitation, you press forward with your mouth, your tongue reaching out and giving her clenched asshole a long, soft lick.

“Fuck!” Mina yelps at the first contact of your tongue and her most private of areas, “Yes! More!”

Your tongue almost moves of its own accord, and before you know it you are tonguing Miyoui Mina’s ass, her clenched muscle loosening slightly as she becomes used to the stimulation of her asshole. All the while, your fingers are playing with her clit, never stopping rubbing and swirling around her hard bud, the juices making her flesh slick and magnifying the pleasure emanating from her clit.

“Oh God!” Mina moans, “Oh god! Eat my ass! I’m gonna cum! Yes… right there…. Ohhh!”

Mina’s squirming, wriggling body suddenly goes taut as an orgasm wracks her young body. You continue to tongue her ass and finger her clit, albeit with a slightly slower pace, encouraging aftershocks of pleasure in her body without making her uncomfortable.

Miyoui Mina is a far cry from the ladylike, reserved lawyer she was a half hour ago - now she is a disheveled, half naked mess, bent over on the boardroom table, her juices leaking freely from her pussy and making her thighs glisten. Her face is pressed against the table, but she still finds the strength to make her next demand.

“Fuck me.”

They are words you have been waiting to hear, and you rise quickly, undoing your belt and zipper, finally freeing your fully erect shaft from your boxers. You grasp Mina’s bound wrists with your left hand and your shaft with your right, pressing the cockhead against her drenched lips, lubricating it with her pussy juices.

Mina lets out a soft gasp before she speaks with a lustful tone, “My pussy… is only for girls.”

It takes you only a split second to put two and two together. Then, adjusting your angle slightly as Mina lowers her hips to allow you better access, you press your cockhead against her tight, clenched asshole.

“...but… you can fuck my ass.”

You didn’t think there were any more arousing words in the English language, and you move your hips forward slightly, pressing your hard shaft against Mina’s ass, before you finally feel the tight ring of her anus begin to give way to you. You didn’t have too much experience with anal sex aside from your first time with Momo last week, but you were certainly eager to increase your knowledge.

Soon half of your shaft is now embedded within Mina’s ass, every square millimeter of penetration drawing a lustful moan from her lips. Your grip on her bound wrists tightens, and you pull backward slightly on your tie, pulilng her wrists and upper body back against your hips as you thrust forward - simultaneously, the thickest part of your shaft finally eases into Mina’s tight ass, and you have finally fully impaled the young woman’s asshole with your hard, thick cock.

“Fuck,” Mina says, the curse word escaping her lips in a long, drawn out hiss as her body adjusts to the new feeling of fullness. She had told you she usually slept with women, so this must have been a new or rare experience, although it occured to you given how much Momo enjoyed anal sex that it was likely not Mina’s first time.

“Enough,” Mina says, interrupting your reverie, “Fuck me already. Show me what a man can do. Fuck my ass until you fill it with cum.”

You want to say something, something that is bold or cocky, but you decide to answer her challenge the best way you know how - with action. And to that end you draw your shaft out of her body, and when only the cockhead remains, you thrust forward again, impaling the young lawyer’s asshole with the full thickness of your shaft. With Momo you took it slow, careful not to cause your girlfriend any pain or discomfort - but Mina didn’t seem to have any difficulty allowing you into her body, and so you quickly find yourself pumping in and out of her bent body with the same speed that you had when fucking another woman’s pussy.

A long, drawn-out string of moans begins to leave Mina’s mouth, accentuated at the end of every thrust into her asshole with a loud gasp as your hips meet the firm flesh of her asscheeks. Soon you are thrusting hard enough that your balls are slapping against her drenched pussy with a wet smack - Mina’s ass was much easier to fuck than Momo’s, which wasn’t surprising given Mina’s seeming comfort with anal sex.

“Oh God,” Mina says, her body rocked with each thrust on the table, “That feels so good! Your cock… your cock is so deep in me! So deep in my ass! Yes! Keep fucking me!”

You are slamming in and out her tight, hot asshole now, truly fucking the young lawyer with long, smooth strokes of your shaft, enjoying the sight of her body as it is bent over in front of you, the perfect skin of her shoulders and back flexing with effort as she absorbs each thrust.

You pull backward on your tie, pulling her bound wrists backward and lifting her upper body and shoulders slightly from the desk. Her breasts are freed from being crushed against the table, and you curse the fact that you are unable to watch as they bounce erotically with each thrust into their owner’s body. You content yourself with watching her full, round ass cheeks giggle as they are rocked with each slam of your hips into hers.

With your free hand you grasp her right butt cheek, squeezing the firm flesh, spreading it outward slightly to give you a better view of your shaft as it plunges in and out of Miyoui Mina’s tight ass. You realize that while she was comfortable with anal sex, the fact that she usually slept with women meant that she probably mainly penetrated by sex toys.

“You like… being filled with cock, instead of some toy?”

“Yes!” is Mina’s immediate reply, “A toy… a toy can’t fill me with cum.”

Her words are so erotic, so lusty, that you are momentarily taken aback by the vulgar, wanton young woman Mina has suddenly become. You decide to reciprocate, and ensure that you had fully broken her outer shell of propriety.

“You like being tied up and bent over a table while a man pounds this tight little ass of yours?”

“Fuck yes!”

You decide to take things into your own hands, so to speak, and you pull back with your left hand, pulling Mina’s upper body off the table completely until her body is almost upright - simultaneously you move your right hand around her torso and grasp her naked left breast, grabbing the entire mound with your palm and squeezing. You find yourself disappointed yet again that you weren’t able to taste her breasts earlier - but you content yourself with the fact that your new position could at least allow you to whisper directly into Mina’s ear.

“You like having your ass fucked, Miss Miyoui? You like being with a man?” you hiss.

“Yes! I love it… I’m so full.. So full with your cock. You… You’re gonna make me cum!”

“You’re such a proper little lady at work,” you hiss, pulling back even more on her bound wrists, driving her torso into an even more upright position as you tighten your grip on her breast, “but you’re not like that at all when your hands are tied and your ass is being fucked, are you?”

“No… I… I’m so close…”

“You’re not such a proper lady right now, are you, Miss Miyoui?”

“No… I… I….”

You fuck her a little harder, drawing startled little gasps from her pretty mouth. You were almost there, almost at the point of fully breaking her little facade…

“Then what are you, Miss Miyoui?”

“I’m your fucktoy! My ass is yours to fuck whenever you want!”

Mina’s reply is loud, and if you weren’t balls deep into her tight, clenching asshole then you might have been afraid that someone passing by outside would have heard. But at the moment you didn’t care - the CEO of your companies could have walked in the room and you wouldn’t have stopped fucking the young, quivering woman in your arms.

You are satisfied that you had finally broken through her demure, ladylike exterior and exposed her true nature. Now it was time to concentrate on pleasure.

“Good… I’m going to be fucking this ass quite a bit, Miss Miyoui. Do you like when I’m so deep in you?”

“Yes… I love it when I’m stretched out… Oh… Oh god. I… I’m gonna cum!”

Her slim, tight body would have been too much to handle during normal vanilla sex, but with her half clothed, arms tied behind her back as she is bent over a table, and with your shaft buried in her asshole as she is on the brink orgasm, it is far too much to handle. And it embarasses you a little bit, how quickly you have found yourself so close to orgasm yourself, but given the circumstances you weren’t exactly surprised.

“I… I’m gonna cum soon too, Miss Miyoui,” you admit, somewhat shamefully. Your shaft never stops pistoning in and out of her clenched ass, however, not that Mina minds as she nears the brink of orgasm.

“Then cum… cum with me! Fill my body with your cum... Cum inside my ass! Oh! I’m cumming!”

Mina does just that, the combination of your hand on her breast and the hard, thick flesh pistoning in and out her body driving her into an orgasm that leaves her trembling and spasming in your arms. You pull back on her bound wrists like it was some sort of leash, all in an attempt to drive yourself deeper into Mina’s willing, wanton body.

It is too much for you to handle, and you are struck with an orgasm that takes you completely by surprise - usually you knew when you were about to cum, knew when to expect that wonderful plateau of pleasure - but not this time. It is an orgasm that strikes you completely unprepared for it, and before you know it you are buried balls deep in Miyoui Mina’s body as you release stream after stream of thick, hot cum into her ass, both of your hot bodies trembling with pleasure.

You black out - nothing else exists except the pleasure that has overtaken your body. You feel the semen leaving your shaft, feel Mina’s asshole tightening around your cock, you are even aware of Mina’s long, sultry mid-orgasm moan that fills the room, but only barely - above all, there is the pleasure.

Slowly you both wind down from your mutual orgasms, and you are both left bent over the table, both breathing heavily. You gather your wits enough to slowly withdraw your softening shaft from Mina’s tight ass, savoring the feel of her body squeezing every inch of it as it exits her, leaving behind a mess of thick white semen that begins to flow slowly from her freshly fucked opening.

You grasp the young woman’s shoulders softly and turn her around so that she is facing you again, her hands still bound behind her back. You run your tongue over your lips as you notice her bound hands have thrust her chest forward, presenting her naked breasts, the firm mounds pushed up by the black dress bunched beneath her breasts.

You lean forward, bending slightly, and take her left breast in your mouth, savoring the feel of her sweat misted skin and the hard nub of her nipple on your tongue.

“Momo always said you were a boobs guy,” Mina says as she lets her head fall back, still happily stuck in that wonderful post-orgasm haze, enjoying the new sensation of your tongue on her breasts.

“I wanted to taste them, but I couldn’t with you turned around,” you say softly between licks. You bring your other hand up and squeeze her right breast, not wanting it to be left unattended.

“Maybe next time,” Mina says softly, “I won’t be turned around. Because maybe… it’ll be my pussy you’re fucking.”

—-

“We accept your offer.”

Tzuyu’s words come as a definite relief, even if you knew they were the only real choice the young woman had of avoiding the fallout of her decision to steal Seolhyun’s tech. There is an audible sigh of relief in the room, at least from the women on your side of the table. You note, however, that Sana was absent from the room.

“We will commence formal talks after this conference. I presume your lawyer here will preside over the legal aspects?”

“I will,” Mina confirms, and you relish the fact that her normally pale skin was still a little flushed from your recent exertions.

“I also demand that I and all my staff members receive complete immunity from prosecution.”

“Done,” you answer.

There is a look of defeat on Tzuyu’s face that almost - almost - makes you feel sorry for her. Despite he audaciousness if her plans, she was still just a young girl that was trying to make a name for herself in a competitive industry, even if her methods were suspect.

“And how did your parent company take this news?” Momo asks.

“Not well,” Tzuyu replies, “I don’t think I’ll be invited to the Christmas party this year.”

“We’ll ensure they don’t do anything to harm you or your staff, Tzuyu. And you can be assured that no one else in our company will be aware of what you did. You’ll have a fresh start with us at JYP,” Momo says, surprising you a little bit with her apparent compassion. Perhaps the older woman was feeling a little sympathetic towards the vulnerable girl in front of you.

“Good. They have a reputation of being rather… cutthroat. It’s how they did so well in other industries.”

“We can take them on,” Seolhyun boasts, “there are only two other companies I know of that could possibly threaten us in this industry. Unless it’s one of them, they won’t be a problem.”

“It is,” Tzuyu says with an ominous tone, “if they decide to, they can wreck JYP without lifting a finger.”

“Then who are they?” Choa asks. Tzuyu pauses for a moment as she prepares to reveal the identity of her parent company.

“SM.”

—-

In an empty meeting room elsewhere in he conference hall, Minatozaki Sana is having a hushed conversation on a cell phone.

“Everything is going according to plan. Tzuyu’s plan was foiled. The targets found the hacking device as planned and my name on the device implicated us, as expected.”

…

“No, they still believe I’m a part of her staff. Tzuyu isn’t suspicious of me. They purchased our division as part of our plea bargain, so I’m now once again part of JYP.”

…

“Yes. I will proceed as planned. You can tell Joy she can send me the stealth hacking program when it’s ready.”

…

“Yes, I understand. Good bye, Irene.”

#kpop fanfiction #kpop fanfic #kpop smut #pov smut #Smut #male reader #twice #twice mina #miyoui mina #mina

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trilies · 5 years

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an argument for AO3

So I’m in a conversation with someone who is kind of in the “against AO3″ camp, and they asked me a couple of questions. Namely, who wouldn’t be uncomfortable with pedophilia? Isn’t it sketchy that a beta website is asking for so much money despite reaching its goals?

And my answer became so long... I figured it might as well become its own post. Please bear in mind that this is cut from a whole conversation.

But here it is.

------

No. It doesn't seem sketchy to me at all. Why would it? I know we make jokes about how much money tumblr has cost the various sites which purchase it like Yahoo, but there's some truth there: it's really expensive to host a website to thousands and thousands of people. It's why we see so many tumblr owners trying to shoehorn in ads or make people buy services, or why Photobucket tried to pull that truly atrocious bullshit a year or two back. Without image hosting capabilities (tumblr and photobucket's big thing), the strain isn't as huge.... but AO3 is MASSIVE. It is hosting literally thousands of accounts, millions of stories. That's massive on a server scale alone, ignoring all the other work they do. Yeah, it's in beta... but that's because it's trying to reach a goal of being as good a fanfic archive as they can be, and they don't believe they've reached that goal yet. Being in beta means they can better listen to their uses on shit like tagging systems and make those changes. Not to mention, again, they are INCREDIBLY transparent. If you are worried about where the money is going, you can go on the site and they have all their stuff up there.

As for the pedophilia subject matter.... Please give me a moment. because there's honestly a lot to say on that particular issue, if nothing else. This will take a while, so if you see this and there hasn't been a reply yet.... I'm still typing lmao.

To start with, of course people are uncomfortable about pedophilia. However, there are a lot of problems with how pedophilia is viewed or *used* as an accusation in the current fandom climate.

For example, in honestly EXTREMELY recent times, I was told I was "defending" pedophilia because I disagreed that a character (an immortal food gijinka) was "minor-coded" or "designed as an underage teenager". (As a note, an argument for this view was that the character's breasts were too small.) When I pointed out, hey, that's kind of a fucked up accusation to throw at a complete stranger, especially as I am a CSA survivor, I was told "You have to be lying about that, then, because a real CSA survivor would understand."

c o o l

That's just my personal experience that happened within a couple of months. Other people have talked about running into people who think that a character turning 18 means they're a pedophile for still dating a 17 year old. Or running into people who think a 40 year old dating someone in their 30s is pedophilic. Or believe that even SHIPPING characters who were not yet 18 was pedophilic if you yourself were over 18.

(Of course, you also have the kinds of people who try to use Moral Purity as a way to bash ships they don't like. I once saw someone try to claim that a popular mlm ship, A/B, was pedophilic because one half of the equation looked young.... when some other artists drew him... Of course, on the side, this person liked to also get angry that *their* favorite ship, a dude/chick ship composing of A/C, wasn't more popular. So. You know.)

So that's one half of the problem: the word "pedophile" being so warped that a lot of people now have no idea if the person using it has a genuine concern or if the accuser is trying to smear someone who doesn't ship the same thing. FFnet and Tumblr have gone with the "burn it all down" approach, which hasn't actually helped anyone and is, to boot, sloppily moderated. So we know from history, from experience in cases like mine, that it doesn't help in that area.

The other half of the problem is... How far is too far?

This is where "anti" culture begins to find similarities with the whole Warriors for Innocence thing. If you completely and blindly block an entire tag, or anyone associated with it, you have to ask: who are you hurting? Warriors for Innocence hurt actual rape victim, and queer folk, and a whole lot of others. Far as I can tell, anti culture is on the route to the same thing, because I have yet to see appropriate answers to a lot of issues.

If one says "anything with underage sex in it is bad and should be banned", what about fics that tackle it in a serious manner? The young adult novel "Speak" deals with rape of an underage girl and how she works through that mental trauma; are fics with stories equivalent to that allowed? Do fics with underage sex have to focus purely on how it is Horrible And Bad to be allowed? Does only a chapter have to be allowed? A paragraph? An author's note? A tag? Or are we allowed to never explore dark subject matter?

Is fic with underage content in it only horrible if it's someone over the age of eighteen who writes it? Can a teenager write smut (terribly written as it may likely be) between teenage characters? Can a teenager write smut between a teenage character and an adult character? For the record, i did in fact, over the summer, run into someone who said that teens/minors "shouldn't even know about NSFW", which is asinine to me, because Abstinence Only is a terrible thing to put in schools, and somehow worse in a way when you try to put that into effect in fandom. If the answer is 'yes', what are you going to do, demand to see people's birth certificates in fandom?

(As a note, I think this is a terrible message to put into fandom for teenagers because I believe it will inevitably lead to self hatred and a warped view of sex. If you make the extremely simplified black-and-white statement of "teens and sex should never go together ever in any way", that's going to mess up teens who are starting to experience arousal in their bodies. The message, whether intended or not, ends up as "NSFW things are bad, which means my brain which thought NSFW thoughts is bad, and my brain thought those thoughts because my body had these feelings". )

(This is bad for any average teenager. This will be especially worse to CSA and rape victims, along with queer youth who, in a lot of places, are still struggling with their bodies and/or feelings because the world is still pretty damn queerphobic.)

Speaking of CSA and rape victims, what about those of them who write/read underage ships or dark content as a way to cope with what happened or Just Because? That's a thing lots of us do, especially those of us who don't look like the Perfect Victims people can use as an excuse for whatever crusade they're waging. I've heard anti types go "Well, it's an unhealthy way to cope" or claims that CSA/rape victims who write such dark content are "just as bad as their abusers"... But are they psychiatrists/therapists? Are they the psychiatrists/therapists of *those specific people*? Will you moderate this kind of content by forcefully interrogating CSA/rape victims to out their trauma to a complete stranger? Will you demand to speak to their therapists? Over fanfic?

When I was a teenager, I wrote all sorts of stuff. I wrote dark dub-con fic, because I liked to explore those dark feelings in the process and the aftermath separate from myself. I wrote a fic with a fairly young teenage girl (what age was kh2 kairi? who even knows, I sure didn't) falling for a MUCH older man built like a brick shit house so that there was never any doubt to him being an adult, even giving him her first kiss, because they were my favorite characters, I wanted both of them to have a moment of happiness (that i promptly ruined but hey), and, *in this fic*, I knew it would be alright. I knew the girl would always be in control, she'd be the one making moves, that the guy was nonthreatening and kind and protect her and work alongside her.

(and then I began the process of killing him off in the next paragraph through him saving her life, but, like. Drama (tm), baby)

This was all good for me. At an age where I was young, vulnerable, and figuring out weird shit like arousal and romantic feelings, it was *invaluable* to have a space where I could explore all of that while relatively safe from actual danger, even if the stuff I wanted to explore was a little messed up. This whole thing against AO3 wouldn't have helped me, and I'm pretty sure it's not helping a lot of other people too.

There is an issue with underage people and sex stuff- not just in fandom but in culture at large. We have Hollywood dressing up young girl actresses in super slinky or revealing clothes. We have schools saying girls basically should never wear shorts, and capitalism fucking this up further by only selling SUPER SHORT shorters. We have media of all sorts giving us adults, whether in real actors or character design, in the roles of young people. (See: "how do you do, fellow kids") We should probably take more care about fandom spaces, so that people of all ages don't feel pressured to engage in sexual shit they're not 100% game for or into, or just have it shoved into their faces without consent. It's a complex issue... and it's not stuff that can just be 'banned' and have that fix it.

AO3 has on its plate a very complex problem that will, if we're all honest, never have a perfect answer. It has given us the best that can possibly be asked for. It obeys the law by not having actual child pornography on it (aka visual proof of actual real children, defined by us law as such), which is closest to "objective" we can get at the current stage in humanity and state of fandom. It has a very comprehensive and moderated tag system, so that people can post warnings along their fic so that people don't stumble onto shit they don't need to, and so that people can moderate their own reading experience to some degree.

If some people aren't comfortable with AO3, that's fine. However, most of us are getting annoyed not with those people, but with the people who just blindly say "AO3 supports child porn and is probably stealing money" (statement simplified for the purpose of this post). It shows an ignorance of the fandom history that lead us here, no understanding in either AO3's practices or how expensive it is to run a site, and no consideration for how complex this problem can really be. It would be great if this was a black and white issue, if there was an easy answer as just "banning" certain kinds of content... but there isn't. And that's where I am.

#long post #ao3 #fandom #here comes the ruckus #csa tw #rape tw #you never realize how long what you've written is #until it's in a whole ass tumblr post #well!

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royalnugget42 · 4 years

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Every day I’m reminded of just how strange the Supernatural fandom is. Not in the way that’s like “omg they’re so quirky and weird, they like murder and death and satan” just...strange.

I’ve only been here for a little while compared to a lot of other people, and there are still some people that act like people used to in 2012, but there also people who have been here SINCE 2012 and they have grown over time. In other fandoms that are newer and decidedly smaller, there will usually be only a handful of really incredible artists.

People that can make comic style characters that just leap off the page. People that draw so realistically you can’t tell if you’re looking at a painting or a photo. The people that write fics that twist your heart into knots, people that edit videos into music videos that look like they’re made professionally (and technically speaking, a lot of them are).

Usually in a fandom there will only be a small handful. Maybe for the bigger, older, more popular ones there’ll be more, but Holy. Shit.

There is nothing, NOTHING, that can prepare you for the sheer volume of art that has come out of Supernatural. There are so many fics on AO3 that if you search up all Supernatural fics at once, it doesn’t even let you look at them all. THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH PAGES to hold the entirety of the Supernatural writing community. And while I’m at it, I’ve been here a few years, religiously scrolling through pages of content, and I still seem to find new artists every other week. Artists that draw incredible stuff, who have been here for years, but that I’ve only just seen recently.

The Big Bangs, the Mini Bangs, and everything in between? I thought that was just a common thing in fandoms, but I don’t know any other fandom that has that kind of massive collaboration, that kind of community feeling. I know if I saw someone wearing Supernatural merch, I would feel comfortable just going up and asking about it, and if someone in the fandom did that to me I wouldn’t even be weirded out. It really does feel like a family here.

I could go on. Needless to say, this fandom is an anomaly, one for the history books. Maybe it’s a product of the show we watch, the emphasis not just on born family, but the family you find along the way. Maybe it’s because the show is so old that the people who may have been average writers or artists in the beginning have had time to hone their craft, to the point where they can actually make a living off of it. Maybe there’s no real reason here, just chance and the appeal of a mediocre genre-hopping show.

And Supernatural isn’t a perfect show. I wouldn’t say that at all. It’s got technical problems, weird acting and writing moments, and in its early days especially, a lot of the usual problems with horror, like just not having any women or bipoc other than minor characters and a handful of cultural appropriation. (Looking at episode 2 and 8 of season one, but there’s more than that) You could accuse them of queerbaiting and for a multitude of reasons you’d be justified in doing so. There are a lot of problems.

But I notice that every now and then, even with all those problems, there are moments that surprise you. Moments that leave you crying, hurting in places you never knew you could hurt in. Moments of joy, of pure uncut nostalgia, of laughs and the occasional meta joke at their own or at our expense.

And maybe this fandom is an anomaly because of that. Because this fandom has Problems. There’s writers out there who can’t take criticism, rampant art theft, and some questionable shipping (not just talking about one ship here either, we’ve all done bad). We’ve had discourse and hate wars, and at the end of it all you’re left wondering why people stuck around.

It’s because of those moments. A fic that makes you cry your eyes out at 2am, art that leaves you gasping for breath just looking at the effort that went into it. The feeling of seeing collaborations and crossovers of all sorts and thinking, knowing, that we are not alone. That no matter how niche our talents, how strange our infatuations, we are a Family.

Because Family doesn’t end with blood.

Keep fighting you guys.

#spn #supernatural #2am rambles #why is always 2am ?#who knows #spn family

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365days365movies · 3 years

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April 2, 2021: The General (1926)

From one legendary early filmmaker onto another!

Joseph Frank Keaton was born in Piqua, Kansas, on October 4, 1895. His parents were vaudeville performers, which might be sounding familiar to you, based on Chaplin’s life history. But Keaton’s childhood was VERY different, I promise. When he was an infant, he fell down the stairs in front of a family friend, and stood up afterwards, seemingly fine. The actor said, “He’s a regular buster!” And the name stuck, as did Buster’s tendency to shake off what could be massive injury. And that proved useful, as he would soon lose the tip of his finger, hit his own eye with a rock, and was also SUCKED OUT OF A WINDOW BY A TORNADO AND DROPPED TWO CITY BLOCKS AWAY. FUCKING SERIOUSLY. And according to some accounts, al of that happened in the same fucking day. Allegedly, because that shit would be CRAZY if true.

Regardless, he was brought on to work with his parents on stage when he was three, and they became “The Three Keatons”. During the act, Buster would be thrown against the scenery, into the orchestra pit, or into the audience itself! He earned to take trick falls quickly, and was billed as “the little boy who can’t be damaged”. And kid was INDESTRUCTIBLE. Sure, he never got hurt because of surprisingly well-thought out stage trickery, but he also was VERY good at landing on his feet, describing himself once as “landing like a cat” on regular occasions. But eventually, the law banned child performers in vaudeville, putting an end to the act.

But that wouldn’t stop Buster Keaton, NO SIR. It did stop his father, though, who eventually succumbed to alcoholism and wrecked the family business. But Buster and his mother left for New York City, and Buster moved on to his lifelong passion: acting. While acting on stage, Keaton met a young man named Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, who would become one of the most prominent early film stars. But then, World War I happened, and Buster served in France, where he would become permanently deaf in one ear.

When he came back, he was a writer for Arbuckle’s films before breaking out on his own projects, being able to write, direct, and act in his own films. In the process, he developed his unique style of acting and filmmaking, which was extremely visual and full of slapstick. In acting, he became famous for his emotionless stony face, known as the “deadpan”. He also ALWAYS did his own stunts, which sometimes resulted in some major consequences.

Yeah. YEAH. Dude did a stunt that caused him to BREAK HIS NECK, and he DID NOT REALIZE THIS for YEARS AFTER THE INCIDENT! This man is the GREATEST BADASS THAT FILM HAS EVER KNOWN. That was on Sherlock, Jr. in 1924, and by this point, Keaton was a millionaire, and one of the biggest names in Hollywood, alongside Charlie Chaplin, of course. He was married to actress Natalie Talmadge (who was the SAME AGE as him, go figure), and they had three children together by 1924. And their marriage...also began to suffer. Just like Chaplin, except that Keaton wasn’t abusive to Natalie or the kids, thankfully. It was her spending habits, and the two of them growing apart.

And then, in 1925, inspired by history like Chaplin was with The Gold Rush, Keaton was inspired by a true story from the Civil War, known as the Great Locomotive Chase. See, Buster LOVED trains, and with the money and resources at his disposal, he had the ability to make his magnum opus, his favorite film, and one of the most expensive films ever made. Working with Chaplin’s United Artists, he made today’s film of focus: The General. And, uh...this would have mixed results, I’ll just say that much for now.

I’ll tell you what happens to Buster after this in the review, but for now, let’s jump into the movie! It’s a short one, but that’s OK! SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap

Y’know, I considered saving this one for Historical July or War November, but I think it’s better here for a few reasons. Plus, I’d rather those films not be comedic, if I can help it. Anyway: Marietta, Georgia, 1861!

The Western & Atlantic Railroad train known as The General is bring driven by its chief engineer Johnnie Gray (Buster Keaton). As a title screen tells us, Johnny loves two things: the majestic The General, and his equally majestic fiancée, Annabelle Lee (Marion Mack). Living in the decadent pre-Civil War South, the two are happy with each other, although Johnnie is somewhat awkward in his way. He provides Annabelle with a photo of him and The General.

Just then, though, Annabelle’s brother (Frank Barnes) comes in and tells her and their father (Charles Smith) that Fort Sumter’s been fired on. UH OH. It’s war. As Annabelle’s brother immediately goes to enlist alongside many other men, Johnnie follows suit. However, when he gets to the enlisting station, he’s refused the opportunity, as he will be needed to act as a railroad engineer. Which, to be fair, does make sense. Railroad engineers would be vital for the effort. However, they never tell him why he isn’t fit for the job, so he just goes back and tries to enlist under a false name. They catch him, though, and he’s again refused. Dejected, he goes back to the train.

However, as he leaves, Annabelle’s father and brother see him in line, and try to get him in to join them. He shakes his head, but instead of assuming that he’s been rejected, they assume that he’s too cowardly to join. They relay this message to Annabelle, who goes to him directly He tells him the truth, that he’s been rejected, but she IMMEDIATELY assumes he’s lying, and tells him not to speak to her again unless he’s in uniform. Dammit, Annabelle! And poor Johnnie doesn’t even know how important he is! Geez, guys, get your shit together.

A year passes, and the war continues in earnest. We go to a Union camp, where Captain Anderson (Glen Cavender) plots with General Thatcher (Jim Farley) to ambush a train and steal it, in an effort to debilitate the train and the South’s efforts as a whole. Meanwhile, Annabelle’s father is wounded, causing her to go and see him. This requires a trip on The General, and a brief and awkward reunion with Johnnie.

However, we now have a much bigger problem than lost love. Because the train is stopped for Johnnie and the passengers to get some food at a nearby stop. And this is when Captain Anderson takes the opportunity to steal The General right from under Johnnie’s nose. And Annabelle, who catches them in the act, is kidnapped in order to hide their scheme.

The men take off with The General and Annabelle, and now BOTH of Johnnie’s loves are taken away from him. He chases after the train, first running, then using a handcar, and THEN taking a man’s penny-farthing bicycle. By the way, fun fact about me: it is my life’s goal to be able to afford a penny-farthing bicycle and ride it around town while wearing a top hat and coat, like it’s completely fucking normal. I need this - I FUCKING NEED THIS, UNDERSTAND???

He rides that penny-farthing to another stop, where he encounters Confederate soldiers, who he tries to recruit to aid him in retrieving his train. However, he accidentally leaves them all behind, using a small engine, Texas to chase after his train and the robbers. Johnnie’s soon leading them in a hot pursuit, also managing to procure a cannon on the way.

However, the robbers have taken notice now, and the Captain is under the mistaken impression that the Texas carries reinforcements. Instead, they keep going. Meanwhile, Johnnie’s hooked the cannon up to the back of the Texas, and is trying (and failing) to fire it at the robbers. Instead, he accidentally unhooks it as it’s about to fire, and it’s aimed at the Texas instead. To avoid the shot, Johnnie...Johnnie does THIS.

...Damn, Buster Keaton, that’s awesome. That’s him doing this, FOR REAL, in this film. Holy shit. Tom Cruise, eat your heart out. Anyway, the cannon misses the Texas, but ends up firing pretty close to The General, spooking the men onboard. To stave him off, they first detach their last car, which falls off the tracks when Johnnie’s looking away, confusing him greatly. Then, they through railroad ties on the tracks, which Johnnie has to clear by getting off the train, riding it’s grill (again), and removing by hand! God, I love this dude.

The Union soldiers divert the tracks, driving Johnnie into a dead end, but he manages to reverse the Texas and switch back onto the right track. Meanwhile, the Union men are building fires in The General’s train cars, and leaving those cars on covered bridges in order to burn them down. They do this on one, and the Texas follows, driving into it, and pushing it OUT of the bridge. And goddamn, this movie is cool as shit.

As Johnnie deals with this latest situation, the train drives through Chattanooga, where the Confederate Army is in full retreat, chased away by the Union. And it’s at this point that I should point something out: I really, really should be rooting aginst Johnnie here, for obvious reasons. But, the movie is putting him in position as the protagonist, and it works, because I do like this guy, even if he’s inevitably on the wrong side of history.

It’s also at this point where Johnnie COMPLETELY loses any advantage, as the men on The General have now realized that he’s the only one on the train, and start fighting back, throwing things at him and the Texas from above. Now in danger, Johnnie takes off and runs into the forest, where he hides. This, mind you, is also as Annabelle is watching from The General.

That night, he happens upon a house in enemy territory, and goes there to hide. As he does, however, a group of officers come in, and discuss their plans to ambush the Confederate soldiers, and to secure one of their bridges for their own trains. Johnnie, all the while, is hidden under a table.

Annabelle is brought in, and the men decide to hold her for now, until the deed is done and they can make other plans. However, Johnnie also hears this, and waits until the officers clear out of the house, leaving him, Annabelle, and a couple of guards. Johnnie, being a badass, knocks out the guards, put on one of their uniforms, and rescues Annabelle. The pair of them escape back into the forest, as a thunderstorm rages. They also encounter a bear in the woods, because that’s basically par for the course with these movies, it would seem.

So is a beartrap, which Annabelle briefly gets caught in (yikes), until she’s freed by Johnnie...who also gets caught in it right afterwards. Nice. With all this trouble in the dark, the two decide to hunker down in the woods. Annabelle thanks Johnnie for coming after her, even in the country of their enemy. And they reconcile as they sleep for the night. Thatnext morning, Johnnie gets his bearings, and sees The General at an encampment down below. Wearing a Union uniform, he devises a plan to get to the train, and warn the South of the Union’s plan.

He convinces Annabelle to hide in a burlap sac, which he carries with him into the encampment. Dude’s a strong guy for being as scrawny as he appears to be. He carries her over his shoulder to the train, then puts her on one of the cabins. The makes his way to the front, and surprises the few men there, pushing them off of it, and stealing back The General! Badass!!!

He gets Annabelle out of the bag and the two attempt to outrun the Union together. They block the way with telephone poles, then grab some wood from recently constructed fences in order to fuel the engine (with some humorous difficulty). The Union catches up quickly, however, and the two are forced to flee again. They dump barrels and other items on board the train onto the tracks, then attempt to replenish the water reserves for the steam locomotive (again with some humorous difficulty) before moving on.

But precious little seems to impede the train’s pursuers. Meanwhile, Annabelle makes herself busy by sweeping the train? Oh ho ho, silly women, with their cleaning and uselessness in vital combat situations! Tee hee hee, why isn’t she pregnant in the kitchen right now? Silly baby receptacles, I mean, women!

OK, that mildly chauvinistic moment aside, the two continue speeding ahead, but then, at a moment when Johnnie gets off the train for manipulate the tracks, Annabelle winds up on The General by herself!. She reverses the train at almost EXACTLY the wrong moment, nearly causing an accident, but Johnnie’s trick with the track works, diverting the Union trains to another unfinished track. And the two gain a wider lead once again. And then...we reach the Rock River Bridge.

This is where the Union troops are meant to be meeting the trains for supplies, and a vital part of the Union’s plans in the area. Turning the tables on the Union, Johnnie sets a massive fire on the bridge, but gets trapped behind it, and is forced to jump into the river as The General moves off of it. However, he gets back up just in time, and they head out to the southern territories.

As they do, Johnnie changes uniform to a Confederate Grey, so as not to get shot at once they arrive. He warns the Confederate troops or the coming Northern invasion, and they quickly mobilize. He and Annabelle figuratively and literally dress down the commanding officer (nice), and they head out to engage the Northern Invaders! I’m sure it’ll go well for everybody involved. It’s also here that Annabelle reunites with her father, alive and healing. Johnnie, meanwhile, tries to go and help the army face the North.

Speaking of the Union, they’re STILL trying to repair the train track that Johnnie messed up. They finally succeed, and head off to the Rock River Bridge, with the Texas ahead of them. The other troops meet with them after all, and the commander insists that the bridge is in tact enough to cross the bridge. And that leads to...the most expensive scene ever shot, at least at the time.

That’s real. Are you listening to me, THAT IS 100% FUCKING REAL! BUSTER KEATON COLLAPSED A BRIDGE WITH A TRAIN ON IT FOR THIS MOVIE!!! That shit? That’s some next level shit. The Union forces, now basically fucked, try to ford the river, only for the Confederate forces to fend them off, with Johnnie’s help. The Captain, hidden on the bank, starts to pick off soldiers that Johnny’s talking to, only for Johnnie to accidentally kill him with a sword, which flies through the air to get him. Which, yeah, is funny in a macabre way. He also accidentally takes out a dam, flooding the river and fishing the Union soldiers out, forcing them into retreat! Their other supply train is disabled, and the South has won this battle! I mean, booo, but I’m happy for Johnnie, at least.

Hailed as a hero with the rest, they all return to the town, where Johnnie reunites with The General in peace. However, he’s nearly done for, as one of the soldiers, an officer that he knocked out a WHILE ago, has actually been on the train the entire time, and has only now regained consciousness. Johnnie takes him prisoner, and the general in charge of this unit is so impressed by his actions that he brings Johnnie into the army, and promotes him to lieutenant, giving him the Union officer’s sword in the process! Good for you, Johnnie! Proud of you, bud.

Now officially enlisted at last, he and Annabelle happily reunite in love, and makeout right next to The General. And then, Johnnie marches off to war for an army on the losing side of history that’s defending slavery, and in all likelihood dies in the deadliest war in American history. Probably. The movie actually ends on the kiss, but it’s the Civil War, we all know what the fuck went down.

And that’s The General! Wow. I get why Keaton was so excited about this movie; it’s a massive accomplishment in film history, and engaging and entertaining movie, and a cinematic masterpiece...that was directly responsible for eventually ending Keaton’s career.

...See you in the Review! I’ll explain the last part, I promise.

#the general #the general 1926 #clyde bruckman #buster keaton #marion mack #glen cavender #jim farley #comedy april #user365 #365 movie challenge #365 movies 365 days #365 Days 365 Movies #365 movies a year #365days365movies

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mikkock · 4 years

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Hey hi your murder mystery art is super totally cool and amazing and I'd like to Extra! Extra! hear all about it *rattles bells*

haha wow i cant believe ud ask me THIS! unbelievable! now im gonna have to make a long post!

all info under the cut cause im kind like that ♥

For reasons I felt like making a Fancy Ass murder mystery story, with you know, hella complex secret storylines and everyone having drama and shit, and one person died but the more the story goes the less people care about who did the murder and the more they want tHE JUICY DETAILs. X and Y had an afFAIR you say!!! well that’s thousands time more interesting than that murder that happened, who cares about the culprit its not like any of us are going anywhere anyway! tell me more about the marital issues!

The ultimate Vibes are Clue (the game, ya kno, it had a movie too, and that movie was shot with three different endings -fun fact- so that movie theatres could play one alternatively that way people wouldnt get spoiled or even if they did they would not get the ending they were spoiled or even if all three were spoiled you couldnt know which ending you were getting anyway, big dick move, cause its an old movie and film is expensive, also that movie stupid and campy, ALSO I ONLY LEARNED MAKING THIS AU THAT IN ENGLISH THE GAME’S CALLED “CLUE” wE CALL IT CLUEDO therefore my wip playlist is called cluedo. because. fuck it.)(i just have an emotional attachment to that game i even had a cd rom video game version and it was the spookiest shit for a 6 years old, trust me, i played it so much tho i didnt even understand the rULES i was just making scenarios like gathering the characters in rooms n making conversations outloud cause honestly the banter is the best part of a murder mystery) ANYWAY that sure is a whole paragraph of tangent.

BUT YE the inspo from the Clue game. you can tell it from the Colours obviously, everyone’s colour codded.(even everyone’s name is colours as well you’ll see it’s real dang fancy! im just remaking that game but with 2932020 characters and more behind the scenes drama and also for gay people.)

So BASIC PLOT!

Sir Belyy, the dude in white, is The Rich Powerful Respected Fancy Boss, and he throws a Fancy Reception Party with his closest friends and associates to celebrate the opening of a new branch of his business. All the lads gather in his wonderful little very isolated mansion in the middle of nowhere, like ok he got a death wish or something or he’s very trusting of his business partners, but not a good move, cause in the middle of the reception, as A Phat Storm Starts (for plot convenience, we going with a campy vibe if you couldnt tell), his body is found, it’s awful, there’s a killer on the loose! All the guests gather, and attempt to maybe contact the authorities, to not avail, since The Storm ya know, phone lines are Broken my dude. Its clear that the culprit is among them, since no one could have entered the house, or left it (cuz once again, ThE sTORm). And then it’s all about interrogating each other, distrust, alliances and betrayal, revealing one’s deepest secrets when they form an alibi and revealing someone else’s deepest secret for they could be a motive! Meanwhile there’s a dead body in the mansion just chillin there.

So as I mentioned, I changed everyone’s name to be colour related (or ya know, food or flowers of that colour cause sometimes a colour in a language would not work as a name given the way names work in that culture all that jazz) which is the trippiest thing cause tHATS NOT YALLS USUAL NAMES but its fun (also changed so many ages hgfhs it was a trip)(still no one’s really old i guess i got boomerphobia). The “Cast” is clearly the most important part, and if ur a True “My OCs” Connaisseur (hdfghd the most useful skill to have, knowing *MY* Charactersdshgd) you may have recognised some faces and can already read some vibes and predict who will be progressing the plot and who will be yelling at people throwing accusations ghdfgd.

(god i wish i hadnt slacked off making the portraits of everyone in that AU i only have 3 tho that’s so sad so ill just make little sketches just cause <3 only text??? i got too many hoes with no attention span for that)

Sir BELYY (the one who dIEs lmao)

(bust shot missing the fact that this man is the tallest beefiest lad around)

Intimidating, powerful, composed, wealthy, carries the name of a family who has generations of control to it’s reputation, he’s The Man that hoes who believe in the economy wishes they were. As in, the “self made” man who only just happened to benefit from having a wealthy background to uplift his plans. In his youth, he wanted to prove his worth, seperated himself from his father, started a business, that business became big, then got attached to the family’s business, bam back to square one but with Reputation now. There seemed to be VERY big tension between him and The Father, some speculate it had to do with his unknown mother, and some family drama there, and it never got resolved as old man Belyy died quite young (the jUICY speculations are that current sir Belyy mURDEREd old man sir Belyy, fucked up if true!). People love him though in general, as he has that reputation of “Cold Lad With a Gold Heart” aka he takes people under his wings, donates, doesnt treat his employees like the absolute worst garbage etc... you know, he’s rich and a half decent person, so obviously he’s an angel on earth. But does it matter though, he’s dead! that’s the concept of the story!

Mr.GRAY (the grey guest)(who could have guessed from the name)

He’s one of Sir Belyy’s oldest employees, and benefits from a high rank in the company. But, sadly for him, he’s been stagnating lately, as newer, youngest employees seem to have Belyy’s favours, and are his prefered associates for important tasks and positions. Therefore he has Some Bitterness, Some Salt, Some Distaste, some unbriddled but professionally muted hatred for Specific people in the company. He can be an antagonistic figure, but the amount of time he spent in Belyy’s circle grants him an immense quantity of information about the man, but mostly, about his business. Anything about the company’s history, dealings, operations, he’s aware of, either having been told of them, or having snooped around to obtain, immune to being questioned due to his legitimacy in the company.

Mr.LIM (the green guest)

Remember when it was said that Gray had beef with some employees cause they were younger and rose to high ranks faster than him and became Belyy’s favourite over him? Yeah well here comes the one he hates the most for that (ofc he’s belyys fave cuz he’s Mine <3) Our lad caught Belyy’s attention for his Exploits in like, em fancy high school tournaments of smart people, it’s a thing its ridiculous, making kids compete on Smart stuff for the pride of their schools n shit, well homie Lim got clout when doing that, and Belyy was extremely interested cause that kid’s main thing was how “this young lad got mad strategic skills tf are u a war general or smth how fancy”, and that’s a coveted skill for ruthless business. So as soon as the kid is an adult, bam, join the company my dude. And because he’s just that Cool n Sexy ofc he met the expectations Belyy had, and old man Belyy got attached cuz it do be such a young lad, a kid, mentally i am adopting. That’s how you get a youngas employee becoming the right hand man of one the phatest CEO in a few years, and even make your way into being a Good Lad on top of a business partner. And that’s how you get Gray to hate your ass too. Now though, fine lad with mad strategic skills, rising to power that fast, and even infiltrating Belyy’s private life? If I were Gray I’d call suspicion there’s surely some shady stuff going no way we’re just dealing with a nice fella who just happens to work good and be friendly to the boss right?

Herra MUSTA (the black “guest”)

Belyy’s newest butler, assistant, house keeper, he multitasks. His family has been tied to Belyy’s for generations, fullfilling roles of help, but also of confidents. He’s been the head butler since only a short time, after his mother passed, and as such is still “in training” you could say, despite having served the family his whole life. There are rumours going around that the contract tying his family to the Belyys may end on his generation and need to be resigned. He known the manor by heart, and carries all keys to any locked room (and mostly, The Master Key, cause in an old house, some doors may be locked beyond all still existing keys). He also knows secrets of the family that no one else knows, but good luck getting em out of him, he’s under contract not to divulge em bro.

Mr. HASSEL (the brown guest)

Belyy’s childhood friend. They grew up together, pictured their dreams together, sworn to flourish together, worked together when starting the company, and then Hassel felt he should create his own thing instead of depending on his friend’s existing wealth, and while Belyy’s business went wild, his never took off. They still stayed very close, despite the massive difference in wealth. Belyy considers him his closest friend, the one person he can trust (fucked if hassel did the murder lemme tell u). So of course, he’s still always invited to the Prestigious meet ups where’s he’s free to feel uncomfortably out of place amongst all the rich and powerful people that he could have been a part of had he had a tiny bit of luck and a small loan from a wealthy relative...People LOVE saying he’s still hanging out with Belyy so much to leech off his wealth, cause of course they do! His bestie status means he has a whole different brand of information of Belyy than his butler does, the Most Intimate Stuff, the Childhood Stuff. The Juicy stuff ya kno...But Bro Code, its all secrets...

Sir RUZH (the red “guest”)

Deep dive into Belyy’s personnal history, the man has many employees working at his house keeping it working, clean, ya know the vibe. They live on the premice, one has a kid who’s just a Joy to be around, all the employees just vibe with that lad, he’s just a born socialite you know? Belyy gets to meet the kid, and also hella vibes with him. And because human are influenced by their feelings, he gives the kid’s mum a bit of a preferencial treatment, in the tasks she fullfils and all, til he gives her an important-as mission, and then there’s an accident n mama dies, and now Belyy got guilt and there’s this kid who just Vibes. So naturally the move is to take the kid in, and play on how his vibes are just so clean, and raise him to be the Perfect Entertainer for guests, bam, its soft power propaganda, if everyone loves your now son’s vibes, they associate them with you too. And also that’s kind of a clean rep, the selfless man who adopted his employee’s son to not have him fall to the streets, how heartwarming. Not at all traumatising for the kid too I bet! But anyway now the lad is just the most charming young adult, mission accomplished. He’s always present at any reception, ready to work his people-pleasing magic, and then going back to a gigantic empty manor to wait for the next and curate the perfect vibes to meet the expectations of dad. On the plus side, he knows everyone, and those who don’t know him cannot wAIT to, he’s just got that aura ya know. People skills for miles, and the insider knowledge that comes with being the son of the CEO, all this hidden behind the personna of the fresh innocent bashful party lad.

Dr.FEN (the pink guest)

Do not get mistaken by the title, he’s no doc, he will not diagnose you with anything, he just studied long enough to get the sexy title. Study in what? Haha. Nothing shady. Just toxicology. He’s a world reknown poison expert basically, that’s his main thing. Oh but don’t worry, of course studying substances that may kill people is only for finding out how to cure them from it of course. What brings him in this circle? Simple, Belyy may or may not have started to suffer some weird illness that no doctor has been able to find the source, let alone cure, of. Him and Dr.Fen had met previously on some event, cause some rich man also love flexing how smart they are and attending sciencey shit, and he was contacted as sort of a shot in the dark. The lad does know how to treat some things, maybe he can treat The Mysterious Unwellness, since no traditional doctor was able to. He knows science, he’s trustworthy, bam, you’re hired to work on My Case Exclusively. Thanks to this, Dr.Fen has access to the whole health history of Belyy and his family, to many mANY dangerous substances, and also has The Respect of the hoes at the party. He HAS a doctorate after all. Epitome of knowledge. And he’s a kind to people and he wears pink like dang how can you nOT pour your wHOLE trust in him.

Sir MOREVITCH (the blue guest)

Youngest son of an affluent family, who used to be close the the Belyys. The two families fell slightly appart after the death of the previous head of the family on the Belyy side, as they do nOT vibe with the current one (well current, til the first night of the story ig). But, unbeknownst to all, one strong link had been kept, between the youngest of the Morevitch, who dislikes his family and wishes to emancipate himself from them while also assuring his depart will not throw him basically in the streets, and our beloved Sir Belyy, who also dislikes the Morevitches but loves to see the rebellious energy of the young one (and ya know, my enemy’s enemy’s my friend or however you say that). So Belyy’s basically offering tips and helping Morevitch plant himself safely out of his family’s grasp, but it’s all taking quite some time isn’t it, slow and steady is fine until your parents try to arrange a wedding to secure more political power, and suddenly it is all quite urgent that you escape that situation because No Thank You Parents I Do Not Want A Wife I’m Too Young And Also Huh <3 Stuff You Won’t Like Hearing For Sure <3. The people who know they’re working together also know that it’s a big point of argument between them, the difference in vision between “you have to go slow and steady to be safe” and “I have very limited time to get to that safety anyway so I gotta risk it” “hell no you cant i can’t follow through if we’re going that quick that’ll put me at risk and you’re family’s gonna send gunmen to take me down”. A mess, it’d be much quicker to just obtain a few million bucks out of nowhere and bolt for sure...

Mr.GANG (the orange guest)

Morevitch’s trusted assistant. He hears the concerns, he helps the secret businesses, he lies to the parents about the whereabouts, and mostly, he’s basically a budget spy. The lad got that talent where people just don’t notice him popping behind them and catching all their dirty laundry as they confess it to someone they trust, and he always manages to break into places, get the intel he was looking for, and escape, putting everything back into place as if no one was ever there (wonder where he got all those skills from damn!). But what he’s even better at is being sneaky not only to benefit his boss, but himself as well <3. If he can catch all the info in the world, go any places, nothing’s stopping him from playing double agent and also going behind Morevitch’s back. After all the assistant life isn’t the most glamourous and rewarding, who can blame him from going and using his talents to build his own little exit route, right? Everybody sort of knows he cannot be trusted, but also no one managed to really incriminate or stop him, and as much as he has tea on many people, no has it on him, but bet once found that would be heeeella juicy.

M.MOUTARDE (the yellow guest)(this one is straight up the name of the yellow player in the french edition of clue too when i say its my main vibe)

Moutarde was an influential celebrity. He had a big break acting in a movie that the whole country stanned so hard they basically turned the script into their national anthem (they would have if it was a true democracy where the people really decide), he was so handsome and elegant, everyone’s dream husband. And then the fame fiddled out because it’s how fame is, one moment you’re the sexiest dish on the table and the next someone brings in dessert and baam, its all about that fresh cake, and no one pays any mind to your delightful aroma anymore, you’ve gone cold, they had a bite, their interest is somewhere else. Belyy really admires his work though, and mostly finds his image fits with the brand of his company, therefore the two are working on a collaboration to make Moutarde a representative. This WOULD boost Moutarde’s reputation, for his ads would be displayed on every imaginable surface of the country, and it would also benefit the company cause being represented by thAT sexy motherfucker? clearly that’s a deal. The freshness of the partnership means Moutarde is a newcomer in the guests, a fresh face, with no reputation, no relationships, no unfair biases against him. He’s just the new handsome charismatic lad with a squeaky clean image. Emphasis on “image”. After all, no one really knows anything of his background, right?

Kun.LAWENDER (the purple guest)

Private investigator, very useful to be around at a party it’s almost like it was expected there’d be a body to investigate, he’s a very close associate of Belyy, as there’s nothing more important to business than investigating the rivals and finding dirt on them to make them fall through infamy. He’s not exactly the PI who goes look for justice to be served, he’s just here for cash bro. He’s got intel on everyone, and will only let it out if offered the right thing in return (money, or sometimes other pieces of very secret intel, trade is good). Wouldn’t advise letting him and Gang team up tbh but they probably wouldnt, as Lawender is really more of a lone wolf player, going on his own for himself. The one thing that negates his usefulness as a PI on an accidental crime of scene is that even if he knew the whole truth of the event he would not spit it out unless he benefitted from saying it. He sure is a polarising lad, but at the same time, an untouchable one, he’s too knowledgeable to be taken down. Rather than sneaky, he’s extremely observant, noticing the tiniest details and engraving them in his memory, ready to be linked up to other details to deduct the big picture. He’s the upfront tea gathered basically (as opposed to Gang’s shadow tea gathering if you will, they are similar forces but using opposite methods)(also one of em got a licence n the other does not hAH).

~~~~

Now the secrets, all of em have them. One of em at least got the secret of having KILLED Belyy that’s that. But that’s to be kept for later (for if i ever use this story for more than daydream material gfhjgh) bet you can imagine what some of em may be just out of Knowing what i do, from having seen the characters in other contexts, or just because you’re a genius and reading the character profiles immediatly lit up the bulbs in your head forming the perfect theory, props to you, mad genius.

Honestly my thoughts are just how lit of a game that would be, you get to pick one hoe (maybe sum are locked til u find their secrets for juicy purposes) and you do your invetigation using your character’s perks and disadvantages, and maybe there could even be Multiple scenarios and outcomes, to spice it up, give replay value, i just think it’d be a game id spend hours on. tryin to get the spicy details of everyone’s life. walking around n digging through a rich man’s stuff, witnessing the drAMA of people fighting cause they’re locked in with a murderer and that’s stressful ngl. That or a long ass show @ netflix wanna give me a show maybe? give me hella budget we’re making it animated cause im too cultured for live action.

whatever i make of it though, i hope i can make this story Flourish, just so that i can lay down all those secret backstories i’ve written. i want the satisfaction of throwing out the craziest secret drama between character n seeing peeps loose their minds, it just is a tasty experience.

also i gotta say, i plug the hell out of Clue for an inspo but when i was building the basics of the story my mind immediatly went “oH MY GOD THE VIBES,, THE BACKSTABBING AND tEAMING UP and all,,, its The Genius, that one tv show where peeps have to do the wildest games that require strategy n they’re in that fancy set that looks like a rich ppl mansion oh god the vibes” so yeah, i rewatched the whole first two seasons cause they’re my faves and that had an impact if only minimal in the aesthetic.

Anyway hope that quick presentation gave you a lil taste of the story, and maybe,,,, got you curious,,, craving to learn more like you never did before (im exaggerating the only real question we all got is just “so who’s fuckin with whom then how many of yall secretly dating” this the real deal)

#doodlin every lad's face at one rly be like 'welcome to the cheekbone festival'#they got antti AND said at once like the cheekbonage is out of this world!#that's musta n gang btw #also every single time i draw cream (blue lad) im like 'i havent drawn u in ages' n it isnt #that i dont draw him much anymore #but that ive drawn only this bitch for months back in the days #him bein in this without his lover....criminal #cuz his boo wouldnt fit a murder mystery au like #hoes would find the corpse he'd just be like 'welp on that imma go to bed aight bye'#anyway u can tell which of my ocs i simp for v easely #like fr #they the ones i spend the longest drawfigfdj cuz i draw em n then go 'not hot enough do it again'#a struggle!#anyway the secret is that i prepares a motive AND an alibi for all of em #so that i can pick who murdered belyy at the last moment <3 #its all abt the contextual clues on the scene of crime <3 #none of the drama tells u anything its all for the treat of gossip <3 #sad part of this project is how much ive planned n written yet i can barely tell anythin if i want to make it #n ive drawn nothingbhd #i hav a dari n a weiwei in their coloured clothes lookin handsome cuz ofc i do #im predictable i have faves #ask if they're in love in this one too take a fuckin guess #u rly think hoe going to his boss's house so much to see the ceo ???? HAH #the real question isnt if theyre smooshin we all kno that answer the question is if dad white suit knows thATs whats important #are yall secret lovers or is green boy climbing the ladder of the company cuz he's smashing the boss's son #who knows #i do i aint telling pay me

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surveys-at-your-service · 4 years

Text

Survey #304

“she’s got a hold on me / maybe she is just what they want me to be”

How many foreign friends do you have? Only one that I know of that actually immigrated into America in their life. I think. In which countries do they live? She was born in Asia, either China or Japan. What was your dream birthday party as a kid? I either wanted to go to the skating rink or Chuck E. Cheese. Have you ever come up with your own game? As a kid, definitely. Whose hand did you hold last? Probably my niece's or nephew's if they were taking me somewhere. What was the last thing you planted? Habaneros, I think. Do you have a green thumb or are you all thumbs with plants? I don't really try with plants because I'm not interested in the maintenance. What or who was the last thing you gossiped about? Does telling your therapist about another person and what they do to stress you out count? lol Any books on your night stand? Wings of Fire: The Brightest Night. Would you ever consider going vegetarian? I was briefly one, but I had to introduce meat back into my diet because I just hate too many foods needed to keep me healthy without meat. I would love love LOVE to go vegan, but I just can't. When's the last time you helped a senior citizen somehow? Probably holding open a door for someone in a wheelchair. What's the most selfless act you have done? I don't know... Maybe letting my mother use all my Christmas and birthday money (which was a lot) to take care of bills to keep us from being evicted and losing the car. She was going to pay me back, but then cancer happened. Have you ever intentionally fed a house spider? No. What makes you feel lucky? The fact I have a roof over my head, food on the table, access to water... That kind of stuff. Never take it for granted. How many Lidls are there in your town? One. Last time you went to Ikea, what did you buy? I don't believe we've ever bought anything from there? But I wouldn't really know. How do you like your favorite beverage? Really cold in a can, heeeeell yeah. What's your big family secret? We don't really have one. What did you think you were good at, until you saw someone else do it? I remember thinking I was the "gifted" artist in school until I met my acquaintance Cailin in the 5th grade, lol. She is SO talented. What is something nice going on in your life right now? My partial hospitalization program is going well. I'm getting more comfortable with talking via things like Zoom, it's a good opportunity for me to socialize with like-minded people almost every day, and I ADORE one of the teachers so much so that I want him to be my normal therapist. I have never in the entirety of my life felt less judged and more cared for from any therapist before him, and it's almost supernatural how easily this man reads people. You could twitch a certain way and he picks it up. I'm ready for him to teach more of the sessions. What was the pinnacle of wealth to you as a child? The idea of owning one of those toy crane machines, haha. If I saw one in a store, I would like beeeeg for it. I remember I cried once when I came across one I adored, it was just too expensive, lol. I did eventually get a little one, I think. What's something that you hate, but can't live without? My meds. What skill do you not talk about, because you feel it sounds like bragging? I don't really brag about anything I think I'm good at because I feel bad about it and don't wanna emit a "better than you" vibe. Who's the worst person you've encountered on the Internet? Ahhh, a lovely "friend" nicknamed Shakes. God she hated me. If death wasn't a consequence, what would you try? Probably ride a motorcycle. I'm too scared to risk the possibility of crashing, and those wrecks are nasty. What's the dumbest thing you've heard someone say? There's this one video of a TV show host thinking the moon was a planet and it was just- What is the worst smell you can remember? This smell was forever branded into my memory as if it was fuckin trauma. When my late dog Teddy had a massive, infected cyst near his ~you know~ and also wore diapers because of incontinence with his age (also keep in mind he had a UTI we couldn't afford to fix, and that smells bad enough), changing the diaper he would wear overnight could, swear to God, be enough to make you puke. It literally came to a point that I personally could no longer do it. It sounds so so bad and selfish, and it probably is, but Mom had to do it before she left and came home from work; she's way less fazed by stuff like that than me. Yes, when we had the money, we got the cyst removed. What song gets better the louder it gets? Only like, every song I enjoy. The louder the better until it becomes obnoxious to others. What's the biggest inconvenience that does NOT ruin your day? Having to pee at like an unnatural frequency? haha What's something everybody should know how to do? Cook... which I don't know how to do. What is a great movie no one knows about? I'unno. I don't really know the success level of most movies unless you see stuff about it everywhere. What type of person could the world use less of? Rapists, pedophiles, monsters like that. What makes you tingle? I have this odd reaction to rubbing my hand while someone is holding it???? idk why????? What’s the best Wi-Fi name you’ve seen? Oh MAN, I wish I could remember 'em all. I've seen some goodies. What's easy to learn, but hard to master? God, it's pathetic that my immediate response is related to a video game, haha. Then again it's such a common idea that it's basically a meme in the World of Warcraft community. So, playing hunters in the game. They're argued to be one of the - if not the - easiest classes in the game that requires little to no skill, while as a hunter main, I disagree with the second part firmly. I don't know about the other specializations because I don't play them, but at least in beast mastery, it takes focus and thinking ahead to master your rotation for optimal damage and just to generally be a skilled player of the class. Not to mention you need to watch your pet(s), too. What's something you've changed your opinion on? Wow, LOTS. Tons of political ideas, like my stance on gay rights, transgender folks, etc... If you had a refilling bowl, what would you want it to contain? For some reason my mind immediately jumped to fresh strawberries. I'm picky with the firmness of fruit, so I won't eat them if they're older because ew. If your bedroom had three portals to anywhere, where would they lead? I mean this in the least creepy way possible, but Sara's house so we could actually hang out, Dad's house so I could see him more, and then uhhh South Africa to regularly see meerkitties. You can ask any author one question about their story. What do you ask? Oh, I dunno. I've got some for writers of other media, but I guess by "author," you mean this is for books exclusively. If you have caffeine late in the day, does it cause you to struggle with your sleep? Shit, I wouldn't even know because I essentially always have caffeine in my system. I don't believe it affects me. When you struggle to sleep, what do you do instead? Keep trying to sleep, or more common than not, I do exactly what you shouldn't do and get back on the laptop for a while. Who was the last person you spoke to for the first time? How did you come to speak to this person? My most recent therapist in the PHP. I love love love him. The therapists rotate the days they teach, and he was the last one I met. Are there any TV shows from your childhood that you still watch today? I'm not opposed to it if I actually watched television. Do you enjoy buying gifts for other people, or do you never know what to buy them? If I actually have the money to, omg yes. I honestly do think I create or buy very thoughtful gifts, and I just really enjoy reminding other people that I love and think about them. Who were you with the last time you went out for a meal? My sisters, Mom, and I went to the Cheesecake Factory for my birthday dinner. That place has come to oust Olive Garden as my favorite restaurant, haha. What’s the last thing you watched on TV? Is this a programme you watch regularly? I believe it was this amateur cooking show called Nailed It!, I think it was, with my mom when I sat in the living room with her for dinner one night. Do you have a favorite documentary subject (eg. nature, celebrities, history, crime)? Absolutely animals. Does having to wear a mask stop you from doing anything, just because you dislike them or find them uncomfortable? Do not fucking talk to me if you're anti-mask. If I set foot in public, I'm wearing a mask like a goddamn considerate human being. Do you prefer zip-up or overhead hoodies? Overhead. I really dislike the appearance of zippers on them. If you have a yard or garden, how much time do you spend out there? N/A When was the last time someone bought you flowers? What was the occasion? I think it was the first time Tyler came to my house. This was quite a few years ago. When was the last time you stayed overnight away from home? Was this with friends, family or in a hotel somewhere? What was the occasion? Hell, I'm pretty sure I haven't slept over anywhere since the last time I was visiting Sara, which was like, two years ago. What’s your favorite period to learn about in history? What got you interested in this particular era? The Renaissance; I always found it to be an attractive subject, art being in its "glory days" and all. My Art History course in college really hooked me in. What is the smallest thing you lose your temper over instantly? Homophobic bullshit. What's a job that doesn't get enough respect? As others have said before me, teachers might just top the list. The shit they gotta put up with for so little pay... What did you take for granted until you visited another country? I've never left America, so I wouldn't know. Who is your favorite scientist and why? I don't have a favorite; I don't know nearly enough about any. Do you prefer emoticons or emoji? I'm from the emoticons era, so I'm biased, haha. How did you meet your pet? Roman was the kitten of one of my sister's mother-in-law's females. They have quite a cat problem and wanted to adopt the kittens out, and Mom knew I desperately wanted a cat, so there we go. One day when we were over there, she showed me the kittens, and Roman caught my eye instantly with his beautiful blue eyes. Venus, I "met" via the Morph Market, a reptile hub website for selling, as the name implies, reptiles that are generally morphs of their species. I was clicking through the genes, keeping my price ceiling in mind, and really fell in love with champagnes, and I thought Venus in specific was just absolutely beautiful. I officially met her as a little thing mailed to me, and she was and still is just the sweetest. I wanna point out that when I chose Venus, I hadn't the slightest idea that champagnes harbored "the spider gene," as otherwise I would have avoided adopting her and feeding the market. Regardless, I love her to death and wouldn't trade her out. Did/Do you have any PEZ dispensers? I did as a kiddo, yeah. Do you enjoy erotic stories? If so, do you read them or write them? No; they make me really uncomfortable. When writing RP, some scenes can get sexual, but I have my limits for sure and know when to stop writing and just time-skip. If you had to choose, which one would you rather have: a pet or a baby? Keep the baby away from me. Gimme a plains hognose or tarantula, please. ^Why did you choose the one you chose? I don't want kids at all but would love the mentioned animals as pets. Do you live with your parents or on your own/with a partner? I live with my mother. What's the car of your dreams? I don't have a "dream car." Have you ever witnessed something or someone die? Animals, yes. Has anyone ever told you that you snore or talk in your sleep? I don't snore, but I talk a LOT. Do you have any houseplants? No. Are you more on a laptop or a desktop computer? I only have a laptop, and I prefer them for portability's sake. If you could do absolutely anything, what would you like to do the most? Entirely leave behind my anxiety, probably. Or PTSD. Do you think your parents raised you well? Yeah. Dad didn't really take much part in "raising" us/enforcing rules and stuff, but hey, my sisters and I wound up being good people. Do you have a Facebook? Yeah. Do you know any of your neighbors? Definitely not well. We haven't lived here long at all. Does/did any of your relatives have an interesting, nowadays unusual job? I'm sure somebody does. Have you met your ideal partner yet? I think so. Have you had a serious relationship yet? If so, how many? Yeah, two. Do you enjoy books, magazines or comic books the most? Books. Are your parents old-fashioned or up-to-date about certain things? Dad is more old-fashioned I think, while Mom is pretty up-to-date. Do you or did you at some point keep a diary? I very briefly did on a few occasions. I always had a journal I wrote in during all my hospital stays. Have you ever upcycled trash into useful items? I remember I once followed this craft idea on Animal Planet where you turn a milk jug into a bird house. We never got any birds in it, though. Which color Skittle do you like best? The only right answer is red. What’s your favorite element? Of the classic four, fire. If you had your own radio show, what would it be like? YIKES, I don't want one. Don't make me talk in front of (through a radio or not) people. What has been the biggest surprise you’ve ever gotten? An "impossible" breakup over Facebook Messenger lmaoooo. Is there a holiday you can’t stand at all? There aren't any that I "can't stand," but I do hold at least some degree of dislike of ones bastardized by religion. It's disrespectful as fuck. Who is your favorite person in the whole world? My mom. Has there ever been an activity you became obsessed with? I was definitely obsessed with RPing in my early teens. Like, I ALWAYS wanted to be writing it. What has been the strangest place you ran into someone from your past? I can't think of an occurance. What is something people tend to come to you about? Anything related to English and grammar. If applicable, what's the furthest you've traveled because of a hobby? For purely a hobby, definitely not very far, partially because I can't drive or afford travelling via plane or whatever. Do you have souvenirs from other countries? If so, what and from where? N/A What do you do when someone is talking to you about something you don't care about? Pretend to be interested to avoid being rude. Do you have Photoshop installed on your computer? Yeah. Do you put lotion on after you get out of the shower? No, but I need to. Has anyone ever given you a promise ring? No. Do you have any bruises on you? Yeah, on my shin. When getting in Ash's van the other day, I hit it against the thing that helps you step up into the vehicle. Because of my muscle atrophy, I, and I am not kidding, can barely manage to absolutely yank myself up there. And mind you, her van isn't even very high up at all. My legs are just that damn weak. Any changes in appearance lately? Gaining weight is fucking lovely. Who was the last person to call you babe or baby? Probably a gal friend commenting on a selfie or something on Facebook. Do you hate the person you fell hardest for? Sometimes. Do you actually care about other's problems? Probably too much for my own good. Have you ever gotten a teddy bear from someone? Besides my mom, I don't think so.

#survey #surveys #questions #lyrics: ''big bad wolf'' by in this moment

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sebastianshaw · 4 years

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Do you have any headcanons about how Haven and Maddie would get along? You mention them both a lot and they seem like they have things in common

OH BOY DO I EVER i happen to love shoving my faves into interaction in my head even if they never met in canon---ESPECIALLY if they never met in canon---and these are my two mega fave ladies! ...coincidentally I was out today on errands and playing Tori Amos (because *of course* I was) and specifically her “American Doll Posse” album, and I was like “GIRL DISAPPEARING and SECRET SPELL have Maddie vibes” (I also listened to KING AND LIONHEART by of Monsters and Men, it’s my fave of theirs, and “As the world comes to an end, I’ll be here to hold your hand” is forever a Haven lyric to me) So massive MASSIVE ramblings under the cut!

Anyway, yes, you’re completely correct, they have a TON in common, both in what actually happened TEXTUALLY to them, and the meta-text of how their stories were handled in very similarly misogynistic ways. Like, they’re both villains through no choice or fault of their own, both the victims of demonic corruption, both exploited specifically for their reproductive capacity (Maddie created literally to have Scott’s baby, Haven’s unborn child used by the Adversary to possess her), and both used to frame female sexuality as evil (Maddie only starts with the skimpy black outfits when she becomes a villain, Haven is a pure and chaste woman who had sex ONCE and as a result becomes demon-pregnant, corrupted, and dies, she’s very much punished for violating purity taboos just ONCE despite all the good she did, while NOTHING HAPPENS to the man who took advantage of her naivete and knocked her up) and both were treated with little sympathy by the story or other characters despite being so very deserving of it. So they’ve got a ton to relate and commiserate on if they ever met and opened up to each other about it, but even if they DIDN’T tell each other about their pasts (which I doubt they would, certainly not at first, it’s not something either is keen to talk about, Haven never told her own beloved brother and Maddie literally KILLS Threnody for throwing it in her face) I think they would get on well. With the understandable exception of Jean Grey, Maddie has NEVER been a jerk to anyone who wasn’t one first (she did go overboard with Threnody, of course...) and Haven, even while a demonically-posessed supervillain, was very calm, composed, polite, and downright kind to the good guys even when they KEPT ATTACKING HER. And to quote the “X-Plain the X-Men” podcast “❝ In this scene, she [Haven] is the one that’s being kind and calm and compassionate, and he [Xavier] is being AN ANGRY JERK. ❞ So, I think they’d get on at first meeting because they’re just both nice people at their default. They’re also both morally good people at their default. Haven’s history is that she’s someone born to extreme wealth and privilege who was driven to use it to help others, she did shit like bathing lepers and caring for dying babies and building children’s hospitals (literally how she got her name in canon, no shit) and even as a supervillain BENT ON DESTROYING THE WORLD OUT OF COMPASSION she STILL does shit like SURRENDERING A FIGHT SO SHE CAN TRY TO HEAL AN *ENEMY* OKAY. And Maddie was just straight-up a superhero even before she had the “super” part going for her, she was one of the X-Men even as a human and even after Scott left her, she had an incredibly strong sense of justice, she did her best at rescuing people in her job as a pilot during crises, she GAVE UP HER LIFE with the rest of the X-Men when Forge needed their life energy for a spell to save the world (she got brought back, they all did, but she didn’t know she was going to be resurrected, she went in knowing she’d die and thinking it would be permanent) and the first time she did get superpowers WASN’T as the demonic Goblyn Queen, but as the healer Anodyne. And you know why her powers specifically took the form of healing? It wasn’t random. The Fire Fountain (from which she and some other humans got these gifts) gave people their powers based on their passions and desires; Maddie’s desire and passion was to help others. So both of these women are extremely moral, healing-types at their core, both in powers and personality, who care about others deeply, even at the expense of themselves. Obviously, Maddie became very morally-grey since in the 90s, but even then she cared about other people first; Sebastian Shaw was never a bad boyfriend in the slightest to her, he was actually her first good relationship, but she left him because he was doing harm to other people, people she didn’t even KNOW, and she wouldn’t be complicit in that even as a bystander. She’s kinda gone full evil in the 2000s but she’s also very much Not Maddie Anymore as of the 2000s, so I just...don’t count that...anyway you see my point! My point being I think they would really come together on helping people, like Haven has the funds (she would probably not have powers anymore if she’s alive, since she’s no longer the host body of the Adversary) and Maddie has the piloting skills and superpowers, they could do a TON of good in the world if they teamed up to do relief work and refugee aid and stuff! I would honestly be really here for that. I really like the idea of them doing good in a way that has nothing to do with superhero adventures and is in no way glamorous or a battle that can be won with powers and punches, but is necessary and worthy all the same. I think they could really get a good working relationship going with this. I think the place they would differ is that Maddie is ANGRY. She’s very angry at what was done to her, she’s very angry at the X-Men, she’s very angry at Jean, she’s very angry at Scott, she’s very angry at Sinister, and she has a RIGHT to be. There is nothing wrong with this. But her anger also isn’t limited to people who harmed HER. Back when Maddie was Maddie and not a walking misogynistic stereotype, she also got BIG MAD at people who did bad things, who hurt others, who oppressed mutants and other minorities, etc. Like, during the story in which we find out about Genosha and how they’re enslaving mutants, Maddie is ready to WRECK ALL THEIR SHIT WITHOUT MERCY using the demonic energy that’s started incubating inside her. And you know what? Good for her. Maddie is the fire of justice and retribution, and if you have done something to deserve it she will FRY YOU IN HELL. Haven is not like that. Again, even when she’s possessed, even when she ostensibly wants to kill the world, even when she’s being steered by an entity of cosmic evil and chaos...she’s still so soft with her “enemies”. Hell, even when she’s come to the conclusion that Xavier must die, she still can’t do it with her own hands and has to just let some other villain out of prison and HOPE he does it, that’s the MOST action she can bring herself to take, and she thinks how “I admire you, Charles Xavier. I respect you. In an odd way, one might say…that I love you. For how can one not love a soul so pure, a heart so full of good intentions? One must love one’s enemy…if one is to slay him with compassion.” And this was AFTER Xavier rammed in his way into her head after she begged him repeatedly to STOP (boy was THAT an uncomfy scene) and she literally unmade herself from existence temporarily (yes, she could do that, and remake herself) in order to get away from him, even though SHE could have just unmade HIM permanently. So, once you take the demon out of the equation, I can only see her as being even MORE pacifistic and forgiving, just the epitome of grace----grace meaning not as in graceful (though I think she’s that too, she’s very elegant) but as in the religious sense of God’s grace, which is mercy where it is undeserved. She’s NEVER going to want to hurt people for their misdeeds like Madelyne does. She wants to comfort the victims, but not attack the victimizers. She’s probably the kind of person who prays for Neo-Nazis. She probably utterly forgives X-Factor and Xavier and the man who got her pregnant. And you know what? I also support that. I support Madelyne’s righteous rage, I support Haven’s all-forgiving compassion and mercy. I think both of these are beautiful. But they WOULD probably make conflict wherein like, Maddie wants to go after some bad guys to avenge the victims, and Haven doesn’t, that kind of thing. And I can see Maddie being angry AT HAVEN for that, and Haven UNDERSTANDING because she’s very understanding but still standing fast in her own beliefs. Haven is at peace with the universe, both its good and its evil. Maddie rages at the Heavens like if Milton wrote a woman. Both are perfect. Also like...I love so much the idea of Maddie being ready to PHYSICALLY FIGHT SOMEONE, no powers, she’s just going to WRECK THEM WITH HER BARE HANDS (trust me, she has a mean punch) and Haven pulling her back. Because Maddie is canonically 5′6 and 110 lbs, she’s not short but she’s VERY skinny (because Marvel likes making all their women borderline underweight; I headcanon Maddie should be more in the 135 lb ballpark) and Haven is a SOLID SIX FEET and has been shown as able to carry around GROWN MEN in her arms, so like Maddie just this feisty lil skinny spitfire ready to MURDER YOU and big mama Haven gently holding her back like an angry lil kitten!! Speaking of physical contrasts I also love how they’re very Tomboy & Girly Girl? Maddy is a pilot, she’s very adventurous and rough and tumble, she’s got cute dresses but she also wears her brown/green flight suit a lot, she’s a goth in the 90s...and then Haven is like, this very well-brought-up polite woman with super-long princess hair and the one time we see her in civilian-wear it’s this GORGEOUS sari with tons of jewelry, they’re just so Queen & Lady Knight, I love it. (It’s not that Maddie is unfeminine, Maddie’s VERY femme, she’s just more versatile and aggressive, whereas Haven is very conventionally hyperfeminine) I think another point they’d have a lot of difference---though not arguement---is sex. Like, Haven still spoke about her one (1) sexual experience with a lot of shame twenty years later, she’s very much a product of a conservative religious culture and while I don’t think she’s the type to slut-shame anyone else, I think she’s now very thoroughly celibate because of her experiences. Whereas Maddie is very much not, like she literally walks into Sebastian Shaw’s bedroom one night and rides that dick because shut up she wants to. While I don’t like the idea of her as this Sexy Evil Succubus that she’s become in the 2000s, I do see her as having a fun, practical, down-to-earth approach to sexuality as something that she enjoys and isn’t ashamed of, while also not being this male fantasy of a femme fatale 24/7. So I can see her commenting on hot guys buff bodies and Haven being embarrass, things like that, maybe Maddie trying to get her a date. Like basically Haven is the Virgin Mary, she’s chastity and motherhood and peace and mercy, and Maddie is Ishtar, the goddess of love AND sex AND war. Another thing about Haven is that she was established as EXTREMELY sensitive to the feelings of others, especially their pain, and that this was NOT a superpower from the Adversary, it’s how she’s always been since childhood. She’s almost psychic, she instantly figures out the personal problems of everyone in X-Factor, from Lorna and Alex’s co-dependence to Guido using humor to mask that he suffers from chronic pain due to his mutation. So while I doubt Maddie opens up to her about her past even when they become friends, Haven can very much feel out that SOMETHING awful happened to this woman. And Haven’s nature as a healer is going to be drawn that, to want to help her, without going too fast or too invasive, without doing anything Madelyne doesn’t want, without forcing anything on her because Haven has had that happen to her and she’s not going to do it to someone else even with good intentions. She’s done ENOUGH wrong with good intentions. And as Madelyne does begin to let her in and let Haven know what happened, Haven in return reveals her own startlingly similar trauma, and I think there’s a mutual healing there in supporting each other. Haven becomes the one shoulder Maddie has to cry on, and Maddie becomes someone who can be angry FOR Haven on her behalf. I see Maddie as probably being protective of Haven, like she has been of other women in the past who were wronged or vulnerable----such as when she was murderously incensed over what Genosha did to Jenny Ransome or when she offered to be Dazzler’s eyes when Dazzler was blinded by a mask magically stuck to her face. And Haven can help Maddie with moving on and owning her own life instead of devoting herself to vengeance anymore, because she loves Maddie and rightly believes Maddie deserves BETTER than that. Honestly, I just...love them both...and want them to be happy and healing...so much...thank you for this ask, I loved talking about them!! ;A;

#haven #maddie feels #haven and maddie #maddie and haven

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bigskydreaming · 5 years

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Biden does not have the nomination yet. It is not yet a matter of “a vote for Biden is a vote against Trump, anything else is a vote for Trump.”

And until it is, until either Sanders or Biden has all the delegates they need, peoples’ criticisms of Biden are absolutely relevant. And even should Biden GET the nomination, c’mon guys, there is STILL room to be aware of everything Biden IS and everything about him that needs OPPOSING, even WHILE still opposing Trump. This is not counter-intuitive....if you are against most of what Trump has done, because it is WRONG rather than it is just Trump who did it, and did it in obvious ways, then this is vital, I’d argue, because Biden isn’t going to address a lot of it once in the White House unless people DO keep in mind what is and isn’t likely to still be an issue in a Biden presidency.

This isn’t divisive, this is NECESSARY. If you can’t find a way to hold both truths in your mind: “Trump absolutely needs to be ousted, and opposed, and his works undone,” as well as “Biden has a long history of doing harm in his various seats, and he is the lesser of two evils ONLY in some respects and its important to know what those are because evil is still evil”....that’s something to WORK on, not just “Biden or bust.”

And to be clear, I’m not advocating for “Bernie or bust” either. I’m simply saying: This is all more complicated than accusing people of having brain worms for thinking “Guy who won’t expand health care as much” is the same as “Guy who is killing people.”

Let me be perfectly, 100% clear: If Biden gets the nomination, if it comes down to him or Trump, I am voting for Biden, hands down. But I will be doing so not thinking that Biden is in any way a more moral choice, but because I think the true danger of Trump is in him serving these past years as a rallying point for all the most vocal white supremacist and homophobic and misogynistic elements within our society, allowing them to feel emboldened and having no shame about expressing their hate openly. I think the true danger of Trump’s presidency is how little of it is actually Trump doing anything other than acting as a magnet that draws all focus and trains all eyes on him, even as his cabinet stocked to over-flowing with white-supremacists, antisemitic, homophobic and transphobic and eugenics-advocating assholes go about ACTIVELY advancing agendas of hate behind him while he serves as the catch-all for all opposition.

That absolutely needs to be opposed, and defeated, but fuck this self-defeating nonsense that this means the work will be OVER the second Trump is gone, whenever and however that happens. And I think for as much as people accuse some of us of doing the enemy’s work for them by sowing division and dividing our efforts and how this is doomed to be self-sabotaging and backfire on all of us, I think the same is true of saying things like the only real drawback to Biden is ‘doesn’t want to expand Health Care as much as Sanders whereas he’s otherwise not remotely comparable to Guy Who Is Killing People.”

Because BOTH ARE SELF-DEFEATING. Both set up only ONE THING as a goal or a focus that needs tackling and carries the implicit “and then we can rest” instead of holding up as a goal or focus that both need defeating or plenty of people are still going to die, as they’ve been dying all along.

If you’re going to go with the Devil You Know because he’s also the Lesser Evil of the two Devils You Know....

You still need to know who he is, and who he is is not just guy who won’t expand health care as much and claiming him to be such and nothing more is DANGEROUS.

Vote for Biden if it comes down to him and Trump, yes! But do so in a way that will let you get right back to work opposing all the shit HE prioritizes and stands for, every bit as much as you claim to oppose all the same with Trump!

Stop treating this as an impossible ask. It is not as simple as evil or not evil. It is as simple as making the choice that ensures most people survive....and then from there, actually ensuring that means that the most people survive.

Which can only happen when you keep in mind how Biden will still be dangerous even once Trump is gone, and who will still need protection from him and his administration and policies, even once Trump’s are gone....and especially because there are a number of those policies that Biden, based on his own policies of the past, is not likely to prioritize or even be helpful in getting dismantled.

Any posts responding to this with anything remotely on the lines of “you’re encouraging people not to vote for Biden and thus helping Trump win” will be ignored the same way they ignore that THAT IS NOT WHAT THIS POST IS, OR SAYS, OR WANTS. I am not responsible for your inability to read what this post actually says, or your unwillingness to hold two not actually opposing viewpoints and priorities in your head at the same time. I am being as clear as I possibly can be on what I will be doing if Biden is the nominee, and why, and how none of that makes Biden’s worst flaws or history irrelevant or a distraction from Trump.

First off:

“Won’t expand healthcare that much” IS actively letting people die. GoFundMe’s biggest usage is trying to raise money for people whose health care isn’t keeping them alive and most of those goals are never actually met, and that’s literally killing people.

Please be cognizant of what kind of people are most being killed this way. Ones who have the most trouble MEETING (often) impossible goals. The most marginalized members of society.

If anyone is still framing the health care issue in their own heads as a matter of whether or not they can always pay for their own medical expenses, or will always be able to, please understand this disregards the many people who flat out can’t, and die every day as a result. Homeless people, people kicked out of their homes for being gay or trans or neurodivergent, not having access to quality health care for those reasons or turned away by the specialists they desperately need because the specialists’ only concerns are they can’t afford to pay. Ex-cons who are largely barred access to jobs with good medical benefits, and are largely barred access to the goodwill of random internet strangers willing to shell out some money of their own for their gofundme campaigns. And so on, and so on.

Absolutely the camps and detention facilities are a huge ongoing issue, but its a huge ongoing issue MOST being talked about throughout these entire past four years by a lot of the exact same leftists being accused of taking focus away from the very issues they are doing the most to highlight.

Now onto Biden specifically:

Are Biden’s positions on everything identical to Trump? No, but for starters, Biden wrote the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, responsible for building more prisons, increasing prison sentences, deploying more cops, and increasing and furthering the exploitation of prison labor, etc.

He’s long been a major proponent of capital punishment, directly leading to the creation of over 60 new capital offenses including murder of federal law enforcement officers. And oh yeah, Biden also voted against limiting appeals and rejecting racial statistics in death penalty appeals.....which would be great if the vast majority of the new death penalty offenses he had a hand in creating - like the murder of police - haven’t been massively disproportionate in who they end up targeting and who ends up charged with and convicted of them:

Like carjackings, acts of terrorism (just hardly ever acts of domestic terrorism aka the mass shootings of white supremacists, antisemites and disgruntled white guys), and the many drug-related offenses that stem from him being known for decades as a ‘drug warrior’ behind many leading efforts in the war on drugs.

Such as how in the 80s he was the head of the Senate Committee responsible for passing most of the most punitive measures against drug users, during the crack epidemic that was largely created to target and make scapegoats of lower class drug users and PoC, whom were at the time denoted as statistically more likely to use crack cocaine than powder cocaine....

And given that Biden himself sponsored and co-wrote the Anti-Drug Abuse Act which specifically and deliberately laid out hugely harsher penalties for crack cocaine use than were received for being convicted of using power cocaine.....aka a particular favorite past-time of rich white guys (including politicians and political staffers)....all during and throughout the crack epidemic Biden and his cohorts happily whipped up public moral outrage about....

This directly makes him and his political career an inciting element in the huge disparities in prison populations, all stemming from this drug warrior’s leading role in a war on drugs he helped get underway and become what it eventually became in the first place. (Please keep in mind he was famously critical of REAGAN for not being strongly enough anti-drug, as well as George H. W. Bush.)

Granted, Biden admitted his role in crafting and enforcing legislation that led to such huge disparities, at least by the time he was asked about such things in the debates of the 2007 Democratic primaries.

But to my knowledge, to this day he has yet to ever similarly walk back his role in things like oh, the Comprehensive Forfeiture Act in 1983. Which directly empowered and has steadily more and more further increased the power of drug enforcement agencies to seize assets of even just those charged with anything from drug possession to intent to distribute. Which in turn, almost always directly affects the ability of defendants to pay for their own defense instead of being limited to the representation of overworked and underpaid public defenders. Not to mention limits their ability to repeatedly avail themselves to the unlimited appeals Biden nominally has always been in favor for.

Or there’s the Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Bill which was a bit of shady shitmanship that squeezed through thanks to being attached to an unvetted, unrelated and super fucking vague child protection bill that has often been criticized as overreaching in scope. And this IDAP Bill, despite its superficially stated intentions, has historically most often been used by DEA agents as an intimidation tactic wielded against drug-reform protestors at rallies and other such events.

Biden might never have openly had his support base chanting Build the Wall, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t vote for the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which partially funded the construction of 700 miles of fencing along the Mexican border.

And his stance for over ten years about whether he’d allow sanctuary cities to ignore federal law has been a clear and concise NO, which y’know, given that’s kinda the whole point of sanctuary cities....and given that sanctuary cities have been absolutely CRUCIAL to even attempting to stave off the worst of Trump’s anti-immigration efforts, travel bans, etc.....this may not make him worse than Trump, but I fail to see that particular stance helping all that much even after Trump is gone.

Because Biden might not have put the same efforts into motion as Trump has, had he been the one in office, but I do not for a second believe he will in ANY way make reversing or undoing some of them his priority. All of that is just as likely to be an uphill battle in a Biden presidency. His track record speaks to itself as to how much he’s likely to make anything like abolishing ICE or getting rid of the detention facilities his first order of business - or even second, third, or even tenth....UNLESS PEOPLE FORCE HIM TO MAKE IT THAT, INSTEAD OF JUST TRUSTING THAT HE WILL BECAUSE HE’S NOT TRUMP.

The caveat I have here is that Biden and his inner circle and support base are unlikely to ever be that visibly resistant to repealing Trump’s anti-immigration efforts, or that visibly in favor of what’s happened there, and he isn’t going to campaign on a platform of overt racism.....but that’s kinda the point. He’s never needed to, in order to still do a huge amount of damage to an untold number of lives over the decades, all while being able to claim to be nominally or superficially progressive and use that to advance his own career.

Trump doesn’t care about hiding his racism....and Biden doesn’t try all that hard to either. But he’s always known he doesn’t really have to try all that hard....just to hide it just enough to claim it isn’t there and its nothing worth anyone worrying about or pushing back against. Plausible deniability - made all the easier and all the more plausible by having someone like Trump to point to and know just by doing so people will breathe a sigh of relief because whew, at least he’s not Trump. Not that this is likely a huge comfort to the people killed long before now, due to his prison policies, capital offense expansion, and war on drugs that happen to not be the right kind of drugs, or being snorted in the right form of those drugs, or snorted by the right people.

And putting a face and a claim to things that absolutely none of his actual efforts back up or are even aimed in the same direction as....this is something that extends to pretty much everything else about him.

Yeah, he reversed his stance on voting for DADT and DOMA in years prior, when as Vice President he said he was totally fine with the idea of men marrying men and women marrying women and each enjoying all the same benefits and civil rights and liberties as anyone else. Course, that doesn’t actually reverse how he voted, nor did he actually have anything to do with striking down the results of his and others’ votes as unconstitutional.

And yeah, Biden drafted the Violence Against Women Act, which he’s famously called the most significant piece of legislation he’s crafted throughout his political career and the one he’s most proud of, citing it as the beginning of a ‘historic commitment to women and children victimized by domestic violence and sexual assault.’ Not that it helped Anita Hill that much, nor that he ever seemed all that interested in helping, believing or supporting her, despite whatever he may have claimed a couple years ago at the start of the #MeToo movement or around the Kavanaugh proceedings, when he stated he’d always believed Anita Hill and voted against Clarence Thomas.

(With Thomas of course still a member of the Supreme Court, alongside Kavanaugh now, thanks to Trump. And Thomas still being famously considered one of its most conservative justices. And still someone whose appointment to the Court might not ever have happened had not Biden - the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee overseeing Thomas’ nomination to the court - made the choice to never call forward four female witnesses who’d been waiting in the wings the whole time to testify on Hill’s behalf and speak to her credibility. With this decision of Biden’s only ever being described as the result of a ‘private, compromise deal between Republicans and then-Judiciary Committee Chair Joe Biden,’ after which all four other women’s testimony was deemed irrelevant, and thus a waste of the court’s time.

And sure, Biden as of just last year supports repealing the Hyde Amendment, that he’s only supported since as far back as ‘76. The Hyde Amendment, of course, blocks federal funding from being used to pay for an abortion except in the specific provision of an abortion being needed to save the woman’s life, or when the pregnancy is the result of incest or rape. Of course, even through all those decades that Biden did support the Hyde Amendment, he pretty famously never felt it went far enough, and thought it shouldn’t include a provision allowing for federal funds to be used to pay for an abortion that stemmed from incest or rape. But that doesn’t speak to his personality or priorities either, obviously, since he took it back (while preparing to hopefully run against pussy-grabbing Trump).

And Biden’s not as interested in giving billionaires tax cuts as Trump is, for instance, since he was always against even George W. Bush’s tax cuts for Americans who made more than one million dollars a year. He was always of the belief that this money should then be put in a dedicated Homeland Security and Public Safety Trust Fund, to invest specifically in increased law enforcement. Joey does love him some cops.

And Biden’s not quite as likely to go to war compared to how often Trump seems to have us poised on the brink of it. Biden only favored sending American troops to Darfur, is a self-described Zionist who has defended various acts of aggression by the Israeli army against Palestinians, and was of the opinion that the biggest problem with our involvement in the Syrian Civil War was that Europe didn’t trust we had a plan there.

Of course, much like with numerous other stances, its not like there’s not plenty to point to as proof Biden’s invested in keeping us out of any international conflicts. For instance, he’s been a longterm advocate for ‘hard-headed diplomacy’ against Iran that included pushing for coordinated international sanctions against them...except then he voted against a measure to declare the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization, said war with Iran wouldn’t just be a mistake, it’d be a disaster, and threatened to personally begin impeachment proceedings against George W. Bush if he attempted to start a war with Iran. This was in December of 2007. Course, then in September 2008, he said that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps was a terrorist organization and that the Bush administration already had the power and right to declare them as such, soooo......hmm.

And Biden did vote against the first Gulf War in 1990. Then supported the use of force against Iraq in 1998 and expressed a commitment to taking down Hussein, even if it meant being in it for the long haul....which as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2002, he ratified by voting to authorize war against Iraq, going on record as firmly believing that Hussein possessed chemical and biological weapons and was seeking nuclear weapons.

Then again, in 2006, Biden did go on to say that the original authorization for going to war with Iraq had been a mistake that was due to Bush “using his congressional authority unwisely” (and that Biden had no role in unwisely helping him obtain), and that there were no stockpiled weapons in Iraq and likely never had been.

Which Biden then followed up in 2008 by saying in his opinion the real mistake had been in labeling Iraq the focus of the War on Terror, instead of Afghanistan, which he believed was really the focus all along, and that we should leave Iraq....and shift our focus fully back there. Because see, the problem was the war in Iraq was a war of choice, whereas the war in Afghanistan was a war of necessity.

And he did have this to say in 2011 about getting involved in the conflict in Libya: "NATO got it right. In this case, America spent $2 billion and didn't lose a single life. This is more the prescription for how to deal with the world as we go forward than it has in the past."

Course, five years later in 2016, in an interview with Charlie Rose, Biden stated he was "strongly against going to Libya" due to the instability it would cause within the country. He said, "My question was, 'OK, tell me what happens.' He's gone. What happens? Doesn't the country disintegrate? What happens then? Doesn't it become a place where it becomes a petri dish for the growth of extremism? And it has."

And then there’s his stances on North Korea...and Russia...and Central America....and Cuba.....all of which can be summed up as “that’s Joe Biden’s hot take on this issue, tune back in next week where he plays devil’s advocate with himself and argues the exact opposite.”

So yeah, all of that and more is who Biden is and always has been. Do not buy into him being someone who has grown and changed, because he’s more recently said the right things - especially as opposed to Trump. Biden has ALWAYS said the right things for the time he’s saying them at.....and history has always shown him willing to say the exact opposite, as soon as its more to his advantage to change his tune to that instead.

He is not the lesser of two evils, IMO, he is just the less overt of two evils. But make no mistake.....I can not tell anyone what to do, nor am I trying to, ultimately, beyond just asking people to BE AWARE of things like this. I can only really tell you what I’m going to do, and if Biden gets the nomination, I AM going to vote for him, not just to get rid of Trump....but everyone Trump brought with him, and the way Trump’s spent four years assuring every hateful piece of shit in America that they are not alone in their hate, and they have presidential approval.

I am simply ALSO saying, at the same time, that I do believe that even a Biden presidency can help push back against this, by virtue of at least being the American people saying We Do Not Support Trump or Want Him Back in enough quantities as to shame at least some of the more hateful and cowardly elements of our society back into silence.....

But that even while doing so, it IMO will remain MORE CRUCIAL THAN EVER to keep in mind.....none of those people or their hate simply sprang into being when Trump took office. They were here all along, and just because BEFORE Trump many of them weren’t brave enough to be seen out of the shadows, doesn’t mean that politicians like Joe Biden haven’t seen them and been fine with them and even agreeing with them and catering to them in various ways all along. Its just, unlike Trump, Biden cares too much about being seen as doing and saying the right things, the progressive things, to do any of those dealings openly, speak to any of those elements directly. But that’s never meant he’s above dealing with them, or profiting from their support.

So elect Biden if that’s what we have to do, even if only because his desire to be seen as progressive is at least a lever to ply between him and such elements of our society, where no such lever exists between Trump and them at all.

But it needs to be remembered that such a lever is only as effective as WE MAKE USE OF IT, AND FORCE HIM TO CATER MORE TO ACTUAL PROGRESSIVE PUBLIC OPINION RATHER THAN ALLOW HIM THE TIME AND ENERGY TO BE TWO-FACED THE MOMENTS OUR BACKS ARE TURNED.

And that if we do not keep this in mind, the latter is very much something Biden will do, just as he has done it countless times before.

AND ALSO PLEASE KEEP IN MIND:

HE STILL IS NOT THE NOMINEE YET, AND UNTIL HE IS STOP TAKING IT FOR GRANTED.

There is a marked difference between preparing for less than your preferred scenarios, and taking for granted that you might as well go ahead and settle for them already.

Too much of the latter has too much to do with the current state of our country, SO WHAT IF WE STOPPED DOING IT.

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chiseler · 4 years

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THE MYSTERY OF SUNN CLASSIC PICTURES

It was like the positive, life-affirming New Age mysticism of the hippies took a sudden turn for the dark and very strange. In the mid-Seventies, as the country was overwhelmed by a creeping atmosphere of impotent anger, paranoia and existential despair in response to Vietnam, Watergate, race riots, Kent State, the Tate-LaBianca murders, bomb-tossing student radicals, pollution, high-profile assassinations, the oil crisis and the emergence of disco, Americans sought solace in some form by plunging headlong into a collective national obsession with all things Mysterious and Unexplained. Suddenly Bigfoot was all the rage, as was The Loch Ness Monster, The Bermuda Triangle, UFOs, psychic phenomena, near-death experiences, apocalyptic Biblical prophecies, and ancient astronauts. People were desperate to hold onto something, anything, no matter how ridiculous and fanciful, as the whole world seemed to be crumbling and burning around them. If something pointed toward an unseen world, a world outside this stinking mess we were stuck with, or better still promised the complete obliteration of this stinking mess, then at least there was a glimmer of hope. Almost overnight, a cottage industry cropped up, flooding the market with cheap paperbacks, magazines, movies and TV shows—even comic books and board games—devoted to unexplained phenomena of all sorts. Personally I didn’t give a Toss about the state of the world, but I still subscribed to UFO Reporter magazine, had a shelf full of cheap paperbacks with titles like The Search for Bigfoot and From Outer Space, and never missed In Search Of…, the half-hour syndicated series narrated by Leonard Nimoy that delved into one mystery or another every week. For god sakes, I even had the Bermuda Triangle board game.

But in what may have been the strangest phenomenon of all, far more bizarre than the legends surrounding Area 51 or the Philadelphia Experiment, in 1971 Schick teamed up with the Church of Latter Day Saints to launch a low-budget movie studio that aimed to become the epicenter of High Strangeness culture.

Yes, a razor blade company and the Mormons decided to make movies together. How could the results be anything but unfathomable?

(It’s worth noting before we get too far that in my research into the history of Sunn Classic Pictures, it became clear the indie studio, which still exists in some vague form today, seems to have gone to some great lengths to fog their early history, never once mentioning the Mormons, and in some cases denying there even was a Sunn Classic Pictures prior to 1980. With only a few rare exceptions, the reasonably small Sunn Classic catalog, now owned by Paramount, never received any kind of home video release, which only adds to the mystery.)

As the official story goes, in 1971, the employees of Schick—a subsidiary if the pharmaceutical company Warner-Lambert—approached Rayland Jensen and asked him to launch a new movie studio. Appalled by all the filth and violence and sex and cursing that infested American movie screens, as well as the so-called “intellectuals” who thought these movies were “good,” they felt real Americans needed a family-friendly alternative. Those Schick employees concluded Jensen was just the man for the job, as a few years earlier he’d handled distribution for a nature picture released by the Utah-based American National Enterprises. The picture had done very well.

Okay, let me stop there. As I said, that’s the official story, as far as it goes and as little sense as it makes. The real story goes more like this.

In 1971, a renegade group of American National Enterprises employees, led by Jensen and inspired by that same disgust with what American movies had become, broke away to form a new production company to release family-friendly, G-rated pictures. Patrick Frawley, the ultraconservative, paranoid, anti-communist conspiracy theorist who also happen to run the Schick razor blade company invested a bundle in the new venture, ensuring he would have some say in the kinds of movies the new company would release.

With headquarters divided between Salt Lake City and Park City, Utah, the newly-christened Sunn Classic Pictures (aka Sunn international, aka Schick Sunn Classic Pictures) set out to Make family-friendly features and documentaries aimed at working class, conservative, God-fearing Americans who didn’t go out to movies very often, likely because of all the above-mentioned filth and sex and violence and cuss words. Moreover, they wanted to make certain these warm-hearted films turned a healthy profit. This involved two basic techniques.

The first was four-walling, a distribution method American National Enterprises helped pioneer. Instead of spending a fortune on all those prints necessary for a massive nationwide theatrical release, Sunn instead rented theaters serving the target demographic, inundated the market with ads and gimmicks, then screened their new film at the selected theater for no more than a week. After that extremely limited run, they packed up and moved the print to another theater far away. It was a tricky ploy. On the upside four-walling a picture allowed the production company to keep all the box office receipts without having to divide them among various middlemen.

If they knew the film was a stinker, it also allowed them to skip town before the bad reviews could do them any damage. On the downside, those limited runs also meant the picture would be there and gone before any positive word of mouth could work its magic. Sunn would try four-walling a new movie for a few months, and if it was making money, they might consider a nationwide release. If not, then they’d start trying to sell it to TV for syndication. It wasn’t a tack that worked all the time, but often enough to make it worthwhile, and it left them more of an escape route than a national release ever would.

So. “Family friendly.” Yes. If you want to make Disney-style pictures but don’t have Disney-style budgets to work with, animated features are out. So are live action films with any kind of special effects. Basically what you’re left with are nature films, right? No expensive sets, very few actors, and as a result very cheap to make. So Sunn began producing wilderness adventure stories.

In those very early days, you can definitely smell Patrick Frawley’s hand in the development process. Films like 1971’s Toklat, in which a man is forced to track down and kill a beloved pet bear after the bear kills a local rancher’s livestock, is a prime example. (As it happens, Toklat was the first Sunn picture I ever saw, Green Bay being a conservative working-class town, and so on Sunn’s demographic map. ) There was something decidedly Nietzschean about those earliest releases. Most of them featured lone individualusts with strong principles who flee the corruption of modern civilization to face the harsh realities of nature alone.

Now, think back and ask yourself honestly” what kid in his right mind has ever liked nature films, Nietzschean or otherwise? Maybe Mormon kids did, but certainly not normal kids. Nature movies are dull as dust, all those endless shots of trees and rivers and shit. Even if it’s supposed to be a true adventure story about some historical frontiersman, so what? Where are the explosions and car chases and monkeys doing funny things? You know who liked nature films? Grandparents! Grandparents loved them because they were wholesome and taught valuable lessons. They insisted on dragging their grandkids to them because they didn’t have to worry about being embarrassed or having to define certain words on the trip home.

The handful of films Sunn Classic released in their first three years—most all of them wilderness adventures about solitary manly sorts learning to dominate nature in one way or another—did okay. They didn’t lose money, but they also didn’t become runaway hits.

In 1974, even after several rewrites, no one at Sunn Classic Pictures had high hopes for the next film on the docket, something called The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams. Sure, it was loosely based on an historical figure who again fled the corruption of the modern world to live in the wilderness, befriending a grizzly bear along the way. But the character was not some stalwart and steely-eyed Ubermensch—he was gentle and kind-hearted. What the hell were they going to do with that?

Enter Charles Sellier, and the second technique that would be central to Sunn Classic’s success. Sellier, today considered one of Sunn’s true founders together with Rayland Jensen, was a recently-converted Mormon in his thirties, as well as the author of the 1972 novel upon which Grizzly Adams was based. As Sunn’s new executive producer, he had a different—and eventually hugely influential—approach to marketing films.

Sellier set aside an estimated $85,000 for market research before a new film went into production. This involved targeting the desired demographic with door-to-door and telephone interviews asking housewives and construction workers what kind of movies they would like to see. This also involved screening early rushes from films currently in production for hand-picked test audiences in order to get their reactions and advice. This is, of course, standard operating procedure now, but it was radical back then, and something that mortified directors and screenwriters. In some cases Sellier even had members of the test audience wired to biometric scanners to measure their reactions to the scenes they were being shown, and use those reactions to have a script rewritten more to the test audience liking. If audience pulse rates went up whenever a certain character was on screen, well, they’d build up that role. If a certain animal warmed their hearts, well, maybe they’d make a whole movie about that particular animal.

Sellier’s method of crowd-sourced filmmaking was first tried on The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams, and sure enough, the film, starring former viker movie regular Dan Haggerty, became Sunn’s first bona fide international hit, bringing in over $20 million. The film was such a smash among grandparents it quickly spawned a Sunn-produced TV series, which was also a big hit among grandparents. To date, the Grizzly Adams franchise remains Sunn’s biggest cash cow.

But something else happened in 1974 that would help make that iconic Sunn Classic logo as familiar and comforting as the Toho, American International, Shaw Brothers and Troma logos. To some of us, anyway.

In 1968, Erich Von Daniken published Chariots of the Gods?, a book which argued, through some mighty suspect and loosely interpreted archaeological evidence, that aliens had visited Earth thousands of years ago, and among other things helped build the Egyptian and Mexican Pyramids, Stonehenge and the statues on Easter island. It was one of the first major hallmarks of the High Strangeness Culture to come. Originally published in Germany, the book became an International sensation among those with a very high tolerance for pseudoscience, pseudohistory, and bullshit in general..

In 1970, German director Harald Reinl made a documentary based on von Daniken’s book, and it, too, became a big hit across Europe. As sillyassed as the whole thing was, I’d argue the film was even more effective than the book thanks to the visual presentation of all the supposed evidence.

Well, after seeing how much money Chariots of the Gods? Was pulling in overseas, and interested in such topics himself, American TV producer Alan Landsburg acquired the U.S. rights, re-edited the filmn, brought in Rod Serling to narrate, and broadcast it in 1973 as In Search of Ancient Astronauts. It would be the first of a trilogy of TV documentaries about ancient astronauts produced by Landsburg and narrated by Serling.

Noting the ratings that Landsburg doc brought in, as well as that European box office, Sunn obtained the US theatrical rights to In Search of Ancient Astronauts, changed the title back to Chariots of the Gods? And began four-walling it around the country in 1974. It didn’t matter that by that time countless articles and books had completely debunked all of von Daniken’s claims, nor that critics had savaged the film, in some cases even calling it racist for purporting indigenous people in Mexico, Africa an elsewhere could never have created these wonders by themselves. The picture made money. It may not have been Grizzly Adams money, but enough to leave Sellier and Jensen convinced they might be onto something with these documentaries about weird shit. Documentaries were even cheaper to make than nature films, and the demographic they were aiming at seemed eager to believe in monsters and aliens and conspiracies, so there you go. For the next five years, along with the wilderness adventures and wholesome TV adaptations of Huck Finn and Gulliver’s Travels, Sunn gave the half-wits like me what we wanted.

In 1975, Sunn picked up the theatrical distrobution rights To The Outer Space Connection, the last of Landsburg’s ancient astronaut trilogy (as well as one of the last things Rod Serling worked on before he died). This final entry argued not only that aliens had visited earth thousands of years ago, but had planted humans here in the first place and had been guiding our evolution ever since. This wasn’t exactly a new idea, and could be traced back, so far as I’m aware, at least to Nigel Kneale’s 1958 BBC miniseries Quatermass and The Pit. But the film, directed by Fred Warshofsky, went several crazy steps beyond Kneale, claiming we know exactly where the aliens came from and why, that the Mayans were themselves aliens, and that these same aliens would return to Earth on Christmas Eve, 2011.

The TV documentaries made enough of a splash for Landsburg that he parlayed them into the above-mentioned weekly In Search Of… series, which began airing in 1977, right around the same time Grizzly Adams hit the airwaves.

Both Chariots of the Gods? And The Outer Space Connection helped cement the template that would define the rest of the Sunn-produced High Strangeness documentaries that would follow, making them so effective on the young, the susceptible, and the merely desperate. The real key, it seems, far beyomd the film’s actual content, was conscripting an authoritative host/narrator who can present the most insane pseudoscientific theories and shaky evidence with a straight face while repeatedly using terms like “indisputable,” “Proven beyond a doubt,” and “scientists agree.”: “It’s an incontrovertible fact these ancient carvings prove alien visitors walked on Earth over five hundred centuries ago.” It was the simplest of carnival sideshow techniques, but one that kept drawing suckers to the theaters.

The same year they released The Outer Space Connection, Sunn also released The Mysterious Monsters, which was less a documentary than a series of vignettes about Bigfoot, the Yeti, and The Loch Ness Monster. Director Robert Guenette had been making what you might call speculative Sunn-style documentaries long before Sunn even existed, so he was in familiar territory. In fact, The Mysterious Monsters includes scenes borrowed from Guenette’s 1974 TV movie, Monsters: Mysteries or Myths?, which coincidentally had been narrated by Rod Serling. The (mostly) new and expanded Sunn production was hosted by Peter Graves, who was as straight-faced as they come. In between shots of Graves and ten other men in cowboy hats wandering the forest on horseback looking for Bigfoot, we get eyewitness accounts from those who claim to have actually seen Bigfoot, Nessie, or the Yeti. Unlike most Bigfoot films of the era (and there were a bunch), The Mysterious Monsters infers a decided fearlessness and hostility on Bigfoot’s part, claiming he not only terrorized innocent victims, but wandered into the suburbs to terrorize them. The recreated Bigfoot encounters here are kind of fun, and in fact the film contains two solid scares, at least if you’re nine. Nessie and the Yeti get short shrift, and those scenes of Graves riding through the forest with that hopeless hunting party are interminable, but the picture was another big hit,arriving at precisely the right time given 1975 was a banner year for Bigfoot cinema. In the end, and where he got his information who the hell knows, Graves announces there is a community of some two hundred Bigfeet living in Northern California, though Graves and the hunting party find none of them.

Another hallmark of Sunn’s documentaries was that most inevitably ended with an outlandish, shocking, unexpected, and wholly unsubstantiated claim. The influence of mondo films—Mondo Cane, Africa ama and the like—on Sunn’s documentaries is undeniable. But while mondo films aimed to shock grindhouse audiences with footage (whether real or created) of bizarre and extreme human behavior, Sunn aimed to leave family audiences womderstruck at the possibilities of a mysterious world of magic and monsters just beyond our perceptions.

In 1976, Sunn followed up The Mysterious Monsters with The Amazing World of Psychic Phenomena, also directed by Guenette, this time narrated by Raymond Burr. The film is less a cohesive documentary than another shaggy dog series of vignettes exploring extrasensory perception, astral projection, and telekinesis as well as ghosts and spiritualism, featuring an all-star cast of celebrity psychics including Jeanne Dixon and Uri Geller. Not surprisingly, Burr, who doesn’t seem terribly convinced himself, informs us that there is irrefutable scientific evidence that all these powers are absolutely real and for true.

That same year also saw the release of one of Sunn’s more patently ridiculous outings, In Search of Noah’s ARk, a film which, in many ways, proved a turning point. The film was the first to be hosted/narrated by character actor Brad Crandall, who would go on to narrate most of the remaining Sunn Classic documentaries, as well as appearing in a few of their TV shows. It was directed by James L. Conway, who quickly established himself as Sunn’s go-to in-house director, churning out five or six features and TV movies a year.

Apart from turning to mostly in-house staffers to make their films instead of bringing in outside directors and celebrity hosts, In Search of Noah’s ARk also marked the point at which Sunn further fed their demographic by adding a decidedly fundamentalist Christian focus to many of their films, from Noah’s Ark to their TV series Greatest Heroes of the Bible to two documentaries about near-death experiences to 1979’s (and grammar be damned) In search of Historic Jesus.

In business terms it was a savvy move. To this day, films aimed at a fundamentalist audience, especially if they support a strictly literal interpretation of the Bible, can bring in more money than most Hollywood films. They certainly bring in more than most Mormon themed films, and apparently the more patently ridiculous the involved claims, the better.

The supposed “scientists” who lay out the evidence that the remains of Noah’s honest-to-God ark are still sitting up there on top of Mt. Ararat (should anyone care to take a look) aren’t, um, scientists at all. One, a supposed physics professor, argues there’s a mountain of geological evidence proving the world was deluged by an all-consuming flood, um, five thousand years ago. Another claims the ark was first discovered by a Russian expedition sent by Tsar Nicholas II in 1916, but all the reports and evidence were destroyed by dirty communist revolutionaries, um, two days after the expedition returned. It all goes downhill from there, and you have to feel some pity for the poor gullible fools who believed all this nonsense.

I saw nearly all of Sunn’s documentaries in the theater when I was a kid, and now feel sorry for my mom, dad, and older sister, who I suspect drew straws to see who had to take me whenever a new Sunn picture hit town. When I was ten I bought every last nutty claim. Going back and watching them again four decades later, I find myself blurting, “Wait, what?” Aloud after nearly every scene. They do, however, remain fascinating artifacts and a mirror of a certain psychological makeup. They’re also still fun as hell for all their crazy dumbness, if you keep your critical thinking skills at the ready.

Sunn found themselves in the middle of a shitstorm in 1977 with the release of The Lincoln Conspiracy, also directed by Conway. Historians, critics and the media at large attacked the film for presenting as fact a convoluted conspiracy claiming the assassination of President Lincoln was an inside job, closing, as Oliver Stone’s JFK would years later, with a demand the investigation be reopened. Conway would later claim the film was just a silly speculative docudrama based on a couple recent books, but even the authors of the books denounced the film. Still, a little controversy has never been known to hurt the box office.

Over the next few years Sunn continued to release two or three pseudoscientific documentaries a year, including Beyond and Back, Beyond Death’s Door, and The Bermuda Triangle, the latter of which claimed all those ships and planes vanished after being zapped by a malfunctioning Atlantean particle bean that was lost somewhere on the ocean floor near Bimini. Bimini? Well, I gotta say, as explanations go, it makes about as much sense as any other.

A personal favorite from the late Sunn era for its sheer nihilistic simplicity was 1979’s Encounter With Disaster, this time directed by Charles Sellier himself. Using his patented market research techniques, he brought a test audience into a theater and showed them dozens of newsreel clips of fires, earthquakes, The Hindenberg, race car crashes and the like, measuring responses to see which were considered the most exciting. He then strung all the most popular disaster footage together and released it as a feature.

Encounter With Disaster was perhaps the one true mondo film Sunn released during their brief heyday, and a definite anomaly. Toward the end, instead of documentary footage, talking heads and manipulative narration, films like The Bermuda Triangle, Beyond Death’s Door and In Search of Historic Jesus cane to rely more on speculative recreations with actors, sets and scripted dialogue. Although a narrator does pop up occasionally to say, in essence, “Yup, this really, really happened!,” the films come off more like splintered docudramas than documentaries, which somehow makes their assorted theses seem even less plausible.

It’s worth pointing out here that In Search of Historic Jesus, as delightfully awful as it is, does, without saying as much, offer a clear case study of the effect Sellier’s marketing machinations could have on a film.

Directed by Sunn’s in-house cinematographer Henning Schellerup (who prior to Sunn had worked on everything from softcore porn to Corman productions) and again narrated by Brad Crandall, Historic Jesus clearly began life as a documentary aiming to present all the independent historical evidence proving the Biblical account of Jesus’ life was accurate. Given there was precious little of that to be found, it became a documentary about the Shroud of Turin. Given there wasn’t really ninety minutes worth of material about the Shroud of Turin, they shot an interview with a fake scientist offering some, um, plausible scientific explanations for the Star of Bethlehem, then plundered some footage from the Noah’s Ark movie (though oddly the data offered in the latter somehow changed between 1976 and 1979). All this left them with a film that was about twenty minutes long.

The film was saved when Sellier gathered a test audience of fundamentalist Christians. After showing them a few scenes, he quickly learned they didn’t need any scientific or historical proof that Jesus really existed. They just wanted to hear more Jesus stories.

Taking their advice, the bulk of the film became a string of recreations of Jesus’ Greatest Hits acted out by amateur actors playing Jesus, Mary, Herid, Pontius Pilate and assorted disciples. No effort whatsoever is made to prove these recreated scenes actually happened. So instead of a pseudoscientific, pseudohistorical account of the, um, historical figure known as Jesus of Nazareth, it became another Sunday School-ready Jesus movie, all primed and ready to be rented to church groups across the country. In short, then, calling the film In Search of Historic Jesus actually makes sense.

By 1979, Sunn’s documentaries seemed to be running out of gas. They were still turning a profit (especially that Historic Jesus thing), but the profits weren’t what they once were, and the films were costing more to make. Also, other production houses had picked up on the Sunn Classic formula and began releasing High Strangeness docs of their own. In 1978, for instance, Amran Films and RCR released The Late Great Planet Earth, based on “Biblical scholar” Hal Lindsey’s massive bestseller which claimed all the prophecies in the Book of Revelation were coming true, and the long-promised Apocalypse would arrive any day now. If I remember correctly, the world was supposed to end in 1986. The film was hosted and narrated by Orson Wells, who had once been asked to narrate a Sunn film, but was so horrified by their marketing practices he turned down the job.

(A few years later in 1981, Welles would also narrate a documentary about Nostradamus’ prophecies, which was directed, coincidentally enough, by Sunn Classic alumnus Robert Guenette. Just to illustrate how influential Sunn’s experiment had been, The Man Who Saw Tomorrow was distributed by goddamn WARNER BROTHERS, of all places.)

What struck the real death knell to Sunn’s hugely successful string of pseudoscientific and pseudo historical extravaganzas was a changing culture. We were own the brink of Morning in America and the Reagan Era. Interest in silly monsters and psychic phenomena was waning as everyone put the ’70s behind them, focusing instead on the stock market, the threat of nuclear war, cocaine, designer clothes and other tangible real world issues.

Charles Sellier

In 1980 Sunn Classic Pictures was bought out by Taft Enterprises, a Cincinnatti-based conglomerate. The suits in Taft’s entertainment division had a few ideas of their own about what American moviegoers wanted. When they correctly saw that the days of four-walling were about over as the business ties between the major studios and national theater Chains grew stronger, Charles Sellier walked away to continue writing, producing, directing and marketing films on his own terms. In 1984 he directed the notorious holiday slasher film, Silent Night, Deadly Night, a picture remembered more for its ad campaign than anything in the picture itself. Sellier also later converted from Mormonism to evangelical Christianity.

When Taft likewise decided family friendly entertainment was a dead end, that the market for G-rated wilderness adventures simply wasn’t there anymore, that a film had to be rated PG or R if it hoped to make any money, Jensen and a few other original American National Enterprises refugees quit in disgust, and once again formed their own production company to offer honest American families wholesome entertainment options. Their first film was 1981’s Private Lessons, a teen sex comedy starring Sylvia Kristel. It made a lot of money.

Director James Conway stayed with Taft for awhile, helming several pictures, including the monster movie The Boogens . Interestingly, the very first Taft/Sunn release, perhaps formulated to attract Sunn’s core audience, was the Conway-directed Hangar 18, starring Darren McGavin, Robert Vaughn and Gary Collins. It was the perfect transitional picture, a sci-fi conspiracy thriller loosely based on what might well have been the subject of the next Sunn Classic documentary: Roswell and Area 51. Conway later went on to become an executive at Spelling Entertainment, overseeing a mountain of wildly successful crap.

Over the subsequent decades there were more sales and acquisitions, with the various companies overseeing the Sunn Classic brand themselves being gobbled up by even larger faceless corporate entities. Sunn vanished, then reappeared, then vanished again. Today there are vague, mysterious hints that Sunn Classics Pictures has been re-launched after Rayland Jensen teamed up with Lang Elliott, original founder of Tri-Star Pictures. But if Sunn really has risen from the grave, would it matter?

For good or ill, over the course of that five-year stretch between 1974 and 1979, Sunn Classic Pictures illuminated one strange facet of a very strange era, warped millions of impressionable minds (like mine), fully capitalized on a nation’s despair and collective neuroses, and left an indelible mark on the culture. Take even a cursory glance at what’s airing on the History and Discovery Channels, or at how the marketing departments of any movie studio large or small operates today. They simply wouldn’t be what they are In the second decade of the twenty-first century had it not been for Sunn Classic Pictures., and fore that we can thank the Mormons, a right-wing kook, and Bigfoot.

by Jim Knipfel

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