#ellie playboy series

[55sturn]

✮ DEALER!CHRIS WHO… / HEADCANONS

once again inspired by the lovely anna’s [@worldlxvlys] dealer w/ benefits!chris series and the lovely isla’s [@gamermattsgf] sour diesel!

DEALER!CHRIS who always has sour candy on standby when he knows his favourite customer is stopping by.

DEALER!CHRIS who brings a pair of his boxers and one of his shirts to the coffee table when she spends the night, making sure to lend her something comfy to wear.

DEALER!CHRIS who goes commando when he knows she’s gonna come by because it gives easier access.

DEALER!CHRIS who makes sure to always keep sour diesel around knowing she gets extremely horny and submissive when she smokes it.

DEALER!CHRIS who always has her favourite drink stocked up because she gets the worst pasties when she smokes

DEALER!CHRIS who can’t get enough of her obedience when she’s high, wanting to do everything she can to please him.

DEALER!CHRIS who lets her measure out grams and baggies for his deals later on because he loves watching the way her tongue peaks out her plump, pink lips when she concentrates.

DEALER!CHRIS who always buys cherry flavoured rolling papers because it tastes like her lipgloss and he can’t get enough of the taste.

DEALER!CHRIS who spends hours laying between her thighs, whether cuddling her or making her scream his name for as long as she’ll let him.

DEALER!CHRIS who will leave in the middle of a deal the minute she texts him that some creep won’t leave her alone.

DEALER!CHRIS who keeps steals a pair of her orange panties after she spent the night and keeps them for nights she can’t stay.

DEALER!CHRIS who loves her surprised squeals when he gets rough because he’s normally so tame when he’s high.

DEALER!CHRIS who bends her over every surface in his apartment, tainting the place with memories of the way that only he can make her feel.

DEALER!CHRIS who very rarely acts submissively but gets so excited when he see the commanding stare she gives him.

DEALER!CHRIS who sits her in his lap and lets her roll the first joint, his hands tracing shapes along her skin.

DEALER!CHRIS who insists they shotgun the first hit and won’t let her light the joint until she agrees.

DEALER!CHRIS who has playboy style posters of his favourite customer all over his bedroom walls.

DEALER!CHRIS who has a billion pink, yellow, and red lighters with playboy stickers all over them and refuses to let his friends touch them.

DEALER!CHRIS who doesn’t let her go on deals with him because he doesn’t want any of his other customers anywhere near her because some of them are freaks, and especially because he deals heavier shit sometimes and he doesn’t want her anywhere near that shit.

DEALER!CHRIS who always has a blanket and a change of clothes for her in the backseat when he picks her up because they always stop and get high on late night drives.

DEALER!CHRIS who gets her to ride his thigh while they share their second joint of the night.

DEALER!CHRIS who stops selling to any other girls the moment she expresses she wants more out of their weird in-between relationship, and he gives her exactly what she wants without hesitation.

taglist: @worldlxvlys @sturnioloshacker @33sturniolo @greatooglymooglyyy @sugrhigh @rootbeerworshiper @soursturniolo @meanttomeet @breeloveschris @thugpugs4lrh @ghostofbrock @l9vesick @mylifeisevenstranger @bethsturn @ifilwtmfc @themattgirl @lovingmattysposts @lacysturniolo @freshloveee @fawnchives @cindylcuwho @freshloveforthefit @freshsturns @forevergirlposts @sturniolo-fav-matt @cupidsword @lustfulslxt @sturnifyed @teapartyprincess4two @mangosrar @querenciasturniolo @pinklittleflower @ellie-luvsfics @strniolo @junnniiieee07 @hearts4chris @evie-sturns @nicksmainbitch @gnxosblog @sturniolopepsi i @wronqness99 @sturniolossss @mattsfavwh3re @inlovewithmattstur @melanch0lybby @whatrulookingat11 @kqyslyho3 @hysteria-things [TAGLIST IS FULL!]

© 55STURN 2024 ! REBLOGS NOT EXPECTED BUT GREATLY APPRECIATED ! [ you do not have permission to copy or save or share my work to other platforms and devices! ]

[wannab-urs]

The Spreadsheet Digest Vol. 2 - Fic Recs

Here's everything I added to the Pedro Fics Spreadsheet in the last week with my unedited ramblings attached (the notes I make immediately after reading, often unhinged).

Surrender - a Joel series by @ezrasbirdie

-> ofc daisy, grumpy/sunshine but the sunshine has depth and the grumpy isn't mean. ellie is excellent in this

Hayloft - a Joel WIP @atinylittlepain

-> dancer!reader (stripper), cute awkward joel, smutty smutty smut. reader is kind of soft!dom?

High Enough - a Joel/Dieter series by @psychedelic-ink

-> Actor!reader and your bodyguard Joel hookup with Dieter Bravo at a party and it is SO hot

Short Days, Long Nights - a Joel series by @frannyzooey

-> post outbreak!joel but it's also domestic bliss. the filth is filthy but the slow burn makes you work for it. This is gorgeous and beautiful and sweet but also so fucking hot!

What he didn't do - a Joel one shot by @joelsgreys

-> divorced!reader and Joel finally go on a date after he's been crushing on you for 10 years and it's very cute

Build Me Up Buttercup - a Joel series by me

-> You're failing Dr. Miller's architecture class and you decide to confront him about it.

Best Laid Plans - a Dieter series by @prolix-yuy

-> Dieter Bravo, legendary Hollywood playboy and a tabloid’s best friend, never thought he was worth much more than a good night to a parade of faces. Until Murch, the editor on his film, turns his world upside down. Now he’s got big plans to do the same as he drags her into the deep end of his hedonistic life. He’s got a guy for everything, but she’s got something he’s always wanted - a big enough heart (and patience) for him to fit in.

Breaking the Girl - a Joel one shot by @cinematicgf

-> Your boyfriend sucks, but you go home with him for the summer anyway. His neighbor and boss Joel Miller is decidedly not an asshole. And he's really hot.

Me-use - a Claude ;) one shot by @boliv-jenta

-> Just fucking trust me you have to read this

Toyin' with them older guys - a Joel one shot by @proxima-writes

->Hot bartender joel fucks with your sex life... and then ya know

The Babysitter - a Joel one shot by @proxima-writes

-> Babysitter reader seduces single dad joel and it is everything you could ever hope for, but it also leaves you wanting more (in the best way possible)

Push and Pull - a Joel one shot by @javiscigarette

-> Dom!Joel, pretty fuckin rough sex, but like Joel is a consent king and the aftercare is so sweet.

Deserve it - a Joel series by @fake-bleach

-> Joel's wife is cheating on him but it doesn't really matter bc you're giving him the best blowjob of his life

A Girl Walks Into A Bookshop - an Ezra series by @oonajaeadira

-> Ezra owns a bookshop and you get pulled into his store one day. This is the softest, most beautiful little story. Give yourself the gift of reading this please.

Vaya con Dio - a Dio one shot by @atinylittlepain

-> Dio thinks he has it all figured out, but you put him in his place

This Will Be The Day That I Spy - a Jack series by @oonajaeadira

-> You go on a blind date with Jack and it's full of surprises

Restoring the Roots - a Joel series by @bearsbeetsbeskar

-> Tommy and Ellie try to convince Joel to see a therapist... This is going to be really good...

A Long Day - a Javi P one shot by @jkprincess10

-> Have you ever wanted to rim Javi Peña? If not, you will after reading this

The Living Waters of Mandalore - a Din one shot by @beskarandblasters

-> Din discovers your uhhh living waters... and he's really excited about it

There's a lot of Joel on here this week... I was going through something lmao. I tried to throw in a few other guys for y'all too though.

Enjoy <3

[avengerscompound]

The Path to the Tower

Before they met Elly, nine heroes followed a path that led them to a life they chose to share together. This is the story of how.

Art-Work by Ischa

Til the End of the Line: 1.1 | 1.2 The Red Room: 2.1 | 2.2 Another Choice: 3.1 | 3.2 | 3.3 The Billionaire Playboy: 4.1 | 4.2 Culture Shock: 5.1 | 5.2 | 5.3 | 5.4 On Your Left: 6.1 | 6.2 | 6.3 Placing Bets: 7.1 | 7.2 | 7.3 The Lonely Witch: 8.1 | 8.2 | 8.3 | 8.4 Three Breakups: 9.1 | 9.2 | 9.3 The Broken Assassin: 10.1 | 10.2 | 10.3 | 10.4 The Tower: 11.1 | 11.2 | 11.3 | 11.4 | 11.5 | 11.6 | 11.7 | 11.8 Epilogue

Return to Tower Series Masterlist

[love-bokumono-fics]

Fresh Crops! January 1 - January 8, 2023

This week's newest fics and chapter updates for Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons on AO3.

Lucky day - by nightm0de; Complete, 2/2, 3.5k

Rating: Explicit; Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply; Category: M/M Fandom: Trio of Towns Relationship: Ford/Wayne; Characters: Ford, Wayne, Frank, Megan, Ethan Additional Tags: Cock Warming, Hate Sex, but not really, Bottom Wayne, Top Ford, wayne just thinks ford is super sexy and if he bugs him enough he’ll fuck him, Consentual though dw, Stress Relief, Fluff and Smut, a lil hardcore at the beginning, Rough Sex, Angry Sex, Angry Kissing, Possessive Behavior, Wayne’s a little shit, Ford has OCD, not really relevant but there, Aftercare, Falling In Love, it's gay cowboys Summary: Wayne knew that if he felt lucky, the first thing he should always do is run to the Westown health clinic. Not because he was ill or injured—but because on lucky days, Wayne got fucked silly.

Story of Seasons Create a Character Contest: Petra - by superhenryjones; Complete, 1/1, 3.2k

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences; Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply Fandom: Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons (General) Summary: This was a character made for the Ranch Story character creation contest. Petra was made to be romanced by anyone, so I tried to keep the language referring to the Player Character as neutral as possible. I will clean up the formatting and include the art from my co-creator chaos/reflow when I have time. Petra does deal with anxiety on a regular basis and I tried to put realistic human touches on it, so if you're not in the right place to experience a character's second-hand anxiety, maybe don't read this now. Other than that, I hope you have as much fun reading about her as we did making her!

Gabriel's Baby - by PirateQueen20; Complete, 8/8, 2.3k

Rating: Mature; Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply; Categories: F/M, Other Fandom: Light of Hope Relationships: Farmer/Gabriel, Farmer/Edmond; Characters: Edmond, Gabriel, Farmer Additional Tags: Cheating, Infertility, Childbirth, Alternate Universe - Farm/Ranch, Shameless Smut, no editing we die like men Summary: I don't know what to say to make you want to read this. It's a fic about a video game, and it includes cheating. It's just some spice, for fun. This is after you complete the main storyline and start a family. This is about marital dissatisfaction and infertility. This is gaining carnal knowledge of both of your best friends. This is being a single mother, with papa in the arm chair. This is trying to be part of a community and feeling more alone than ever.

Degausser - by SHADESofDEATHxx; WIP, 3/?, 14k

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences; Archive Warning: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings; Category: F/M Fandoms: Friends of Mineral Town Characters: Pete | Jack, Claire the Farmer, Ann the Innkeeper | Ran, Gray, Cliff, Jennifer, Popuri, Rick, Karen, Brandon, Kai, Elli | Elly, Doctor | Trent, Mary the Librarian | Marie, Mineral Town Residents Additional Tags: Redemption, Fresh Start, Loneliness, Angst, Self-Loathing, Self-Acceptance Summary: Those that live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones – but that’s all Jack and Claire ever knew up until a series of half-lit cruel intentions landed them on the ferry to the desolate island of Mineral Town. After all, it was certainly easier to cast judgment unto others than it was to face the skeletons in your own closet. And surely no one would have an ill word to say about a brooding playboy and an immature party girl taking over the once-great farm that founded and funded their small town, right?

Sugar and Spice - by Chibimiie; WIP, 51/?, 132k

Rating: Mature; Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply; Category: F/M Fandoms: Animal Parade Relationships: Chase/Molly the Farmer, Angela/Luke; Characters: Molly | Hikari, Angela the Farmer, Chase, Luke, Kasey the Farmer Additional Tags: Slow Burn, oh god how do you tag fics, mentions of eating disorders, alternating povs, Friends to Lovers, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, bumped up the rating because i honestly should have a little bit ago, burn so slow it's honestly a simmer Summary: Wanting to get away from past hurts of the city, sisters Molly and Angela decide to respond to a flyer advertising an abandoned farm on the faraway island of Castanet. Leaving behind their closest friends and brother Kasey, the two take a chance and move to the tiny island hoping for a new chance at life.

Good Ending - by chewypetals; Complete, 1/1, 1.1k

Rating: General Audiences; Archive Warning: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings; Category: M/M Fandoms: Pioneers of Olive Town Relationship: Male Farmer/Matsuyuki; Characters: Male Farmer, Matsuyuki Additional Tags: Hugs, Sleepy Cuddles, Spooning, they are soft, Eiji is so soft I love him Summary: As the title suggests, I wanted more fluff after that hug fic.

The Heart of a Westown Cowboy - by Mya_Stone; WIP, 3/?, 5k

Rating: General Audiences; Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply; Category: F/M Fandom: Trio of Towns Relationship: Female Farmer/Wayne; Characters: Frank, Ford, Carrie, Brad, Megan, Hector, Colin, Daryl | Darius, Marlena, Lynn Additional Tags: Slow Burn, Romance, Romantic Friendship, Guy Falls First, I Wrote This For Me But I'll Share It With You Summary: Wayne is Westown's perpetually single lady's man. He'd like to settle down but he just hasn't found The One and he's fairly certain he's met everyone in town. Then Melody moves in, taking a plot of her uncle's ranch to fulfill her dream of being a rancher. A college-educated business woman, Melody doesn't accept failure - especially not her own. As Wayne falls hard for her, she struggles to return his affections until she has what she came for - and when she continually comes up short at the cow competitions, she begins to wonder if Westown is really the place for her.

[myrefersofficial]

Top 10 Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2023

"Books are the mirrors that reflect the beauty and complexity of our world."

The new year is always exciting for book lovers, as it promises new stories, fresh perspectives, and unexplored worlds. As we enter 2023, we can't help but feel thrilled about the books that are set to be released in the upcoming months. 

From highly anticipated sequels to exciting debut novels, there is something for everyone on the horizon. This blog has compiled a list of the top 10 books we can't wait to read in 2023. So, grab a coffee, cozy up, and get ready to add these books to your TBR pile.

List Of Top 10 Books In 2023

#1 Spare

Author - Prince Harry

Release - January

The world has seen Prince Harry grow up, but they have only gotten to know him personally. His biography is an "honest and fascinating personal portrayal." The memoir is expected to explore his mother, Diana's death and why he and his wife, Meghan Markle, left the royal life behind.

#2 Sam

Author - Allegra Goodman

Release - January

"Sam," pick of the year, is a coming-of-age narrative with language that mirrors its protagonists' growth and evolution as Sam does. The story is about a girl who has lost her childhood's magic and purity to regain her strength and hope.

#3 The Shards 

Author - Brett Easton Ellis

Release - January

Less Than Zero, Bret Easton Ellis' first book, was published in 1985. The Shards is Ellis' first novel in 13 years. It is fascinating, brilliant, and disturbing, transporting readers to the early 1980s. It's about Ellis, a high school senior who writes a book called "Less Than Zero." 

He has a gang of wealthy, attractive friends who are being pursued by a serial killer known as "the Trawler." There is extravagant violence, shocking eroticism, and a never-ending list of song and movie titles that fit a certain mood. 

#4 The Guest 

Author - Emma Cline

Release - May

It is a captivating literary account written from the perspective of the deceiver herself. Exiled from her ex-Hampton boyfriend's house, she convinces herself she can hang out for a week and make an uninvited appearance at his weekend party.

#5 Age of Vice

Author - Deepti Kapoor

Release - January

Age of Vice has been compared to a modern-day Godfather, but it is much more. Kapoor's huge but propulsive blockbuster novel is an addictive and socially conscious thriller that depicts contemporary India in all its enthralling complexity. 

At the heart of the conflict are three dissimilar souls: a playboy with ambition beyond his corrupt background, a servant, and a journalist. The most captivating of these characters is also the most vulnerable—a young guy whose criminal life begins with a minor disagreement.

#6 The Survivalists

Author - Kashana Cauley

Release - January

Aretha is an ambitious, focused, and logical lawyer until she meets another orphan. Aaron, who escaped Hurricane Sandy by perching on a refrigerator in a Greenwich Village apartment as the waves rose, is now a co-owner of a coffee shop.

His business partner and roommate are survivalists with a bunker in their backyard. A reluctant Aretha is dragged into Aaron's world of Brooklyn survivalists preparing for a possible apocalypse. The book will create a sensation in your mind. 

#7 The Racism of People Who Love You

Author -  Samira K. Mehta

Release - January

This one-of-a-kind art addresses an issue many struggle with in our increasingly diverse yet chronically divided society—the pain and pressure points regarding race that remain in the most intimate areas.

#8 The Skin and Its Girl

Author - Sarah Cypher

Release - April

Betty, a lesbian Palestinian American woman, uncovers a series of notes from her late aunt that assist her in navigating a difficult decision in this family drama about exile and immigration. Her aunt's writings show a complex existence full of secrets beyond Betty's imagination and the answer to whether she should leave her native country to pursue the love of her life.

#9 The Last Tale of the Flower Bride

Author - Roshani Chokshi

Release - February

Roshani Chokshi's enthralling first adult novel is a fairytale-infused drama about marriage and the secrets couples hold from each other. That, plus an enchanting mansion off the coast of Washington and a fortune in hotels.

#10 Hang the Moon

Author - Jeannette Walls

Release - March

In this brilliant narrative of Prohibition-era Virginia, the author of the renowned book 'The Glass Castle' depicts the Tudor dynasty's power grabs and double-crosses. Sallie Kincaid is expelled from her house after her younger half-brother is killed in an accident.

She leaves her flamboyant father, Duke, and the little village where she grew up. Sallie forges her path nine years later, overseeing the family business while managing feuds and uncovering family secrets.

Conclusion

Books are not just collections of paper and ink; they are collections of ideas and dreams!

Reading books of different genres is important as it provides a wide range of perspectives and ideas that can broaden an individual's knowledge and understanding of the world. Reading fiction can develop empathy and learn about human behavior and cultural practices. 

Non-fiction books, however, provide an opportunity to learn about the world's history, scientific advancements, and different fields of study. Reading books of different genres can also expand an individual's vocabulary and language skills.

It can be useful in their personal and professional lives. Exposure to various genres can improve critical thinking skills and analytical abilities as different genres may require different cognitive processes and analysis methods.

Furthermore, reading books of different genres can also be an excellent form of entertainment and relaxation, providing an escape from reality and allowing individuals to experience different worlds, cultures, and perspectives. 

Reading books of different genres is essential for personal growth, intellectual development, and a more profound understanding of the world. Hope you will like our suggestions. So, start reading right away!!

Books are the silent mentors that shape our lives and inspire us to become the best version of ourselves.

Visit Us, https://myrefers.com Original source, https://bit.ly/3KRvZPz

[angelenohq]

in the city of angels.

NAME: Thea Ellis Barlow FACE CLAIM: Frida Gustavsson AGE & DATE OF BIRTH: 32 & May 2nd, 1990 HOMETOWN: Los Angeles, California TIME IN LOS ANGELES: Born and raised NEIGHBORHOOD: Santa Monica OCCUPATION: Actress

biography.

trigger warning: infidelity, vehicle accident, spousal death, parental death

Hailing from Sweden to the City of Angels in the early 80s, Etta Karlsson fled quickly to Los Angeles at the first opportunity she was given to pursue her dreams of becoming an actor. That dream was promptly squashed at every opportunity, but while she found no success in her career she did find some kind of financial stability and maybe even love — all in the form of hospitality heir and billionaire Edward Barlow. The two met when Etta was waiting tables at one of the more high end restaurants in Beverly Hills and as the story goes, they quickly fell in love and married six months after meeting. Rumors flew that they’d only wed because Etta had fallen pregnant but regardless, they soon welcomed a healthy baby girl they’d name Thea.

The union between the two of them didn’t last long, as it often goes in Hollywood. Edward was a notorious playboy and it wasn’t shocking when he eventually left Thea’s mother for another woman — someone younger, more beautiful, and more blonde. Child support and alimony wasn’t nearly enough to live on, so Etta continued working as a nurse anyway to support herself and her daughter where Edward wouldn’t. Thea was a quiet child at first, never speaking out of turn or doing anything she shouldn’t — but as years went on and she became increasingly aware of her father’s actions, she began to act out. She resented Edward and his new family and the court mandated time she had to spend with them, the only saving graces being her younger half sisters who she knew were innocent in the whole ordeal. Thea loved them both, doing everything she could to keep them from becoming completely susceptible to the Barlow name, but ultimately she lost that battle to her step-mother and her antics. Brie became a clone of the woman in question and her youngest sister, Cass, didn’t seem far behind in Thea’s eyes. As time went on, she distanced herself from the family when she could, as it became increasingly apparent that she was on the outside of their circle.

By the time Thea was ten, she knew she wanted to be an actress and do what her mother wasn’t able to do — a failure she blames completely on her father. She had no trouble using his last name to get started in the industry (though she would eventually drop the name Barlow completely in favor of her middle name, Ellis) and as time went on, Thea ended up landing a guest role in a sitcom series at just thirteen years old. By the end of her junior year she dropped out of school, deciding to earn her GED in favor of shooting her first real feature film. It was a box office flop, the film barely recovered its budget in revenue and Thea couldn’t help but feel embarrassed and ashamed when she saw the finished product for herself — but her raw talent was there, real and exposed for the world to see. Even if the film itself had been terrible, she’d soon had studios and directors sending her agent scripts for auditions she never would have been considered for before. Thea Ellis would be deemed a young star to watch for, and for a brief moment in time the public loved this new, up and coming actress.

Thea’s true breakout role came in the form of a YA dystopian action movie, followed by a brief slew of dramas and self proclaimed high-brow films, earning herself a spot as a critically acclaimed actress by the time she was 22. One role even earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress and an eventual win, something even Thea herself had a hard time believing was true. The online film buff community claims the Academy had slim pickings that year and she’d won by a fluke, but the general public seemed to love her and while she wasn’t sure she deserved the Academy’s recognition, she did know she’d worked hard to get where she was. In the meantime, her personal life had been covered page to page by tabloids following the whirlwind romance between Thea and her then boyfriend, a movie producer who would eventually become her husband when they wed just after she won her first Oscar.

The behind the scenes of Thea’s highly publicized romance wasn’t nearly as glamorous as the press made it seem. Ben was a good man, a great one even — but his studio worked with some of the most vile men in Hollywood; men Thea had no problem telling off when she needed to. Of course her behavior made headlines, studios deemed her hard to work with and she personally grew resentment toward Ben for continuing a relationship with these men who were relentlessly trying to blacklist her from the industry. Though it barely stopped her, as it seemed for a brief moment in time that Thea was set to be Hollywood’s darling indefinitely. The building momentum of her career came to an abrupt halt, however, when her husband was involved in a fatal car accident just under two years after they married. Rumors flew around Hollywood and eventually the tabloids started reporting that she’d orchestrated the entire thing as revenge for his inability to stand by her against other studio execs. Obviously it was a ridiculous rumor and, of course, completely untrue — but it did enough damage to Thea’s image that she retreated from the public eye for a few years, only taking on roles in small films she felt connected to and generally shying away from the glitz and glamour of Hollywood that she’d once found herself in the center of.

Of course, with her reclusion and mysterious departure from the Hollywood scene came even more salacious rumors as the years passed. Thea turned a blind eye to them all, choosing instead to focus on her family and the work she was doing. Her mother’s health had rapidly deteriorated over time and when she eventually passed, Thea had ultimately cut herself out of the public eye completely. She dated here and there and desperately tried to keep her relationships under wraps, though her most recent fling with another actor who turned out to be desperate for more fame made more headlines than she’d seen in a long time due to the man’s wandering eye — and after four years of the tabloids calling her the problem, Thea eventually broke it off for good. Now she’s been truly keeping to herself in her beachside home in Santa Monica, the only project she’s been working on being a television drama series that she couldn’t pass up once she’d read the script HBO had sent her way — the fact that one of her first childhood co-stars was already attached to the project had simply been an added bonus. For now, Thea’s kept her name mostly out of the tabloids for a year or so while filming, but the release of the series and the interesting dynamic she has with her co-star may turn her public image on its head once again.

[lcnelyinthesky]

PLAYBOY - ATSUMU MIYA 

a three part, enemies to lovers, fake dating au by lcnelyinthesky

-- in which second year inarizaki student miya atsumu wants to make a girl jealous. you were his best bet at doing just that.

pairing: atsumu x fem!reader

genre: enemies to lovers, fake dating, fluff, hurt/comfort ??, comedy

warnings: swearing

taglist: closed!

updates: thursdays at 20:00 est

start date: thursday, third december!

end date: thursday, seventeenth december!

enjoy!

masterlist

- part one

- part two

- part three

[moondoposting]

do you have any good places to start reading the mk comics?

yes!

MOON KNIGHT (2016) #1-14

what people are talking about when they mention the "lemire run". first issue looks like this:

features:

amazing art

inventive storytelling and story concept

analysis of marc spector as a character

exploration of his jewish upbringing, mental health, and origin as moon knight

the inspiration for many of the show's aesthetics and set pieces

not gonna say much more, just go read it

it’s very much a coming together of a lot of moon knight characters from across the comics, but it’s still very enjoyable without prior knowledge. you can quickly pick up on the characters and their dynamics, but if you’re at all confused just look them up :) the main ones are gena, crowley, marlene, and frenchie.

that’d be my main starter recommendation, but here are some other great ones! (under the cut because this got very long):

MOON KNIGHT (2014)

it’s like a series of shorter, contained stories. they’re really fun and have some great art!

this run is often referred to by the first author's surname (ie. ellis), but be aware that this writer is a real POS so it would be best to avoid calling it that. upon recommendation ive starting to refer to it as the "shalvey run" or just "2014", cause it actually involves a lot more than just 1 artist.

they’re collected into 3 volumes that look like this:

features:

accessible, largely self contained stories!

fast paced - sometimes brutal - action

the origin of mr knight!

marc khonshu divorce arc

marc living in an abandoned hotel with a bunch of ghosts cause he’s a loser he pushed all his friends away

this one story that’s told almost entirely through camera/phone footage. it’s really cool when you see it

MOON COPTER

MOON KNIGHT (2021)

the mackay run. it does reference some things that happened in previous comics, but honestly all you need to know is that khonshu tried to take over the world and got put in jail for it. also marc technically has a kid. but it barely comes up. the first issue looks like this:

features:

the midnight mission, moon knight’s open door hero service/church of khonshu

more analysis of marc spector et al.

WHAT’S THAT, 8-BALL? I CAN’T HEAR YOU OVER THE SOUND OF THE INDUSTRIAL CAR SHREDDER!

the origin of hunter’s moon, another servant of khonshu!

mr knight sleeping in a sarcophagus like a vampire

MOON KNIGHT (2016) #188-200

the bemis run. it's numbered strangely because marvel changed the way they number their issues, but this follows directly after lemire. the first issue looks like this:

i…. hmm.. i have mixed feelings about this run. it has some really really fun stuff involving the other alters, but i kind of despise bemis’s writing. he loves to constantly refer to marc as “crazy” and in general seems to write with less love than the previous lemire stuff, if that makes sense? so i recommend it with the caveat that it has some uhhh cringe moments

features:

fun (and not so fun) system shenanigans

they have a kid??? more news at 8

origin of another avatar, this time of ra!

jake being fucking unhinged (sometimes derogatory)

the origin of the system's DID (specifically #194 if you just wanna read that, it’s pretty stand-alone tbh. content warning for discussions of the holocaust and nazism)

i honestly might just make a master post of fun system moments so people don’t have to read bemis LMAO

FINAL NOTES

there are a lot of things that are different from the show to comics but the main ones are:

steven grant is a playboy billionaire film producer, not a soft spoken gift shop-ist

marc is as aware of jake as he is of steven and vice versa. jake is also general not more violent than marc is, but is a bit rougher around the edges.

mr. knight =/= steven grant and moon knight =/= marc spector. it depends on the writer, but generally they are separate personas/alters and are almost always not tied to a single alter

while the DID rep in the show has its flaws, it is far more considerate than the majority of comic runs. outside of lemire and mackay, writers have not done the best to respectfully examine marc's mental illness so please be aware of that

other than that, have fun with it! these comics are great and i hope you enjoy them

[petekaos]

Top 5 characters with great development!! Whatever that means to you ☺️

hiii nonnie! oooh this is an awesome ask, thank you so much! 🥺💗 in no particular order:

1) han juwon from beyond evil. okay listen i finished watching beyond evil a couple of weeks ago (maybe a month? time is a lie) and then my friends nico and ellis and dawn started watching it too, which meant i just got to relieve the experience through them. one of the things we talked about most is the way juwon grew throughout the series. he starts off as this arrogant-seeming city boy who doesn’t care about anyone but as the series progresses, we see him peeled back, layer for layer, and it all makes sense. in the end, we see juwon as this kid who has a difficult relationship with his father and who was not loved for a long time, and we see him letting himself care about other people. it’s JUST SO 😞🥲 my han juwon…

2) pete phubodin rachatrakul from dark blue kiss. the LOML … his character development is one of the most satisfying to watch? he goes from being this aggressively straight guy to doing an absolute 180 and doting on kao once he realised his feelings. and it’s so nice to see him mellow out in dark blue kiss … you can really tell how much he truly adores kao and how much he wants to spend his future with him. seeing pete, the campus playboy and an all around mess in kma, settle down into a healthy relationship with its ups and downs in dbk is just soooo so refreshing! 🥺💗

3) sung deok sun from reply 1988. I LOVE HER SO MUCH … my little meow meow 🥺 the way that she’s ribbed on for not being good at school in the beginning but how she’s so emotionally intelligent and always knows what’s going on with her friends. and how she gains self confidence, respect, and a stable job when she becomes a flight attendant. it’s just so lovely to see how deok sun matures within her friendships but also in her own personal growth as she chases her dreams and doesn’t let the fact that she’s not the most academically gifted hold her back at all, because in the end, that’s not what’s important. her empathy and her kindness make her who she is.

4) na woochan and jeong insol from racket boys. OKAY okay i know they’re side characters but i just really love the way that their confidence in their playing rose throughout the series. insol went from this guy who was so focused on academics and was sort of cut-throat to someone who cared so deeply for his friends and is kind of shy, whereas woochan went from not being too confident in himself to playing so well in matches after he realised what his weaknesses were. they’re so underappreciated but some of the best characters in the show 🥺 also: society if woochan and insol were a couple etc etc!!

5) kakei shiro from kinou nani tabeta / what did you eat yesterday? aaaah i love him so much. this show is just a balm to the soul 🥺 it’s so lovely to see shiro become more confident and open in himself and in his relationship with kenji—while openness is absolutely not the be all end all of relationships, it’s something that happens organically and naturally in knt and therefore so nice to watch—and the finale made me sob tears like a baby.

thanks for this ask!! these are just the first 5 characters that popped into my brain, there are tons more from different shows that i adore 🥰

put ‘top 5 anything’ in my inbox!

[mel-at-dusk]

SEX, LIES AND CHEAP COLOGNE: AN ORAL HISTORY OF ABERCROMBIE & FITCH’S SOFTCORE PORN MAG

The story of how an oversexed, strangely intellectual magazine by a polo shirt brand completed the improbable task of changing the course of sexuality in America’s malls, homes and moose-print boxers

Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries was a shrewd businessman, but he didn’t always make the best decisions. Between the blatantly racist T-shirts he signed off on, the child thongs he called “cute” and the series of public statements he made admitting that his brand intentionally excluded anyone who wasn’t “cool” and “good-looking” with “great attitudes and a lot of friends,” it’s no wonder that he spent the majority of his reign at Abercrombie in hot water. (For the uninitiated, Abercrombie made what fashion writer Natasha Stagg calls “sexy versions of the clothes kids already wore to school: T-shirts and jeans, stuff you could toss a football in or throw on the grass if everyone decided to go skinny-dipping.” More importantly, as she writes in her book Sleeveless, it was “for those who were casually peaking in high school.” It, meanwhile, peaked in the 1990s.)

An exception to Jeffries’ questionable CEO-ing would be A&F Quarterly, the glorious, controversial and questionably pornographic “magalog” he created at the height of the brand’s popularity in 1997 in order to connect “youth and sex” to its image. Woven in amongst surprisingly thoughtful interviews with A-list humans like Spike Lee, Bret Easton Ellis, Rudy Guiliani and Lil’ Kim was a cascade of naked photos from photographer Bruce Weber which showed nubile youngs in various states of undress. They were frolicking, they were caressing and they were deep in the throes of experimenting with types of sex that — at the time — had never been portrayed by mainstream brands.

With issue titles such as “XXX,” “The Pleasure Principle” and “Naughty and Nice,” the Quarterly dove headfirst into the risque. During its 25-issue run between 1997 and 2003, it printed interviews with porn star Jenna Jameson, offered sex advice on how to “go down” in public and suggested — on multiple occasions — that its readers dabble in group sex. One issue published an article on how to be a “Web exhibitionist,” another featured a Slovenian philosopher barking orders to “learn sex” at school and big-dick Ron Jeremy even stopped by to talk about performing oral sex on himself and using a cast made from his own penis.

The actual Abercrombie clothing being modeled in the magalog was an afterthought, appearing in Weber’s photos as more of an impediment to nudity than an actual, purchasable item. The whole thing was, as journalist Harris Sockel put it in an Human Parts essay, “20 percent merch, 20 percent talk and 100 percent soft-core aspirational porn.”

None of this would have been vexing had a more adult-oriented brand been the ones hawking it, but Abercrombie & Fitch was — and still is — marketed toward suspiciously toned teenage field hockey players named Brett. Though he might have looked like a man in his big salmon-pink polo, Brett was but a child. Abercrombie was fond of saying its clothing was for college-aged clientele, but we all knew where its real haute runway took place — inside the crowded halls of every middle school in Ohio.

The Quarterly, too, was intended for college kids, and to prove it, Abercrombie shrink-wrapped it in plastic and sold only to those over 18 for $6 a pop. You could buy it as a subscription, of course, but it was more commonly found in-store, nestled alongside A&F’s cargo shorts and “thongs for 10-year-olds,” a questionable placement that prompted concerned parents, conservatives and Christians to accuse Abercrombie of sullying their children’s minds with impure thoughts.

As such, the Quarterly became the subject of a mounting number of boycotts, protests and controversies that some believe were responsible for its eventual demise. By the time circulation peaked at 1.2 million in 2003, it had been denounced by organizations like the National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the American Decency Association, Focus on the Family, the National Organization for Women and, of course, the Catholic League.

Yet the outrage against the Quarterly was matched — if not exceeded — by its cult following, who found its frank portrayal of sexuality to be transcendent. Journalists, artists and the teens whose hands it fell into adored the magazine, and its rarity — plus its utter absurdity — makes it a sought-after collector’s item to this day.

At the same time, few people know about the Quarterly and even fewer realize what it meant to the generations of young people discovering themselves and their sexualities through the unlikely lens of branded content. As journalist Emily Lever puts it, “There’s no weirder way to learn about sex than to pick up a magazine by Abercrombie & Fitch — a brand for hot, mean mostly white kids who shoved you into lockers — but, I guess I’ll take it?”

This is the story of how an oversexed and strangely intellectual magazine by a polo shirt brand completed the improbable task of changing the course of sexuality in America’s malls, homes and moose-print boxers.

AND IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WAS ASS

The first issue A&F Quarterly debuted in June 1997. With 70-ish pages of full-color hard bodies, it was relatively tame compared to later editions, but it quickly became popular when Abercrombie’s nubile clientele realized it was a paper-backed portal into an adult world of sex, nudity and the kind of unbridled sensory hedonism their parents warned them about. As rumors of its legend began to spread, people began to wonder: What the hell is A&F Quarterly, and why is it printing ass for teens?

Emily Lever, journalist and chronicler of the Quarterly’s absurdist philosophical leanings: A&F Quarterly was an in-house magazine put together by Abercrombie & Fitch that published a who’s who of literati to accompany their images of young adult and teen bodies in order to hawk expensive distressed jeans and polo shirts to kids who would shove you inside a locker.

Alissa Quart, author of Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers and director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project: From what I recall, it had a Bruce Weber-y vibe — gorgeous young men and teens unapologetically objectified, a leering retro pin-up element, also sort of like the highly stylized, sexed-up, nostalgic 1980s and 1990s black-and-white Guess ads. Men — boys, really — were photographed without their shirts, elaborately muscled abs, sometimes naked.

Harris Sockel, in his Human Parts essay: [It was] Playboy crossed with Fratmen.com and a bit of Field & Stream. The Quarterly made my hormones do a kick line across my frontal lobe. I wanted to nibble the soy ink for snack until sunrise. To absorb it so deeply I sweat grey drops onto my pillow. To rip a page from that issue and fold it into a paper flower and stick it all the way up my ass until it came out my mouth.

Lever: Yeah, it was hot. But it was also extraordinarily literary. It featured big-time thinkers, writers and philosophers — stuff that was supposedly intended to expand your mind. It was way too high-brow for the average Abercrombie teen, and its existence made almost no sense given what the brand represented.

Savas Abadsidis, editor-in-chief, 1997-2003: There was nothing else like it. We were the first mainstream brand to combine playful, irreverent, intellectual content with sex and youth in this beautiful, high-art magazine format. Was it controversial? Sure. But it made the entire country take notice.

What they didn’t necessarily see, however, was what was going on behind the scenes. Not only were we the first brand to do this kind of advertising, we were also the first big brand to normalize gay culture for a mainstream audience, expose America’s youth to some of the era’s most progressive thinkers and use our platform to address sexuality in a useful, hands-on way. And you wouldn’t necessarily expect that from Abercrombie. That’s what made it so cool.

It all began in 1996. I was 22 and working at a temp job for a prominent New York architect who happened to be friends with Sam Shahid, a big-time creative director for Calvin Klein, Banana Republic and later, Abercrombie & Fitch. He was looking for an assistant. I had taken a deferment to go to law school and was looking for a job for that interim year, so I applied. I got in.

It was a horrible gig at first. Just awful, Devil Wears Prada-type stuff. I left crying many nights. But I had two things going for me. The first was that Abercrombie had a really small office in the West Village. Mike Jeffries, the president and CEO of Abercrombie, used to come in. He wore flip flops, had a desk made out of a surfboard and began each sentence with the word “Dude.”

Mike Jeffries, ex-CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch, speaking to Salon in 2006: Dude, I’m not an old fart who wears his jeans up at his shoulders.

Abadsidis: I didn’t know it at the time, but Mike was gay (I wouldn’t find out until much later). I think that was part of the reason why he and Sam — who was also gay — took me under their wing. They actually didn’t realize that I was, too — it’s not like we all sat around a bonfire at Fire Island and talked about how us gay guys were infiltrating Abercrombie — but that dynamic dovetailed nicely with Bruce’s photography for both the brand and the Quarterly, and it certainly set the tone for what was to come. I was grateful to get what amounted to an unofficial apprenticeship from both Mike and Sam, and eventually, they had me doing much more involved tasks than I was hired to do.

One of them was sitting in on important meetings. At the time, Mike was inviting all these different editors from magazines like Interview, Men’s Journal and Rolling Stone to come in and brainstorm ideas for what the Quarterly could be, but their ideas were flat. They felt like ideas coming from 45-year-olds writing for college kids, and I could tell Mike was getting frustrated by how little they seemed to grasp what he wanted.

One day in a meeting, one of the magazine editors threw out an idea. Without even acknowledging him, Mike turned to me. “Savas,” he asked. “What do you think about that?”

My mind raced — I could tell he was testing me. If I flubbed the answer, I’d be done. I briefly considered censoring myself, but then I thought better. What did I have to lose? I was young. Surely, I’d find another summer job. “I don’t think it’s a great idea,” I told him.

Apparently, that was the right answer. Mike practically threw the guy out of the room.

After that, I started to think more about what I’d want to see out of a magazine. I was just out of college as a French comparative literature major at Vassar, and I was super into that sort of 1950s-style Esquire journalism with the dapper closing essay. I was deep into The New Yorker, Interview Magazine, 1990s-era Details, MAD Magazine and 1980s pop star mags like Tiger Beat, too — those were all an influence. I also loved philosophy, social theory and comics. And graphic novels. You know — college stuff. Then it hit me: If the magazine was for people like me, why not get actual college kids — not 50-year-olds — to create our content?

I suspected my ideas were what they were looking for and knew they’d look fresh compared to what other editors were throwing out, so I decided to take a risk. I got up at 2 a.m. and typed out a 20-page proposal for what I thought the Quarterly should be. The next morning, I faxed a copy to Mike. I left another on Sam’s desk.

About a (very anxious) week later, Sam called me into his office and told me to pick up his phone. Mike was on the other line. As I reached for the receiver, he leaned over to me and said, “Who the fuck do you think you are?”

I didn’t even have time to comprehend what that meant before Mike’s voice was in my ear. “Congratulations, kid,” he told me. “You get one shot.”

Shortly thereafter, I was promoted from Sam’s assistant to the completely green, 23-year-old editor-in-chief of the Quarterly. It was a Jerry Maguire moment. I was thrilled and terrified at the same time.

They gave me a month to put together a staff and get the first issue out. Bruce Weber was named as its exclusive photographer — he’d already been shooting ads and campaigns for Abercrombie — and Sam was the creative director. As for me, I knew I’d need an editorial staff, and stat.

HOLY SHIT, THERE ARE NO LIMITS

Abadsidis quickly throws together a team composed of two college buddies, Patrick Carone and Gary Kon, who he describes as “pretty funny and stuff.” Carone became the only straight guy on the editorial side. Kon is Jewish and gay. The three of them vow to stay as true to the idealized college experience as possible with their content — even if it means chasing white whales.

Abadsidis: I can’t remember the exact starting budget, but it was upwards of a few million, probably much larger than most magazines get for their first issue! But our budget was also Bruce’s budget. He was getting advertising money, so we were well taken care of in that regard.

We weren’t really expected to turn a profit, though. That was never the point. Come to think of it, I don’t even think we tracked how much the magazine impacted clothing sales, although from what I can remember, clothing sales bumped up double digits every quarter after we launched (for a while, at least). [This statement is unverified.] But that didn’t matter: Our mission was just to set the brand image and make people aware of us. That was our version of success. We were also our only advertiser for a while, so we could get away with a lot of stuff that other publications couldn’t.

Gary Kon, managing editor, 1997-2003: When Savas offered me the job, I jumped at the opportunity. I’d already interned for Sam, and I’d have to scan hundreds of Bruce Weber images that he shot for Abercrombie as part of the job. And I fell in love with his work. It was the visual connection that seduced me. Weber’s photos were like a new Greek mythology; the men and women depicted in the photos were both idealized and sexualized. As a gay kid, who was pretty comfortable by that time in my own skin, I had no problem recognizing the eroticism in his work.

Abadsidis: Me, Gary and Patrick was definitely something special. I don’t think I’ll ever have an opportunity to create anything like that again. I was a huge comic book fan. If I had to describe it, it’s the closest thing I’ll ever come to Stan Lee’s Marvel comics bullpen. Pretty much everyone I hired was super unique. We weren’t all gay (maybe half of us were) but few of us really adhered to the Abercrombie image.

I think Sean came on in 2001.

Sean T. Collins, managing editor, 2001-2003: I was a little skittish about it at first because Abercrombie & Fitch represented everything I was not. They marketed, almost exclusively, to the lacrosse players that called me names I cannot repeat. It was very preppy, and that was not me at all.

I was alternative, maaan. I was a big fan of Nine Inch Nails. I wore a lot of black. A&F was everything I wasn’t, and in a way, everything that had tormented me as a kid. The irony of me working for them was palpable, but what I learned very quickly was that at the Quarterly, you could do anything that you wanted.

One of my first articles was an interview with Clive Barker, the writer and director of Hellraiser (he also wrote Candyman). Now, if you’ve seen Hellraiser, you can imagine just how far of a departure a sadomasochistic horror film was from Abercrombie & Fitch, but getting him to sign on was easy. He’s gay, and at the time, he was super ripped. I think he appreciated the extravagant gayness of the Weber stuff in particular. He was also a photographer, and his husband was, too. I think he recognized what was going on with the photography.

We had an unlimited expense budget, so I took him out for drinks at the Four Seasons. I talked to him for hours, and then he invited me to go back to his house and hang out and see his art studio. He had three mansions in a row on Sunset in Los Angeles, up in the hills. One for his office, one for his actual domicile and one that was a painting studio. I got to see that. I was just a 23-year-old kid. This was my first job out of college, and I felt like Cameron Crowe from Almost Famous. After that, I was like, “Holy shit, there are no limits.”

Kon: I have to credit Savas with pushing us to work without limitations. We were very lucky. At some point during my tenure, I realized that as long as we worked within our (sizable) budget, we had almost full autonomy. We could plan trips to Hollywood to shoot our favorite actors. We could travel to Thailand to reenact our version of The Beach. We could tag along to London or Rome or wherever Bruce was shooting the catalog. We could stroll into the office at 11 a.m. and work until 11 p.m.

Collins: If I wanted to talk to Bettie Page, the pinup model from the 1950s, they’d be like, “Okay, sure.” If I wanted to feature Underworld, my favorite electronic music band, it was, “Sure, go ahead.” It was total editorial freedom, which was so strange knowing how specific of a person the “Abercrombie type was.” I’ve been writing for two decades now, and I’ve never experienced anything like it since.

Abadsidis: Everyone wanted to be in it, too. At first, it was just indie musicians. But then, in the second issue, we snagged Lil’ Kim. That’s when I knew we’d made it big. She was into it — she loved everything about the Quarterly. A lot of people did. The whole high-brow/low-brow thing was really appealing, and the idea of going to college, reading good books, getting drunk and having sex felt uniquely nostalgic and fresh in the context of America back then. Clinton was getting impeached for getting a blow job. It was just a weird, puritanical time, and the Quarterly gave people a national platform to let their freak flag fly.

We had Rudy Guiliani, early Britney Spears, Paula Abdul. There was the New York issue where we talked about the Harlem Renaissance. Spike Lee — one of my idols — asked me if he could be in it. He’d done advertising, you know? I remember him being like, “Yo, this is the deal. I’ve got to give you mad props. This is the dopest thing out right now, advertising-wise.”

We had big-time philosophers and literary figures, too. They were great. We wanted to mimic the experience of being in college and having your mind expanded, so we got writers like Bret Easton Ellis and Michael Cunningham on board. There was a whole Sex Ed issue plastered with musings from Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, a friend of a professor’s from college. I believe Jonathan Franzen was in there, too.

Jonathan Franzen, award-winning novelist and essayist: I gave hundreds of interviews between 1997 and 2003, almost all of them at the request of various publishers. One of them must have thought it was a good idea to talk to A&F. The fact that I apparently did (I don’t remember it) signifies nothing except that I felt grateful to my publishers.

Collins: We got a lot of weirdos, too. John Edward, the guy who talked to dead people. Chuck Palahniuk, who wrote Fight Club. At the time, it didn’t have the meathead reputation that it does now. It was legitimately looked at as this piece of anti-corporate, anti-capitalist art, the irony of which was just delightful given that we were a capitalist brand trying to sell polo shirts and $90 ripped jeans.

Abadsidis: The only guy who refused an interview was Donald Trump! I have a feeling his 90-year-old secretary had something to do with it. Though we were technically a magalog and did belong to the brand, our stuff was just really visionary. David Keeps, who was the editor of Details at the time, always defended the Quarterly as a real magazine and publicly said that we were doing more innovative stories than most “real” magazines at a time.

ASPIRATIONAL HOMOEROTICS

It’s no secret that the photography and creative direction of Weber and Shahid contained homoerotic undertones. Irreverent, minimal and moody, it was suggestive without being literal, spinning entire storylines into a single frame. At the same time, it was too idealized to be “real.” The queerness that their photos showed was, as Collins puts it, “aspirational,” meaning that like the mostly white, ab-riddled models instructed to sell cargo shorts by taking them off, they didn’t necessarily represent the full reality of what queerness actually was.

Still, the photos that the Quarterly published during its seven-year run did more to normalize and represent queerness and non-monogamy than any other mainstream brand at the time — weird, considering that Abercrombie’s target market was hegemonic suburbanites whose parents bred genetically pure golden retrievers and had cabins in Vail. Without these photos, the Quarterly might have read more as a minor-league Esquire or Ivy League MAD Magazine, but with them, it became one of the least-discussed, most under-appreciated items queer history.

Collins: Our editorial content — which almost functioned as a parody of so-called “Abercrombie people” — was always accompanied by this extremely beautiful photography that was also extremely queer. But it was never explicitly so. It was all this nudge, nudge, wink, wink stuff. I don’t know how you could miss it, though. The homoeroticism was so overt.

Abadsidis: You’d have had to have been blind not to consider the imagery homoerotic (though, it was really in the eye of the beholder). We had the Carlson twins posing on the cover and riding a motorcycle. We had a drag queen named Candis Cayne. There was a lesbian couple kissing at a wedding.

Kon: David Sedaris, Gus Van Sant, Gregg Araki, Avenue Q, Stan Lee, Peaches, Fischerspooner… you could teach a queer theory class with everyone we featured.

Abadsidis: At the same time, we never labeled anything as “gay” or “lesbian” or “queer.” We never came out and said, “Welcome to our gay magazine!” and we never had a meeting where we were like, “Okay, guys, let’s figure out how to make this thing gay.” It was more nonchalant. The imagery implied it without saying it.

Hampton Carney, A&F Quarterly spokesperson, 1999-2003: The message we were sending was clear: “You do you, whatever that is. Have fun!”

Abadsidis: That was a very 1990s thing.

Collins: There was a specific brand of Abercrombie gayness that got shown, though. The word that they always used to describe Abercrombie as a brand was “aspirational.” They didn’t want to make it like an everyday, normal-people brand. They wanted it to be associated with money, glamour and that WASP-y aesthetic. So all the gay raunch of it was presented within the context of what appeared to be a very square, nuclear family: white, wealthy and secure.

At the same time, that was really when same-sex marriage was kicking off as a political issue. I think you can see a commonality in how Abercrombie was essentially making an argument that you could be a normie and also be gay. That was a newish thing at the time (though I’m barely an expert as I’m not gay myself). Still, I can’t help but see a resonance between coming up with this clandestine content that normalized being gay at the same time this big political fight that was brewing.

Maybe being more forward about it would have come across as “too political.”

Abadsidis: Part of me wishes we’d gone a little further with being more outwardly queer, but I don’t think the time was right. Maybe with a braver CEO — no one at the time was brave enough to take on queerness or gay rights as a mainstream brand, including us — and that’s why few people remember the Quarterly as the sort of transcendent queer thing that it was.

Kon: It’s never been credited as such, but the Quarterly is really an item of gay history. I don’t think we were pushing a “gay” or “metrosexual” lifestyle on people as much as we were showing that it already existed, even out in Middle America. Perhaps that’s what made people uncomfortable. We took that thread of counterculture and taboo that ran through the imagery and continued it into the editorial content. We dealt with topics like drinking, drugs, religion, politics and sex. Again, these are issues young people dealt with daily, but were rarely editorialized.

At Vassar, there was a yearly party called The Homo Hop. It was one of the biggest parties of the year and leaned on Vassar’s history as a women’s college. I bring this up because, on the night of my freshman Homo Hop, I was instructed that each student had to do something sexually that they had never done, and one drug that they had never done. It wasn’t that you had to be gay, but you had to experience something that was new and different. I think that translated well into the Quarterly. Yes, there were a bunch of gay guys writing and shooting and drawing images. But we were simply trying to expose Cargo Short Brett to ideas, images, artists, books, writers and directors that he may have never heard of before. Our shared experiences would become his.

Collins: It was culture jamming, really.

Abadsidis: It was also very “college” to be fluid or experimental without labeling it. I think it’s safe to say that college is one of the gayest places there is in life, maybe not sexually, but definitely in terms of having your mind expanded about different types of people.

Carney: I was in a frat. I’d see fraternity brothers streaking across campus together. It was never a big deal. There are a lot more people in the middle of either extreme of sexuality than people talk about. We’re not one and 10 — we’re one through 10, if you will. That kind of stuff has always happened on college campuses, and that’s the kind of mentality we had around sex. We just happened to editorialize it really beautifully.

Collins: There’s a Barbara Kruger print that reminds me of the mood we were trying to capture: It reads: “You construct intricate rituals which allow you to touch the skin of other men.” That’s basically what Abercrombie & Fitch was. It was an intricate ritual that allowed sunkissed lacrosse players to metaphorically touch the skin of other men.

Carney: You know what’s funny, though? It was never the gay stuff people had a problem with. It was everything else.

LET THE CONTROVERSIES BEGIN

For almost every moment of its seven-year life, The Quarterly was a controversial publication. Parents, politicians and conservative-types didn’t appreciate its no-holds-barred approach to rampant fucking, and they could not, for the life of them, understand how such an adult magazine was making its way into the hands of their precious teens (who were probably jacking off to dad’s Playboys long before the Quarterly came along, but I digress). There was approximately one year — 1997 — where the amount of people it pissed off stayed below a critical mass, but after a certain somebody published a story that vaguely suggested underage kids drink, it was off to the races.

Abadsidis: We got in our fair share of trouble with Christian groups and concerned parents right off the bat. Let’s take one of the earlier issues — I believe it was Summer of 1998. It was my story. Basically, I suggested that people could do better than beer and that they should “indulge in some creative drinking.” There was one drink I made up called the “Brain Hemorrhage” and a few others you could play a drinking game with. We also included a spinner insert people could cut out.

None of it had anything to do with driving, of course, but the issue was called “On the Road.” It was a sort of beat-focused, Jack Kerouac thing, so some people interpreted that as us promoting drunk driving (though we did nothing of the sort). Also, the kid on the cover was underage. He was 16, if I remember correctly. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) didn’t like that.

Karolyn Nunnallee, vice president of public policy for MADD: We had been really focused on underage drinking and had been instrumental in getting the country’s legal drinking age raised to 21. Then Abercrombie & Fitch comes out with this weird magazine that basically said, “Don’t go back to college drinking the usual beer. We’re going to show you a new way to drink.”

Not only did they have this drinking game, but they had recipes for these mixed drinks for young people to partake in. I was like, “Abercrombie & Fitch? Aren’t they in the clothing business?” What in the world were they doing? I mean, they were a high-end brand, not Walmart. Why would they take their focus off of clothing and put it toward alcohol? Were their clothes not good enough that year or something?

Needless to say, we weren’t happy with them. Curse words were handed out. We sent a letter to them and started a whole media campaign about it. We went on as many news media outlets as we possibly could with the story of how incensed we were.

Abadsidis: I was sure I was going to get fired over that. We had to remove the page with the spinner out of every single issue across the country. We apologized, of course, but it ended up backfiring against the protesters — that incident gave us so much publicity. It put us on the map. It also made us a target for conservative types. They hated us. After MADD, boycotts of Abercrombie started flaring up all over the place. That’s around the time we hired Hampton to do PR.

Carney: It was my job, at the time, to defend the brand. I’d go on talk shows like Entertainment Tonight or Today Show and explain away our latest controversy (there were a lot). It wasn’t hard, actually; each time, I’d give them what was more or less my go-to response: “It’s a beautiful publication intended for college-aged kids.” And that was the truth! It was way ahead of its time and was absolutely meant for people 18 and up.

Though not everyone saw it that way. The sex and nudity really got to people. A lot of them definitely thought we were making porn. That was the constant complaint: We were deliberately putting porn in the hands of young kids.

Lever: The Quarterly featured about the same level of nudity as a European yogurt commercial. Which is to say, a lot. It was a “clothing catalog” with almost no clothing. Of course [American] people thought it was pornographic!

Carney: Okay, sure — there were photos of like, six girls in bed with one guy and more than a few spreads that enthusiastically suggested naked non-monogamy — but it wasn’t porn. It was tasteful. And let me tell you — nothing we had in there was surprising to kids.

Abadsidis: The models ranged from 16 to 20. It was erotic. It was art. I don’t think there’s anything pornographic about the Quarterly unless you think that nudity, in and of itself, is pornographic.

Illinois Lieutenant Governor Corinne Wood did, apparently. In 1999, she called for a boycott of Abercrombie & Fitch because its “Naughty or Nice” holiday issue “contained nudity” and “even an interview with a porn star.” That porn star was none other than Jenna Jameson, who at the time was well on her way to becoming a household name. A so-called “child prodigy” occupied the neighboring page, sparking accusations that the Quarterly somehow intended to connect children to porn.

A cartoon of Mr. and Mrs. Claus experimenting with S&M across from the statement “Sometimes it’s good to be bad” didn’t help, nor did the “sexpert” who offered advice on “sex for three” and told readers that going down on each other in a movie theater was acceptable “just so long as you do not disturb those around you.”

The Illinois Coalition of Sexual Assault joined Wood’s boycott. Later that year, Michigan attorney general (and eventual governor) Jennifer Granholm sent a letter to Abercrombie complaining that the “Naughty or Nice” issue contained sexual material that couldn’t be distributed to minors under state law.

Carney: There were four states that tried to ban us after that. I remember Granholm. She was my arch-nemesis at the time — we really got into it. I respected where she was coming from, of course, but our whole thing was that we weren’t showing anything that wasn’t actually happening on college campuses. And I’d already made it pretty clear to the press that the magazine wasn’t for minors.

Also, it’s not like we were the only magazine talking about or showing sex. You could find all the exact same stuff in Cosmo or Playboy — it’s just that we were a clothing brand, and one whose major customer base just so happened to be teens and young adults. No one expected that from us. Brands weren’t “supposed” to be talking about sex period, let alone to teens and young adults. But we took it upon ourselves to pioneer a more open, honest view of it. That’s the wrinkle that made it so interesting.

We did come to an agreement with Granholm. We decided to wrap the magazine in plastic and make it available for purchase only to those over 18, that way, it’d be even more clear that we weren’t “selling porn to the underage.”

Kon: I believe it was one of the few times the company acquiesced.

Collins: Other than that, don’t remember getting any instruction from Savas, Mike or Sam to tone it down. It was kind of mutually assumed that we weren’t going to apologize for the sexual nature of our content. We knew we had to keep things sexy, as it were — that was our whole thing.

We weren’t deliberately trying to piss off people, but we were trying to push the envelope, and there was definitely an element of deliberate trolling of conservatives and Christian groups. It was a good thing if we pissed them off. It created the controversy that made the brand seem edgy and dangerous, which is what you want if you’re trying to appeal to young people.

Carney: We were also just showing real things that happened at college. And as anyone who’s been to college knows, it’s not just about reading and writing papers. It’s also about sex. Not only that, of course, but we’re sexual beings. We respond to images that are sexual. We were trying to take the stigma away from that and acknowledge that it’s not a bad thing to do.

But no matter how clear we made it, our stance on sex polarized people more and more. I could tell, because almost as soon as I started speaking on behalf of the magazine, strange things started to happen to me. I got stalkers. People left me messages saying I was going to hell and I’d have no afterlife. I got hate mail to my house. One person left a package containing their dirty, stained underwear at the front door of my apartment with a note saying they’d be “coming by later” to “talk to me about it.” I had to call the police on that one.

I was the face of the publication, so I got the vast majority of the harassment. But I didn’t mind. It was my job to take the fall, and I heard and respected every single person’s complaint and talked to them about it. Plus, for every message I got banishing me to hell, I got another from a journalist or a fan begging me to save a copy for them. People collected them. They really loved it, precisely because it was so sexual.

Abadsidis: Mike didn’t flinch about any of this stuff. He wanted to defend it because he could see it was working. We weren’t about to tone anything down (at the time).

Flash-forward to June 2001. The Twin Towers are still standing tall, tips are being frosted and Apple has just unleashed iTunes onto an unsuspecting populace. A&F Quarterly, now in its fourth year, is in hot water once again. Having survived a number of boycotts, lawsuits and controversies since its inception, it’s now in the midst of weathering another minor national conniption over its use of nudity.

Jeannine Stein, describing the Summer 2001 issue in an excerpt from a Los Angeles Times article called “Nudity? A&F Quarterly Has It Covered”: [It’s] explicit in ways that most catalogs and fashion magazines are not, and its use of male nudity is uncommon among general-interest publications. It features 280 pages of young, attractive men and women alone and together, in serious, romantic, sexual and party modes, wearing lots of A&F clothes, some A&F clothes and sometimes no clothes at all. Among the coffee-table book-ish photos by Bruce Weber is a man, covered only by a towel, surrounded by five women; a woman at the beach reclining body-to-body with three men; a back view of a naked man getting into a helicopter (we haven’t quite figured that one out yet); and a few topless females.

There are many naked butts and breasts.

Abadsidis: We also had photos of nude women in a fountain — which were inspired by Katharine Hepburn skinny-dipping at Bryn Mawr College — and a whole set dedicated to the Berkeley student that spent a day naked in class. It was par for the course for us, but even though we’d done the whole shrink-wrap and over-18 thing, people still felt it was too sexual for branded content.

In response, an unexpected alliance formed between cultural conservatives and anti-porn feminists to boycott Abercrombie & Fitch over the Summer 2001 issue of A&F Quarterly. According to Wikipedia, the offending issue included “photographs of naked or near-naked young people frolicking on the beach,” “top-naked young women and rear-naked young men on top of each other” and an “interview with porn star Ron Jeremy, who discussed performing oral sex on himself and using a dildo cast from his own penis.” Once again, Wood was at the helm.

David Crary, journalist, excerpt from a 2001 Associated Press article: Illinois Lt. Gov. Corinne Wood — a Republican who has been sparring with A&F since 1999 — announced the boycott campaign last week in Chicago. She has recruited a diverse mix of supporters more familiar with facing off against each other than with working together.

Wood, writing on her website in 2001: A&F is glamorizing indiscriminate sexual behavior that unsophisticated teenagers are not possibly equipped to weigh against the dangers of date rape, unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease.

Michelle Dewlen, president of the Chicago chapter of the National Organization for Women, speaking at one of Woods’ press conferences in 2001: It’s not a catalog. It’s a soft porn magazine.

Rev. Bob Vanden Bosch, head of Concerned Christian Americans, as quoted by the AP: It’s very important for people to get involved. The exploitation of sex and young people in A&F’s catalog isn’t only atrocious but also a psychological molestation of their teenage customers.

Quart: It was predatory in a few ways, really. One was that it confused the corporate identity of Abercrombie and the advertising with the editorial. It preyed on young consumers not understanding the difference between editorial content and sales content. Back then it led, I saw, to a way that girls were objectifying themselves and commodifying themselves. It ultimately led to boys also objectifying themselves and commodifying themselves — not to the same extent, but far more than they were when I started reporting Branded a little more than two decades ago.

I have the stats on the male body image dysmorphia at the time in Branded (which has only worsened). Then, male body shaming and “manorexia” was on the rise, for the first time on a mass scale. It couldn’t help for the most popular brand at the time to have a dedicated giant glossy magazine filled with pictures of male teenagers with zero body fat half undressed.

Abadsidis: I mean, sure, as much as any advertising does. It wasn’t like we were leading that charge. Any effect on self-image was certainly unintentional, but I do think it did make people want to be athletic. You definitely saw a lot of guys trying to look like that during that period, especially as time went on. If you look at the first few issues, the guys aren’t that built. Ashton Kutcher was actually in the second one — that was his first big break — and they get increasingly more cut from there. That whole era is when men’s body issues started to come out.

Lever: I’d also submit that all this was controversial because it was pre-internet. The internet mainstreamed sexual content in a way that makes A&F or other “scandalous” ad campaigns (like the 2003 Gucci ad with the model’s pubes shaved into the shape of a G) seem quaint, even obsolete. Like, do you remember that Eckhaus Latta ad a few years ago that scandalized people for five minutes because it showed people having real (albeit pixelated) sex? Neither does anyone else.

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK TEACHES SEX ED

Always filled with philosophy, social theory and intellectually minded topics that likely soared over the heads of most Abercrombie consumers, the Quarterly outdid itself in the Fall of 2003 with its penultimate issue. A gorgeous romp of summer-spirited abandon accompanied by some delightfully incoherent, Dada-like musings from Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, it connected a “back-to-school” theme with a pretty clear directive to fuck. Yet, the information it presented was actually rather safe and tame, a reality which confused and irritated Quarterly staff. Their content was legit, so why was everyone up in arms?

Abadsidis: The “Sex Ed” issue was the second to last one that we did. It got some of the most criticism, and was supposedly the reason everything was finished. I literally had stuff in there cited straight from the University of Michigan’s freshman student handbook on sexual conduct, and it still pissed people off! Then, of course, there was Žižek.

Lever: Žižek identifies as a radical leftist. He’s very famous for his work on cultural theory and critical theory. He analyzes all kinds of topics in his signature, impenetrable — but also approachable — style. And when I think of him, I think of his very distinctive manner of speaking, that some people have described as being on cocaine constantly. But he’s definitely kind of a cult figure, a favorite of people who consider themselves highbrow, but also fun.

He’s really touted as the greatest anti-capitalist of our time, and yet, here he was, “sexually educating” the mean girls and boys of your high school, in a brand catalog whose entire goal was to ensnare young people for the purpose of selling them distressed jeans.

According to the magazine’s foreword, the editor wrote to Žižek and said this: “Dear Slavoj, enclosed please find the images for our back to school issue. We’ve never had a philosopher write the text for our images before, so write what you like. We’re looking for that Karl Marx meets Groucho Marx thing you do so well. Thanks, Savas.”

Abadsidis: I love Slavoj. He was friends with one of my professors from school. He only had 24 hours to write this, so we actually sent someone to London where he was to drop off the images we wanted him to write text for. They hung out for a day and then flew back with what he’d written.

Lever: It was basically a series of insane, absurdist ramblings pasted over really hot naked people.

Žižek, excerpt from A&F Quarterly’s 2003 Sex Ed issue: Back to school thus means forget the stupid spontaneous pleasures of summer sports, of reading books, watching movies and listening to music. Pull yourself together and learn sex.

Lever: I mean, that’s like the first episode of every teen TV show, where these three nerdy boys start high school and they’re like, “Okay, we’re going to be cool this year guys. We’re going to lose our virginities.” It’s very formulaic. But there’s more.

Žižek: The only successful sexual relationship occurs when the fantasies of the two partners overlap. If the man fantasizes that making love is like riding a bike and the woman wants to be penetrated by a stud, then what truly goes on while they make love is that a horse is riding a bike… with a fantasy like that, who needs a personality?

Lever: The “go learn sex at school” part really struck a nerve with conservatives. But I don’t think it was that transgressive. Fourteen-year-olds are receiving messages to have sex all the time — what did it matter if some Eastern European anti-capitalist was hitting them over the head with it through the pages of a polo shirt advert?

Abadsidis: Fox News got involved, if I remember correctly. That was one of the few times I actually got pissed off about how an issue was being covered. I mean, the information in there was handed out to students by an actual university. Half the issue was quotes from this really influential philosopher. But for some reason, people really took offense to the language of it. That whole year [2003] was just a bad one for us.

THE LAST HORNY CHRISTMAS

For its final trick, the Quarterly released a holiday issue featuring 280 pages of “moose, ice hockey, chivalry, group sex and more.” It had oral sex, group sex, sex in a river, Christmas sex and pretty much every other type of sex you could think of, all which followed an earnest letter from Abadsidis which read: “We don’t want much this year, but in keeping with the spirit, we’d like to ask forgiveness from some of the people we’ve offended over the years. If you’d be so kind, please offer our apologies to the following: the Catholic League, former Lt. Governor Corrine Wood of Illinois, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Stanford University Asian American Association, N.O.W.”

But the issue didn’t really hit. By fall 2003, Abercrombie was involved in a number of lawsuits and protests related to exclusion and discrimination, which left people cold despite the inviting warmth of a crackling, fireside circle jerk (a Weber offering which, I’m told, can be found on page 88 of the final issue).

Cole Kazdin, journalist, writing in a 2003 Slate article called “Have Yourself a Horny Little Christmas”: The challenge for me, when masturbating with my friends to the nubile nudies in the Abercrombie & Fitch catalog, is trying not to think about serious things like racial diversity; it tends to kill the mood. But because most of the models in the catalog are white and because a lawsuit has been filed against the clothing retailer for allegedly discriminating against a Black woman who applied for a job at the store, it’s hard for the issue not to rear its nonsexy head. [In 2004, Abercrombie also agreed to pay $40 million to settle a lawsuit that accused the company of promoting whites over Latino, Black, Asian-American and female applicants.]

Collins: As a brand, Abercrombie did a lot of things that were quite gross. I’m sure you remember when they came out with these T-shirts with these racist stereotype characters on them. You would just see it in the catalog and just be like, “Jesus Christ.” It was awful and stupid and self-defeating, just tone deaf. And we just couldn’t figure out how no one at the company saw the problem with it.

Stagg, excerpt from Sleeveless: Kids in my high school wore shirts that read, “Wok-n-Bowl” and “Wong Brothers Laundry Service: Two Wongs Can Make It White,” accompanied by cross-eyed propaganda-style cartoons. If you weren’t part of the in-crowd (and white), A&F was oppressive. Non-jocks made their own anti-A&F T-shirts, using the brand as a catchall for exclusionary, competitive behavior and old-fashioned bullying.

Carney: That stuff was indefensible, really. Those were the darkest days of my job — listening to calls and reading letters about how offensive those shirts were. Even though the Quarterly was quite separate from the brand and we had no influence over what they did or what clothes they designed, we did still have to print their stuff at the back of the magazine. It was pretty uncomfortable.

Stagg: By 2006, Mike Jeffries’ most controversial public statement on sex appeal was really just saying what we were all thinking: “Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.” Those remarks were followed by lawsuit after lawsuit, mostly involving staffing discrimination. An announcement about the store refusing to carry anything over a size 10 reportedly marked a noticeable decrease in sales.

Abadsidis: There were a lot of underlying problems at the company. The amount of negative press Abercrombie was getting was getting silly. No matter what we did, we’d end up in the news, especially if it was related to the Quarterly. After so many bad news incidents, it just felt done, like its moment had passed. It was bound to crash at some point.

Gina Piccalo, excerpt from the Los Angeles Times: Clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch has pulled its controversial in-store catalogs after outraged parents, conservative Christian groups and child advocates threatened a boycott over material they said was pornographic. However, a company spokesman said the move had nothing to do with the public outcry. The catalogs were pulled to make room near cash registers for a new Abercrombie & Fitch fragrance.

Abadsidis: People like to think that the boycotts and Christian protests had something to do with it, but that wasn’t the case at all. By 2003, Abercrombie’s stock was low — something to do with ordering too much denim. The store was having negative sales for the first time. There was the line in the New York Times, who covered our demise, that Mike was “bored” with it.

Collins: We had no warning. We were all there one day, and the next, we were gone.

Lever: The Quarterly was a relic of a different time. I feel like it could never have been made after 2008 for so many reasons — economic, and cultural and political. It would just never fly. It was made before feminism pervaded everything, at a time where you could be completely flagrant about gross patriarchal shit and still get away with it.

It was kind of like this last gasp of a certain conception of what’s desirable — a very hegemonic coolness exemplified by white Ivy League frat kids who got fucked up the night before their philosophy class. That doesn’t have much currency anymore. Abercrombie kept that image on life support until its last gasp.

Now, 20 years later, what’s cool is not that. What’s cool is to have depression and ADD. The ideal is out. The real is in. And the Quarterly, having always existed in the liminal space between, is neither here nor there.

EPILOGUE

In 2008, Abercrombie resurrected the Quarterly in the U.K. for a limited-run special edition to celebrate the success of its European stores. The original team was reunited — Abadsidis, Shahid and Weber — with the hopes that Britain’s more “open-minded approach to culture and creativity” would provide a welcoming substrate on which to re-grow their original ideas of sexual liberation. The issue, “Return to Paradise,” was “more mature” than its American cousin. It was well-received — aside from the usual protests about sex and nudity — but it wasn’t continued.

Two years later, in 2010, the Quarterly was revived again, this time as a promotional element for Abercrombie’s Back-to-School 2010 marketing campaign, which bore the unfortunate title of “Screen Test.” The lead story Abercrombie put out on its website sounded like a cross between American Idol and a gay porn shot: “The staff of A&F Studios opens up to editorial to explain the steps the division takes to find new, young, hot boys. The cattle-call approach to herd young talent ends with the best of the beefcake earning a screen test that ‘could be the flint to spark the trip to the star.’”

Bruce Weber would be shooting, of course. This would become especially ominous after he was accused of a series of casting-couch style sexual assaults by 15 male models beginning in 2017. According to the accusations, he subjected them to sexually manipulative “breathing exercises” and inappropriate touching, insinuating that he could help their careers if they complied.

Arick Fudali, a lawyer at the Bloom Firm, which represents five of Weber’s alleged victims, declined to confirm or deny whether any of the alleged assaults happened on a Quarterly shoot. If they did, they’re not prosecutable as sexual assaults in New York. Because the states’s statute of limitations on reporting rape is only three years, anything that happened during the Quarterly’s run wouldn’t count toward a sexual assault charge (unless a minor was involved, which Fudali also declined to confirm).

No one I spoke with for this story remembers seeing, hearing or experiencing anything like what the allegations against Weber describe, but some expressed concern over how they might affect the legacy the Quarterly leaves behind. “The accusations are pretty grim,” Collins told me. “You feel for the people who are put in that position. People had power over them. It just makes you think, ‘Was any of this worth it?’ Not really, if people were getting hurt.”

As such, it’s difficult to conclude with definitive sign-off about the Quarterly’s legacy. Either it was a bastion of progressive and transversive sexuality that simultaneously trolled and nourished the very audience it sought to mine, or it was the product of darkness and pain. Either way, Sockel sums it up just right: “The Quarterly was discontinued in 2003, after the American Decency Association boycotted photos of doe-eyed bare-assed jocks in prairies and glens,” he wrote in his recollection. “It was nice while it lasted.”

[tabloidtoc]

OK, May 10

You can buy a brand new copy of this issue without the mailing label for your very own at my eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/bradentonbooks

Cover: Inside Kim Kardashian's Wild New Single Life

Page 1: Big Pic -- Jenna Dewan enjoyed a stroll around her L.A. neighborhood with 13-month-old son Callum, whom she shares with fiance Steve Kazee, in a stroller

Page 2: Contents

Page 3: Contents

Page 4: The world watched as Prince Harry came face-to-face with the royal family for the first time in over a year to say farewell to his late grandfather Prince Philip, and now that he's back home in Montecito, California, with pregnant wife Meghan Markle and their 23-month old son Archie, Harry's been reflecting on the emotional reunion and preparing for what lies ahead in the coming months -- although the trip inevitably had its share of awkward moments, he's generally happy with how it went, and things had been especially frosty between Harry and The Firm following his televised tell-all, but the main thing is they broke the ice, and he's finally communicating properly with his family again -- in fact, Harry is said to have enjoyed low-key meetings with several relatives before heading back home to the States, including his grandmother Queen Elizabeth and cousin Princess Eugenie, although he did not have a one-on-one chat with his estranged father Prince Charles and it was more of a civilized catch-up than an intense sit-down because it wasn't an appropriate time to delve into recent tensions; however, Harry did take the opportunity to reassure everyone it wasn't his intention to upset them and that he loves them all very much and they, in turn, echoed their affection for him and they mutually agreed to keep moving forward positively and constructively and there's a still a lot of unfinished business, many are hopeful that all will be resolved when Harry returns to the U.K. for a memorial honoring his late mother Princess Diana on July 1 and this could be Harry's last chance to sit down with his family and properly repair things and Harry and Prince William have both agreed to meet before the event and have a frank discussion about how they can do their best to fix the damage that's been done and air their grievances in a calm and pragmatic manner

Page 6: Next spring, Johnny Depp and his ex Amber Heard will head back to court in the latest installment of their ongoing legal drama, but this time, Johnny, who filed a $50 million defamation lawsuit against Amber following a 2018 op-ed where she detailed her experience as an alleged abuse victim, is determined to clear his name one and for all -- Johnny and his team have new and explosive testimony from two of the responding officers, plus new body cam footage, that they believe will finally turn things around in their favor and they're convinced it will show that Amber made up claims about their alleged May 2016 brawl in an attempt to ruin him and the video shows a neat apartment with nothing out of place, nothing broken or anything to suggest a knockdown fight had just occurred -- Johnny's always maintained his innocence and now he's confident this evidence will prove it and Johnny's also working on a tell-all that he intends to release as soon as he's declared innocent and the tome will vividly detail what happened on that night in 2016 and throughout their year-long marriage and Johnny feels Amber never really loved him and his friends warned him not to marry her, but he didn't listen, and he's paid a dear price for it

Page 7: A fateful chapter from Ashton Kutcher's past could be coming back to haunt him as he's being urged to take part in the upcoming documentary on his late ex Brittany Murphy and it's stressing him out to no end and so far, he wants nothing to do with it -- the documentary is going to look for clues as to why it all ended like this for Brittany, and producers want Ashton to tell his side of the story and the thinking is he may have little choice but to participate because he had a front row seat to Brittany's life, and her fans want him to shed light on what really happened

* Alec Baldwin and wife Hilaria Baldwin knew that having six kids would be a challenge, but they're realizing it's even harder to find nannies who are up to the task of tending to their brood because Alec and Hilaria have some pretty high expectations for the kind of people they want to employ and what the job entails and it's been a logistical nightmare hiring and scheduling a rotating team of caretakers -- in addition to children Carmen, 7, Rafael, 5, Leonardo, 4, and Romeo, 2, the parents welcomed baby Eduardo in September and their sixth child, Lucia, via surrogate in March -- long hours and multitasking are a must given the meal prep, diaper changes and homeschooling, plus the nannies have to know how to deal with a cranky set of kids without losing their cool and Hilaria's every bit the mother hen, so she won't settle for anything less than perfection

* Harry Hamlin and Lisa Rinna have had it with the romance between their daughter Amelia Hamlin and Scott Disick -- Amelia recently raised eyebrows when she was spotted with bruised lips, which often occurs after lip filler injections, and Harry and Lisa drew a line in the sand and they're concerned that Scott is convincing her to mess with her appearance, especially since she's talking about boob and butt surgery to keep his eyes off other girls and ever since the couple hooked up last October, Harry and Lisa have been sitting back and hoping that Amelia would come to her senses, but it's clear she's in way too deep now, and that they need to make their feelings known, but the worry is that Amelia will be pregnant before she knows it, so Harry and Lisa are ready to take the bull by the horns before Scott ruins their daughter's life

Page 8: It's been nearly four years since Matt Lauer was fired from Today amid a sexual assault scandal, and he's still being snubbed by his old Hamptons crowd -- Matt, who retreated to his waterfront estate in the celeb enclave after a colleague accused him of assaulting her at the 2014 Olympics, has done everything he can to regain his place in the community, but he's remained persona non grata despite his best efforts; he'll turn up to fancy events and be super friendly with everyone but most people just turn their noses at him -- the disgraced ex-anchor, who hooked up with public relations exec Shamin Abas after his 2019 divorce, has been talking to friends about marrying her in a big Hamptons wedding, but it's hard to imagine there'd be much of a turnout and people have had ample time to put out the welcome mat, but it seems like they've shut their doors on Matt for good

* Former Playboy Bunny Kendra Wilkinson has gone from living the high life to pounding the pavement to earn a paycheck, and she's missing the glam old days -- Kendra, who enjoyed a pampered existence as Hugh Hefner's girlfriend and Girls Next Door star, has had to bring home the bacon in the wake of her 2018 divorce from Hank Baskett to help provide for their two children, Hank, 11, and Alijah, 6, and being a single mom is a lot harder than she thought it would be and she currently resides in a humble Calabasas rental and recently snagged a job as a realtor and was hired by Kyle Richards' husband Mauricio Umansky and she's working long hours and weekends, and she looks pretty burnt out and Kendra tries not to complain and is sucking it up as best she can, but she can't help but think about the times when she didn't have to worry about bills and rent and could sleep in as long as she wanted

* He was once Hollywood's biggest bon vivant, but Jack Nicholson has become a total hermit, and friends are concerned that he's harder to get a hold of than ever and Jack's shut himself away in his hilltop home on Mulholland Drive, and everyone is worried about his state of mind -- the actor, who was last seen in public looking disheveled at a January 2020 Lakers game, says he just wants to spend his retirement in peace and quiet, but his loved ones wish he'd make himself a little more accessible -- Jack's admitted that he yearns for one last romance, but how can that happen when he's hiding at home? Jack turned 84 in April, and it's as if he's resigned to spending the rest of his life alone and it's so sad, but it seems there's nothing anyone can do for him

Page 10: Red Hot on the Red Carpet -- stars wow in sexy shoulder-baring dresses -- Ella Balinska, Renee Zellweger, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley

Page 11: Adrienne Warren, Martha Hunt

Page 12: Who Wore It Better? Rainey Qualley vs. Celine Dion in Chanel, Melissa Wood-Tepperberg vs. Idina Menzel in Alice + Olivia

Page 13: Ellie Goulding vs. Charli XCX in Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood

Page 14: News in Photos -- Gavin Rossdale took his beloved dog Chewy with him to tennis practice in the park in L.A.

Page 15: Jeff Goldblum stopped at celeb hotspot Craig's for dinner with wife Emilie Livingston and their kids Charlie and River in West Hollywood, newly single Real Housewives of Orange County star Braunwyn Windham-Burke hit the beach in Miami, Natasha Lyonne continued filming her series Russian Doll in NYC

Page 16: Amber Rose enjoyed lunch with her son Sebastian whom she shares with Wiz Khalifa in L.A.

Page 17: Anchor Robin Roberts filled viewers in on current events during Good Morning America in NYC, Kristen Taekman got all gussied up at her home in NYC, Howie Mandel showed up to the America's Got Talent set in surfing gear in Pasadena

Page 19: Bling Empire's Cherie Chan and fiance Jessey Lee grabbed a bite with their daughter Jadore, pro wrestler Ariane Andrew (a.k.a. Cameron) fueled up with a healthy sip

Page 20: Wells Adams stocked up on some essentials at the grocery store in L.A., Rachel Brosnahan protected herself with an umbrella while filming The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel in NYC

Page 21: Jon Hamm and his new rescue dog Splash get some fresh air in L.A., Whitney Port in a beige sweater dress and matching boots while recording her podcast in NYC

Page 22: Selling Sunset's Christine Quinn brightened things up in designer duds while walking her dogs in L.A., Monique Green attended the drive-in premiere of her new series Big Shot in L.A.

Page 23: Irina Shayk and her daughter Lea De Seine walked hand in hand around NYC, friendly exes Sara Gilbert and Linda Perry take a stroll in L.A., Law and Order: SVU stars Mariska Hargitay and Ice-T snapped a photo together in between takes

Page 26: Inside My Home -- Sam and Aaron Taylor-Johnson's designer digs

Page 28: Home Town stars Ben and Erin Napier recently announced they're getting ready to welcome their second child, a girl, and the famously private pair, who chose to keep the news a secret to avoid any extra unwanted attention or stress, could not be more excited -- this baby is a miracle because Erin was told years ago that pregnancy would be unlikely due to a past health issue and when their first daughter Helen arrived, they were overjoyed, and they never imagined they'd be blessed with a second -- with Erin's due date just around the corner, she and Ben are busy prepping Helen to become a big sis and they have no doubt she'll be wonderful because she's very warm and empathetic toward others and she loves to hug so the baby will be extremely loved -- after the newborn's arrival, the busy HGTV stars will take some much-needed time off and they're a team, and Ben plans to be there to support Erin and make sure she gets her needed rest, but they both love what they do, so it won't be long before they're back in front of the cameras -- while baby No. 3 chatter has already begun, the college sweethearts aren't getting ahead of themselves and Ben and Erin always dreamed of having a big family, and if they can, there will be more children, but if it doesn't happen, then they will be quite content as a foursome

Page 29: Kacey Musgraves is head over heels for her new boyfriend Gerald Onuoha, but friends are worried that she may be rushing the romance -- Kacey, who hooked up with the Nashville-based doctor after calling it quits on her three-year marriage to Ruston Kelly in July, tends to jump into things with her heart and this relationship falls into that category and Kacey, who was spotted snuggling up to her physician beau while out and about in L.A., is on cloud nine with this guy, but when she has to hit the road again it's not like he can pull up stakes and follow her -- she's not thinking straight about the future, and her friends are bracing for trouble once reality sinks in and Kacey would be wise to slow things down and not get ahead of herself

* George Clooney turned the big 6-0 on May 6, and his wife Amal Clooney is being a bit of a birthday buzzkill -- George wants a big, booze-soaked sky's-the-limit bash in an exotic locale like Mexico or Italy with his old drinking buddies like Rande Gerber, but Amal is pushing for a quiet family celebration at home with their children Alexander and Ella, and it's led to a few arguments -- George figures it's his chance to finally let off steam and that it's his choice on how to mark the milestone occasion and he wants Amal and the other wives to come and join in on the fun, but watching George get wasted certainly isn't her idea of a good time and she sees nothing wrong with a dinner at home

Page 30: Harrison Ford is finally set to start filming the new Indiana Jones movie this summer, and his wife Calista Flockhart will be keeping a close eye to make sure he stays safe on the set -- Harrison has been training hard to get in shape and is feeling great, but at his age, you can understand why Calista is concerned and protective Calista plans to accompany Harrison as he shoots the fifth Indiana Jones installment in London and other locales and he's still capable of doing his own stunts, and a lot of it is thanks to Calista, who made sure he stayed fit with weight training and proper nutrition, but Harrison's going to have the best people in the business looking out for him so he doesn't get hurt again, otherwise Calista wouldn't have given him the green light

* It's barely been three months since Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker went public with their hot and heavy romance, and they're already talking about getting engaged and pregnant, not necessarily in that order and Kourtney fully believes this isn't just a honeymoon phase, but that Travis is the man she's going to share her dreams with -- as for Travis, he's been telling everyone he's hit the jackpot with Kourtney and Travis, who has two kids of his own, has already started shopping for rings and he's planning an ultra-romantic proposal because he's big on grand gestures and he's still looking for the perfect ring, but that doesn't mean the baby-making has to wait until it's on her finger

* Love Bites -- Zac Efron and Vanessa Valladares split, Brooks Laich and CrossFit athlete Katrin Davidsdottir dating, Tan France and husband Rob are having a baby this summer

Page 32: Cover Story -- Kim Kardashian single and loving it -- ready to mingle, an unattached Kim is having fun exploring her dating options -- she did all she could with Kanye West and now she needs to steer a new course for herself -- she's been relishing her single status and feels like she can finally breathe again -- Kim may be living it up, but her four children remain her primary focus -- the eligible bachelors who've caught Kim's eye: Drake, Rege-Jean Page, Brad Pitt, Lewis Hamilton

Page 35: Jennifer Aniston's on such good terms with her old flames she still talks to ex-husbands Brad Pitt and Justin Theroux regularly and has even stayed in touch with her former beau John Mayer -- Jen and Brad have a lot of complicated history, but she's glad they reconnected and are friends again and she thinks the world of Brad, and they support each other -- Justin recently revealed he and Jen text and FaceTime, and the divorced duo will always share a special bond -- although she and John split in 2009, Jen and the musician still hang out from time to time and they flirt here and there and when John's in town, Jen's down to meet him -- but friends are urging the star to finally and firmly move on from her exes and they think she needs a fresh start, and Jen's been on a few dates with someone who isn't famous and Jen's not looking to get married again, but she'd like to have a partner to share her life with and this guy could be the one, she's just got to give the relationship a fair chance, without any distractions

* Weeks after announcing she'd called it quits with Alex Rodriguez, Jennifer Lopez is feeling sad and disappointed and she didn't want to believe the rumors about Alex's wandering eye, but the Madison LeCroy thing was the last straw -- it's not the first time Jennifer's been fooled by a bad boy as cheating rumors plagued her romances with Sean "Diddy" Combs and Casper Smart and she's wiser now -- Jennifer's saving grace is she's got a jam-packed schedule so it won't leave too much time to be broken-hearted and she's a busy mom of two with a million projects up in the air so don't expect her to be dwelling on the past for too long

Page 36: Young and In Love -- Why wait? These stars were in their early 20s, or teens, when they tied the knot -- Olivia Wilde married an Italian prince when she was 19, Hailey Baldwin married Justin Bieber when she was 21

Page 37: Demi Moore married rocker Freddy Moore at 17, Uma Thurman married Gary Oldman when she was 20, Cher married Sonny Bono at 18, Macaulay Culkin married actress Rachel Miner when he was 18

Page 38: Jessica Simpson married Nick Lachey at age 22, Kate Hudson married rocker Chris Robinson when she was 21, Drew Barrymore married when she was 19 for only 19 days

Page 39: Janet Jackson married R&B singer James DeBarge when she was 18, Kim Kardashian eloped with a music producer when she was 19, Solange Knowles married and a baby at 18, LeAnn Rimes married a backup dancer at 19

Page 40: Interview -- Anya Taylor-Joy thrilled to pieces -- The Queen's Gambit star is still processing her phenomenal success

Page 42: Role Models -- like mother, like daughter -- these stars are inspiring their kids to stay healthy and fit -- Brooke Burke, Gisele Bundchen

Page 43: Cindy Crawford and Kaia Gerber, Christie Brinkley and Sailor Brinkley-Cook, Goldie Hawn and Kate Hudson, Jessica Alba

Page 46: Style Week -- Saweetie has a new sunglasses collaboration with Quay

Page 48: What's Hot Right Now -- stand out with a statement piece from the 8 Other Reasons x Draya Michele capsule collection

Page 49: Make Me Blush -- follow spring 2021's hottest beauty trend and create a flush with a pop of peach, pastel pink or terracotta -- Mindy Kaling

Page 50: Mother's Day Gift Guide -- Molly Sims

Page 54: Entertainment

Page 55: Reality Check -- your small screen guilty pleasures are back and here are all the details -- Bar Rescue, The Real Housewives of New York City, Teen Mom 2, Million Dollar Listing New York

Page 58: Buzz -- The ACM Awards in Nashville -- Carrie Underwood and CeCe Winans, Keith Urban and fellow emcee Mickey Guyton, Kenny Chesney and Kelsea Ballerini

Page 59: Blake Shelton, Chris Young and Kane Brown, Miranda Lambert and Elle King, Jimmie Allen and Brad Paisley, Maren Morris and husband Ryan Hurd

Page 60: Sound Bites -- Jessica Alba on not being afraid to complain, Justin Theroux on dating, Jodie Turner-Smith on her and Joshua Jackson being perfect partners, Rob McElhenney on expectations of men in Hollywood

Page 61: Chrissy Teigen on her break from Twitter, Courteney Cox showing off her extremely organized kitchen on Instagram, Lance Bass on the basic thing in his past he'd like to move on from, Amanda Seyfried on confiding to the Mank costume designer about her pregnancy, John Stamos on getting together with wife Caitlin, Eiza Gonzalez on developing body confidence

Page 62: Horoscope -- Taurus Henry Cavill turned 38 on May 5

Page 64: By the Numbers -- Rege-Jean Page

[suffering-and-happy-about-it]

The Time of Everyone’s Life (Favored Ones, Part 11.)

Series description: Many things were surely fucked up in the year 2038, but no-one ever told anyone how all of it went down. What happened before a group of people left for Seattle to handle personal matters? Why did one girl refuse to leave all of it be? And why there were so many dead in the end?

Part Summary: You weren’t happy that Eugene, your friend, had passed away. But he was quite old, to be honest and he died of heart attack. And since you knew he wouldn’t be glad to see you being all sad about this, you decided to respect the man in the best way possible. 

A/N: Honestly, I love Eugene. The time in his hut was the best spent time of the whole fucking game. 

Warnings: Side characted death, sexual innuendos, drug usage - weed, to be specific. Almost everyone being high as a kite in this chapter. Also, for some, it could be extremely disrespectful to talk about someone they do talk about the passed away person - but he was truly a living, breathing legend.

Word count: 5 K

Tagging:  @nemodoren @xxgoldenhour @missdictatorme​​ @peakymarvels​​ @davnwillcome​ @pickleriiick​ @jodiereedus22​ @gladiosamicitias​ @tamkashi​ @eternallyvenus​ @avengerssstuff​ @fangirl-inthe-us​ @avery-miller​ @mikah-writes​ @mad-hatter-98​ @sadiaafrin99​

Series master list: H E R E

Joel Miller’s playlist for the bonfire occasions: H E R E

Youtube playlists: JACKSON DAYS | SEATTLE DAYS

The winter of 2037, three months before the incident:

It was a fucking funeral. You shouldn't be cracking up during the last farewell Ellie was reading from that piece of paper. Well, technically, you should be cracking up - but with tears and not with laughter. You had to keep the cool face. You and Dina were standing next to each other with a huge grin as you both fought the urge to cry with laughter again.

You were sure that Eugene would be happy to see you smiling like two dickheads at his funeral. This seventy-year-old dude was acting more like a teenager then you ever did. He was the biggest crackhead in Jackson and your friend as well. The dude constantly smelled like a weed since he was blowing that shit almost every other day, sometimes telling you to come along.

Any of you got to know where Eugene had his cache, but he always had weed on him. And man oh man, his weed was some fucking good stuff. And the crackhead jokes he had? Jesus. He always had you and Dina in total tears.

Maria was looking at you and Dina cracking up throughout the whole ceremony, but she didn't tell you to behave since she knew Eugene way too well. It was refreshing to see someone cry with laughter and happy memories at a funeral instead of the typical rivers of sad tears.

You and Dina told something way before Ellie. When you met Dina on that morning, she wasn't even surprised to find you on your sweatpants, obviously just woken up, on the other side of the town. She was too sad to realize.

But when you gathered around the breakfast, talking about Eugene, the sadness turned to fondness. You opened up and drank the wine she got you, drinking it in a record ten minutes. That was when you started to tell stories about Eugene - like the time he got so high he pretended he's a mermaid while swimming in a near lake. Or teach you how to start a fire while being stoned as fuck, accidentally lighting it up.

So that was why you were dying at the ceremony, cracking up all the time.

As it usually is, Eugene left a last will behind, which included most of his crackhead friends - including you, Dina, and Ellie. Jesse took the role of the man who was giving people the stuff he left them since it was obvious that Eugene could leave any random thing behind.

"So, first, we have Ellie here." - Jesse read from the will. She stood up immediately, earning warm applause from you and Dina. You loved Eugene so much. No matter that he was three times as old as you were, he still was your great friend. That was how you wanted to remember him as well. As a good friend and the funniest person, you've met. - "Give the girl my... Fun time magazines since she enjoys naked girls just like I do." - Jesse read, having you and Dina cracking up again. This was so Eugene. Just like Jesse read, the girl was given a huge stock of well preserved Playboy and Maxim magazines. The expression on her face was hilarious because she didn't know what to do with the shit. That motherfucker had thought his last will through really well.

"Then, there's Dina." - Jesse read when Ellie sat down with her new magazines, having a grin on her face. - "To this babe, I give my lucky lighter to light shit up no matter how windy it would be." - Jesse took out the lighter with his initials carved into it, having Dina smile in the sweetest way you've seen. The lighter meant a lot to Eugene. And you both knew that. But before you had another chance to cry, with melancholy this time, Jesse announced your name.

"And last, but not least, there's my bitch, Y/N." - With that, you stood up and bowed, having the girls whistle and clap for you. Eugene always called you bitch ever since you and Ellie called each other bitch when you got high. The conversation consisted of the word bitch for two hours in a row. - "Tell her, that her ass looks splendid and give that bitch my last joints. Also, tell her to give the other assholes the time of their lives." - Jesse read and gave you a huge glass full of joints, which you proudly rose above your head. All of these gifts... Were just small trinkets to remind you of the man, but nothing felt more like that man. It would be weird if he'd leave actual presents or valuables behind.

"Man, I love the dude so much." - Ellie whispered when she was going through the magazines. Suddenly, her interest peaked and she was now taking in every naked woman with a gourmand grin. So, naturally, you leaned in and started to look at them as well. Dina, being the sweetheart she was, laid on your thighs to join into the activity.

"Why are they so fucking oily?" - "Could they even walk with these watermelons?" - "Why did Eugene have so much of them?" - Those were just a few questions that Jesse heard throughout the whole evening. You decided to go to a barn near Jackson, to sneak out and smoke some of these joints out there, sending a real last farewell to the man. So, there you were, sneaking out after midnight, laughing like high school girls. You've taken even Diego with you for one specific reason.

"Listen, man, I'm sorry for what happened yesterday." - A whisper came out of your lips as you walked to the barn through the snowdrifts. Ellie was carrying Dina on her back while Jesse was looking at them with an unreadable expression. But he was still smiling so he wasn't pissed - which was great. - "I was drunk and I was just puking when you stormed in..." - You mumbled, really feeling terrible at that moment. Sure, Joel was giving you the ride of your life at that moment, but that didn't grant you a right to act like a total moron. Diego looked at you, searching for any sign of sarcasm or irony... But you were serious with the boy.

"There are always two sides to blame, Y/N. I shouldn't have been pushing you so hard into liking me when I knew you don't want it. I acted like a douchebag." - Diego stopped, offering you a handshake. Instead of that, you hugged him as a true friend.

"I mean, any girl would be lucky to have a boy like you by her side, but... I think I like someone. I'm not sure if it'd lead somewhere... But I want to try it." - Did you think that you like someone? You knew you were all over Joel. The man was bringing you chills with every praise he told you, with each daring smile and you loved it when you could see the small shine in his eyes. Diego seemed to be taken away with your confession. The boy opened up his lips with surprise, watching you before he chuckled.

"I think any boy would be lucky to have you by his side... Or did you joined Ellie's team?" - Oh, dear Lord, Diego wasn't holding back with his teasing that night. Which, at least, meant that you're good. You chuckled, looking at Dina falling into the snow, dragging Ellie along. Ellie was screaming something about bitches and freezing while Dina was hysterically laughing - soon after, Ellie shoved a fistful of snow into Dina's face, making the girl open up her mouth before she started laughing once again.

"Well, I think about joining team Ellie from time to time, but then I see stuff like this and I realize I'm good with boys." - You answered as a joke, watching the girls having the time of their lives, acting like two kids. Diego nodded, obviously thinking about your secret someone. - "I'm not telling, don't even bother asking." - You sighed, looking at the barn appearing in the distance. It was comfy - you made it comfortable throughout the years you kept coming there. There was a big fireplace, comfy couches, warm blankets, and some water and food if you'd be hungry. And, of course, an ultra-old stereo which Eugene somehow brought to live and his cassettes. When everyone was comfy enough, you stood up and clapped a few times to make the others look at you.

"Welcome to the ceremony of us giving our last respect to the man, the legend and the myth, Eugene Linden. Many of you knew him as the crackhead, which is the title he rightfully owned and of which, may I mention, he was proud. I wish to talk about my happiness regarding this man's peaceful death. I wish you to die the same way - old, happy, stoned as fuck and without pain." - Everyone was grinning the whole time you were talking. It could seem extremely rude to talk about someone who had just passed away in such a way, but everyone in the barn knew Eugene would've loved that. He would most probably be the one who'd laugh the loudest. - "And as the last farewell, I would like to play his 90s' tape, starting with the title song Macarena." - You bowed, earning small applause as you walked to the stereo, turning the music on. You chatted for a while, having Ellie reading you some particular articles about pleasing a woman from the Maxim magazines she got, having each of you rolling there in tears even before you opened the last stash Eugene left you.  

Since you were the one given the stash, you had the right to light up the first joint of the whole night. Dina had landed you the lighter she was given to light it up. With a serious look to everyone, you rose it up like glass, toasting to Eugene. - "To Eugene." - Each of you said before you sat down next to Ellie and lit the bad boy up. And it could be felt that it's one of Eugene's babies straight off the bat. It had you inhaling deeply, holding it in your lungs before you breathed out and passed it to Ellie.

For a small moment, there was silence as each of you thought about Eugene on your own. You were thinking about the time you befriended the old-timer. It was a summer day and you've seen him carrying some heavy stuff to the gates, so you asked the guards to let you out. It was just a week after you and Eve had arrived, you hadn't even known Ellie and Dina at the time. The old man was in Jackson from time to time, but it was evident he's residing somewhere else. When he saw you approaching, he was weirded out since he had never seen you in Jackson before - that was when you first realized he's stoned. The lapses before answering you were turning him in, just like his read eyes and slow reaction time. But he was a funny and sympathetic person to be around.

The first time he offered you to try some of his bad boys came shortly after Dina and Jesse started dating. Sure, you were just kids at the time, but the man wasn't the most responsible around and you were just a stupid bunch of kids who wanted to try some forbidden stuff. That time was also the first time you've ever visited the barn.

And how could you forget that you and Ellie had puked the trees standing in front of it so bad that it smelled there like vomit for weeks? Suddenly, Ellie's elbow hit your ribs and that was when you realized you had been crying for a while. Quickly, she helped you wipe the tears off before cuddling you to her chest. The world seemed to be so peaceful when you were high - so slow, without complications. Also, Ellie felt so warm when the cuddled you, played with your hair, and kissed your forehead from time to time. The songs seemed to play utterly slow, but you didn't care about that.

"I miss him too." - Ellie whispered after a while, having at least minute lapses between the words. Sure, you could be all funny around the whole dying thing, and you were sure that he'd love you to be joyful because he lived the was lived and he had done the things he has done, but you knew you'll miss him. Sure, it wasn't grief for a loved one, just the way you were grieving for Eve, but no-one had grosser jokes than Eugene. He wasn't your dude for serious conversations, but he was the one who could turn your day around. He was probably even masturbating when the stroke got him. Eugene never took a single shit seriously and the whole world could just fuck itself because Eugene wasn't backing off.

"I know, dude." - Dina answered to Ellie's thought a good few minutes later. - "Eugene was fucking dope, man. He saved my ass so many times... Especially on the patrols." - Oh, that was right. Dina was Eugene's patrol partner from time to time. It depended if the man felt to be a citizen of the settlement or not. Suddenly, with a burst of energy, Diego got on his knees looking at everyone.

"You up for a snowball fight?" - He asked seriously.

Honestly, it was one of the best nights you've ever lived through. All of you were laughing like a bunch of crackheads, which you were and all of you were soaking wet and freezing when you were coming back to Jackson, which was fairly reasonable when you had a three-hours lasting snowball fight with small stops for another joint. The only flaw about these bad boys was that the euphoria never lasted too long. It gave you about twenty minutes of feeling invincible, with some range after that, of course, and that was it. Sure, you felt tired, but when you got through this stage, you were more or less sober again. Everyone watched as you walked in a different direction than your house was - but they let you go. You were walking in the direction of the cemetery, so they assumed you're off to another chat with Eve.  

But five minutes later, you were knocking on Joel's door, hoping the man would answer. It took you about ten minutes of knocking, but the lights in the house slowly turned on as you heard the heavy, sleepy footsteps. When Joel opened up, all he could see was your freezing cheeks and nose, a big smile, and completely wet clothes. And you smelled just like Eugene. The man sighed at your grin, massaging the bridge of his nose.

"Do you realize how late it is?" - A grunt came out of lips, making you smile at the man. - "More or less. You let me in or should I fucking freeze to death?" - You asked with a giggle. Great, so you weren't only smelling like Eugene, you were also at least half the high as he always was. Joel stepped from the door with defeated, closing the door behind you.

"Straight to the shower, don't even stop here." - A yawn sounded through the kitchen when you put your jar with the last joint on the countertop. At the moment, you found Joel utterly cute - it could be heard and seen he had just got up from his bed. He had that messy hair, small eyes, and a proper grumpy face. - "Will you join me?"

"You're big enough to do it on your own." - The man dismissed you. It was his loss that he didn't want to join you - so you took a hot shower just to warm up a bit, walking out of the bathroom completely naked with a towel on your wet hair as you automatically went to dress into one of his t-shirts. Mr. Grumpy was laying on the bed, reading some book, and drinking coffee from his mug, while you had your tea ready on the other nightstand. Happily, you ran downstairs to come back with the last joint between your fingers. Joel first just glanced at you before he realized what you're holding. That grin... He knew he wouldn't like what you'll come up with.

"Are you serious?" - The man lowered his glasses and put the book down. - "You wake up at damn two in the mornin', smellin' like a weed growing room and now you're... Damn Christ, you're irresponsible at times." - Joel wasn't exactly pissed - sure, he was grumpy and not glad you woke him as early as you did, but he still tried his hardest to be nice to you. You didn't answer a single word to any of the accusations - you just walked to the bed, climbed in, and kissed the man. You knew what he was into - so you were grinning when you heard the approving grunt as your fingertips brushed his neck and shoulders.

"We have to talk. And this is a great opportunity. Especially when we lose it up a bit." - A whisper made him realized that you leaned off again - "Don't tell me you've never smoked weed before." - Joel didn't answer it off the bat, but he leaned his elbows to the bed, sighing - which was an obvious sign he had smoked pot before.

"To clear everythin' up, it was at a college party and I was twenty at the time." - The man smirked at the memory, watching you settling on his lap. Your grin at the word 'college' made him clear even more stuff up. - "I wasn't studying there, but I enjoyed myself hella lot there. Jesus, you'd love college parties." - Joel smiled, even more, leaning into the frame of his bed while making sure you follow him. When you sat down again, his palms started to draw small circles on your thighs. Sure, you were right. There was stuff both you and he had to talk about. Like him calling you baby girl. And the obvious feelings you had for him. Joel was aware of you liking him with every look you gave him. Thereš was this endless adoration - which, sure, made him flattered just as it made him worried. And losing the things up a bit was a good idea.

"You'll kill me one day, you know that, rite, baby girl?" - Joel smirked in the end, informing you that you succeeded in your persuasion. Before settling down to smoke the pot, you agreed to have some scrambled eggs, saving some for later. Then you withdrew the curtains in his room, closing the door and securing it enough for the smoke to stay in the bedroom only. You also made sure the window is open so it wouldn't smell like Eugene in Joel's bedroom.

"So, start talkin'." - Joel encouraged you, taking the joint from you. Jesus, he was too old for shit like this. He'll probably throw up after that. And that bad boy overwhelmed him for a second so much that he made a funny face, making you laugh. After a while, you gathered yourself and sat up to look him in the face.

"Let's just admit... Just hypothetically, okay? That this isn't more a thing where strings aren't attached, hm?" - You rose your eyebrow and played with the hem of his briefs. You watched Joel breathe out the smoke slowly, looking at you. Sure, it didn't exactly love what you two had going on, but there were some feelings in the air. That was undeniable. Joel grew fonder of you every time you came to see him and spend the night. Things in his house felt quiet and impersonal when you weren't there. Playing the guitar wasn't feeling the same as when he was playing it because you wanted him to. And he'd never sing to anyone just because they wanted to.

It wasn't exactly love he was feeling for you, no matter from which point of view Joel approached it. The man didn't know how you were feeling about him... But he liked you. And that was something big when it came to Joel Miller. - "I think that is somethin' rite to say. But..." - "Don't think too much about that, I know." - You sighed. There was a warm feeling inside of you which you weren't able to stop. So there were some strings attached between your two. Sure, you'd love to hear Joel say something I like you without bringing your hopes down immediately after that. But that was just the way Joel was.

"You know, it ain't the easiest for me, baby girl. I ain't a good man at all, you know? You may be thinkin' I am, but trust me, I ain't." - Oh, so weed was making Mr. Grumpy talk about his feelings. As you nodded, he passed you the joint back, watching you smoking it with grace. He sat up more straight as he searched for the right words. - "I've done some terrible things and if you'd hear them, you'd most likely get up and never come back again. I was survivin' for a damn long time. I've seen my friends end up dead. I've hurt many people. I've done stuff only the worst people do, you hear me?" - The man looked at you. All of these things were on his mind at the very moment, the weed made him re-live every moment he spoke of. Slowly, you nodded and passed him the joint back.

"I was a Firefly. Earlier. Back in Salt Lake. I was... In training when I overheard one of Marlene's conversations with someone." - You were nervous to talk about that. You knew that Tommy is a former Firefly and from what you've heard about Joel you knew that he doesn't like Fireflies at all. Yet the man was waiting for what you had to say, his eyes slowly slipping to your fingers around the hem of his briefs. - "My unit was named Spring. You know? They were probably just running out of names or what... But she told the guy that she's planning to send us to do another assassination. The attacks where they gave the squad some bombs and let them kill innocent people. And when the guy asked her if she's aware of killing all of us at the mission, she scoffed and asked him 'And?'. That was the final red flag. I knew I had to leave... So one stormy night, I sneaked out and ran. I just ran." - It most probably wasn't the right thing to say at the moment, but you felt that you had to tell him. Joel nodded and zoned out for a second before he gave you the joint again. One of his palms covered your thigh as he started to smooth it slowly.

"And what about your parents, you knew 'em?" - Joel whispered. Oh shoot, that was a killer question. Quickly, you pulled another smoke in, moving your palm on his.

"I did. Shortly, but I did know them, yeah. My mom was this nurse who took care of the people who were hurt and my dad? I don't even know what he was doing, I just remember pieces of his face." - A small smile appeared on your face as you memorized their faces, thinking about them after a long time. Ever since you met Eve, you weren't thinking of them. Because of what happened to them. Yet Joel made you visit the memories again. - "I don't really wanna talk about it." - You whispered, tears already slipping down on your face. Joel slowly nodded and got up, fetching the guitar to play you something.

"Sarah. That was my girl. She is my girl. And she listened to this big... Variety of music genres. She sometimes listened to this awful pop bands, sometimes I didn't hear anything but rock, but damn, that girl loved Elliott Smith. She got it after her handsome dad." - Joel looked at you from tuning the strings, having a wicked grin on her. You wiped your face clean again, nodding. You didn't know if it was because you were stoned as fuck, but when he started playing the melody, you lost yourself in it. You've zoned out, watching the string vibrating as he played, his fingers holding the right chords. How could he even play at that point? He should be zoned out and laughing. All you knew was that the song made you cry again just because of how beautiful it was. Joel was performing while thinking about Sarah, which could be felt through the tenderness of his words. He was in pain because of the thoughts haunting his mind, sure, but he could overcome it.

"Drink up one more time and I'll make you mine. Keep you apart, deep in my heart, separate from the rest, where I like you the best. And keep the things you forgot." - The man whispered, looking at you with a small smile, coming back for one last chorus. - "People you've been before that you don't want around anymore. That push and shove and won't bend to your will... I'll keep them still." - The last pull on the strings made you realize the song was over, but you couldn't stop crying. So Joel put the guitar away, took the joint out of your fingers to finish it, and then pulled you down to lay on his chest. You were a whining mess.

The memories you've never thought you had were popping up in your head. Your mom smiling while picking chamomile for her patients, promising you a crown from dandelions when you'll be done. Dad carrying you on his shoulders, singing some dumb kid song with you. The blood on the wall behind them, the moment when your heart stopped beating. Marlene dragging you from the place, screaming at you because you've sneaked out from your bed and saw something you shouldn't see.

Joel was quiet the whole time you were crying to his t-shirt, rubbing slow circles on your back while giving you tissue after tissue. When you stopped crying, the man sighed and looked down on you. - "Are you good, baby girl?" - Of course, you weren't good. But all you did was that you pulled him closer, kissing him tenderly. You laid there for almost half an hour, stealing kisses from each other before your eyes suddenly shut.

The following morning was the worst. The room was cold because neither of you cared enough to close the window, your head hurt like a son of a bitch, Joel was snorting and laying on you, pushing you down to the mattress. But what woke you up? Someone coming up the stairs. You panicked, jumped out of the bed and sneaked to the bathroom, closing the door silently. Jesus. You hoped you didn't leave your stuff somewhere where that someone could see them. The blood froze in your veins when you heard Dina's voice.

"Joel?" - She called out and knocked on the bedroom door. You put both your hands over your mouth, hearing Joel waking up as well. The heavy footsteps immediately went to open the door. Dina chuckled nervously, but you didn't know what that was about. - "Jesus, man, you have some cold here. Tommy sent me here, he wants to talk to you about the east perimeter and you didn't show up in the morning... So..." - She explained nervously. You almost wondered how it came that Dina didn't ask about his love life.

"Oh, Jesus. I've slept in a bit, kiddo. Thanks for wakin' me up." - Joel mumbled back, yawning in the process.

"Sure, no problem." - Dina said and you heard the wood cracking under her legs. - "I'll go tell Tommy, okay?" - She asked and then, she was off. Jesus, that was close. Slowly, you walked out of the bathroom, sticking your head our first to see if she's gone for real.

You said a pretty hasty goodbye, promising each other to hang out that evening again. You took the route B around Jackson so it wouldn't be as suspicious. That day, Ellie and you were finally cleaning up the mess in your workshop, painting the walls white again. The music was blasting through the whole neighborhood, making the old neighbor pretty pissed once again, but you couldn't care less as you both moved in the rhythm, made faces, and showed off your dancing skills... Which weren't particularly good either.

Sometime later, Dina suddenly rushed in, bringing you some lunch. She was bringing some big news - so you placed a blanket on the ground, sitting down to eat. - "So... I was at Joel's today, in the morning..." - She started, looking at both of you with expectations in her face. While Ellie just nodded regularly, you almost showed the utter terror that had risen inside of you. Ellie asked her what the fuck she was there, but Dina ignored her. - "And he had someone over. I'm sure of that."

"Why do you think so?" - You asked, grinning at her confidence.

"For starters, I don't think Joel secretly wears black panties, so why would he have them on the floor in his room? Then, there were two mugs on his nightstand and... I heard someone in the bathroom." - Dina rose her eyebrows. Both you and Ellie started to debate with the girl, but only one of you knew how deeply fucked you are.

[love-bokumono-fics]

Fresh Crops! January 16 - January 22, 2023

This week's newest fics and chapter updates for Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons on AO3!

Degausser - by SHADESofDEATHxx; WIP, 4/?, 20k

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences; Archive Warning: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings; Category: F/M Fandoms: Friends of Mineral Town Characters: Pete | Jack, Claire the Farmer, Ann the Innkeeper | Ran, Gray, Cliff, Jennifer, Popuri, Rick, Karen, Brandon, Kai, Elli | Elly, Doctor | Trent, Mary the Librarian | Marie, Mineral Town Residents Additional Tags: Redemption, Fresh Start, Loneliness, Angst, Self-Loathing, Self-Acceptance, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Drug Use, Self-Harm, Eating Disorders, Multiple Pairings Summary: Those that live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones – but that’s all Jack and Claire ever knew up until a series of half-lit cruel intentions landed them on the ferry to the desolate island of Mineral Town. After all, it was certainly easier to cast judgment unto others than it was to face the skeletons in your own closet. And surely no one would have an ill word to say about a brooding playboy and an immature party girl taking over the once-great farm that founded and funded their small town, right?

Novelization of Harvest Moon A Wonderful Life: Welcome To Celestine Farm - by MuffinsInSummer; WIP, 1/?, 2.6k

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences; Archive Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death; Category: F/M Fandoms: A Wonderful Life, Harvest Moon DS Cute, Friends of Mineral Town Relationship: Takakura/Vesta; Characters: Pony | Aya | Jill, Pete | Jack, Takakura, Gustafa, Marlin | Mash, Muffy, Vesta, Celia | Seperia, Wally | Suarii, Hugh, Lumina, Kate, Griffin | Garfan, Cody, Murrey, Carter the Archeologist, Mineral Town Residents, Flora, Sebastian, Patrick | Pasaran, Kassey the Pyrotechnician | Kesaran, Romana, Skye | Steiner Additional Tags: Domestic Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Forget-Me-Not Valley, Mineral Town, References to Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons Games, Stardew Valley References, Eventual Romance, Canonical Character Death, Future Character Death, Novelization, Video Game Mechanics, Bad Flirting, Fireworks, First Kiss, Drunken Flirting, Because A Wonderful Life Is getting a remake I just had to, endgame pairing yet to be decided, but Tak/Vesta is open for discussion, Touch-Starved Summary: Jillian has always wanted to work on the farmland her father and her 'Uncle' Takakura had tried to make a profit off of, but ultimately her fathers untimely death had lead to some unfortunate series of events. One after another, and Jillian 'Jill' Westwood had found herself in Forget-Me-Not-Valley. With her cousin Pete already making a profit off of farming crops in Mineral Town off of their grandparents farm, she wants to somehow make it like how Pete is. But can she do it with just Takakura's help and her heifer and some Tomato seeds, and that old rundown land? She'll have to wait and see what life brings, in this old sleepy valley.

Living in Color - by rockyroadster95; WIP, 10/?, 21k

Rating: Mature; Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply; Categories: F/M, Gen Fandoms: A Wonderful Life Additional Tags: Canon Compliant, Canon Universe, Light Angst, Slow Build Summary: At her father's funeral, Aya was given an offer that would take her far from her stale and directionless life to a place she hoped would give her something to live for.

Under the Name - by ModernTsunami; WIP, 11/63, 97k

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences; Archive Warning: Major Character Death; Categories: F/M, Gen Fandoms: Friends of Mineral Town Relationships: Elli/Doctor Trent | Torre, Elli | Elly & Stu | Yu, Elli | Elly & Old Ellen, Elli | Elly/Rick; Characters: Doctor | Trent, Elli | Elly, Old Ellen, Stu | Yu, Rick, Mary the Librarian | Marie Additional Tags: Character Development, Slice of Life, Slow Burn, Co-workers, Roommates, Grief/Mourning, Smoking, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Other Ships Not Mentioned in Tags, Strangers to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Medical, Implied Sexual Content, Illness, Injury Summary: When Trent accepted the offer to run a rural health clinic, he didn't realize he was taking on the part of small-town doctor and neighbor. The dual relationships he develops with the residents of Mineral Town begin to shape his ideas of who he is and who he wants to be. But growing closer to others always runs the risk of clouding one's judgment. While small-town life is nothing new to Elli, being caretaker to her younger brother and homebound grandmother is. There’s nothing she wants more than the confidence that what she’s doing for them is right, but as she strives to fulfill her growing obligations to her family, she finds it harder to hold on to what she wants for herself. Together they work in the clinic and learn the difference between what you do and who you are.

Our Story of Seasons: Pete x Claire - by Ry2_Sinheart; WIP, 16/20, 24k

Rating: General Audiences; Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply; Categories: F/M, Gen Fandoms: Friends of Mineral Town Relationships: Claire the Farmer & Pete | Jack, Claire the Farmer/Pete | Jack; Characters: Pete | Jack, Claire, Thomas, Zack, Dog, Harvest Goddess, Ann the Innkeeper | Ran, Karen Additional Tags: Romance, Slow Burn, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Romance, Fluff, Domestic Fluff, Slice of Life, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings, Developing Relationship, Strangers to Lovers, Friends to Lovers, Childhood Friends, Childhood Memories, Video Game Mechanics, Game Logic, Male-Female Friendship, Eventual Fluff, Eventual Relationships, Slow Romance, Digital Art Summary: A story that revolves around the protagonists of Mineral Town. After a series of unfortunate events, Pete and Claire agree they'll have to raise the farm together, whether they like it or not. Through their farming-ventures, they realize that maybe farming together… isn't so bad.

The Heart of a Westown Cowboy - by Mya_Stone; WIP, 5/?, 7.6k

Rating: General Audiences; Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply; Category: F/M Fandom: Trio of Towns Relationship: Female Farmer/Wayne; Characters: Frank, Ford, Carrie, Brad, Megan, Hector, Colin, Daryl | Darius, Marlena, Lynn Additional Tags: Slow Burn, Romance, Romantic Friendship, Guy Falls First, I Wrote This For Me But I'll Share It With You Summary: Wayne is Westown's perpetually single lady's man. He'd like to settle down but he just hasn't found The One and he's fairly certain he's met everyone in town. Then Melody moves in, taking a plot of her uncle's ranch to fulfill her dream of being a rancher. A college-educated business woman, Melody doesn't accept failure - especially not her own. As Wayne falls hard for her, she struggles to return his affections until she has what she came for - and when she continually comes up short at the cow competitions, she begins to wonder if Westown is really the place for her.

[just-a-spark]

The Before, and The After Masterlist

A Knives Out Story

*I’m sorry can I geek out for a second- this GIF above is amazing and I’m obsessed- sorry, please continue with your regularly scheduled reading*

Warnings: Language, Sexual Content (18+ to be safe)

Summery: A wealthy classmate of Meg’s becomes close to the family, a little too close to the playboy grandson of Harlan Thrombey. The events leading up to, and following, Harlan Thrombey’s death.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Part 10

Part 11

Part 12

Part 13

Part 14

Part 15

If you enjoyed this story- please check out my Steve Rogers/OC series on FanFiction.net!

From Erskine to Ellis

96 Weeks

From Ellis to Rogers

[anadvanceddegreeinquiet]

What, Me Pandemic? A Boho Crowd Stakes Its Claim (and Claims Its $48 Steaks)

Fricasse Dubois, 21, lamented the decision to pull her latest concrete poem from The Codswalloped Pisspot as she passed one of the whimsical “Maine-ducks-in-flight” mailboxes that serve as newspaper bins for the red-hot downtown rag. But her friend and intern, Banshee Fitzgerald, 33, had made a good point: The Pisspot had been flirting with questionable taste for months now. 

First there was the ironic opera libretto by Steve Bannon, which cast Leo “KIDS” Fitzpatrick as a Muslim refugee in a Copenhagen no-go zone. Then there was the edgy faux-memoir from Terry Richardson, modeled on O.J. Simpson’s unpublished “If I Did It,” and accompanied by a portfolio of Juergen Teller ass-Xeroxes.

But now, the Pisspot hype was growing, and Dubois realized that she might miss the proverbial boat. Interest in the nascent publishing venture was at fever pitch; a SPAC had been formed by laid-off Gagosian and Perrotin directors eager to stage a hostile takeover of the irregularly published ‘zine. 

And a dash of infamy certainly helped—the paper’s co-editor, Stizzy Fugger, had just launched a Tumblr in which she tallied the number of people she had inadvertently infected with Covid-19, updated in real-time (12,617 at press time, if you’re keeping score, more than the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally).

Anyone who has witnessed a “Pisspot drop” in the Dimes Square neighborhood of Manhattan knows to expect pandemonium. But nothing could have prepared this reporter for the foamy-mouthed jubilee and ecstatic violence of the occasion. 

It was 11am on a Tuesday, and the editors appeared at the corner of Seward Park, bearing several cardboard boxes of the paper. They were trailed by the usual suspects: Pimple-necked sadcore rappers, sex-positive Zoom therapists, former Artforum critic’s pickers who now run content for Chipotle, and middle-aged men who really shouldn’t skateboard.  

It’s a truism that an issue of Pisspot isn’t really read so much as it is imbibed, absorbed via the osmosis of social media’s orgiastic frenzy. In fact, the Times had a great deal of difficulty locating anyone who had physically held a copy of the paper in their smooth, unlined hands; many preferred to experience it as a series of fuzzy, thumbnail-sized images posted ironically on MySpace. 

“People used to say they read Playboy for the ads,” said Kit Murano, a fish-eyed, forty-something member of a downtown-based Adderall (™) street team. “Pisspot doesn’t have ads. And no one who knows anything would be caught, like, just sitting there and flipping through the thing. It’s an attitude. It’s an essence. It’s a lifestyle.”

Okay, sure—but what about the actual content actually published in each issue? Imagine an early iteration of Vice cross-pollinated with Tiger Beat, and then add a splash of sexual-harassment-era Paris Review. It’s a bit silly, and a bit loose. Bret Easton Ellis contributes a crossword puzzle in which every answer is just another reason why millennials suck. A party report—‘Reamed & Furred’—diligently transcribes the coke-addled bon mots of the same group of six people all eating at the same restaurant every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evening. 

If there’s an ethos gluing all of this together, it’s a passing-of-the-torch from an older bohemian guard to a younger demographic, with their laissez-faire attitudes about sex, drugs, and global pandemics. “It’s, like, we can all still party together, and age isn’t really ‘a thing’,” explains Murano, leaning out the window of a Mini Cooper wrapped in shiny SunGen Pharma adverts.

The entire scene revolves around the lopsided triangle known as “Dimes Square,” which borrows its moniker from the culinary hotspot Dimes. (The name derives from Cockney rhyming slang for ‘elongated pinky nail.’). Every New York story is also, of course, a story about real estate. In this case, that means the Connecticut country houses that this cohort has Airbnbed out while remaining to weather the storm in lower Manhattan. 

Parts of this scene are “white, but probably ambisexual-adjacent; they’re members of the creative class, but they possess enough self-hatred to seem authentic,” says Dash Johnson, a Dimes Square hanger-on who many suspect of running the Steak-Umms social media accounts. “Most of them used to work for galleries, or websites, or Garage magazine, but when those jobs dried up, they woke up one morning and said: Fuck it. Let’s stop pretending. Let’s just tweet.”

One essential element of any good scene is a gossip column to keep track—and to keep score. ArtWet’s “Wet Ass Pigment” plays that role for the Dimes Square cognoscenti. It’s a bleeding-edge social diary written by an anonymous, Gossip Girl-style correspondent who communicates solely via Signal, using a vocal transformer. 

“I was sick of trying to break into this world,” they said. “I was sick of meeting Anthony Haden-Guest at a dinner, for the 387th time, and having him introduce himself all over again, like we hadn’t both thrown up in the same toilet less than three days before. Fuck gatekeepers. I built my own gate, and then I started keeping it.” 

It was a Wet Ass Pigment column, in fact, which broke the season’s buzziest news: semi-disgraced first son Hunter Biden had bought an octoplex apartment directly above Dimes, where he’ll be staying as he prepares for a September solo exhibition that will open concurrently across Andrew Kreps, 56 Henry, Shoot the Lobster, and a pop-up space for Recess CBD seltzer. Unlike the gentle, “meditative” paintings that Biden had been making in recovery, the new work is brash and rudely vulgar—the product of an unexpected friendship Biden had struck up with Bjarne Melgaard and Jordan Wolfson. 

Meanwhile, the group’s literary face remains 29-year-old Katarina Klaus, whose razor-sharp prose skewers her surroundings with the acidic wit of a young Evelyn Waugh. “I’ll be honest, I fucking hate writing,” Klaus admitted, blowing her nose into a Telfar bag. “I’m both super motivated and super lazy. Sometimes I’ll just copy-paste random chunks of Speedboat into a column and no one will even notice.”

So what’s next for this ragtag crew? “Dimes Square will probably be over by the time this fucking article comes out,” Klaus laments. “You’re going to have, like, some TikTok influencer house on the corner of Canal and Essex, and all the coke will have fentanyl in it again because idiots from New Jersey just have no nose. You know what? I’m regretting this already. This is all off the record.”

Meanwhile, Klaus is already rethinking her involvement in Pisspot. With a current print run of 250 copies, the instantly iconic newspaper suddenly seems a bit too exposed. She’s in discussions with a new, unnamed venture that would distribute articles and essays in a serialized format, via fortunes randomly inserted into cookies at various Chinese restaurants within a three-block radius of the Square. “It’s all about ephemerality,” she says, sucking on a DMT vape she brought back from Mexico City. “It’s all about staying relevant.”

This article was lovingly rewritten from the original by Scott Indrisek.

CORRECTION: The above edition of this story mistakenly cites Kit Murano’s age as “forty-something,” based on our reporter’s visual guesstimation. She is actually 19.   

CORRECTION: ‘Dimes’ is in fact Cockney prison rhyming slang for the expression, “a bent knob is straight twice a day.”

CORRECTION: An earlier online version of this story mistakenly identified The Codswalloped Pisspot as The Duct-Taped Shitberg.

CORRECTION: An earlier, subscribers-only post of this story mislabeled the gossip blog Wet Ass Pigment as being a Spotify podcast called Wank ‘n Pose.

CORRECTION: Jordan Wolfson died in 2014. 

CORRECTION: An earlier Google Doc of this story referenced a non-existent ‘hardcore maternity diary’ by Chloe Sevigny, which most likely did not appear in issue 4 of the Codtaped Shitpot. 

CORRECTION: A version of this story that was sent to hapless print subscribers in Texas and Connecticut wrongly identified the geographic boundaries of “Dimes Square” as being East 45th Street, Central Park West, Freeman’s Alley, and Bedford Avenue.

[valkyrieofsmut]

Bucky Barnes Masterlist

@valkyrieofsmut‘s Bucky Barnes Masterlist!

My Masterlist is one of the first things I posted, and now it’s too far away to update! So here’s some more Bucky!          More Smut

Series

Never got over you (Complete!)

(Y/n), a physical trainer at the gym she worked so hard to lose her extra weight at after high school, and Bucky, a veteran sent home after losing his arm, are put in an uncomfortable situation; they are now housemates. Problem 1: they don’t like each other. Problem 2: the sexual tension between them keeps building. Problem 3: things keep pushing them together when they try to stay apart. Problem 4: they keep fantasizing about each other in ways that are definitely not helping the sexual tension. Problem 5: they’re not sure what it is, yet, but it’s sure to be as bad as the others.

Love, recorded (Posting in progress)

Ellie and Bucky have been friends for forever, they hang out together, work through the same temp agency, and live together, too! Everything is great, until they can’t pay rent. Now they’ll be homeless together, too. Bucky knows it’s not fair to ask Ellie to become a cam girl, performing erotic acts for money, to pay the rent, but they may have no other option. Hopefully they’ll be able to make rent before feelings for their best friend tears their relationship apart.  

I think I want to marry you (In processing)

CollegeAU. Bucky and (Y/n) get a little close while studying for finals. Tests are over and they celebrate the tried and true college way; alcohol. But in Las Vegas you can get into all sorts of trouble while drunk. After graduation, Bucky, who has spent all of college in ROTC, is shipped out, and (Y/n) finds a man she wants to marry. Problem? She finds out she’s already married, and Bucky doesn’t want to sign any divorce papers. He doesn’t like her fiance, either.

Falling for a surrogate (In processing)

ModernAU. Nat and Clint want to have a baby, but she can’t conceive due to a past injury. A friend of Nat’s makes a living as a surrogate for couples who can’t conceive and offers to help in exchange for a place to stay. Bucky meets her and finds that her growing body is something he wants, and not just for the short term.

One shots

Weak

Bucky always has to keep tight control over himself, staying strong when the hardiest man would give up, but (Y/n) broke through his walls without his permission. Will he be able to handle it if he’s not in control?

The girl from the cafe 100 follower celebration

After living through all he has, Bucky is a bit shy. Steve wants to help him out of his shell and decides to use his crush on the girl in the cafe of the tower as the way, and a party Tony is throwing as the place.

Best failed prank ever @gaybybirth's 10k celebration

(Y/n) has had a crush on Bucky since he came to the tower a while ago, but he’s a cocky playboy who likes to tease her. She has had enough and decides to get back at him with an attempted prank that goes wonderfully wrong.

How I see you   @omnomsauruswrites 200 followers celebration

(Y/n) is feeling really down, and after a terrible date, Bucky wants to make her feel better, but can he convince her that he thinks she’s beautiful? You can bet he’s about to do his damnedest!

Count ‘em for me   @propertyofpoeandbucky’s mystery writing challenge

(Y/n) and Bucky have unresolved sexual tension. She gets mouthy on a mission and Bucky decides to teach her a lesson, but she never dreamed she’d like the punishment this much, and neither did he… But he knows how to handle it. Counting to ten should be easy, but with Bucky overseeing you, it’s one of the hardest things ever… One of them.

The truth about the dare  Tagged by @tephi101 in truth or dare game

Friday night- game night! Tony is an ass, everyone knows that, but when Bucky practically runs away from a dare for (Y/n) to give him a lapdance, -for the second time!- she starts thinking it has something to do with her, but Bucky wants her to believe that that’s not the case, so (Y/n) gives him a dare to prove it.

Salvator  (The only not smut so far)

Bucky finds a half dead kitten on a mission an brings it home, Dawn helping him nurse it back to life and keep it hidden from Tony. Over time, he has started coming out of his shell, and realizes some feelings that he didn’t know he had. So, did he save the kitten, or did the kitten save him?

Bucky’s cookies @devilbat‘s Christmas challenge

Bucky misses some things about his past; his mother’s gingerbread cookies are one of the things that always had happy memories associated with them. He can’t recreate them, but it does lead to an opportunity to create more happy memories.

Be good for Sarge, Kitten 

Bucky wants to give (Y/n) a wonderful night. This is really… mostly something I wrote for me because it’s a so called “special day”.

Let me keep you warm (working title, in processing)

Ok, so this was just messages that I read, and was inspired... In processing...

More Smut