#from there i contribute to residuals and i know that everyone saying 'it's just me' adds up but

[gayofthefae]

I stand with Palestine but I also can't exactly afford to be picky with good representation. I'm sorry. Next question.

[vegasandhishedgehog]

I didn't want to derail this post by @bird-inacage because it was so focused on SandRay and how going into episode 5 would treat them, but reading it struck me with an important realization.

Of our main couples, how much do they really enjoy each other's company?

Starting with Top and Mew, their dynamic is really interesting, because they are desperately trying to enjoy their time together. And there are moments where it's literally visible! They are having a good time! But it quickly gets ruined by the residuals of Top's bad habits and/or Mew's insistence to keep control of a relationship he took as a personal challenge. While Top is enjoying playing at domesticity, he has to either be continuously blue-balled or lie to get it, so any time he spends with Mew is dampened by the fact that he can't be himself (not that he's a great person but it bears to be acknowledged). Mew is so hopelessly trying to convince himself that he's not out of his depth that it's taking all his energy just to prove it, and he is likely mistaking any exhaustion from it as just being new to things. They don't actually enjoy each other's company, though.

Boston and Nick? Golden if they're having sex. The minute they're done, their minds are immediately on the continuous conflict between them: how do they want to keep their status. I think part of what contributes to Nick wanting something more committed is that he has a bit more stability both externally and internally (surprising, I know). He has his tech job, he has at least one friendship that's genuinely supportive (Sand), and he owns being a nasty bitch. Besides his cuckoo-for-cock thing with Boston, he has interests, skills, and a life outside of him and possibly views Boston as another one of those stable facets he always wants to be able to turn to.

But Boston isn't on the same page. When he isn't manwhore-manipulate-manslaughter being a student, Boston kind of doesn't have anything else going for him except his photography hobby which isn't being put to good use. He likely is part of the friend group because at least they're a queer friend group in the same field of study, and everyone else might as well be in and out of a revolving door. Nick is an anomaly for him, but he wouldn't know what to do with something stable let alone be valued for anything outside of sex so Boston dangles boyfriend status like a carrot.

So do they enjoy each other's company? Yes and no. And no and yes. They have a lot of things to work out between each other and unfortunately for both of them things will blow up and cause catastrophic damage. But they couldn't be made for anyone else, IMHO.

Finally we have Sand and Ray. Their relationship has a couple rocky moments in the beginning, but all things considered, it's literally founded on the fact that they like spending time together. Ray says it to Sand multiple times: "You're fun to talk to." He begs him to spend time with him, he offers payment for god's sake. And Sand obliges because he can't help himself. He also likes hanging out with Ray. They have found things outside of any romantic or sexual context that they both enjoy that become the foundation of all their future activities together: a good drink and good music. And the more time they spend together the stronger that will become, even as the strained relationships they have with everyone else threatens to fuck it up.

[callmearcturus]

the funny thing about the epilogues is how they really did decimate the fandom in a specific way

because when the epilogues happened, a metric fuckton of the people who were into whomstve and making stuff and contributing constructively peaced out and left

which from outside observation seemed to tip the scales really fucking badly. like, WP was really up front about how tremendously toxic the fandom became, and while I have zero respect for WP and Hussie given all their horsefuckery, I can absolutely see how the entire fandom turned.

like, when I was into whomstve, pre-Epilogues, things were not perfect. there were antis and harassers and awful people and artists getting driven out of the fandom bc purity bullshit. but there was still more positive, creative fandom force. I was one of many people who were making stuff, encouraging others to make stuff, and doing our best to make that space fun and good.

but with the exodus caused by the epilogues, it seems the scales really really tipped. the majority people who remained were, uh. not the best people. they were the discoursers and harassers and the poison in the fandom well, and without alternative voices there, all that poison just became more concentrated. and any of the Reasonable Fucking People who remained often peaced out too because of that rise in ambient toxicity.

this was obviously exacerbated by people like Kate who were the loudest, most poisonous people of all. so when WP says "we literally didn't include credits on Hiveswap 2 bc we're afraid of harassment" I believe it. but also: my brothers in karkat, that's literally the fandom you fostered and encouraged.

because there's some folks who enjoyed the epilogues or didn't mind them, but we Know there are Other Folks who stuck around in the fandom post-epilogues because they are..... sort of self-selecting. tell me, what kind of people do you expect to stick around for that wad of mean-spirited heinous spit in the face? the kind of people who are thrilled to be regularly handed more ammunition to use against other people?

yeah.

it took, honestly, waiting for the residual waves of the epilogue's impacts to finally give out before we could have what I feel like we have now. and it's never going to be The "Good" Old Days again, but it's something, and I feel like at least in my corner of the fandom, everyone is older and wiser

and way quicker on the block button. which, thank god.

my actual point here is: fandom cannot just be Discourse. if there is not a significant creative energy in the fandom, it will turn into a circlejerk of hate.

[blindbeta]

Trope Discussion: The Blind Prophet / Blind Seer

This covers blind seers, prophets, clairvoyant characters, etc. Anyone who can see or predict the future, usually through seeing visions. This trope is extremely common. It also has roots in classical mythologies, religion, and literature. It is not necessarily bad on its own, but the way it is used in fiction and it’s popularity with non-blind writers makes it an uncomfortable trope for me much of the time.

I understand that not everyone will agree with me, but I think some of my suggestions can be helpful because this post offers potential ways to make this trope better for those who wish to use it.

I neglected to include it in my post about Things I Want to See More Of / Less Of in Blind Characters, but it is still something I want to discuss. I thought it warranted its own post. To get an idea of my thoughts on this trope, I don’t think it is so much harmful on its own, such as the cure trope, but rather I feel it is over-used and used in ways that contribute to ideas I find harmful. In the case of this trope, the ideas I find harmful refers mainly to the idea that blind characters need something extra or special that is designed to make up for their blindness.

The blind prophet or blind seer is something people seem to assign to their blind characters because it feels right. I would like writers to consider why this is, ways to avoid problems associated with it, and ways to be more intentional with how they design blind characters in the future. To clarify, I’m not saying you should never write a blind character who can see or predict the future. I’m not even saying this is best left up to blind writers. I’m saying I want writers to be aware and have more intent when they use this trope. Hopefully this post can help people do that.

I often receive asks or messages about blind characters who can see the future. A few common characteristics include:

1. this blind prophet is the only blind character

2. this blind character is the only person in the story who can see the future

3. this blind prophet is always totally blind - I have only received one message in which the blind prophet in question had some vision in one eye

4. seeing the future is portrayed as making up for or otherwise replacing the character’s lack of vision (again, the trope is almost always about a totally blind character)

So, in other words, this trope can be used for writers to make up for blindness, whether that means actually giving the character sight through their visions or making up for it emotionally. For example: “This character is blind, which is sad, but that’s okay because they can see even more than we can! They’re special!”

Let’s break it down.

Discussion: 1. this blind prophet is the only blind character

Why is this a problem? First, I think we are well beyond having only one blind character in our stories. Sometimes having one blind character feels as if the writer believes having more than one would be unrealistic. Sometimes it also feels frustrating to explain over and over that affirming stereotypes can often be avoided by simply having several blind characters. Unfortunately it often feels like a struggle to get writers to consider it. This means the only example of a blind person in the story is one who can see the future, which means they affirm this trope or stereotype for the casual reader.

Second, having the prophet be the only blind character tells readers that blind characters cannot exist without something to make up for their blindness. They can’t even exist in a story without this.

Discussion: 2. this blind character is the only person in the story who can see the future

Why is this a problem? This one is similar to the first one. We have the token blind character who is the only one who needs sensory based powers. Because, remember, the blind character needs to make up for something, apparently.

Why does the blind person always have to be the prophet? Why can’t they be the strong one or the one with teleportation? Why can’t they be, I don’t know, the person with power of attraction or display proficiency with a weapon?

Why do they always have sense based powers? Why not another power? At least a character like Toph is a powerful bender. She can do plenty of things aside from see, plus her adaptation was derived from everyday use of a power she already had rather than a power she was given for the purpose of seeing.

It gets a little disappointing when a blind person’s power is just the ability to — I guess — see? More on that in section 4.

Discussion: 3. this blind prophet is always totally blind - I have only received 2 story ideas in which the blind prophet in question had some vision

Why is this a problem? I’ll try to explain this part as best I can.

There is nothing wrong with having a totally blind character. That is not what I’m getting at here. My issue resides in the idea of seeing the future making up for blindness, and this means, the character usually needs to be totally blind.

I think this is a manifestation of the myth that all or most blind people have no vision at all. This is not true. In fact, the majority of us have some remaining vision. I asked my totally blind friend who said she had only met one other person who was like her.

I think this is also a manifestation of the idea that blindness needs to be made up for. With a special sight power and not with something like flight or technology-based powers. Writers who are consciously or unconsciously accepting this idea need to have a totally blind character. Because if the character has some remaining sight, what needs to be made up for?

Discussion: 4. seeing the future is portrayed as making up for or otherwise replacing the character’s lack of vision (again, the trope is almost always about a totally blind character)

Why is this a problem? I want to stress that these are two separate things. Both problems, but different ones that have roots in ableism.

When I say ‘making up for’, I refer to a blind character being given visions to make up for their lack of actual vision. As I mentioned before, this character, almost always totally blind, needs something to make up for blindness in the narrative. These visions can be brief ideas of the future or actual flashes of light or color. Either way, this character is being given a special kind of “sight” which makes up for their blindness. This can be a way for a sighted audience to feel better, or for the writer to feel as if they have made up for the character’s blindness. This is mostly emotional or mental. The character doesn’t need to actually see anything in order to fulfill this part of the trope.

The second part is about how sometimes the blind prophet can literally replace their blindness with their future visions. For example, they don’t need a cane while using stairs because they can predict when each step is. Or they might not be able to see people’s faces in visions. This erases their blindness. And in this case, why write a blind character at all?

On that note, discussion 3 also comes into play. If you want your character to be totally blind while failing to write them as totally blind, you shouldn’t be writing a totally blind character. In this instance, you probably shouldn’t be writing any blind characters, period, but I do think you would be better off writing a character with some vision instead.

Additionally, back in discussion 2, I said this: [quote] “It gets a little disappointing when a blind person’s power is just the ability to — I guess — see? More on that in section 4.” [End quote]. I wanted to add that having powers that just make up for a lack of sight is boring. I’m bored by it. Does it mean it can never be made interesting? Of course it can be interesting. However, that would require more work than some writers are putting in when this trope is used.

How to Avoid Some Problems

Problem 1: this blind prophet is the only blind character

To avoid: add more blind characters, specifically ones who cannot predict the future.

I generally advise adding at least 1 extra blind character, but for big tropes like this my happy area is 2 to 3 extra. You should have at least 2 to 3 blind characters in total to avoid both tokenism and this problem specifically. This means, if you have 1 blind character who can see the future, you should have at least 2 who cannot. This is the minimum.

The point is to expose readers to characters who do not follow the tropes they are probably used to and may even think are representative of blind people in general.

Problem 2: this blind character is the only person in the story who can see the future

To avoid: Set out to have characters who can see the future and who are specifically not blind. Also, have characters who are blind who cannot see the future.

I think, if you want a bunch of prophets in your story, this is a good way to go. You could also simply not have any blind prophets, but it depends on the story you are telling and if you have a bunch of prophet characters, you might wish to include a blind character among them.

For an ask relevant to this point, go here.

Problem 3: this blind prophet is always totally blind - I have only received 2 story ideas in which the blind prophet in question had some vision

To avoid: Create characters who are prophets with residual sight.

This problem is very much connected to problem 4, but I wanted to mention it just in case. It is not as much of an issue on it’s own.

Problem 4: seeing the future is portrayed as making up for or otherwise replacing the character’s lack of vision (again, the trope is almost always about a totally blind character)

To avoid: Don’t erase the character’s blindness with visions. Don’t give them visions as a way of making up for not being able to see at all / well. Don’t connect their powers to their blindness. The idea of [quote] “My character can’t see so what if they could - gasp - see in an extra special way” [end quote] is not that creative. Also see problem 3.

Additional thoughts:

Consider giving blind characters powers that don’t involve sight, at least not in such a direct way. Whether you have a blind prophet character or not. Perhaps another alternative could be giving them several powers.

I would like blind characters to have more unique powers, because I see this trope often. It would be fun to see something different or for this trope to be subverted somehow.

Again, I want more awareness and more intent from writers. Not necessarily complete avoidance of this trope. Would I like to come across it less? Yes. But there is still hope for it.

I hope this helps.

-BlindBeta

I also offer sensitivity readings. See my pinned post for more information.

Edit: @stealthetrees Yes I think it would still apply. Think of this type of character as also being totally blind.

[mysteryhackin]

Oh man, AUs are such a total blast! Everyone’s work for this week has blown me away! Please enjoy my contribution to Forduary Week 3: AUs/Hands. Also reproduced below if you want:

After thirty years, Ford is finally able to bring his long lost twin brother Stanley safely back from the multiverse. But this reunion is never a happy one.

The portal crackled with residual energy as it wound down, the only sound in the cavernous basement. A few moments ago it had been so loud that they had to yell at each other in order to be heard, but the sudden silence after the portal had completed its job just added to the tension of the room.

Four pairs of eyes wordlessly watched the man silhouetted against the bright circle of light at the top of the inverted triangle that formed the portal, unable to make out any defining features due to the backlighting. The man stood in the circle, barely moving his head but clearly taking in his surroundings with practiced motions.

“What’s the word, Sixer?” the man’s gravelly voice echoed across the basement, the casual tone jarring compared to the tense situation.

Ford turned to the three people behind him. “Stay back,” he said quietly but firmly. “I’ll let you know when it’s safe.”

“Looks like you’ve installed stairs-” the man continued conversationally as he sauntered down them. “Would’ve been handy thirty years ago, right?” As he moved away from the glowing portal, he was becoming easier to see. He was wearing an outfit straight out of one of those corny dystopian movies Soos would often make Ford watch, but somehow the overall effect made the man seem more dangerous than silly.

And of course, except for a few scars, his face was the mirror image of Ford’s.

“Welcome home, Stanley,” Ford said, trying to hold back tears as the phrase he had wanted to say for so many decades finally rolled off his tongue.

“Yeah,” the man said, and in a flash pulled out a gun and pointed it straight at Ford.

“Soos, get the kids out of here,” Ford said immediately in a low voice, not taking his eyes away from the gun pointed at him.

“We’re not leaving you, Grunkle Ford!” Dipper’s shout echoed in the cavern.

“You brought kids to join your little cult? That’s low, Stanford,” The man smiled bitterly. “’Course, I shouldn’t be surprised- you people are all sick-”

“Stanley,” Ford tried to keep his voice calm, his hands up in a placating manner. “It’s me. It’s your brother.”

Stanley’s laugh had an edge to it, but the hand holding the gun didn’t waver. “Yeah, I know it’s you. Everyone thought I was you. They all said you were working for him. I didn’t want to believe it. I spent years not believing it, trying to clear your name, trying to get rid of him. And then she said I was right, but now-”

Ford tried to quell the growing panic that threatened to take over. He had expected this reunion to be full of gratitude and forgiveness- he had been practicing his apology speech for weeks now, but here he was, on the wrong end of a gun as his brother angrily rambled at him. “Stanley, what are you talking about? I’m not working for anyone-”

“Bill. Cipher.” Stanley said coolly.

Ford’s jaw dropped. “How do you know about-”

“Grunkle Ford would never work for Bill Cipher!” Mabel interrupted, and Ford suddenly felt small hands grab one of his own as Mabel appeared beside him, a defiant look on her face.

“Not anymore anyway!” Dipper grabbed Ford’s other hand, his expression matching his sister’s.

Ford smiled grimly despite the situation, and felt a little proud that his great nephew was such a stickler for facts. He squeezed the hands of his niblings in gratitude for their support.

“Sorry Dr. Pines,” Ford could hear Soos panting behind him but didn’t turn around, still keeping his gaze on his brother. “They’re- they’re kind of slippery.”

“That’s right!” Mabel answered proudly. “Princess Love-icorn’s Shimmer and Sparkle Lotion never actually absorbs into your skin!”

To Ford’s surprise, Stanley let out a huge belly laugh, sounding exactly like Ford had remembered from high school. “I like this kid!” he said. “She’s weird!” he moved his gaze to Dipper. “And what’s this guy’s deal? He seems a little… sweaty.”

“What’s it to you?” Dipper asked rebelliously. Ford’s eyebrows shot up, and he moved to put Dipper behind him.

But Stanley smiled, impressed, and kept the gun pointed squarely at Ford. “And he’s got moxie. How’d you get these kids to join you? Kidnap them from their parents?”

“They’re our great niece and nephew, Stanley,” Ford answered, still working on keeping his voice level. “Shermie’s grandkids. Twins. Like us.”

At this, Stanley’s gaze faltered, and he slowly put down the gun, although he kept it in his hand. “Shermie’s grandkids?” he asked in a faraway voice. “I…I missed…” the sadness appearing on his face suddenly clouded over with anger, although he didn’t bring the gun up again. “Thirty years, Stanford.” He growled. “All I wanted was to get right with my family, and instead my evil mad scientist brother pushes me through an interdimensional portal as a sacrifice to a dream demon-”

“No, Stanley, it was an accident!” Ford said, horrified. “I would never- Bill Cipher tricked me, that’s why I had you come down here, but I was so sleep deprived I couldn’t think straight, and we got into that fight-” he stopped, knowing if he continued he would break down in tears. He took a few deep breaths to regain his composure. “I’m sorry, Stanley. I never wanted this to happen to you. To anybody. But I’ve done everything I can to get you back, and now you’re-”

“Yeah, you conveniently pull me back home after thirty years, right at the exact moment I’m about to end Bill Cipher for good!” Stan said, his anger boiling over. “Tell me, Sixer, if you were so eager to get me back, why did it take so long?” he gestured around him. “Finally a way to get revenge on me for your busted science project, is that it?”

Ford felt as if he had been punched in the gut. “My science- Stanley, surely you can’t think I would-”

“Or have you always hated me? Always thinking I’m holding you back?” his bitter chuckle returned. “That I’m, that I’m the-” he held up his hands in finger quotes, one hand still holding the gun, “‘dumb twin’ just keepin' you from reaching your full potential? And now, oh look, we have Stanford Pines, who’d rather make a deal with a literal demon and forget his twin brother to the multiverse for thirty years-”

“I thought you were dead!” Ford’s strangled cry rang out in the basement, creating a silence so harsh it almost hurt his ears. This couldn’t be happening. All of the hope he had received this past month- when Dipper discovered Ford’s writings that he thought were long destroyed by Bill, meaning he was able to fix the portal, or when Mabel realized the scanner searching for Stanley didn’t work the way it was supposed to, or when the retooled scanner locked on to his brother, showing that he was actually alive… all of that hope was now dashed.

But what did he think was going to happen? That his brother, who he had let down when they were seventeen by not standing up for him, his brother who he accidentally sent wandering through the multiverse for thirty years, would actually be happy to see him? That he wouldn’t be jaded and bitter, and hate Ford as much as Ford hated himself? That there would be a tearful reunion, full of hugs and stories and gratitude? Of reconciliation and forgiveness? Of course not. It was a fool’s hope. The past forty years couldn’t be undone, and it was all Ford’s fault.

“I thought you were dead,” he said again, this time in a whisper, and he suddenly felt as if all of the energy was sucked out of him. He staggered a little, but Mabel, Dipper, and Soos prevented him from falling over. “I’m sorry.” He looked right into Stanley’s eyes, hoping his brother could see his sincerity.

Stanley stared at him, and nobody moved, waiting to see what he’d do next.

Finally he took a deep breath. “Fine,” he said gruffly. “Prove it. Send me back.”

“Send you…” Ford’s mind was whirling from the gamut of emotions he had been through. “No…I… you just got back, you’re safe-”

“Prove you’re not working for Bill Cipher and send me back so I can kill ‘im.” Stanley said. “Or did you just want to get me back to make yourself feel better?”

“How do we know you’re not working for Bill, and just want the portal to work to get him here?” Dipper asked suddenly.

Stanley once more laughed. “Good question kid. All I can say is I ain’t working for Bill, and I wanna make it so no one else works for ‘im… or is tricked-” Ford bristled at Stanley’s tone. “ever again.”

“It is a very pertinent question, Dipper,” Ford said, risking a proud glance at his great nephew. “But what Stanley doesn’t know is that I made it so only someone with his exact DNA signature can get through- even if we were to once more open the portal, there is no way that anyone but Stanley could use it.”

“Pretty smart there, Poindexter,” Stanley smirked, “So now that you know it’s safe, howza bout getting rid of me again? It’s what we both want.”

Ford was incredibly angry by now. And why shouldn’t he be? After all he did to bring Stanley back, and now Stanley was just throwing it back in Ford’s face… as if all of the hard work and sleepless nights to get his brother home safely was worth nothing. “Fine. I’ll send you back.” He said icily. “It’s going to take a few days to get the fuel source and-”

“Great,” Stan finally holstered his gun and seemed to relax. “I can wait a few days. Get to see the scenery, get to know the kids-”

“You stay away from them,” Ford said tightly. “They’re family- something that clearly means nothing to you.” He heard Mabel gasp, but didn’t care.

“Fine, whatever,” Stan waved his hand as if waving Ford away. He walked past them towards the door leading to the elevator, then turned around. “You, Gumdrop,” he addressed Soos. “Do they still make Pitt Cola?”

“You bet they do!” Soos said happily, seemingly just happy to grab onto something he was familiar with.

“Super. You wanna get me one? And get me outta this basement?”

“Go ahead, Soos,” Ford responded to his lab assistant’s questioning look. Soos scurried over to Stanley and began asking him questions about life on the other side of the portal.

“Can we go with him, Great Uncle Ford?” Mabel asked.

“No way Mabel, he’s dangerous,” Dipper responded before Ford could say anything.

“He’s just hurting!” Mabel protested, then turned with her big eyes looking up at her great uncle for confirmation. “Grunkle Ford?”

“Dipper’s right.” Ford said, and put a hand on his forehead, letting it fall down his face as if wiping his mind clear. “I’m sorry for getting you kids mixed up in this. Stay away from him for the few days he’s here, then we’ll send him back.” The elevator pinged, and Ford watched Stanley and Soos disappear.

The man who went through the portal thirty years ago and the man who came back through it just now were clearly not the same person. Ford had lived for thirty years with the guilt that his brother was gone forever and that it was all his fault…

And he was right.

[ava-achlys]

The Boyz NSFW Scenarios

Lee Juyeon - Breaking Dawn

Frenemies! Juyeon x fem! reader

Warnings: hate-fucking, degradation, pegging, sex toys, enemies(?) with benefits, sub!Juyeon, mild dubious consent

"Breaking Dawn, more like breaking your back" -Eric Sohn, 2021. Thanks for the inspo, Eric 🤣 I hope you guys like this one, bottom Juyeon has been on my mind for a while 💕

You and Juyeon have been rivals for as long as you can remember, but he somehow always tops you, both in academics and in the bedroom. One day, your offhand comment about you being a better top than him turns into a challenge, and Juyeon and his ego won't back down.

"Fuck you," Juyeon spits harshly, panting into the bed sheets. You smirk at him, thrusting your fingers deeper in his hole, causing him to moan lowly. "No baby, did you forget I'm the one fucking you?" Your tone is saccharine sweet, yet so sinister. Juyeon shivers, unable to hide how much he wants you, despite the venomous words and dark looks he gives you.

You pull your lube-coated fingers out of his ass and he whines, clenching around air, the cold wetness of the residual lube on the edge of his hole arousing him. You laugh and spank his ass, basking in the fact that only you get to see this side of Juyeon. He thrusts his hips back, clearly wanting more, and you debated giving it to him. Spanking him made you feel in control, but if he wanted it, then there was no point. Instead, you huffed and busied yourself with fastening the strapon to your hips, ignoring the squirming boy in front of you.

Getting annoyed, you slap his thigh instead, drawing a high pitched moan from him. "Would you stay still for once?!" You hiss and he turns to glare at you, his large hand inching towards his aching cock. "If you could just hurry up and fuck me, I wouldn't be such a brat." You scoff and roll your eyes. He had always been a brat behind closed doors, and only to you. He was always teasing and edging you, holding your orgasm out until you broke down your pride and begged him for release, which obviously fed his massive ego. Now that the tables have turned, you realise he's going to be just as difficult. The little shit would never back down from a challenge, which led the both of you into this position in the first place.

You smack his hand away from his cock and open up a condom. He looks questioningly at the foil in your hands and you can't resist the urge to piss him off, so you grab him by the chin, and his pretty eyes look up at you with nervous excitement. "Do you not want me to wear a condom? Want me to fuck you raw instead? Bet if this was a real dick you'd want me to cum inside you, fill you up and breed you like the little whore you are, don't you?" You sneer at him, and his breath hitches. You grip his jaw harder so he opens up wider, and you spit into his mouth. Juyeon's eyes roll back into his head at the taste of you, and his whole body shivers at your humiliating words.

He swallows with difficulty and tries to avoid your eyes. He never begs. He always makes you beg for his cock, that's how it's supposed to go. But he needs you now. And you know he does. "P-please," he whispers so faintly that you almost didn't catch it. You pull his jaw to make him look you in the eyes and ask him to repeat himself. "Please... fuck me," he pleads with those pretty, glittering eyes of his. You shrug and decide to oblige, since he asked so nicely for once. You shove him onto his back, spreading his long legs open and slipping the condom onto your strap-on. He's trembling as he watches you, his position making him feel so exposed and vulnerable, his leaking cock standing tall. You kneel between his legs and hitch them up onto your shoulders. You loom over him, and 6 ft tall Juyeon has never felt smaller in his life.

You ease the tip of the dildo into his hole, and he whimpers at the intrusion. You glance up at him, and he gives the subtlest nod, and you continue pressing your length into him. He grips the bedsheets in discomfort, but he soon feels the pleasurable stretch of his walls creeping up on him. You can't deny you're a tad worried, but you refuse to show your concern, so you keep an impassive mask and continue until you've fully bottomed out. You lean over him, your hand on either side of his head, and his eyes are shut tightly, getting used to the dildo inside him for the first time. He looks so pretty like this, you think. Feline eyes, sharp nose, high cheekbones, glossy red lips. You can see why everyone is head over heels for him, but your contempt for his behaviour is what drives you away from him. He's quite cute when he's not pissing you off in private or taking credit for your contributions to the club, and especially not when he's whispering filthy words in your ears in bed. But he knows exactly how to keep you coming back to him; with his hands, his mouth, and his massive dick.

"Move," he whispers hoarsely, his eyes still shut. You tap his cheeks so he looks at you, and you slowly start moving your hips, pulling out a little and pushing back into him gently. "Mmmhh, ahhh, fuck," his little noises are muffled by the arm he's thrown over his mouth, and you pull it away, wanting to hear more. You thrust into him harder and deeper this time, and he's holding the bedsheets in a death grip with the effort of concealing his moans, knuckles turning white. "Come on Juyeon, let me hear your pretty voice. Tell me how good I'm fucking you," you mock him in a singsong voice. "Shut up," he barks, still trying to remain composed. You roll your eyes and pull out almost all the way, leaving your tip inside him, and slam into him fully, and a strangled moan rips from his throat. 1 point for you, you think.

You continue to fuck him at a brutal pace, his hard cock oozing precum and bobbing from the force of your hips snapping into his. His whines turn into broken groans and eventually loud shameless moans and curses. He doesn't dare to look at you anymore, opting to face the ceiling as you pound into him, his large body sliding up the bed with your every thrust. You changed angles, unsatisfied with his reactions and hit that bundle of nerves inside him, and he cums unexpectedly, spurting ropes of creamy cum all over himself. He actually lets out a sob at the feeling of relief that his orgasm brings, but you had no plans on stopping. You pull out and Juyeon winces, only for you to flip him over, your adrenaline lending you some strength to move the much taller and heavier boy. Cumming untouched, that's 2 points for you now.

He yelps as you force him onto his hands and knees, protesting as his legs feel like jelly, but you weren't going to win so easily. You wanted him to admit that he lost. You slip your dildo back into him and fuck him again, his cum sliding off his sweaty body and dribbling pathetically from his still-hard cock onto the bedsheets. He gasps for air and pleads for you to stop, and yet he moves his hips back to meet yours every time. You spank his ass and he mewls, a tiny, pathetic sound from a large, cocky man, and you know he's going to break soon. "I can't.. I can't take much more, I think I'm gonna cum again," he whines into the pillows. "Go on, then. Cum for me. Say my name, Juyeon, tell me how I good I make you feel," you demanded as you reach down to grasp his cock.

He gasps at the oversensitivity, and the cold tone of your voice. You were barely keeping it together at this point, your pussy dripping with slick at how beautifully wrecked Juyeon looked beneath you, and his breathless chants of your name as he climaxes for the second time that night, his cock feebly spurting whatever cum was left in his balls onto your hand. He collapses onto the sheets, no longer having the strength to prop himself up. He tiredly rolls over onto his back and looks up at you, eyes glazed over. You lean over him again, your faces just a few inches apart. "Was I that good, Juyeonie?" You smirked at him. He blushes and tries to turn his face away but you hold him in place, and stick your cum-splattered fingers in his mouth, making him groan at the taste of himself. "Say it, Juyeon."

His glassy eyes shyly look up at you and he mumbles as best as he can around your fingers, "Mmfh, ffank you for f-fucking me so good." You beam at him, and pull your fingers out of his mouth. You get up off the bed, disposing of the condom and taking off your strap-on. You head into the bathroom to get a damp towel to clean him up with, trying to ignore the dull ache between your thighs as you walked. You come back and he's avoiding eye contact, wincing slightly as you wordlessly wiped him down, despite the warmth of the towel. Once you were done, you took a quick shower, deciding you'd just get off by yourself later and got dressed, Juyeon eyeing you tiredly from the bed. You're about to leave when Juyeon suddenly sits up, grimacing at the pain in his lower back. "Wait! Did you cum at all? You were so quiet but you were eating me up with your eyes the whole time," he belatedly realises.

You turn back to face him. "Does it matter?" you deadpan. "The point of this was to prove that I'm a better top than you. Some bottom you are too, couldn't even make me cum. Maybe this will take that over-inflated ego of yours down a notch, hmm?" you sneer, ignoring the crestfallen look on Juyeon's face as you walk out and slam the door shut. You let out a heavy sigh as you leave his apartment, looking out at the sky, the first rays of the morning sun breaking through the clouds. You're immersed in your thoughts as you make your way back to your place, an uncomfortable feeling in your gut to accompany the discomfort in your loins. You've never left his apartment before daybreak, the two of you always waking up on different sides of the bed and you quietly leaving with just enough time to shower and change at home before going for your classes. Even if you saw Juyeon around on campus or debate club meetings, it was all polite smiles and casual conversations, but the animosity really showed in bed. He was good in bed, you just hated how cocky he gets. Now that you flipped the switch, you think maybe you've gone too far.

3 points, you've finally won, but has victory always tasted this bittersweet?

A/N: This might have been a shit ending, but like, I dunno anymore. Sorry bout that 😅

[mercurial-madhouse]

Trigger Warning: Healing is painful, but there’s so much light on the other side if we’re strong enough to walk through the dark.

My hope in sharing my story is to help anyone who reads it find peace or healing, just as I always aim with my fiction. If it feels right to you to do so, I encourage you to reblog this. It is highly personal, but I choose to share it publicly.

************

This past Sunday, I received an email responding to my desire to withdraw from a fic fest. Instead of the simple “You have been removed from the fest” that I’d been expecting through an official channel from mods to a participant, this is the response I received. Please be aware, the following is painful.

***

We've removed you from the fest and will mark you down as not being welcome to participate in future fests. We show a great deal of compassion toward our writers, which is why we send reminders, answer any and all questions, and provide extensions when requested. There's a reason why our fest has one of the highest numbers of fics of any fest/challenge in the fandom - it's because we support our participating writers and do everything possible to assist them as they complete their fics.

However, once a writer has repeatedly failed to communicate and missed both a deadline and an extended deadline, it's clear that they do not have any respect for the fest, the mods, our time, or our own unique situations, as we don't have endless extra hours to track down participants in a fic fest. Several reminders on three different platforms, an extension, and requests for writers to simply let us know if they need more time does not demonstrate a lack of compassion in any capacity. We also showed a great deal of compassion by welcoming you with open arms into the [redacted] after you insulted the fest, insulted [redacted] fics, and made writers uncomfortable last year after signing up to beta their fics, all while pretending to support and uplift writers in the fandom just as you did in your email here.

Have a great week!

- [redacted] Mods

***

This email arrived right at the end of the night, just as I was lying down to sleep. I couldn’t read it all the way through. It elicited a trauma response in me. My heart started racing, my palms were sweaty, I was shaking, I felt sick to my stomach.

I went into fight/flight/freeze/fawn mode. My first response was to freeze. In order to escape the barrage of pain bombarding me, I simply dissociated and disconnected from my body. It allowed me to sleep, but barely. I deleted the email in a desperate attempt to pretend it didn’t exist.

The pain caught up with me twenty-four hours later. I couldn’t breathe, my lungs shrunk in around my heart. My whole body locked up. I couldn’t move. I knew that if I spoke, even to say ‘hello’ to someone, I’d start crying.

The moment I was alone in my room the tears came. The pain came, bursting through me. I sobbed uncontrollably, curled into myself on my bed, begging for the pain to stop, begging for a miracle, screaming internally for relief and to understand what I’d done to deserve this because I didn’t have the air for more than broken whispers.

I fell asleep whispering ‘I need a miracle’ over and over. The mantra blocked out all the disgusting thoughts that wanted to keep swirling through my head. This is it. This is the final proof that you don’t belong here. You never have. You never will. Run away, M. It’s over. You tried, you failed. You always do. You always will.

I fell asleep out of sheer exhaustion.

Grief is intense. These are the moments where we don’t think we’ll survive what we’re feeling. My love, whoever you are, if you are reading this, hear from me. The agony passed. I needed to feel that agony, to allow it to move through me and to give myself the space to feel it. Without diving off the deep end into what hurts, I wouldn’t have been able to find the inner peace to keep healing, to start to understand.

The residual pain is still there, even as I write this post. But it no longer overwhelms my senses. And by Tuesday morning, I’d been given insight into what was happening.

I experienced a trauma response because it mirrored mistreatment I first received in childhood from family and classmates alike and continued into my adult life. In full view of others, it was acknowledged as cruel even by my mother, who struggles with her own guilt because she never stood up for me. No one did.

So I internalized the mistreatment. I must deserve it if everyone else around me is ok with me being singled out like this? At first I spoke up for myself. But in the end I stopped speaking up for myself too. I had never healed this pain and here it was, coming back around again, forcing me to face it, to heal it once and for all.

I still do not know what exactly I may have said to cause these accusations that you see in the email. **I do not and will not deny them.** Even if my words were taken in a way I did not consciously intend, to deny that I said anything that caused someone else pain is to deny my own power AND to deny that everyone’s emotions are valid and worth digging into.

I have the power to inflict pain, just as I have the power to spread and share love and joy.

Whatever I said came from a place of pain, of believing I did not belong in this community. That I am not good enough or worthy enough to be here. A series of unfortunate but necessary events when I first entered this fandom completely disintegrated my core beliefs in my abilities as a writer, something I have always kept so close to my heart, and my belief that I had a place in this fandom.

I expect, as I look into my past patterns, that what I did was try to logic why I wasn’t allowed to belong. At the time, this fest was the only subset of the fandom I knew, I was so brand new. So I looked through all the prompts in the fest. I brought a scientific method view to answering the question: “What is it about the fics people write in this fandom am I unable/incapable of doing?”

This process allowed me to generalize everything I saw that I perceived as ‘I can’t do that, this is why I don’t belong here’. Consumed in my own doubt that I could measure up and write something worth reading, I dropped from the fest last year too. If I can’t contribute writing that’s worth reading, I could at least stick with what I do best, which is helping others be their best selves. I had signed up to beta, and I chose to cling to the only grasp of belonging I had, which was through beta’ing. I ended up beta’ing four fics last year for the fest. And, of course, each of them were (and still are) incredible fics. At the time, it was further proof to me of exactly what I can’t accomplish.

In all likelihood, these generalizations, stemming from a place of pain and jealousy because I wanted to write good fics too, came out in a personal conversation with someone, which they translated as a personal attack. It is valid. Whoever you are, your emotions are valid. It does not matter how I meant whatever I said, pain is what you felt. This person did not feel comfortable sharing that pain with me, so instead they turned to others and shared. My moment of vulnerability and pain then spread more pain.

Pain only comes from pain.

The response was to shadow ban me. In fact, I was never meant to find out about any of this. The pain this person shared was simply taken at face value and that was that.

So on my end, this decision showed up in the physical world this way: Suddenly all my asks went unanswered, people I tagged to share snippets and last lines and get to know more through ‘about me’ posts or who had once talked to me through DMs simply stopped speaking to me in a way that is only noticeable to the person being ignored. I thought I was going crazy. But there it was, right in front of me: absolute proof that I wasn’t good enough to be a part of this fandom.

Is anyone else beginning to see the cycle of pain?

I expect I continued this cycle right back, because the pain turned to bitterness. I’d been doing everything I could to support every author the best way I knew how, and this was what I got? The exact opposite?

I found out about this shadow ban and actual blocking around June of this year. An ask sent in by a friend for me, inquiring why I couldn’t reblog a post that’d been sent to me by someone else, finally gave me the answer that I’d been banned for the accusations you saw above.

Horrified, hurt, and unable to comprehend any of this except to know that I support every author no matter what they write, I sent an apology to the mods, trying to end this cycle the best I could without knowing any of the details of what had happened. There was nothing more I could do.

They thanked me for the apology, though as you can see from the email, it was never accepted. I do not say that as a judgement call, but simply as a statement of what happened. Everyone is entitled to accept or not accept in their own time and their own ways.

I have been healing so much since everything that occurred last year. And the more I dig in to this cycle, the more my heart goes out to the drafters of this email, to the person I hurt with my words who then turned to share it out of context with others, and to the people who shadow banned me in connection with this situation.

We attract to us what resonates with us. Like attracts like. Which means just as I’ve attracted the greatest friends to me, I have also attracted this pain, and conversely, these mods and that person attracted me to them.

Deep down, on some level we share the same core wounds. And the person who can really understand just how painful those wounds can be is someone who feels them too.

So this is my message to the mods of the above email, to those who have shadow banned me and want nothing to do with me, and to the original person I hurt with my words:

I am sorry for my part in this pain. I am sorry for causing pain and I apologize for it. You are loved. You are enough. You are doing a fantastic job. Your feelings are valid. Your hurt is valid. I don’t know what occurred that hurt you before I entered the fandom, but after finding out from others that an email like the one you sent above is ‘Oh that’s just how they are’ tells me something else happened to hurt you before I even arrived.

Your hurt then is valid too. Allow yourself to feel it and process it. Don’t let it consume you. Don’t let that hurt and fear of it happening again or believing that that’s how everyone is push away from you people who in fact love just what you love. If someone has a different belief from yours, don’t let it invalidate what is true for you. Believing internalized lies about myself only caused me pain. And we spread and create what we believe to be true, whether we consciously realize it or not.

So here, now, is my truth:

I choose to perpetuate love. I choose to spread love. I choose to understand my pain and the pain of others, to transmute it, and to heal it, instead of passing that pain on.

I choose compassion. Compassion for myself in making these mistakes, and compassion for those who have hurt me. I do not condone the email that was sent to me. No one deserves to be treated that way. I choose to focus beneath the visceral anger and lashing out, to focus on the agony beneath the words, and stop this cycle of pain.

I choose to belong in this fandom. I choose to support every author in this fandom and ensure no one ever feels not good enough. I choose to own my past mistakes and learn from them.

I choose trust. To trust that those who I truly hope will see this, will see it. I have no expectations of responses or outcomes or reactions. My only hope is that whoever will benefit from seeing this post will see it.

This is not a matter of right or wrong, bad or good, just or unjust. It is a situation of two parties in pain, triggered by the same triggers.

Looking back on that email, I’ve come to realize that half of the pain I felt when I received it was not my own. I felt the pain of the attack, sure, but I also felt the immense pain beneath those words. And I wish I could hug you. I acknowledge your pain and I acknowledge how painful it is because I know that pain myself. I also know that this pain isn’t you and it isn’t who you are.

So I choose to remember the mods I first met around this same time last year in this same email chain. Mods who were so kind and offered advice to a brand new writer even when she sent an email that had nothing to do with the fest and was still struggling to find her place in the fandom. I choose to remember how beautiful that kindness felt. I choose to remember how I was so grateful for that kindness that I shared my gratitude for these same mods in an email with with another fandom friend at the time. I am still grateful for you.

You are so loved. You are loved for being exactly who you are. This fandom is built upon love. A shared love of five incredibly talented lads who have brought so much joy and light when each and every one of us has needed it the most. Shine your light through the dark and believe with all your heart that you are not alone. You have support. I support you. Shine on. Don’t let anyone dim it.

[andypantsx3]

statistically significant | 5 | bakugou/reader

length: 23,490 words | 7 chapters

summary: You’re the scientist who developed a neural net to model the value of assists. Now that your work is feeding into the hero rankings, pro hero Ground Zero has a bone to pick with your results.

tags: romance, enemies to lovers, sexual tension, reader-insert

warnings: aged up characters, eventual smut, m/f threats of violence, problematic behavior

The next few weeks were a blur of activity.

When he wasn’t off on patrol or a mission, Mina and Kaminari kept Bakugou busy with dozens of team exercises, all of which needed your analysis. They ran him through any and every scenario that entered their brains, and after the first few rounds, Bakugou seemed to resign himself to their ministrations, his explosions no longer rattling the windows of the training room in displeasure. You’d reviewed footage of the first couple of rounds all together, the trio of heroes jammed into the tiny surveillance room with you, grimy with the ashy residue of Bakugou’s explosions, someone or another’s shirt partly melted off, and all of them looking exhausted but pleased.

Eventually, though, it became difficult for you to spare time in between your meetings with the other agency heroes. Bakugou was not helping matters by kicking the door down in the middle of your meetings and attempting to bodily remove anyone you were in conversation with whenever he wanted an update. You were dedicating almost as much time to breaking up fights and rescheduling appointments as you were to having the actual meetings themselves.

In the interest of maintaining the peace--and health and safety the Miruko agency employees--you wrote a quick script that monitored the training room footage and automatically ran your analysis program any time it keyed in on Bakugou, Mina, and Kaminari together on screen. It forwarded the results to their phones so that Bakugou wouldn’t come stalking in and making any more enemies than he already had.

That seemed to pacify him for a couple of days, and you managed almost twenty blissful meetings uninterrupted, until a Friday morning when no sooner had you flipped the lights on in the surveillance room than Bakugou was ripping the door open after you.

“Enough slacking off, nerd,” he growled, stalking over to loom over you in a vaguely menacing manner. It was early but he looked wide awake, maybe a little mussed like he'd already been training, the same combination of annoyingly handsome and intimidating as always. He was also dressed in some variation of his usual training set, dark fabric clinging to his chest, arms bare. The sight was really way too much for this early in the morning.

His sudden entrance startled you out of a yawn, and you just barely managed to catch your laptop before it slipped through your fingers.

“Good morning?” you hedged, looking up at him in apprehension.

He made an angry, dismissive noise. Before you could dredge up enough energy for a proper eye roll, something small and warm was thrust unceremoniously into your chest, briefly winding you.

You looked down at the item he was attempting to fracture your sternum with and found yourself staring at a white takeout cup.

You looked up at him in confusion but he just glared passively until you looked down again.

“....what is this?” you asked. Your hands raised automatically to take the cup from him.

“Battery acid,” Bakugou said.

You stopped, gaping at him, and he rolled his eyes. “The fuck do you think it is, idiot?” he demanded, gesturing at it forcefully.

You looked down at the cup again, a soft swirl of steam issuing from the opening in the cap. You brought it hesitantly to your face. A cursory sniff revealed very little in the way of poison--not that you had much expertise on the subject--but it did smell suspiciously like the house blend from the nice bakery down the street.

You stared at Bakugou with misgiving. “What is this, actually?”

He made a disbelieving noise. “You spend all this time acting like such a smartass and you don’t even know what a fucking coffee is? The fuck do you think you drink every morning?”

You couldn’t help but stare at him. There was absolutely no way Bakugou Katsuki was bringing you coffee. This had to be some kind of trick.

His threats from a few weeks ago floated to the forefront of your mind. I’m going to win the bet, he’d said, and then you’re in for it. Was this part of "in for it"? What was “it”, exactly, and was it likely that “it” entailed poisoning you in broad daylight in the middle of a hero agency?

The offing you in broad daylight seemed very much his style, but poison seemed a roundabout way to do it. No, if he was going to settle a score with you, it was going to be something much more immediate, and probably obnoxiously flashy.

You brought the cup to your mouth, taking a tentative sip. No acid tang of poison met your tongue, only the rich, buttery taste of the coffee. Though arsenic was said to be flavorless... Damn that was good, though.

Bakugou hovered impatiently, like he was waiting for something, wearing a strangely blank expression. You watched him nervously. Was the poison slow acting or something?

His scarlet gaze locked onto yours, and it suddenly hit you what he must be doing. You almost dropped the coffee. Was he...waiting for a thank you? As in, he was aware of and actively acknowledging that he’d just done something for you?

You decided to test the waters. “Thank you, Bakugou.”

He made an impatient clicking noise. “Fucking took you long enough.”

You frantically schooled your features into a mask that betrayed nothing of your shock. Christ, he was serious. He’d actually brought you a coffee, and he knew it was a nice thing to do? There was no way he was doing this just to do this. He had to want something from you.

“...So, what is it that you’re bribing me for?” you asked.

Bakugou’s face went dark, the tips of his ears strangely pink. “Fuck you. I don’t need to fucking bribe you for shit, with your obvious little crush on me.” He took a threatening step closer, and that familiar scent of gunpowder and caramel filled your nose.

You felt your face heat, your heart jumping into your mouth. Not this shit again.

So, it was absolutely true that you had a lot of trouble detaching your eyes from the width of his biceps, and that your brain ran wild loops every time he was close. But just because you had difficulty looking anywhere else when he was in a room, didn't mean you had a crush on him. He was way too much of a brat and it was exhausting trying to keep up with his weirdly intense personality. Just because he was pretty did not mean you had a thing for him...

“Why are you like this?” you complained, edging away from him as he moved nearer.

He smirked knowingly, taking another step closer. A small, traitorous shiver went up your spine at the thrill of a man so close. To your eternal embarrassment, Bakugou’s keen gaze seemed to catch it, a darker smile curling his mouth.

You opened your mouth to make some kind of excuse--though what you would have come up with was completely beyond you--when a head of wild pink curls poked itself through the door.

The intruder let out a quiet gasp, but that was enough to break the moment. Bakugou whirled on her, red eyes glaring.

“Raccoon, do you ever mind your own fucking business?” he demanded, in the tones of someone interrogating a war criminal.

Mina’s dark eyes widened innocently. “What? How was I supposed to know this is where you’d gone?” she asked. There was note of something gloating in her voice, however, and you got the feeling that she’d been hoping to catch you in some kind of act.

Your face went hotter. Why did everyone think there was a thing with you and Bakugou, including, apparently, Bakugou?

“Anyway, I’m not here for you,” Mina informed him briskly, derailing your wandering train of thought. “I was gonna ask stats girl to give us a hand this morning.”

She turned to you, her smile slightly predatory. “Blasty’s better at sticking close now, so we started focusing team exercises on victim evaluation. Any chance you can play civilian? Denki was for a bit but he started getting too into it.” A grimace flitted over her pretty features. “I almost lost an arm trying to stop Katsuki from blasting him clear into the stratosphere.”

You looked at Bakugou, but an irritated twitch of a blonde eyebrow was all you got by way of an explanation.

Your thoughts turned inward, wondering if this was a good idea. You’d been hoping to use the morning to get a little work done on a prototype of a productionized model, seeing as you had fewer meetings than usual today. And you hadn’t really come prepared for a potential roll around in the dirt and dust of the city simulation training spaces.

As if sensing your hesitation, Mina chirped, “I’ll let you a spare set of my training clothes so yours don’t get dirty! And you would probably be saving Denki’s life here--don’t you owe him one from the Hero Awards?”

Your gaze cut back to Bakugou without any direction from your brain. Bakugou appeared to be making no attempt to look apologetic about the incident at the Awards. He raised an eyebrow in challenge when your look lingered too long for his liking, red eyes narrowing in on you with a sudden heat. “The fuck are you looking at, nerd?”

“He means please,” Mina said, her voice going honeyed and wheedling. “Plus, it will be fun! I promise you I won’t melt any of your body parts off. Just Blasty’s, I swear.”

You couldn’t help the way your eyes stayed firmly attached to Bakugou’s face. His mouth twitched in obvious irritation at the implication that he would ever say please, but he made no move to correct Mina, limbs drawn in tight, defensive.

You looked down at the cup in your hand, sighing. He’d brought you a coffee and was doing minimal yelling. He appeared to be making some kind of effort here--though to what end you weren’t sure--and you supposed contributing to his training was ultimately your goal here, anyway. You could reward him for behaving himself as well as he knew how, and work towards your promotion at the same time.

“Fine,” you allowed, watching as Mina startled wiggling in obvious delight. “Let me finish this coffee and then I’ll help out.”

Mina clapped her rosy palms together. “Ahh! This is going to be so fun! You’ll see.”

Mina’s definition of fun was any civilian’s definition of fucking terrifying.

It was one thing to see the three heroes using their powers on screen, or safely tucked away behind a meter of quirk-enforced glass. It was another thing entirely to be in the center of the action, acid sizzling mere inches from your feet.

“You said you wouldn’t melt anything off!” you shouted, stumbling away from Mina.

She’d accused Kaminari of getting too into playing civilian--whatever that meant--but you thought she was way too into playing villain herself. A hard look passed over her pretty features, sending a chill down your spine. With that dark look, those unusual eyes and twisted horns took on a more sinister nuance. She looked almost like an alien, and moved like one too, stalking you through the twisting alleys of the training cityscape.

“Accidents happen,” she cooed, almost happily. She threw up a twisting fistful of acid that hardened into a warped wall in front of you. You skidded wildly on the gravel to avoid it. “Now stay still, you’re supposed to be a hostage.”

A choked little noise escaped you. Honestly, thank god this woman was a hero. You might have trouble sleeping at night if you knew a villain like this was stalking the streets, unchecked and unbound by social mores. You’d probably still have trouble getting to sleep tonight, even after she went back to smiling and bouncing all over the place.

“Actually, maybe Kaminari should take over again,” you managed, stepping back from her. “Not really sure if I’m cut out for this.”

A loud boom drowned out her reply, an office front a few blocks away crumbling under the force of the blast. You gaped at the force that shook the street, even blocks away.

Mina used your distraction to her advantage, grabbing the back of your shirt to haul you towards her. “He’s so obvious, my god--how he got to be number eight is beyond me. Now come over here and do your best to look injured. He needs practice evacuating people instead of coming in blasting.”

She fumbled with something on her belt, pulling out several bright red bands that proclaimed various types of injuries in blocky white font. Then she leaned over you, shoving a band up your arm that announced SEVERE BURNS, and another on your left ankle, proclaiming a DISLOCATION.

She clicked her tongue, looking you over. “Would more be overkill? This is enough that he should at least hesitate before trying to blow me sky high…” She seemed to decide against more, shoving the rest back into her belt. Then she gently pressed you down to the ground at her feet.

“This is the part where I get to monologue,” she said, winking down at you. “Do your best to look helpless and make sure your severe burns thing is showing. I wanna see if he can prioritize rescuing you over my trash talk.”

A soft groan escaped you. Fat chance. Bakugou was the most foul tempered little shit you had ever met, and while it was true that his single-minded focus on winning the bet meant he was tolerant enough to be doing this exercise in the first place, you highly doubted he was going to hesitate if Mina was pushing his buttons as expertly as she usually did.

The chance to find out came soon enough. There was a strangled kind of yelp and a crackle of lightning followed a thunderous boom a few blocks away as Bakugou presumably rendered Kaminari’s perimeter defense useless. Then with another screaming explosion, he was rocketing over the buildings separating you, barrelling straight down on Mina.

Mina threw up another acid shield that hardened into a defensive wall. Bakugou’s first attack cracked it but didn’t manage to penetrate. There was barely a breath between the cracking and another explosion, however, and then the wall exploded inwards in a crackling shower of fizzing pieces. Mina crouched over you, breathing excitedly, “This is the fun part!”

Whatever reply you might have given her was drowned out by an angry series of hissing snaps from Bakugou’s palm as he stalked closer to you. The right half of his shirt had been singed off by lightning, it looked like, and a fine veneer of dust layered in his hair and on patches of his skin. It was just a training simulation, but he looked half-wild, teeth bared and eyes bright over the ash on his face. If he looked nearly this intense in real life situations, it was a wonder that anyone would agree to be evacuated by him at all.

Maybe that’s why he sucked at rescues.

“It’s fucking over, raccoon eyes,” he said. “Hand her over.”

Mina laughed, a delicate sound like bells. “Not another step closer, hero, or I’ll melt a hole straight through her pretty neck.”

You twitched away from her minutely. God she was terrifying.

“Quit it with the fucking villain act, fuckwad, or I’ll blow you all the way to hell,” Bakugou growled.

Mina reached for your arm, pulling you up next to her. “Hmm, then I hope your aim is good. She’s already got one set of severe burns.”

Bakugou’s crimson gaze cut down to your shoulder and the displeased twist to his mouth deepened. “Fucking--of course you got yourself fucking injured. Fucking idiot.”

“Hey,” you protested, shifting against the band. “I’m not actually.”

Mina kicked you. “Moments to live, this one. Unless you can pull a healing quirk out of those glorious buttcheeks of yours.”

You choked on your own spit while Bakugou snarled. “I’m gonna fucking remember this, you strawberry fuck.”

“Maybe. But she won’t,” Mina said, and suddenly there was a rosy palm in front of your face, dripping acid. A drop landed deliberately on the fold of the training pants she’d lent you, searing straight through with a loud hiss. Your heartbeat spiked in violent alarm. You reeled back, but Mina was still crouched over you, and you banged into her collarbone.

In the next second, everything went to shit. Something searing hot blazed just over your shoulder and Mina swore, jerking back from you in the blink of an eye. There was a deafening crack and a rush of burning air over you as Bakugou let loose an explosion at the same time he seized your ankle and pulled you straight underneath where he’d aimed the blast, missing you by inches.

“What the fuck,” you gasped. Bakugou grunted, and yanked harder, pulling you straight to him.

“Quit being such a fucking princess,” he growled, shifting an arm underneath you. You froze, suddenly wishing that his explosion had managed to hit you, searing off every nerve ending.

“What are you doing?” you demanded, sputtering in alarm when he hoisted you against him. You could feel every place your body touched his, and smell the sharp gunpowder and sugar scent of his sweat. He hooked his arm firmly around your waist, glaring down at you with one baleful red eye.

“Fuckstick gave you a dislocated ankle so I would have to fight her off with one fucking arm and carry you with the other,” he bit out, whirling when a stream of acid came hissing your way.

You gripped at his shirt, swearing. “Oh my god. What the hell is she doing, aiming for me? This is a simulation! Also, I can walk.”

He grunted. “You can shut the fuck up is what you can do.”

He executed another agile dodge, pulling you with him. “Now hold on, princess, this is gonna be a rough ride with one arm.”

You didn’t have time to ask him what the hell he was on about. He aimed a shot over your shoulder, the heat simmering and boiling in the air next to your ear, and you heard the impact of Mina hitting the pavement behind you. In the next second, Bakugou tightened his arm around you, and aimed a palm for the ground.

The next thing you were aware of was a strangled screaming sound. It took a second for you to realize the mortifying noise was coming from you. But in your defense, Bakugou had literally blasted the two of you clear above the alleyway. You could see the wreckage from Bakugou’s scuffle with Kaminari, and Mina scrambling to her feet, much smaller and further away that you were comfortable with. Your hands fisted in his shirt and you nearly decapitated him with the force with which you shoved your face into his shoulder.

Even with your eyes closed, you could tell Bakugou hadn’t been kidding about the rough ride. Another blast from his palm jerked you sharply to the right, and he uttered a soft swear.

“Hold tight, nerd,” he said in your ear. There was a series of more explosions and you spun violently in the opposite direction. You went careening over a low roof top to land heavily on the pavement, Bakugou twisting at the last second to take the initial impact to his shoulder, rolling over you to distribute the momentum.

You rolled twice more, eventually stopping with his hard body under yours, your face jammed unpleasantly into his shoulder, his arms bracketing your sides. One of his hands was fisted in the back of your shirt, and a tuft of blonde hair brushed your cheek.

He let out a huff. “If you ever let her put the fucking dislocation band on you again, I’ll melt your damn laptop.”

You pulled back from him, hissing into his face. “If you dare, I'll--”

“The fuck you gonna do, nerd?” he demanded, sitting up. Straight into you.

You gripped his shirt so as not to fall right off of him, widening your knees for balance. Then you froze when you realized he was pressed against you everywhere, hard muscle and the heat of his skin bleeding through your training clothes. He was hot like a furnace, ashy and dust-streaked like one too, and his eyes glowed like banked coals. He gazed back at you, his mouth setting with some kind of a challenge.

Then those red eyes trailed slowly and deliberately down your face, stopping right on your mouth. His fingers tightened in the back of your shirt.

You couldn’t help your sharp inhale. Holy shit, was he...going to kiss you?

You sat frozen, locked in place, neither willing or able to move away, like you were being pulled towards him like some kind of magnet. Was he really going to do it? Was he really going to kiss you? Or, no...were you going to kiss him?

You could, you thought hysterically. That’s what it felt like, watching him breathe shallowly, eyes fixed on your mouth. You could kiss him and he would let you.

Had that been what all the your little crush on me shit had been about? Had he been torturing you not because he’d noted the way your eyes lingered over him, but because it was something he’d wanted to happen? Had that been what all the threats were for, what the crowding you against walls and the frigging coffee had been about? When Mina had said he’d been fixated on you, did she actually mean it less like revenge and more like actual attraction?

You let out a shaky breath. Only one way to find out, you thought wildly, leaning forward with your pulse singing in your veins.

And then an explosion rocked the foundations of the building, throwing you forward against Bakugou’s chest. You gasped, the breath knocked out of you, and whipped around to glare at his free hand in accusation. Bakugou pulled you back, however, a hard looking passing over his face.

It was only seconds before Mina and Kaminari came scrambling out of the maze of training buildings, looking worried. Kaminari was already crackling with static, agitated whips of lighting zipping across his skin. Bakugou's palm started to grow hotter against your back.

His next words threw the situation into sharp clarity.

“That wasn’t from a training room.”

[luimagines]

Hi! can I request wind scenario (in group) having a crush on gn reader (same age as him) whos kinda like a ghost like fading through walls, going invisible, making the room go cold ect. but they're still hyrulian (did I spell it right-)? (plush anon)

Masterlist

I mean, most people call them Hylian. But I suppose your rendition isn't wrong, since they're from Hyrule. Like a nationality versus a race.

Ok, I think I have an idea with what you mean. Ghostly abilities with a crushing Wind!

I hope I did it justice!

Scenario under the cut!

It was time. You had fought against it for so long.

It was time to track down Wind and figuring out what was eating at him.

You took a deep breath and fazed through the walls of the Wild's house.

He was getting worse and it was starting to worry you. It was unnoticeable at first but he would wander off and come back just fine. So no one did anything. Later though, he would walk off earlier and stay away for longer.

You were beginning to miss him.

But now, your group was no longer in an open space and there were less places for him to hide inside.

You hoped at least he didn't go outside. That would make things harder for you.

You also hoped that Wild wasn't going to get mad at you for just walking through the place. It's not something the others... appreciated... especially when you never gave out a warning.

But that was a them problem.

Wind never seemed to mind.

On the other hand though, you didn't want to risk getting a lecture and ruining your plan by fazing, and by extension, trespassing through the house. So you went invisible for good measure.

The only thing you couldn't fix was how the room always dropped in temperature but if you fast enough it wouldn't make a difference.

Peak in. Look for Wind. Dip if he's not there.

Simple plan of action. Simple solution.

It... didn't occur to you that Wild's house had a few more rooms than he let on, or let the others into. It also didn't occur to you that some places could only be reached by the outside and could then be an excellent place to hide.

Not from you though.

So the search didn't really last all that long.

Wind was hiding under the desk of the outer work house.

He looked like he was crying and was quietly shaking from weight of them.

Concern flooded through your system and you dropped next to him immediately. You went to place your hand on his wrist but he jerked up and made eye contact.

He screamed and jumped in place, slamming his head against the top of the desk and came back down with his hands on his head.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." You reached out and began to rub the poor spot on his head, knocking his hands out of the way. "I probably should have said something first. Are you ok? I mean, obviously not if you're crying but that looked like it hurt-"

"I'm fine." Wind knocked your hands away and wiped his face with his sleeve. There was an edge to his words, and it shocked you a bit.

Wind was never hostile with you and the change made you instinctually move back with your hands up.

"Um... What happened?" You try instead. Maybe it was just the residue pain talking.

"Nothing." Wind sniffles and you swear you could almost see him putting up walls around himself. High and imposing and you nearly sink to the ground at the thought of him cutting you off.

“It’s not nothing if you’re crying over it.” You say gently. “It’s ok to cry Wind. My dad says that it’s just being alive and it’s nothing you have to hide. But why? Did someone hurt you?”

The thought makes you angry and the closet’s temperature plummets with your train of thought. “Who did it? Just say the word and I’ll deal with them.”

Wind hugs himself tighter and shakes his head. “No. No one hurt me.

“Then why...” You reach out again and hesitate to place your hand on Wind’s wrist again. After a second of deliberation you touch him and try reaching out again. “Wind, I’m your friend. What can I do help?”

“Nothing.” He spits and looks away from you. “It’s fine. You shouldn’t... You were the last person that I wanted to find me like this.”

He pushes past you and opens the door to the outside.

“Did I do something wrong?” You ask instead and chase him. “Wind, what’s wrong? Why are you avoiding me? Are you mad at me?”

“No.” He spins around and takes a deep breath. “It’s... nothing you have to be worried about. The problem is with me. I’ll get over it.”

“But I want to help...” You admit. It sounds weak even to your ears and you can only imagine how Wind must think it’s a little pathetic how little you actually contribute to the group.

It’s something that’s been bugging recently but everyone has been welcoming despite your abilities and they let you know when to take a step back from running head first.

It’s not a thought you focus on frequently but if Wind thinks of you that way...

Well... It hurts more than you’re willing to admit.

Wind chuckles slightly, ruefully, cutting off your thoughts. He begins to run a hand through his hair and he looks at the ground instead. “I know you do. You help everyone. You’re incredible like that, you know. I admire that about you. It’s one of your many talents that I can’t even begin to list them all off or I’ll be here all day. But this... Isn’t something that you can fix or help with. You wouldn’t want to help me anyway, if you knew what I did...or rather how I did it.”

He doesn’t anything more.

“But you’re Link.” You say and chance a step toward him. The use of his name, something you only use when alone with only one of them, catches his attention but he’s quick to look away from you again. “And you’re my friend. Why can’t I help you? Maybe just telling me would help, if there’s nothing I can do physically.”

“I...” Wind wipes his face again. “I can’t. It would change the way you see me. I know it. It’s not... I don’t know if I can handle that. I think it’ll hurt to much to see your face look at me in horror. It wouldn’t be a good look for you anyway. You’re too pretty and sweet and nice and I’m-.”

“Wind.” You begin to walk toward him more, counting on the fact that he’s still talking to you that he won’t run away. “I can’t say I know what you’re talking about. But do what to know how I see you?”

He blinks, a little wide eyed and fearful but nods.

“I see an incredibly brave hero. Someone’s friend. Someone’s brother. Someone’s right hand man. Someone who saw a problem and wanted to fix it. Someone who was willing to travel the world and risk his own life to protect the people he cares about. Someone who loves adventure and the ocean and always sure wonder in his eyes... I admire the way you see life and I think you’re a genius. There’s a way your brain works that I find absolutely fascinating.” You put your hands on his shoulders. “I trust you. I care about you. And... I want to help you with your problems. I want to know your dreams and your goals and I want to see more of your world and know more about the people you care about...”

You stop and gulp. It’s getting a little too real for you to handle. Time to stop talking about that less you say something you can’t take back.

“If you’d let me anyway.” You finished lamely. “My... My point is that, you’re a good person. You have a good heart and a good head on your shoulders. You... You’ve done so much and can do so much more if you put mind to it. Not only did you save the world but I bet that you’ll change it for the better. I want to be able to see it. You are many things Link, but you’re not cruel. If you did a bad thing, I’m sure it was for a good reason.”

Wind steps closer to you to close the distance and hugs you. 

Tight.

“You’re too good to me, you know that?” He says into your hair.

You hug him back with just as much force and grin into his neck, content with the contact. “I’d give you the world if I could Link.”

“Not if I give it to you first.” He fires back and lets go slightly. He chances a look at your face and studies it for a moment. 

You look back at him and do the same. He’s beginning to look more like himself and a lot less like he’s been crying. He’s got a large smile on his face before it morphs into a more determined one.

It catches you off guard but right as you try to question him, he leans in and places a hesitant and delicate kiss to your cheek. 

It’s more like a butterfly touch with how nervous he is to do it and you barely feel it.

But it feels a little more magical that way and your heart flutters into a frenzy.

Your hand reaches your mouth and you have trouble looking him in the eye after that. You’re happy. Confused. But happy. 

The blush on your face, you know, is very bright and Wind smiles at your reaction.

“What was that for?” You whisper.

“A thank you.” Wind offers his arm despite the massive blush me has on his face as well. He looks pleased. “You said you wanted to know me more... And well, I’d like to know you more to. Want to go to the tower with me?”

He points to the top of the town, beyond the houses and where you know Purah the scientist resides to do her research.

There’s hardly any visitors there, so it would just be you and him...

You grin and take his arm.  “I’d like that a lot actually.” 

[entertainment]

Entertainment Spotlight: Tongayi Chirisa, Palm Springs

Originally from Zimbabwe, Tongayi Chirisa made a name for himself in the South African film scene before crossing into the US entertainment industry. This summer, he appears opposite Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti in the romantic comedy Palm Springs. He will also star opposite Janelle Monáe in Lionsgate’s upcoming thriller Antebellum, in which a successful author (Monáe) finds herself trapped in a horrifying reality and must uncover a mind-bending mystery before it’s too late. In TV, Tongayi recently joined season two of Netflix’s sci-fi action series Another Life. Other roles for tv include starring as Friday in NBC’s Crusoe opposite Philip Winchester and Sam Neill, as well as roles in The Jim Gaffigan Show, American Horror Story, N.C.I.S., Hawaii 5-0, The Guest List, and iZombie.

Palm Springs adds to the well-established genre of films that use a time loop as a dramatic and comedic device. If you were stuck in the same situation day in, day out, what would you do?

I think I would do everything possible on earth, literally everything!! Think about it... all I have to do is sleep and bam! I’m back at the same place?! 

Both Antebellum and Palm Springs are innovative contributions to well-known genres. What film genre would you save if all others were to disappear, never to return again? And why?  

I would save the Sci-Fi genre because it’s the only genre where you can merge all other genres, and we see that in many of the films produced in recent years.

What drew you to your role in Antebellum?

What drew me to the project was the material, and the message it was sending. I am an advocate for female empowerment, so learning Janelle Monáe was on board just made the project that much better—we all know how much of a powerhouse she is. Also working with Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz, these two dynamic visionaries. Over the course of production, I got to see why they are called film activists. They really know how to draw you into what they are saying with the mediums of sound, color, and moving picture in a way that evokes your very soul.

When you hear Black Excellence, what or who comes to mind?

Black Excellence is man/woman reaching their fullest potential and succeeding in maintaining that excellence, but also mentoring and showing the next person how it is done. You are not excellent until someone else benefits from your knowledge and experiences, i.e. mentorship. Knowledge is meant to be passed on.

You’ve been a professional actor in both South Africa and America. Can you talk a little bit about the differences between the industries, productions, audiences, and type of work you have encountered?

From a production and work ethic standpoint, nothing much varies on the day-to-day running of production. However, as an actor, I will say this: Living in Los Angeles when the work has been slow, many times, those coveted residual checks have truly been lifesavers. That is not the case in South Africa. They have a system where once they pay you, that’s all the money you are ever going to get, which puts many of the actors who are between jobs in very difficult positions. Hopefully, we can find a solution where the artist also benefits from the excessive profits producers and studios make.

Do you have any advice for young actors who are just starting out and would like to work in both countries?

Follow your heart. Only you know what it is telling you, and if you are a person of faith, believe in Yeshua, he will order your steps—I am a living testimony of that. Work hard and if this is the career you have chosen, immerse yourself in it. I would love to work in both countries continually as I have already been doing so. There is a need for my countrymen and the film industry to see one of their own in local homemade productions as well as the international blockbusters, to give them a true sense that dreams are truly possible, that you can make it from Harare to Hollywood.

Mopani Junction, a serial radio drama you were in, was taken off the air at the height of political turmoil in Zimbabwe. What role do you think film/tv/radio have and should have regarding political and social realities?

Entertainment/film/music are all reflections of society. Someone will always resonate with what you say. So with that in mind, creatives play a very significant role in shaping people’s mindsets. We have an obligation to allow everyone's voice to be heard without prejudice or discrimination. We are only as strong as the weakest among us. To disregard creatives in any nation is to disregard the true lens of society.

How do you embody the mission of #BlackExcellence365 in your everyday work?

In my preparation, in my execution and in my presentation of the character. In my decorum on and off the set, and in my desire to see every person on set win, by giving them what they need to do that.

What would be next for you if you could choose any role, any project?

Ooh…haven't really thought about that..! No, I’m lying, I dream about it all the time. I think I'd look good in a spandex superhero costume! I love the world of Sci-fi and hi-tech concept films. So anything that really pushes the narrative; I want to be a part of that, for sure.

Use one word to describe each of the following:

Who you are: beloved

what you value the most: prayer time

What you’d be if you were a food item: cantaloupe—I don’t know but I really love that fruit!

Thanks for taking the time, Tongayi! Palm Springs is now streaming on Hulu.

[shroomcult]

@soulxmakaweek

Day 4: Apologize

I fell way behind with Soma week because I got slammed with work and this monster of a fic took me too long to write.

Summary: 

Maka comes to realize that Soul had never felt fully comfortable around Crona, and in ignoring this entirely - she unknowingly hurt her closest friend.

Special thanks to Tori @chichirichick (she betas all of my dumpster fires, bless her) for proofreading this mess of emotions and also to Zi @azroazizah for coming up with the concept for this fic. 

**Disclaimer** This story is not about putting blame on Crona, but instead about acknowledging the fact that Soul went through trauma due to their actions and it was never taken into consideration by Maka before inviting them into their friend group. I'm not saying Crona didn't deserve support, but it's also completely valid for Soul - a victim of Crona - to not feel entirely safe around them regardless of their tragic background and circumstances. If Crona is a big comfort character for you and you feel you would likely be upset by this concept, then I recommend not reading it altogether. We all interpret things different and we're all entitled to our own opinions, and I'm not going to get in arguments with people over this.

It’d been a while since the Spartoi team was all together again.

After the fall of Asura, they really had no purpose to join forces as a team. No big baddie to unite them in ass-kickery. 

The skies were blue again. There were still Kishin eggs to take down, and a shaky new diplomatic relationship with the witches to maintain as well. 

Things were more or less … normal. Boring, even.

The only big difference Blackstar could discern was that nobody seemed to have time to just hang out and be friends anymore.

Kid was over his head with his new responsibilities, and while he was doing an admirable job filling his father’s shoes; there was a steep learning curve and his perfectionist tendencies only made it more challenging to overcome. He upheld a calm and collected demeanor in the public’s eyes, but Liz and Patty spent most of their time holding him together behind the scenes. 

Soul and Maka were a different situation entirely.

It was odd enough to adjust to the recent change in the nature of their relationship. They claimed to be the same as they’ve always been - just Soul & Maka. Only, they grew much closer after the hardships they had endured both in the book of Eibon and on the moon.

They had been close to begin with, but this was a different kind of close. Stolen glances, hands reaching for each other when they thought nobody was looking. Blushing for almost no damn reason. 

Something was going on between them - he could be sure of that.

More recently, however, Maka had been particularly obsessive about solving the dilemma of Crona’s entrapment on the moon. She was driving herself to a slow-burning insanity, considering every moment that she hadn’t rescued them yet to be a personal failure.

She’d been spending much of her time in the restricted section of the library, consuming every piece of relevant research for hours on end. Soul often stayed up there with her doing the same, or at the very least keeping her silent company when he was too burnt out to read anymore.

He’d also spent much of his extra time with Stein, training to perfect his sound-wave abilities into his own form of wavelength attack.

He’d been giving his all ever since making deathscythe status to hone his strength and better serve Maka. He’d even been able to hold his own for a surprising amount of time in the sparring ring against Blackstar, and that was a feat in and of itself.

All of the focus on Crona’s rescue had appeared to be wearing on him, though. 

Soul may have accepted Crona into his friend group for Maka’s sake, even empathized with them - but he had never fully trusted the demon sword meister. Although Soul was outwardly friendly towards them, Blackstar noticed the way his friend had watched them like a hawk before they turned back to Medusa. He was always ready for a scenario like that because he had never felt entirely safe around them to begin with.

Not that Maka had bothered to even take Soul’s feelings into consideration before forgiving Crona on his behalf.

She couldn’t have possibly been that dense. She had to have been actively ignoring the signs of Soul’s discomfort because she couldn’t handle acknowledging them.

And now she was doing the same thing all over again even with Crona as far away as the moon. It was obvious that Soul was doing what he always did - shoving his own feelings aside in favor of Maka’s. The loyal mutt of a boy valued her wellbeing far above his own, that was for certain.

He just seemed so exhausted of it all now. Searching tirelessly with Maka for a solution that may not even exist took up much of his time and energy.  

He never had the time to shoot hoops or play video games like he used to, and Blackstar was far above begging for his attention. He stopped even bothering to ask him.

Just for one night though, by some divine luck - everybody was willing to clear their schedule to have a late night dinner at the most beloved and heart-attack inducing burger joint in town. 

Every member of Spartoi was crammed into the largest booth in the restaurant and their chatter was loud enough to fill the whole section. 

There were multiple conversations happening at a time, but Blackstar was zeroing in on Soul who had his chin resting on his palm and that stupid, dopey look he got on his face when he was proud of Maka. Yuck. Keep it in your pants, loverboy.

Maka was next to Soul, his arm stretched out behind her on the booth, while Ox engaged her in a fiery debate over god knows what across the table from her. Judging by the redness in baldy’s face - Maka was on the winning side. He really couldn’t understand Soul’s hard-on for a bossy know-it-all personality, but whatever floats his boat he supposed.  

He decided he’d seen enough of that look on his best friend’s face and crumpled up a straw wrapper, dipping it in his soda and sticking it at the end of his straw.

He blew on the other end, sending the sticky wad of paper flying across the table. The projectile hit its target directly on the cheek.

“Fuck’s sake dude, how old are you?” he grumbled, reaching over the table to grab a handful of napkins to clean his face off with.

Maka snatched some of his napkins for herself, rubbing it vigorously into the flecks of cola that stained her uniform. “You got my shirt all wet, idiot.”

Blackstar simply threw his head back to cackle obnoxiously. “I just thought I should break up your lame little debate team fight before Ox over here pops a blood vessel. You know he can’t handle losing well.”

“I wasn’t losing!” Ox hissed under his breath.

Maka only met her opponent’s glare with a shit-eating grin.

“Hey, Maka! What had you stopped to talk with Professor Stein about earlier today?” Tsubaki cut in, obviously attempting to diffuse another argument between the two competitive brainiacs.

Maka’s expression relaxed into something a little more neutral, seemingly caught off guard by the question. Debate-mode successfully disarmed.

“Oh. Well… I just had some questions about my black blood research for him.” 

Blackstar didn’t miss the way Soul tensed up beside her at the mention of black blood. His face was void of any distinct emotion, but something was off in his body language. The way his shoulders squared as if he were instinctively bristling.

Anyone with a shred of social awareness could have deduced that black blood, Medusa, and Crona were not Soul’s favorite topics. It wasn’t unusual for him to shut down and discontinue any contributions to a conversation when any of these things were brought up. 

Unfortunately for Soul, all of those subjects were constantly on Maka’s mind since she began her obsessive pursuit for a solution to Crona’s ordeal.

“Oh? And what did he have to say?” Tsubaki pressed, completely oblivious to the tense situation she was potentially triggering.

“As you’re already aware, there’s not really any official research on the black blood that exists. We’ve been digging through countless books - gathering as much information about madness and Kishins as we can, but it can only get us so far. It would be so much more useful if we could get our hands on a physical sample of the substance itself.”

Soul’s eyes widened in concern, but only for a second before he slipped his usual poker face back on. His Adam’s apple bobbed nervously despite the veneer of calm he displayed.

“Anyways,” she continued, turning to look at Soul, “I was going to talk to you about this later, but maybe some of the black blood still remains in your system? I know we believed it was all gone, but surely there’s some residual amount of it lingering behind? Something we could maybe isolate, extract and create a concentrate of? Stein said it was unlikely, but technically possible. We have to try for Crona, right, Soul?”

He was no longer wearing his mask of apathy. Unmistakeable, visible discomfort was etched into his facial features and he was clenching his hands, knuckles whitening from the pressure. Everyone at the table was hushed and the tension was palpable.

“He doesn’t have to try anything,” Kid’s voice cut sharply through the silence, golden eyes flashing sternly at her.

A soft gasp escaped her and her eyebrows shot up, clearly taken-aback by the sudden burst of hostility from her boss and close friend. Her eyes darkened seconds later, determination setting in.

 “I think that’s his decision to make, and I’d like to hear what he has to say,” she turned her attention back to Soul, hope still shining in her eyes.

He fidgeted with his necktie, loosening it and clearing his throat. “Yeah, s’fine. Whatever you need, I guess.”

Maka’s face lit up into a bright smile that turned Blackstar’s stomach and she pulled Soul into a brief hug. “I knew we could count on you, Soul! You’re the best partner ever.”

“Whatever, it’s no problem. Just try not to drain me of all my blood, alright?” he chuckled weakly, avoiding her eyes in favor of staring a hole in the middle of the table.

She gave an easygoing laugh in response, and went back to conversing with Tsubaki as if she hadn’t just pressured her partner into volunteering himself as a guinea pig for the sake of someone who had literally sliced him open from shoulder to hip and infected him with black blood to begin with.

Is she fucking serious?

Blackstar was practically vibrating with fury from the interaction he’d just watched, and Tsubaki’s normally soothing hand on his shoulder did little to calm him down. When he glanced at Kid, he instantly knew the death god had shared his frustration with Maka’s obliviousness. 

It wasn’t long before Soul abruptly stood from his place at the end of the booth, pulling a twenty out of his wallet and placing it on the table in front of him.

“Soul? What are you doing? The food hasn’t even gotten here yet,” Maka blinked at him in confusion.

“I’m not feelin’ too great - gonna head out, sorry guys. Could you just bring my food back in a to-go box?” he said with an apologetic quirk of his lips. He squeezed her shoulder gently before turning on his heels and making his way out of the diner in long strides.

Why does she look so shocked? Does she really not understand that she’s been hurting him?

After that, the night passed by in a haze for Blackstar. He hardly spoke for the rest of the meal due to the fact that he was using all of his mental capacity to keep his impulse to stand up and loudly call his friend out in front of everybody in check. 

The only thing truly stopping him was the knowledge that Soul would likely be embarrassed and more than a little pissed off if he’d made a big scene over something that he wasn’t even willing to talk about.  

So he waited - held his tongue until he could lash out in private.

As everyone was saying their goodbyes, Blackstar watched her rise from her seat gathering her to-go boxes carefully and giving him a nod of acknowledgement before she headed out.

His eyes bore into the back of her head as she left, and Tsubaki’s hand clamped gently on him for the second time that night. Her eyes were crinkled with a gentle concern.

“I think you should leave this between them. If Soul wanted all of this out in the open, he would have had that conversation with her himself.”

A heavy sigh settled in his chest, “You know how he is. He’s the suffer in silence type and he always does her bidding. If nobody says anything, then nothing’ll change. I just want to talk to her - not like I’m gonna beat her ass or anything … unless she gives me a reason to.” 

“Blackstar,” she chided, fully aware that he would make good on that threat.

“I know, I know. I won’t be long, see ya at home,” he said, throwing up placating hands before stuffing them in his pockets and striding in the direction Maka had gone. 

            _______________________________________________

Maka set her walk home at a leisurely pace, dragging her feet slightly as she watched the sunset bleed into the sky above.

It wasn’t that she was trying to prolong seeing Soul, or that she wasn’t worried about the way he’d acted back in the diner - like something was eating at him. 

She was pretty positive that he wasn’t physically ill, which only left the option of it being an emotional issue. 

And getting Soul to talk about emotional issues was like trying to pull teeth from a temperamental bear. 

She had to figure out a way to go about this delicately, and she had to figure it out soon because their apartment block was fast approaching.

She stopped in her tracks when she felt the presence of a familiar soul behind her. His steps had been so quiet, she wouldn’t have even been aware he was stalking her from behind if it weren’t for her exceptional soul perception abilities.

“I know you’re following me, Blackstar.”

In moments, he was stepping out in front of her. “Wasn’t trying to hide. I need to talk to you,” his voice was uncharacteristically stern.

She wasn’t stupid. She knew Blackstar had some kind of problem with her since dinner. He was deathly quiet and glowering at her for most of the night; very unusual behavior from someone who never shuts up or hesitates to start a fight. 

“Okay, I’m listening,” she said, already preparing to defend herself against whatever absurd argument he wanted to pull her into.

“The whole situation with Crona - have you ever once thought about how Soul feels about it?”

Whatever she had been expecting to come out of his mouth - that wasn’t it.

“What? I mean, I know how Soul feels. He wants Crona to be safe, just like I do. What are you trying to get at?”

“I’m not talking about what he thinks about Crona being stuck in the deathdamned moon, Maka! I mean have you ever thought about how he felt when you forced Crona into his life to begin with? After being sliced open?” 

Maka’s eyebrows shot up to her hairline and her mouth opened and closed a few times, baffled by the question. 

“Soul understands why I welcomed Crona as a friend. He trusts me,” she answered, hoping her voice conveyed the confidence that she couldn’t find in this moment.

This entire conversation was throwing her off.

“Yeah, okay. He accepted your decision because he trusts you, or loves you or whatever the fuck. We all know that - but that doesn’t mean he was comfortable with it. It doesn’t mean he felt safe. He just stuffed his own feelings down, because he knew it made it easier for you.”

Her throat tightened as her own conflicting emotions overcame her. He had no idea what he was talking about. Soul was fine. He’s always been fine. 

“Did he say that to you? That he didn’t feel safe?” she choked out. 

“Soul? You think he tells people things? About his feelings?” he snorted. “No, he doesn’t have to tell me shit. It’s clear on his face every time you mention Crona, or Medusa, or that fucking blood.”

“Maybe you’re just making assumptions about how he feels!” she shouted back, gripping handfuls of the front of his shirt.

He leaned in, completely unfazed by the rage burning in her eyes. “You ever noticed how when Crona was around, he was always watching them out of the corner of his eye - twitching every time they made some sudden move. You ever noticed how quiet and withdrawn he’d get around them? Or any time they were brought up? You didn’t - because you didn’t want to.” 

“Shut up! Y-you’re making something out of nothing. Are you trying to tell me that I should just give up and forget about Crona? That they don’t deserve to have a friend?” 

Some of his aggression was fizzling out as he released a heavy sigh, placing his hands calmly over hers, still clenching in his shirt. “I’m not trying to say that you shouldn’t have helped Crona, or that you shouldn’t keep trying to help them now. I’m only telling you that even if Soul has forgiven and moved on - he’s still a victim of Crona’s actions. He suffered trauma from that, even if he’s too fucking stubborn to admit it. Just acknowledge that maybe he needs a break from thinking about them - all of that shit that happened - every now and then. Get your head out of Crona’s ass long enough to check if he’s okay too.”

She stumbled over wordless sounds as her hands went limp and released their vice-grip on his clothing. She was trying desperately to think of a way to refute the awful things he was saying, but Blackstar wouldn’t give her the chance. 

“If you gave him even half the thought you gave to Crona - maybe you would have noticed it like everybody else has. I just want you to think about it for a bit, that’s all,” his voice softened towards the end, shoulders sagging slightly as he turned away, leaving her to deal with the aftermath of his confrontation.

The heat of tears prickled behind her eyelids and she clenched her fists tightly to her sides. 

She wanted so badly to swing around and scream at Blackstar’s retreating figure that he was wrong, that he had no idea what he was talking about and of course she thinks about her weapon.

But the longer she allowed his harsh words to sink in; the more she could feel the sting of truth settling into her heart.

Had she really been so blind? 

             _______________________________________________

Soul had been laying on his back in bed, hands resting on his stomach and eyes pointed at the ceiling, unmoving for some time. He wasn’t entirely sure how many hours, but he knew his playlist had ended long ago - no music played from the earbuds that were still jammed in his ears.

He couldn’t explain the heaviness in his heart. The anxiety that often set in whenever Maka mentioned Crona or the black blood. It was all water under the bridge, wasn’t it? There was no point in allowing himself to wallow in all the negative emotions that punched him in the gut at the mention of their name. It was selfish to feel those things - it was his job to give Maka his full support. His own feelings were irrelevant.

It was just harder on this particular night. Sure, she droned on about those sore subjects often. Their research revolved around it anyways. He’d just hoped that it could have been different just for one night.

He’d secretly been ecstatic when Maka begrudgingly agreed to shelve her research just long enough to get a late dinner with all of their friends. A break had been long overdue. 

Things had been different between them, after all. They’d been sharing a bed, and they’d even shared a few kisses in the small, rare moments that they’d spent alone together - focused only on each other. They were chaste kisses, but he’d greedily take whatever he could get. 

As she became more frantic about her lack of results in helping Crona, he may as well have not even existed to her. 

He’d just needed that one dinner to pretend things were normal, to pretend as though he was on a date with her and she was willing to spend time with him and think about literally anything aside from her latest fixations. Instead, she’d asked him to play part in some unsound experiment - to prod for things that he hadn’t wanted to find again. It had only been made more uncomfortable by the scrutinizing presence of all of their friends. 

He’d felt used.

Soul perked up at the familiar sound of the front door creaking open and slamming shut. He was immediately ashamed of the pavlovian response he had to the sound of his meister returning - the little flip in his heart that made him feel like a stupid dog wagging its tail at the sound of its master.

Just keep to yourself. She doesn’t need to interact with you in this useless state of self pity. You don’t deserve her comfort.

Self-loathing curled in his gut and he kept his eyes stubbornly trained on a water stain in the ceiling.

Suddenly, light flooded into his dark room as his door was hesitantly opened. He reflexively brought himself to sit up on his elbows only to meet a teary-eyed Maka.

All self-indulgent angsty thoughts instantly evaporated from his head, and he was ripping his earbuds out and swinging his legs over the side of the bed to get up.

She made purposeful steps across his room, throwing her arms around his neck and forcing him back onto the bed with the motion.

“I’m so sorry, Soul,” she warbled mournfully into his sweater. 

“Huh? Sorry ‘bout what? What’s going on, Maka?” he tried to nudge her into looking up at him, but she adamantly refused.

She took a few shallow breaths before rubbing her wet cheek against the quickly-dampening fabric and looking up at him with dewy eyes.

“I haven’t been a good friend to you - have I? 

Was that a trick question?

“I-I don’t get what we’re talkin’ about here,” he stuttered uselessly, attempting to compensate for his lack of eloquence by brushing his fingers comfortingly through her soft hair.

“I never asked if you felt okay with Crona being around you. I never asked you if you forgave them at all - I just brought them into your space, your home. I just wanted them to have a chance at a normal life so badly - I ignored your pain, and I’m so sorry,” she rushed her confession out like it had been a breath she was holding in.

He had to fight the urge to bark out a laugh. It wasn’t that he found anything that she said humorous - it was just so strange that she was addressing this out of the blue. She’d seemed completely unaware as usual back at the diner, where had this even come from?

He was so lost in thought, he’d almost forgotten to respond and instantly regretted the prolonged silence he’d left her in. “Maka, it’s fine,” he insisted, “I get why you forgave Crona. I admire you for it.”

“But that doesn’t mean you were okay. I should have at least checked on you, or asked you about how you felt - or literally anything,’ she mumbled numbly from his chest.

“Hey. Look at me,” he said, lifting her cheek from its resting place against his sweater, “Sure, I didn’t feel the most comfortable around Crona. I think it was pretty awkward for both of us to be near each other. That doesn’t mean I dislike them, or didn’t want you to be their friend. You can’t beat yourself up over something I hadn’t bothered to tell you.”

His words hadn’t brought the comfort that he’d hoped they would, and her brows remained stubbornly crinkled. “If it had been me - if I was the one who’d been cut by that sword, would you still say that you don’t dislike them? That you’re okay with us being friends?”

It was a question that he instantly knew the answer to, but he was reluctant to say it out loud. He finally caved, bringing his eyes back to hers, “No. I wouldn’t have been able to forgive them if it was you.”

She closed her eyes tightly, nodding her head in grim acceptance of that truth. She had likely known that would be his answer already, but hearing it must have been difficult.

“But I love that about you. You have so much compassion. I only care for the few people that I’ve decided I love - I don’t have room in my heart for others like you do. I’d like to be more like you,” he whispered reverently, taking her cheeks in both of his hands and briskly wiping away all of the moisture he could reach with his thumbs.

“I should’ve had more compassion for you,” she lamented softly under her breath, eyes downcast.

“You’re not a fuckin’ mind reader, Maks. It was my choice not to bring anything up.”

She nodded slowly, but the way her grip tightened on him only confirmed his suspicion that she wasn’t going to forgive herself for it.

Minutes passed before a word was spoken, but Soul eventually cleared his throat. “You know, I don’t expect you to ever stop being friends with Crona, or to give up on rescuing them. I don’t want that. I don’t mind helping you like you’d asked earlier tonight, too. If that’s what you need from me, then I’m here.”

She brought herself to her elbows on top of him to get a better view of his face.

“I know. I’m not going to give up on them. But It matters to me that you’re happy too, and if that means you need a break from all that, then I want you to know that it’s okay to ask for that.”

“Right, I’ll keep that in mind,” he said in a hushed tone, distracting himself with a piece of her hair twirled between his fingers.

“And I don’t want to use your blood for research. It was wrong of me to even think of asking you that. We’ll find another way,” she assured him, voice tightening with emotion, “I definitely got carried away with all of this. It wasn’t healthy, and I really am sorry I’ve pushed you away in the process. We can’t solve this thing if we don’t have time to properly take care of ourselves. You’ve been working so hard with me, and I think we need more actual quality time together.”

“Yeah, I could get on board with that. I kinda walked out on dinner tonight, so how about we do something - just you and me tomorrow? Movies sound good?”

“Movies sounds great,” she hummed in agreement, hands idly playing with his hair.

As much as he would have preferred for her to continue her ministrations, he stopped her movements to grasp her hand, bringing it to his chest to rest above where she knew his scar was. He pressed down on her hand lightly.

“I’m glad it happened. I’m glad they gutted me, ‘cause I hadn’t understood what you meant to me till that moment,” he muttered, pressing a quick kiss to the top of her head.

She only exhaled shakily, hand tightening against the evidence of his devotion.

“I just hate that it took a lecture from Blackstar of all people for me to realize that I’d been hurting you.”

His eyes widened a little at that new piece of information. Blackstar was the one that brought all of this on her mind? He could’ve sworn it would have been Kid if anyone. He couldn’t help but feel a little touched that Blackstar had been so concerned about him, but he was also somewhat irritated that his friend had distressed Maka as much as he had.

“Blackstar, huh? Remind me to have a conversation with him about mindin’ his own business,” he laughed half-heartedly.

“No, don’t. I’m glad that he said what he did - I needed to hear it,” she urged him.

“Doesn’t matter. He didn’t have to make my girlfriend cry from guilt over bein’ friends with someone,” he muttered, but his face immediately burned a bright red as soon as he’d caught what he’d called her.

She was a similar shade, holding her breath as well as his gaze with a tortuously difficult to decipher expression on her face.

“That is, uh- I mean… fuck.”  

Very articulate. Great job, Soul.

He hadn’t needed to agonize over whether or not he’d just fucked everything between them for long because her face soon melted into a warm, genuine smile.

“Girlfriend, huh?” she said with a glimmer of mischief in her eye.

“I’d like that. If that’s w-what you want,” he wanted to kick himself for the voice crack he just experienced. Not cool in the slightest. 

At least she got a good giggle out of it. The melodic sound squeezed something in his chest and he swallowed nervously as a response.

She brushed back his bangs, leaning in to place a soft kiss to his forehead. She peppered a trail of kisses down his cheek until she reached his lips. 

This kiss was far from chaste. She cradled his cheek and jaw as she slanted her mouth sweetly over his, pressing fervently, constantly moving against him and eliciting a breathy moan from him that he would never admit to making. 

When she tried to separate, he followed her, bumping noses for a moment and giving the corner of her mouth a few more enthusiastic pecks before backing up and allowing her room to look at his face. 

“Girlfriend sounds nice, actually,” she smiled broadly, letting her fingers brush against the back of his neck.

“Glad that’s settled, then,” he laughed easily, not even bothering to feel any embarrassment over the flush of his skin or the lightness of his breath.

He crushed her to his chest, and they stayed like that for a while, just listening to the other’s loudly beating hearts until they were lulled to sleep. 

He’d have to thank Blackstar with a game of basketball later.

[honestlywtfisgoingon]

A Match Set

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Pairing: Benny Watts x Reader

Summary: After meeting one night in New York, you and Benny Watts are drawn to each other. As you go through different experiences with one another, you grow closer until it finally gets to be too much for Benny.

Word Count: 1890

Warnings: none

Notes: aye this is my first fic because there is a serious lack of benny watts fics and i had to change that for myself. this will probably be multiple chapters that can be read separately.

It was your first art gallery, and you were both anxious and overjoyed to see people surveying your work. You had put so many hours into each piece and all kinds of people had poured in to look. It was a well known gallery, but the variety still surprised you. You looked around and saw some interesting characters, but your interest was piqued when your eyes fell upon a particular cowboy.

He was inspecting one of your favorite paintings which had chess pieces as the subject. The pieces merely served as part of a metaphor in your art, as the game and all its complexities had never really been your thing. As you looked closer at the man you realized that, not only had his outfit sparked your interest, but he seemed familiar too. Out of curiosity, you walked over and stood next to him.

“What are your thoughts?” You asked, motioning towards the painting.

His initial expression showed surprise that you were talking to him, but he recovered quickly, saying, “It’s good. I think the artist has talent.” You felt a bit of pride hearing that. You opened your mouth to say thanks, but you decided not to reveal yourself. You wanted him to give his honest opinion without fear of offending you.

“So do you like chess?” He nodded to the painting. Hearing this you made the connection as to why you remembered seeing him before. Your father owned a little bookshop back home and you were looking into chess for the same painting you were discussing right now. You had seen this cowboy on the back of one of those books, but you hadn’t given it another thought, never actually expecting to meet him. You decided not to reveal this information either and continued with the conversation.

“I can play a modest game. You?”

“I can play a modest game.” He had a small smile as he shrugged.

“Your first lie.” You said smirking back.

He looked confused but curious, so you explained about your research, your fathers bookshop, the whole story. He puffed up a bit after hearing that, looking impressed that you knew who he was.

“What’s your name?” He asked, still curious.

“Y/n” you replied.

“Nice name. I’m Benny, but you already seem to know who I am. On the other hand I don’t know anything about you.” He reached out his hand to shake yours.

“You walk in here with a black trench coat but you make me out to be the mysterious one,” you smirked as you took his hand. He chuckled a bit, and after your introduction, you asked why he was here.

“My friend knows the artist actually. She told us we had to see her work before going out.” You hummed as you thought about what to say, but he interjected.

“I don’t usually do this, and I’m not sure why I’m doing this now, but maybe you’d consider coffee with me. I won’t tell anymore lies” he joked.

You laughed a little, mildly shocked. “you’re not sure why? That’s flattering” you teased.

“Not what I meant-“ but before you could come to a conclusion on his sudden offer, you heard an excited french accent.

“Y/n! Im so proud! You finally got to show off all that talent!” Your friend Cleo ran up to you and wrapped her arms around you. You hadn’t seen her since you lived in France for a few months and you had missed her. You left for France after you realized you weren’t really needed at home, so you dedicated yourself to trying to soak up some culture. She looked gorgeous like you remembered, fitting for a model. You continued your reunion embrace for a moment before she waved her arms to the men and woman behind her. She introduced the friends she had brought to your show as Arthur, Hilton, and Annette, who all smiled at you. Cleo paused to turn to the cowboy saying, “I see you’ve already met Benny.”

“Yeah we met,” he said, “but I didn’t know this was your work. I would’ve told you how impressed I am.” Your cheeks turned a light pink at the praise.

“Look at Benny, impressed with someone besides himself for once.”Cleo poked fun and the group let out a laugh.

“Hey I’m not a narcissist or anything, don’t listen to Cleo,” Benny made excuses to you, only mildly offended.

“Sure you aren’t. I have nothing against narcissists,” you jokingly assured him. This answer didn’t comfort the man who had essentially just asked you on a date.

You and Cleo continued to catch up and you talked more with her friends as well. Benny just stood next to you, and you caught him glancing at you once or twice, but you just ignored it. Eventually you agreed to go out for drinks with the group, walking with them to a bar a couple blocks down called Hal’s.

You all squeezed into a booth while Arthur went off to get drinks. You sat on the outside, watching the people out on the floor next to you giggling and dancing. Having a couple of drinks beforehand must’ve contributed to the large amount of people out there, you thought. Arthur eventually announced his return by laying a tray of drinks in the middle of the table.

You were all conversing and sipping on your drinks when Annette decided she wanted to dance. Cleo agreed enthusiastically, but the rest of us refused. She suggested we all take shots to make it easier, but once again we tried to turn her down. she pleaded, “come on guys, it’s a Saturday night, and you can’t possible lose something from it. Have a little bit of fun with me!”

We relented, having a feeling that she wasn’t going to give up any time soon. She gave a little clap and handed out the shots. You knocked yours back with everyone else and grimaced at the bitter taste. Shaking it off, you slid out of the booth so the others could get out. You moved back into your spot after they all made their way to the throng of people. You decided you would join them later, but you liked to observe first. You looked over and the only two left were you and Benny. You slid over to him, not wanting to sit awkwardly on the other end like he wasn’t there.

“I bet you five bucks that lady is bored out of her mind.” He pointed to a blonde on a date across the bar, “Either she’s an alcoholic or she’s trying to tune out baldie.” You looked at the woman and saw she was surrounded by empty glasses while the man in front of her seemed like he was boasting endlessly. You both started making observations about the various people in the bar. Most of them were snarky comments that you whispered into each other’s ears, giggling, but you also created imaginary lives for them, guessing who they were and how they got here. After sharing a couple laughs, you sighed and reached a comfortable lull before Benny brought up what you knew was coming.

“So have you thought about my earlier question?” He eyed you seriously all of a sudden, but you didn’t feel any pressure. He seemed the type of confident where he thought you would say yes, but he could recover if you said no.

You weighed in your impression of him. He was cute, with fluffy hair and nice eyes that were a kind of chocolate color. He was funny and you he seemed intelligent (I mean he had to be, he played competitive chess). Albeit his trench coat and hat were a bit eccentric, but that wasn’t a bad thing, in fact you found it attractive.

“So have you?” He asked again, leaning his head in.

“Oh uh” you hadn’t realized while you were thinking that you had zoned out looking at him. Clearing your throat you said, “I’m free for coffee.” You stopped, “But you have to wear the hat.”

“Wouldn’t leave home without it” he winked.

Suddenly you were shoved against him as your tipsy friends barreled back into the booth.

“We should probably join them” you said as you moved off him, pushing one of the leftover drinks towards him. He nodded and you both drank some more just to get on the same level as your friends.

“You two haven’t even danced! I saw you whispering. Too busy flirting?” Annette smiled as she slurred a few of her words. You just looked down, cheeks pink, leaving Benny to respond.

“How were you watching us when you were dancing with that guy, the one who looks like he’s only ever kissed his mother.”

“No, I’m sure he’s kissed other people! I mean he did seem young but...” Annette looked over to the guy she dragged to dance with her earlier. He stood sheepishly in the corner, looking like he hadn’t outgrown his baby fat yet, and was definitely not a city type. “He’s just shy!” She defended, but me and Benny just looked at each other, falling into giggles. You figured out that night that Annette was one of those drunks who got a little childish, but she was sweet.

You would’ve been content to keep hanging out with Benny, if it hadn’t been for Cleo who grabbed your hand and pulled you out to the dance floor. You looked back at Benny, but gave in and allowed her to twirl you into the crowd. You were having a good time with Cleo, Hilton and Arthur dancing on either side of her. You were soon out of breath, but didn’t mind, enjoying it all.

You had moved to the city a couple months ago, but hadn’t had time to make friends, focusing on your work and setting up your apartment. You missed having company, people who were fun and interesting.

You continued to move to the beat of the song until you bumped into someone. You looked back to see Benny smiling next to you. You smiled back and let him in to the little circle you and your friends had created. You felt a little warm, not from the dancing, but from being close to him.

After fifteen minutes you were all tired and made your way to the booth to gather all your things up and pay the bill. You walked out of the bar and into the chilly night air, grateful for the residual body heat that came from all the dancing. You hugged Cleo and your new friends goodbye as took turns getting into taxis and headed towards their homes. Hilton offered to wave you down a taxi too, but you declined, explaining that your home wasn’t a far walk. He shrugged and gave you another hug before climbing into the yellow car. Once again it was just you and Benny.

“Just the two of us again huh?” He spoke, and he definitely didn’t sound turned off by the idea.

“Fate I guess.”

“Sure” he said casually.

“Do you not believe in fate?” You asked. You weren’t a firm believer in the idea but something in his tone made you curious.

“I’ve had this debate before I think. I’m not sure, but I’d like to figure it out. How about you?” He said. You imagined him having a lot of debates. You had just met him, but he seemed to fall into the intellectual category. They always kept things interesting, and frequently offered new perspectives.

“I mean everything’s gotta mean something, there has to be a purpose. I just don’t know if we make our own purpose or if we’re given a purpose; fate.” You mused, not meaning to get existential. He didn’t seem to mind.

“You seem like the type to want to figure things out too.” He said ‘too’. So you and him both liked to do that. You added that to the growing list of things you liked about him.

“I guess I am.” He had a pleased look on his face and you just shrugged as you started to say goodbye.

“Wait” he grabbed your arm, “I heard you say you didn’t live far, I could walk you.” Before you could protest he told you, “it wouldn’t be a big deal, I heard you tell Hilton where you lived, we’re in the same direction.”

You agreed, finding yourself wanting to talk to him more. He offered you his arm casually and you laughed to yourself a little at the gesture, taking it anyway. You walked down the sidewalk, talking and laughing. You felt comfortable as you felt like you leveled with him. It seemed like too short of a walk as you suddenly found yourself at the door of your apartment building.

“Guess this is goodnight.” Benny said as you both stood on the sidewalk.

“What about coffee?” You asked.

“Glad you remembered. I’ll pick you up at twelve tomorrow, we can make it lunch. I’ll pick you up.” He said it decidedly, like it was just a fact. Something you noticed he did often.

“Ok then. Lunch. Tomorrow. Am I forgetting anything?” You said as you stepped halfway into the doorway.

“If you are we can figure that out later. I’ll see you.” He waved with a slight smile.

You waved back and smiled in return, watching him walk away before closing the door. You sped up to your apartment, letting yourself finally feel the excitement and anticipation of going out. You stripped off your clothing as soon as you got in and flopped on your bed, feeling sort of giddy. You felt like you and Benny were connected, though you had barely met him. As you laid down you smiled to yourself, looking forward to tomorrow.

[star-consultant]

Bright are the stars

You need a Beatle song that perfectly encapsulates your sign? Of course you do. (Spotify playlist) 

Aries—“I Saw Her Standing There” 

One two three FOUR! An eager and intense song for an eager and intense sign. Aries falls hard and fast, with a tendency to rash vows that everyone doubts they mean—but Aries doesn’t doubt. Paul (who later styled himself as a "ram” at a key point in his creative development) makes good on the Cardinal Fire vibe with his exuberant vocals, and John of the Aries rising contributed the street-smart innuendo that utterly makes the song: And you know what I mean. Fittingly, this song kicked off the group’s first album, which itself has plenty of Aries “HELLO I AM HERE TO MAKE A MARK ON YOUR WORLD! (like me plz ok? this is my heart and i am Doing My Best??)” energy. 

Taurus—“All I’ve Got to Do"

A song that takes its sweet time but burrows deeper than the average ear-worm into your consciousness. It’s a patient song that is unassuming but knows exactly what the hell it’s doing. The intensity builds bit by bit, so that you’re unaware when the power of the bridge comes crashing down. Describes the Taurean romantic ideal: lazy, loyal, cozy, constant, tender, and ever-so-true. Also, “All I’ve Got to Do” is featured on the second album, With the Beatles, which has plenty of other Bullish touches, noticeable even with a casual glance at the tracklist: “Don’t Bother Me,” “Not a Second Time,” and “Money (That’s What I Want).” 

Gemini—“She Loves You”

Paul is a Gemini Sun, and throughout his catalogue it shows. But perhaps he never topped the Twinniness of this energetic, optimistic, breathless, gossipy classic. It was composed “eye-to-eye” with John, a truly dual-authored song, and one the rare Beatles numbers where the two lead vocalists double up on every single line, in true (Nerk) Twin fashion. Also the first but definitely not the last of their many “third-person narratives,” Paul’s novelistic instead of confessional slant being distinctly a Gemini thing. The speaker in this one couldn’t be more enthusiastic about this relationship if it were already repaired, and he couldn’t be more enthusiastic about it if it were his. Love is great! People reconciling is great! You should be glad, dumbass! But the real corker? What makes this so Gemini that it hurts? Yoko has confirmed that in the early 70s, during her separation with John, she actually had Paul play agony aunt. Then, during that meetup in L.A. where they were last photographed together, Paul urged John to “apologize to her” and get back together... which he did. That’s right. "She Loves You” is not merely a Gemini’s song: it’s a Gemini’s life. 

Cancer—“Octopus’s Garden”

Ringo the Crab’s musically-complex fantasy about an underwater sanctuary where children are “happy and safe,” he and his lover can be together, and there’s “no one there to tell us what to do.” George (a triple Water sign himself, probably not-so-incidentally) always insisted that his best mate’s song Had Depths, and he himself supplied a lot of them: check out his lead guitar lines. They function as emotional counterpoint. When Ringo’s vocal line is especially wistful, the guitar is bright; when Ringo ends on a confident note, the guitar is quirky, ironic, even stiff-upper-lip pessimistic. Result: a shifting kaleidoscope of FEELS. The Moon approves. 

Leo—“Good Day Sunshine” 

Paul perfectly expresses his own Leo moon with a sublime, vibrant ode to laughter, love, and pride on a cloudless summer day. The bit in the lyrics about she knows she’s looking fine and I’m so proud to know that she is mine? That’s not marring the high tone of the song: that is part of the tone. Hear us roar! And by “roar” I mean "laugh and canoodle, coz Leo is about living the good life, bitches.” 

Virgo—“Please Please Me” 

What’s fair is forkin’ fair, mate! A exemplary blend of Virgo’s Mutable passive-aggressive sensitivity with its Elemental directness... half-critical, half-begging... plus the very sign-typical humblebragging. About their sexual prowess. Damn, Virgo. People forget how Earthy you really are sometimes. But here we are. In very Virgo fashion, instead of ditching the girl he’s decided to harangue her. On a more meta note, the Beatles were still studio virgins when they first began crafting this song, and it took several passes and incorporation of George Martin’s feedback before it became the bursting pop hit as we know it now. There’s that Virgo work ethic paying off.

Libra—“Strawberry Fields Forever”

The imagery of the title suggests an eternal harvest. But the star sign resemblance goes deeper than that: Always, no, sometimes think it’s me, but, you know, I know when it’s a dream. I think, er, no, I mean, er, yes, but it’s all wrong... that is, I think I disagree. Did you just hear your Libra roommate rambling after a joint, or did you listen to verse three of “Strawberry Fields”? Same difference. The song is absolutely lovely, as anything associated with the child of Venus should be, and innovative, as befits a Cardinal sign. Most of all, even in all of Libra Sun John’s weighing and weed-wandering, he knows one thing: he’s got to take someone else along with him. A companion, stat! 

Scorpio—“While My Guitar Gently Weeps”

George of the Scorpio moon and Scorpio ascendant had to really lean into this side of his nature to even get this damn track properly recorded. He resorted to the social power play of inviting Eric frickin’ Clapton into the tense post-India studio just to get Lennon, McCartney, and Martin to give his song proper Beatle recording magic. Which it deserved. The dark drama of the hard-won arrangement is the perfect Scorpio accompaniment to the moody, reflective lyrics about “all the love there that’s sleeping” in this weary world. There’s tender, horrified pity here for those who are stifled into inauthenticity: I don’t know how nobody told you how to unfold your love. I don’t know how someone controlled you; they bought and sold you... Bonus points for the Watery ‘just can’t even’-ness of not being able to so much as pick up a damn broom. 

Sagittarius—“Something” 

You’re asking me, will my love grow? I don’t know, I don’t know! A deeply instinctual lover knows that Cupid has done hit a bullseye. He remains emphatically ambivalent about the future, but he knows what he feels in this moment, and in that moment is romance and wonder that is as deep as the earth is from the heavens. Sags are intense, but of all the Fire signs they are most far-seeing and detached (due to their Mutable quality, which makes them see the world a bit more like an Air sign does). “Something” keeps trying to capture that je-ne-sais-quoi, and despite the speaker’s happiness he can’t help but circle back again and again to take another shot at that the mental target. A philosopher even when in love. Ultimately, however, he doesn’t want to leave her now... which for a restless Sag is already saying a ton.

Capricorn—“Revolution”

John let his unfashionable midheaven Capricorn off the leash with this blunt, pointed savaging of radical and violent revolutions. (Given the tanks on Tiananmen Square and the millions dead on the killing fields of Cambodia, I can’t say that his cautionary note about “destruction” and “minds that hate” was unnecessary.) Few things are more Capricorn than ‘Oh, you want my money? Yeah, first show me that you’ve done your fucking homework, mate.’ Bonus Earth points for the fact that he somehow worked sex—a lot of sex—into this political track. 

Aquarius—“Come Together”

John of the Aquarius moon’s decidedly loony attempt to write a political campaign song in order to stop Reagan. (The result was too weird for Timothy Leary, whose reaction was pretty much ‘wtf? I don’t think even I have enough residual acid in my system for this one... ’) John invokes the ideal of collaboration, but his call to solidarity is built around fantastical lyrics that no one can comprehend: He wear no shoeshine, he got/Toejam football, he got/Monkey finger, he shoot/Coca-Cola, he say/I know you, you know me... Oh, right. The lyrics contain exactly one discernible message: One thing I can tell you is you got to be free. How Aqua. Also in true collaborative Water-Bearer fashion, the arrangement really makes the song (special mention to the tight, tight work of the rhythm section). Bizarre genius that attracts a true team effort—it doesn’t get much more Aquarius than that.

Pisces— “I Want to Tell You”

The wall of sound builds up thickly enough that soon the words seem to be traveling through the sea to reach you: I want to tell you my head is filled with things to say... But when you’re here, all those words, they seem to slip away. A gorgeously, emotionally tongue-tied song... about being tongue-tied. Written by George, a Pisces Sun, this absolute mystery of a lyric is all emotion and no logic. If he seems to act unkind, it’s only him, it’s not his mind. Okay, Fishboy. Good thing the track is compellingly lovely and utterly relatable. Which suits the Pisces life exactly: ‘I don’t know what I mean, but it’s exceedingly beautiful and I want you to share it with you very, very much.’ 

[fivelakesinwriting]

I’m in a tricky situation and I feel like you’d be perfect at advice

I used to be really close friends with this guy about 5/6 years ago everyone said he liked me more than a friend and I did aswell but I started to see another guy who I ended up in a relationship with he was very controlling and made me end the friendship , the relationship turned into abuse mentally and physically so I left and met someone else I ended up having a child with this person , this relationship has now come to an end due to arguing and no effort or anything that resembles a relationship from his side

I was on Snapchat a few nights ago and saw that the guy I used to be close friends with was actually on my friends list and had been since 2020 so I must’ve added him back after the first break up

I’ve not spoken to him for 5/6 years so I took the plunge and messaged him to say that I was sorry for how things ended up being, he responded much to my shock “ it’s ok it’s water under the bridge” I do have regrets regarding him but obviously a lot has changed now I have a 4 year old and I hardly know anything about his life now but I really want to rekindle the friendship

I have messaged him back since but he’s not opened the message I don’t know wether he just doesn’t use Snapchat or he’s paying me back for when I ignored him

Hi, lovely!

First of all, I want to extend support for what you've gone through these last few years in your relationships. That cannot have been easy, and to have dealt with, especially with a child must have made it even more difficult. I am happy you have seemingly come out on the other side. Take a deep breath and exhale. You made it.

I think a familiar face is a good thing right now, dealing with all that residual trauma from those relationships. But I think it's also important to realize WHY you want him there. Is it for simply his friendship? Or do you want something more from him? Perhaps give him a day or so while you think about it, and if he has not replied, reach out again and see if there's an easier way to make contact. A new phone number, email, ye Olde Facebook.

Everyone deserves a tight knit support system, and if you think your old friend will contribute to that. Good! I know for me, when I went through a traumatic breakup with an emotional abuser, I ran back to a boy that I had been chasing for YEARS. Because he was familiar, not because it was right. And I got hurt even more.

This is just some advice, something for you to mull over, chew on. I hope it helps. And I hope you have a little lightness in your heart. I'm thinking about you xoxo

[96thdayofrage]

It was the mid-1980s, and African American rock ‘n’ roll, R&B and blues musician and activist Daryl Davis had just finished performing a set with his band in a bar in Frederick, Maryland.

As he left the stage, a White man—who would later reveal himself to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan—went up to Davis, put his hand around his shoulder and expressed his approval and admiration for his performance. “This is the first time I heard a Black man play piano like Jerry Lee Lewis,” he told Davis after they exchanged pleasantries. Surprised with the statement, Davis quickly replied, “Well, where do you think Jerry Lee Lewis learned how to play that kind of style? . . . He learned it from the same place I did: Black blues and boogie-woogie piano players.” The White man was in disbelief and refused to accept Davis’ proposal.

Hearing about this incident on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast made me realise that I had been just as ignorant and oblivious as this man about the extent of the artistic contributions of Black people to American music. The moment also sparked within me many questions about my state of ignorance. Why did I not know about these artists? How much more did I not know? How much of the music I listened to was indeed Black?

As an Indian girl growing up in Kuwait in the 2000s, my exposure to American popular music came primarily through television channels like MTV Arabia (the Middle Eastern iteration of MTV) and MBC (Middle East Broadcasting Center) as well as the radio station Radio Kuwait FM 99.7. Hit singles from a range of American artists, including Black artists, were in heavy rotation along with other shows. My favourite was an MTV show called ‘Rewind’ which played classic pop, R&B and hip hop hits from the previous decades. Songs were played in cars and at parties and hummed in classrooms by local as well as expatriate teens of various nationalities who, like myself, were unaware of the cultural and historical backstories of the music.

For example, I heard of Elvis Presley, dubbed the “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” on television shows and news media due to his iconic status, but until recently, I had no idea that Presley was profoundly influenced by and “borrowed” from Black blues, gospel and rhythm ‘n’ blues artists of and before his time. He was influenced by radio performances of then local Black disc jockeys like B. B. King (who later came to be known as the “King of the Blues”) and Rufus Thomas (who also became a successful recording artist) and by performers at the Black nightclubs he visited during his teenage and young adult years.

Furthermore, I only recently learnt that many of Presley’s early recordings were covers of original songs by Black artists and that some of his biggest-selling songs like ‘Don't Be Cruel’ and ‘All Shook Up’ were penned by a Black musician by the name of Otis Blackwell. In fact, the first time I heard about it was last year in a YouTube video of a speech that Michael Jackson gave in 2002. While facts like this have now become somewhat common knowledge for most people in the West, my lack of awareness of Blackwell and others like him may be the residual effect of a time in the United States’ past when racial segregation permeated every aspect of life, including music and entertainment.

Dr Portia K. Maultsby is a renowned ethnomusicologist and professor emerita at the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University and the founder of the university’s Archives of African American Music and Culture. Maultsby took up the study of African American popular music traditions in the 1970s when there was no one looking into it as a valid area of research. She explains that segregation ensured that White Americans remained ignorant of Black musical traditions.

“Due to the segregated structure of the country for years and years, White Americans were kept away from the sounds of Black music,” Maultsby says.  During this time, many Black jazz, gospel, R&B and soul artists enjoyed popularity in and even toured different parts of Europe. However, within the United States, Black artists were relegated to the so-called category of ‘race music’, an umbrella term—later replaced by ‘rhythm ‘n’ blues’ in the 1940s—used to denote essentially all types of African American music made by Black people, for Black people. The songs were distributed by mostly White-owned record labels catering exclusively to Black audiences, which meant that the White population remained largely ignorant of the large volumes of work that was recorded by countless Black artists. Black artists also did not get paid as much as White artists or have as many resources, and segregation ensured that their performances were limited to smaller venues.

By the early 1950s, however, a number of independent radio stations (again, mostly White-owned) began popping up, including rhythm ‘n’ blues or “Negro” radio stations. Since it was not possible to segregate radio waves, Black music became accessible to everyone and White teenagers began taking an interest in it. Seeing this, the music industry recognised the potential of appropriating Black music and record companies started making sanitised covers of the music with White artists to distribute to White listeners. But as Maultsby explains, they did so while “keeping the original artists in the background, unexposed” and rhythm ‘n’ blues music, covered and performed by White artists, was now marketed to the mainstream White listener as ‘rock ‘n’ roll,’ a term coined by radio disc jockey Alan Freed.

Record companies and White artists wanted the Black sounds and styles that appealed to the White audience but they did not want the Black artist. American record producer and founder of Sun Records Sam Phillips had been looking for “a White man with the Negro sound and the Negro feel” when he found Elvis Presley. The Beatles got their start by covering various blues artists like Arthur Alexander and rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Chuck Berry. Janis Joplin, who was dubbed the “Queen of Rock”, wanted to sound like a Black blues musician and was influenced by Lead Belly, Bessie Smith and Big Mama Thornton. Pat Boone covered ‘Tutti Frutti’, an original song by musician, singer and songwriter Little Richard, and reached 12th place in the national charts of 1956—several places ahead of the original.

Covers like these were made by record companies much to the disapproval and discontentment of the artists. Little Richard, nicknamed “The Innovator, The Originator, and The Architect of Rock ‘n’ Roll” and whose style influenced big names like the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, Michael Jackson and Prince, told the Washington Post in 1984 that he felt as though he was “pushed into a rhythm ‘n’ blues corner” to keep him away from the White audience. He said that “they”—who he does not name—would try to replace him with White rockstars like Elvis Presley who performed his songs on television as soon as they were released. He believed that this was because “they” didn’t want him to become a hero to White kids.  

Little Richard’s statement reveals the racism and the lack of agency that Black artists suffered while under exploitative record labels. Exploitation happened to almost all artists in the music industry, but Black artists were particularly targetted as they would receive very little or nothing in royalties. Forbes reports that Specialty Records purchased ‘Tutti Frutti’ for a meagre 50 USD and gave him just 0.05 USD per record sold in royalties, while White artists received much higher rates—a discriminatory practice that was quite common in the industry. Richard, after he left the label in 1959, sued Specialty records for failing to pay him royalties.

Dr Birgitta Johnson is an associate professor of ethnomusicology in the School of Music at the University of South Carolina and teaches courses on African American sacred music, African music, hip hop, blues and world music. She explains that Black artists were not protected by copyright laws and would often have their music recorded and sold by record companies without proper contracts—in other words, their music would get stolen.

“Back in the day, there was no expectation that the Black artist could fight someone in court even though some of them did,” Johnson says. “If they didn’t have the copyright stolen from them, the record companies would own the music [instead of] the artists, and [the artists] wouldn’t know it because a lot of the time, they wouldn’t have the legal know-how to recognise what was happening in contracts. They wouldn’t get paid royalties . . . even though they were due royalties.”

While this exploitation of Black artists continued, in the late 1950s, after the development of smaller and more portable transistor radios, a wider audience of White teenagers began listening to Black radio stations. This new generation no longer had to depend on the family’s devices and gained more autonomy over what and who they listened to. “Young White people, who would become the hippies of the ‘60s, are the generation of people who started to press for their freedom . . . to [listen to] what they wanted to hear,” Johnson explains.

Listeners who heard the originals would call up the radio or go down to their local record store and ask for the originals, and record companies had to start supplying to demands to stay relevant in the market. “The covers made money but didn’t last long,” Johnson says, “because young White people no longer wanted the covers, the fake versions, the copies.”

The problem was that cover bands and artists tended to simply do whatever the producers asked them to do, which was usually to copy the original artist’s sound, style and moves, and more often than not, it made for bland and inauthentic renditions of the originals. The covers lacked the authenticity that Black artists conveyed in their performance and the young audience who had heard the authentic versions could see this. “They knew what the good music sounded like—it was almost like they understood... they may not have understood the racial dynamics of it, but they knew [the real thing from the fake],” Johnson says.

Moreover, artists who did covers were performing in styles that were foreign to them. “It was outside of their tradition; it was outside of their aesthetics; [and] they couldn’t bring the same excitement to it sometimes,” she explains. The music, performance and singing style had characteristic elements such as polyrhythms (layering of multiple rhythms), call-and-response, dance and improvisation—elements rooted in traditions that were brought to the United States by enslaved West and Central Africans between the 18th and 19th centuries. More importantly, the lyrics of songs by Black artists reflected the unique social customs, trends and living conditions of Black people, and these were not fully understood by people covering the songs. As a result, “[the covers] couldn’t compete with the real thing,” Johnson says.

Maultsby explains that due to the increasing popularity of the originals, record labels soon began recording more Black artists. However, she says, they watered down or “temper[ed] [their] heavy gospel-oriented sound” to make it more palatable for the White audience, and “one way they did [that] in the ‘50s and into the early ‘60s was to use pop production techniques” which meant a “background of strings and backup singers that sounded more White—concert-type singers—to soften the more raspier, emotional sound of the Black singer.”

By the 1980s, Black music gained exposure to an even wider international audience through television channels like MTV as well as broadcasts of live performances. Throughout the 1980s and ‘90s, collaborations between interracial duos were used as a mass-marketing strategy to increase the reach of Black artists and pop production continued to be used to “soften the Black sound.” Record companies also paired up White artists with Black producers to achieve that ever-popular Black sound.  

“Thus, more White artists embodying or imitating aspects of the Black style made it acceptable and soon . . . that Black sound began to define the American sound,” Maultsby explains. However, this imitation and dilution meant that people could never experience authentic Black music.

According to Maultsby, who helped pioneer the academic study of African American popular music, the way non-African Americans experience African American music, even in the United States, is from the perspective of an outsider, and this applies to the international audience as well.

“By and large, within African American communities, music is created as a part of everyday life . . . music is a part of our lived experience,” Maultsby explains. “When that music is then taken out of that context and placed in the music industry, it becomes a commodity for mass dissemination, and it takes on a different meaning and a different function.”

She explains that the live performances of legendary artists like Aretha Franklin or James Brown were very different from the studio-recorded performances because the records were “mediated so that [they] fit a certain format that [could] appeal to a broader audience.”

“Record labels didn’t like recording performances live because they felt the audience interaction would interfere with the performance,” she says. “But that audience interaction [was] very much a part of the way Black music is created and experienced.

The writing and coverage of Black music both in and outside of the United States also did a poor job of representing its true essence. As Maultsby explains, White journalists who covered Black music would write about it from a White perspective rather than a Black one.

“A lot of misconceptions early on had to do with the music being reported by White journalists who reported through the lens of White audiences,” Maultsby says. “When journalists wrote about Black music . . . in the US—and this carried on to Europe and the rest of the world [including] Asia [and the] Middle East—they wrote about it through their observation of performances in venues with predominantly White or all-White audience, or in general, non-Black audiences . . . they did not go into the Black community to see how the music was performed and experienced.”

Writing about Black music and culture from a Eurocentric or White point of view has resulted in early Black contributions to popular music being misrepresented as well as erased from the general consciousness. Black culture was appropriated, exploited and diluted and in the process, consumers were left with watered down, commodified versions of the art that did not represent the people that were at the heart of creating it, and its after-effects have carried over to the present-day, among non-Western consumers.

Black contributions to music are also rarely discussed in mainstream media, which is largely controlled by White executives.

“The influence of Black music in a lot of American music are things that only get discussed in classes or documentaries—sometimes award shows—but mostly in formal environments, unless you’re from that tradition,” says Johnson. “[Artists like] Steven Tyler . . . [have] said, ‘I grew up listening to the blues; I love the blues’ . . . but the people who promote him don’t really have any interest in [promoting that] narrative because it’s really about selling a personality when you think about how the music industry works.”

She explains that though most people are analytically aware that the United States is a diverse country, images that are promoted by American companies are very White-centric. What is sold to the rest of the world as “American” is usually centred around Whiteness, whether that’s through music, movies, television or other forms of entertainment.

“The outside world sees a very limited package and predominantly a White or Eurocentric image . . . people look at America and assume this is basically a White space even though we have all this diversity—we’ve always had this kind of diversity of culture,” remarks Johnson, who often does not get recognised as Black American when she travels internationally. “When I go to China, they don’t assume I’m American. When I go to Thailand, they don’t assume I’m American."

Even though a lot has changed for Black musicians and artists in the United States since its “race music” days, the impact of racism and Eurocentrism lingers on and affects the way Gen Z as well as millennials outside of the United States, like myself, understand pop music in the 21st century. Many tributes have been paid to pioneering and legendary Black artists in award shows, documentaries and biopics and their contributions have been studied academically by scholars like Maultsby and Johnson, but my awareness of Black music and culture as a non-American is not only limited by what’s been given to me in the media, but also by what’s been left out of the conversations around popular music. How do we change this?

As Maultsby expresses, it starts simply with acknowledgement—just like a symphony orchestra’s roots are acknowledged to be European no matter who performs it or how it is reinterpreted in different cultures, or how a sitar is recognised as an Indian musical instrument whether it’s played in a jazz performance or a symphony orchestra, we need to continue to learn and acknowledge the Black roots of the music even when it has a local interpretation or variation.

“We all know [the symphony orchestra] comes from Europe; there’s no question there; we don’t try to claim it as our own conception, but we do participate in that culture. That’s how we have to think about Black American culture,” she says.  

We need to recognise African American music for its role in shaping Western popular music, and understand what constitutes Black musical traditions and what differentiates it from the rest of the world, rather than generalise it as merely American music. And while music may have transcended cultural and racial boundaries, transcendence should not come at the price of obscuring and erasing the source.

“It’s fine as long as we keep in mind the source of that music,” Maultsby says. “We can say it transcends race—it just shows how influential Black has been internationally—but at the same time, we don’t need to erase the group that created the music and make Black people invisible in terms of their contributions. And that happens a lot.

“If we are not reminded that Black people are the ones that created the music you love, we question their contributions to society and to the world. We shouldn’t need to be reminded every day. It belongs in our consciousness.”

[creaticare]

Heroes Rising pt3. (But Analysis)

This was written as I watched the movie, and based off what I remembered from the first time so If stuff seems a bit out of order it’s because I wrote a bit from memory. Also the movie took me like 2x longer than normal to watch because I was writing this as I watched.

What if some of class 1-A hadn’t made it, like I mean died during the final battle. This is also just a analysis of the injuries that everyone should have by the end of the battle. 

Lets starts with these two, logically speaking Momo and Yuga got buried under a giant pile of rocks once their quirks had been majorly depleted. That means they would be way weaker than their normal forms, which contributes to the fact they should be dead after that. 

Now let’s move onto Ashido, it clearly shows that after she got the hair’s into her leg then fell down a couple levels of rocks she was bleeding from the head. I’m not saying this should have killed her but this would definitely leave her with I’m guessing a Major Concussion. 

Then we got Sero, he is first hit straight in the face with a rock that breaks into his helmet and probably makes contact with his face. I’m guessing by the force of the rock being thrown that would probably break a bone in his cheek and/or jaw. Then we see him get thrown probably over 8+ feet tumbling the whole way, which would leave him out of commission as it shows, I also think that would give him a few fractures in his body. 

Next Subject Kirishima, when they go through with Todoroki’s plan he was hit with the full power of Chimera’s blast. This should have caused chipping of his unbreakable form, because you could tell the amount of raw power that blast had by how Chimera took down the forest. So Kirishima logically should have been chipped apart and starting to bleed out as soon as he returned back to his normal form. Also for Tsuyu, Iida, Todoroki, and Kirishima all their eye’s should be a bit worse now because of how bright Chimera’s blast is, that amount of light being shone straight into someone's retina would definitely cause some permanent damage.

Iida and Tsuyu got smacked together and you can watch as they fall, blood falls along with them. This means that something had to have caused blood to come out of them, it could have been a outer injury or internal injury. Internal Injuries is something that probably a lot of the characters would have from the different events in the fights. Those two or I think at least one of them got a Internal injury from that collision, because it might not have seemed like a hard hit, but the power Chimera possesses can make it so you would know that was a hard hit. Then also you will see they are both bleeding from their heads which like I have said multiple times already, probably means they have concussions just like Ashido.

Todoroki, it does not matter that he can regulate his own body temperature for this. When he freezes Chimera from the inside out he gets a lot of major frost bite. People probably over look this fact since ‘Oh he can regulate his temperature’ no it will still leave a lasting effect on the outside of his body. Also you can watch that he passes out before he can Manually warm his body back up, that means his heating up process will take a bit longer. The cold for too long probably messed with some of his internal organs and that is not good for the body. You also should be able to hear when he does his inner monologue of ‘did we do all that we needed to do’ his speech is way slower and his breaths sound more cut off. The exhaustion and frost bite were already taking a tole on his body and brain as soon as the fight was over.

Time for Jirou and Ojiro analysis, they tried to face Nine head on even though they have some of the weaker quirks (not meant to be a jab at them I love them). Ojiro was shown to still be a bit Injured from the first fight, while Jirou did not have any major Injuries to show. Both were taken into the Jaws of what I think is a Blue Dragon skeleton that Nine has direct control of. They are then crashed into the wall of the castle, this definitely would cause something more than a light scratch. This would probably result in multiple broken bones scattered all throughout both of their bodies. No doubt that Ojiro’s tail would be broken in many places, since he was probably slammed into the wall on his back first, which means his tail would actually make contact before anything else.

Shoji, he was carrying Katsuma and Mahoro when Nine had started shooting the lasers at him. Minor cuts are shown to be inflicted on his arms, but they never show what is really happening to his back. His back was what was taking most of the shots, and the first couple that are shown don’t seem to affect him much. His hero costume might be made of special material but at some point it would need to give in. So if you think about it enough his back should be all sliced up and burnt from the lasers. He literally sacrifices himself so that the two of them could get farther ahead and away from Nine. During the Fire Tornado when debris and ruble was about to fall on Katsuma and Mahoro you see him fling his body to cover them. Also right before the screen goes to show the full castle the scene shows a giant rock that looks like it falls straight onto Shoji’s back. If this was incase the fact then his spine would either be fractured badly or broken. Don’t get me started on the amount of nerve damage he would have from a rock falling straight onto his spinal cord.

This is a add on too Jirou, Ojiro, and Shoji. Ojiro and Jirou show up to help Shoji against Nine, and let the kids run. The two of them should have been out of commission but they weren’t because it’s a movie. But all three of them or Just Ojiro and Shoji hit Nine’s force field and then were flung through walls. Even if Jirou wasn’t on the force field it had expanded and probably picked her up also and sent her flying through the wall. But as I have said many times before Bricks and Bones don’t mix, that equals many broken bones.

Kaminari, yes he can take electricity but only so much. I think that when he got struck with the lightning bolt that messed up more bodily functions then they thought it would. His blood stream probably absorbs the electricity or at least some of it. My mind also believes that some blood cells absorb too much and they can burst in a unnatural way.

During the major storm and fire tornado you could see lightning striking all over the place. More than once those strikes probably hit close to some of the others who are already out of commission. If any of them actually got struck which someone probably did (I’m thinking about the four near the water when I say this), that would mess up their brain functionality.

Sato, it isn’t much but when he has to hold up the ruble from falling into the cave that probably causes a good deal of Mental and Physical strain on him.

Tokoyami was litteraly buried under ton’s of rock and ruble, their should have been no way he survived that. Because a human body would not be able to take that amount of strain for as long as he had. It doesn’t matter if it hit dark shadow first in the end all the weight was put onto his body.

Don’t even get me started on Bakugo and Deku, they were tossed around a lot between all the battles. After their first battle they got healed by people with healing quirks and Katsuma cell activation. But I still think they would have some residual fractures and stuff, since the healers said they couldn’t do much about the bones, and I doubt Katsuma is strong enough to heal breaks fully. SO when they get thrown around during the final battle that probably cracks lots of bones, their rib cage’s probably being a big target. If their ribs are broken and they are being thrown around that means the bones shift, it is lucky that it didn’t pierce their lungs, cause if it had they would have been out of commission and killed. Then their is also the fact that they have probably gotten a lot of blunt force trauma to the head, this could cause major concussions that would render movement hard or even impossible. You also have to take into account that Deku breaks his bones just by using his quirk. While Bakugo’s quirk probably leaves some burns of varying degrees depending on how long he over uses it, which in that battle he probably went far past his limit.

Both Deku and Bakugo are taken into the jaws of the Dragon Skeletons as Nine goes over his Monologue about his new world. When they dissed him the were dragged along the ground still in the mouths of the skeletons. That would be a lot of unnatural twisting and turning that gets put upon the body. When the jaw starts to close on their stomach’s that probably puts pressure on Rib’s that were most likely already broken. When Deku proposes his Idea to Bakugo you need to look at his body closely, he is hanging so that his head is upside down. But also his one arm is so unnaturally limp, his shoulder looks like it has been dislocated, that is the only explanation for how far back his arm is in that position. But also like I said Deku breaks his bone’s with his quirk, for a short time Bakugo also had the quirk and used it so he also broke some bones cause of it.

In the Finale Finale battle (I meant to say Finale twice) there was ruble falling everywhere, there was no way in hell that didn’t land on someone. Like the whole part of the island was scattered with Class 1-A rocks needed to have landed on someone during that battle.

Deku and Bakugo literally fall head first towards the ground once the battle is over. you can’t tell me that they somehow landed gracefully on their backs and that was that. They probably hit their heads very hard on the ground which would have them out for I would say at least two days.

Now this one has something to do with all of the kids of class 1-A. All of them had been thrown around in the battles, more than once hitting their backs on something very hard. Depending on the severity of the hit this should have left them Paralyzed. Some if you look close enough have even hit their necks, which is a even stronger case to show that they should have gotten Paralyzed.

So there’s that 1,854 word Spiel, this was actually a lot of fun to write. But this is what I feel everything would have come out as if it was a bit more realistic and that was me going a bit nice.