#i know it’s a shit picture and the framing/quality is bad but i don’t particularly want people to read my words…moreso just look at the page

[seraphicsentences]

this req: hey baby i was wondering if you could write something about chubby!reader feeling insecure and Ellie noticing and worshiping her body like a damn goddess byeee ily!

here’s the less shit version (click). i only posted this because i felt bad for myself.

okay honestly don’t read this read the other version above.

ellie, being the absolute sweetheart of a girlfriend she is, was taking you out to dinner for some quality time. finals week had just come to a close, and the accomplishment was in much need of celebration.

you threw off your sixth change of clothes with an exaggerated huff, tossing it aside where you meant for it to dramatically hit the wall, but instead met ellie’s face.

“hey- woah, i barely made it through the door and you’re already stripping for me? i’m a lucky girl, huh?” she jokes, making a beeline towards your clothes-filled bed.

crossing your arms over your stomach, your cheeks warm at her comment. “ha-ha. sorry, els, i just can’t pick a fucking outfit to wear tonight.”

“well, there’s no rush,” she winks teasingly, whistling lowly as her eyes scan your bare body. “what was wrong with this?” she questions, eyebrows tugging together as she holds up your thrown garments.

you reach over to snatch them from her, rethinking the outfit as you hold it to your frame in the mirror. “it was just, like, ugh- i don’t know. too short? i’m so bloated and if we’re going out to eat this’ll just not be a good look, trust me, els.”

you can see ellie trying to picture it, tilting her head to the side in contemplation, before sauntering over to you. she wraps her arms over your shoulders, ducking down to press a kiss to your forehead, “baby, that’s what’s bothering you?”

you bite back a smile as she begins to pepper your face with kisses, repeating her question, “that’s what you’re bothered by? that?”

“ugh, ew you’re getting your slobber all over me!” you respond between giggles, playfully swatting at her face as she continues. “get off of me you freak!” you laugh.

“okay, okayokayokay! i’m done!” she says, grinning, holding her hands up in surrender as she dodges your final attacks.

“good,” you say, wiping at your face.

“now is that really what’s bothering you? you think by some higher power, you won’t look good? and it’ll just ruin the night?” ellie says more seriously, tucking some stray pieces of hair behind your ear.

you sigh, dodging the concerned look in her eyes as you cross your arms, looking down. “I mean, yeah.”

she cups your chin lightly, rubbing your jawline softly with the tip of her thumb as she tilts it upwards, locking eyes with you. she swivels you around in one move, walking backwards with you tucked against her chest. “c’mon then,” she says, letting the back of her knees hit the edge of your mattress, and tugging you down as she falls with a bounce.

“what’re you-“

“shhh,” she cuts you off, “just look.”

from your position on the bed, you’ve got a perfect view of yourself, and ellie, centered in your floor-to-ceiling mirror. she’s got her hands wrapped around your waist, her legs hanging loosely around either side of you, and her gaze is sharp now as it traces over your reflection. “i wish you could see yourself how i see you,” she murmurs, lips just brushing against your ear. it sends a shiver down your spine.

you watch, dazed, as ellie mouths her way down your neck, breath scorching hot against your skin.

“fuck, ellie,” you curse, your eyes closing as your head drops back against her shoulder. she tsks at your movement, fingers reaching again for your chin to direct your gaze towards the mirror. “i want you to watch yourself, baby.”

your jaw relaxes open, wordless, as she tongues her way over a particularly sensitive spot behind your ear, letting out a soft whine.

you watch as your bra falls to the floor, undone by ellie’s sneaking hand as it slips around to caress your chest. you let out a shaky breath as ellie rolls a hardened nipple between her calloused fingers, her alternative hand palming hard at your other breast.

almost subconsciously, your arms shift to cross over your pudgy stomach, grimacing at the way your skin creases over.

ellie notices your change in behavior like she’s inside of your mind herself, frowning along with you as she pulls gently at your arms. “no more of that, baby, gotta get out of that head of yours,” she murmurs, twisting her torso over yours to bend over and dot kisses to your abdomen.

“i love your body,” she says between pecks, “and i want you well-fed,” she kisses, “and all having meat on your bones means is that i’m doing a good job.”

she drags her lips back up to you, pressing an oh-so-sweet emblem of love against your nose as she tugs you in closer to her warm embrace.

you stare into the mirror, gaze softer now as all the reflection seems to capture is the genuinity and beauty in the two of you’s relationship.

“look how pretty you are for me. fuckin’ love your tits,” she mutters out, “so beautiful.”

mhmm is all you can reply, lost in the hypnotic sensation that ellie’s touch is.

“don’t you agree with me, babe? i wanna hear it from you,” she rasps by your ear, sharp green gaze droning into your own as she awaits your response.

your face heats up, as you look off to the side, “yeah, mhm,” you whisper.

ellie chuckles, chest vibrating against your back, “aw c’mon, you can do better than that,” she says. “look in the mirror for me,” she encourages.

you shyly oblige, entranced as you watch her hands continue to ravage you, squeezing and twisting and caressing, but still every motion filled to the brim with love.

ellie smiles at you with that stupid dorky grin of hers, twisting at the neck to press a soft kiss against your lips. “tell me how pretty you are, baby.”

you drag her in to mumble quietly into her mouth, “i look so pretty right now.”

smiling against your lips, she replies, “i’ll let you get away with that one because i love you. but you don’t just look real pretty, you are pretty, yeah? my pretty girl?”

mmm you blush, back arching against ellie’s frame. “more, please?”

she wanders a hand further down, tapping at your knee for you to spread your thighs, but not before squeezing them harshly, whispering, “love these too— ‘specially when they’re tight around my head.”

“elli-“

“shit,” she swears. “look at how soaked you are for me. need me bad?”

you nod, your voice failing to work as ellie runs her hands up and down your legs, gripping the meat where your hips meet tightly as she teases the tips of her fingers under the band of your underwear.

“gonna need you to use your pretty voice for me,” she mumbles, nose nuzzling into your bared neck.

“need you so bad, els, please,” you whine, pulling her teasing hand closer to your burning core, hips bucking.

“okay okay,” she laughs, kissing your cheek again like it physically pains her lips to part from you for more than a minute.

she tugs your bottoms down easily, the cold air hitting your soaked entrance causing you to let out a sharp hiss.

“prettiest pussy i’ve ever seen.”

“shut up.”

“oh i’ll shut you up,” ellie quips, before promptly sliding two of her curled digits into your dripping hole.

you gasp, moaning okay i gave up here. smart move, yeah?

[fromthedeskofelizabeththird]

On Bended Knee

True story, I named the doc for this Wakey Wakey Victor’s Nakey and in the end he mostly keeps on his clothes. I played myself.

Mr Love: Queen’s Choice | Victor x MC | Explicit

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Victor liked to be in control, almost to a fault.

He read the business section twice a day, checked every ingredient in what few prepackaged foods he owned, organised his schedule several months in advance.

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that he was intrigued by the things he could not predict nor control. No matter how often he checked the stock market, he could not change the weather. He could bake his own bread and brew his own wine, but he could not change the thoughts and feelings of others. He could not unsend a text, could not undo a bad decision.

At most he could keep an eye on consistencies, uncomfortable in the knowledge that human beings were almost predictably inconsistent.

Up until now, for example, MC had been only too happy to take on board his advice, particularly when it came to company dinners. He didn’t blame her, of course. Most of her own employees were her peers whereas these men were older and richer than most, with expectations and etiquette far removed from common people.

It grieved him to think of MC as common, even if he never said so to her face. Instead he would sigh at her wide eyed expression at the initial invitation and urge her to promise that she would not embarrass him in front of his business partners. He would rub his temples at her attempts to double check conversation topics, feigning annoyance in favour of openly acknowledging that her enthusiasm was impressive even if her execution left much to be desired.

He insisted on going with her when she went out to pick up new dresses for the event, complaining at her lack of taste even as he put each one on his card. He always insisted she wear flat shoes; always ignored the form fitting and mature dresses in favour of ones that cast a light on her youth and innocence, telling her that she didn’t have much of a figure to show off in the first place when in fact the opposite was true. He struggled to think straight whenever she wore a skirt and was repulsed by the idea of any of his business partners doing the same.

He hated the idea of them fawning over her. He might have told her otherwise more than once, but she had a wealth of redeeming qualities, any of which might enchant a man with a discerning eye. The thought of another seeing past her innocence to the strong will underneath kept him up at night. His peers were different to hers, after all. There was nothing he could give her that they could not.

Teaching her a new way of walking and talking was as much of a shame as spray painting over a tiger’s stripes, but any sadness he might have felt at her demure dresses dissolved the moment they left each restaurant and she slipped off her mask with as much gusto as she did her high heels. She was a near perfect picture of elegance and refinement, but he liked her best after they left the table, as she raved in the back of his car about the price of dessert and diamond inlay on the salt and pepper pots.

For this night in particular he had pointed out a conservative blue dress and matching cardigan. MC had looked confused as she took in her reflection in the dressing room mirror, somehow still taken off guard by his choices.

He had chosen the dress for its high neckline and long skirt, leaving next to nothing to the imagination, which she seemed to notice, for she frowned as she gave him a twirl.

“Are you sure about this? Don’t you think it looks a little...frumpy?”

“Frumpy?”

“Yes...I think I had a dress like this in kindergarten.”

“Well in that case it’s perfect,” he smirked, “a true representation of what lies beneath.”

MC pouted at that, still defending her maturity long after they left the store.

The day of the company dinner, he picked her up at her front door as had become the routine. She was always five or six minutes late and had a different explanation each time, from smudged lipstick to forgetting her purse. This time around, she was a full fifteen minutes late and Victor spent the time wondering what her reasoning might be. The reality, of course, was the last thing he might have imagined.

MC stepped out in a bright red dress, worlds apart from the one he had chosen. It was carefully tailored to accentuate every curve and left very little to the imagination, with a plunging neckline, that left her collarbones and the swell of her breasts tentatively exposed. She had pinned her hair high above her head, drawing the eye to the jeweled necklace at her throat.

Victor couldn’t take his eyes off her, unable to do anything but stare as she walked towards the car.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said, sitting down next to him as she always did and reaching for her seat belt. “Kiki and Willow came over to do my makeup and got talking…”

Victor couldn’t tear his gaze from the curve of her neck; the way her necklace glimmered in the evening light. He was all too familiar with the scent of her perfume, of how she looked naked. He liked to be in control, to be ready for every outcome, and especially so when it came to himself.

“Are you okay?” MC ventured, that same undercurrent of satisfaction in her voice that he recognised from his own. He had never doubted it, of course, but this was all the confirmation he needed that she meant to take command and test him.

Naturally, he wouldn’t allow it. He leaned back in his seat, keeping his composure so well that no one, not even MC, would notice the slip in his facade.

“Did you forget the rest of your dress?”

“Don’t you like it?”

MC shifted in her seat, crossing and uncrossing her legs. Victor narrowed his eyes, knowing a challenge when he saw one.

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Dinner was rather more intense than usual, though not in ways that Victor was used to. He doubted anyone but he and MC noticed the silent tug of war. Every time MC leaned forward and cupped her head in her hands to listen intently to the other board members chat, Victor made a point to change the topic, asking MC her opinions and switching everyone’s focus back to her. She fiddled with her hair, he turned away to speak to someone else. She placed a hand on his thigh, he ignored her entirely.

With every new course, he considered a new way to take command. Perhaps he would invite her back to his home and leave her gasping between the sheets. Maybe he would book a room for the night and see how she looked in nothing but the necklace at her throat. Every idea was more depraved than the next and he half wondered whose victory that was.

In the end it was MC that made the first move. She leaned over to whisper in his ear while everyone around them discussed ergonomics.

“Excuse me,” she said, “I think I left my phone in my coat.”

She got to her feet and left the table, glancing over her shoulder at him with a smirk as she headed to the cloakroom. The message was loud and clear, though he wasn’t sure if he should accept it. Going to her would almost certainly stack the cards in her favour.

He debated leaving her there, wondering not only how long she would wait but how long it would take his colleagues to end their conversation long enough to notice. In the end he gave them a nod and excused himself with some muttered excuse about checking in with the chef.

He slipped a few notes to the man at the cloakroom door in exchange for a key and stepped inside, glancing around to take note of who was there while MC stepped out from behind one of the coat racks, wearing a shit eating grin.

“This is a dangerous game you’re playing,” he said, satisfied that there was no one else around and turning to lock the cloakroom door.

“I like games,” said MC, “especially when I’m about to win.”

“Oh?” He turned to face her, taking in every curve and exposed patch of skin. “What makes you so sure you’ve won?”

She took several steps backwards, towards a dressing table and leaned back against the frame. He could tell she was flustered, but giving it all she had. She didn’t usually put on a seductive mask, after all. Generally she blushed her way through foreplay.

He wondered how long she had been planning this; how many dresses and masks she had tried before this one. He took a step closer, keeping up his own facade of cool indifference.

“I just...I know,” she said, blush creeping across her cheeks. “You followed me here, didn’t you!”

“An interesting gamble,” he said. “What makes you so sure I didn’t come here because you’d been gone for too long?”

“I...I…”

Victor had come to know MC, from her measurements to her favourite song. He could tell she hadn’t planned for a scenario where she might actually come out on top.

He took a few more steps closer, planting both hands on the dressing table and leaning forward until he was close enough to smell her shampoo. By now she was a furious red and burning up, at a complete contrast to her prior confidence. 

He grazed his lips along her neck, all too satisfied at the way she gasped without meaning to.

“Are you sure you want to play this game, MC?”

She reached her hands out to his waist, looping her fingers into his belt buckle as she pulled him closer.

“I do,” she said, then, a second time, “I do!”

Then, as if the second confirmation was for herself, she fumbled with the zipper of her dress.

She stared at it for a few seconds as it hit the floor before kicking it aside, standing in front of him in nothing more than her underwear and heels. She popped open her bra with far less hesitation and her panties none at all. She reached down to his zipper but he caught hold of her hand, guiding it away and lifting her up onto the dresser.

Only then did he kiss her, hungry and demanding. He kissed her with the same force he usually reserved for when he was buried deep inside of her, stealing the breath from her lips with every nip of his teeth. He slipped his knee between her legs and spread them apart, feeling each and every touch so clearly that they all rippled through his body, his every instinct willing him towards her sex.

Before MC he had never understood the way his peers described women; as if they were almost irresistibly intoxicating. He had always prided his own self control and the notion of losing it was both frightening and uncomfortable. He understood it now, though, that just the scent of MC’s perfume was enough to leave him teetering over the edge.

She woke the parts of him he had forgotten existed; shattered chains he didn’t know he had.

He pulled away from her, looking her in the eye as he sank down to his knees. MC watched, blushing furiously as he reached up to part her legs even further and spread her out so that all of her was on display.

“Vic-“ she murmured, lapsing into a moan at the feel of his warm breath against her cunt.

He waited, listening out for any sound of discomfort before running his tongue over her clit, keeping a strong hold on her trembling legs.

They might be at a Michelin ranked restaurant, but she was the finest thing he’d tasted all day. He couldn’t get enough of her, burying his face in her folds and sucking her clit so hard that she dug her fingers into his hair. She was so gloriously wet for him, and it took everything in him to stop himself from taking her there and then.

He let go of her leg and rested it over his shoulder, slipping a finger from his free hand into her heat and leaving her little choice but to hold her hand over her mouth to stifle her moans. He ran his tongue over her clit and sank his finger into her, once and then twice until he had something of a rhythm, however erratic.

When she came he felt it against his fingers, her soft walls ripping against them and squeezing hard, as if the pressure had come from his cock and her body meant to milk him of every drop.

He slipped his fingers out of her and looked up into MC’s face, absorbing how utterly dazed from pleasure she had become.

He let go of both of her legs and got to his feet, laying a soft kiss on her lips and pushing aside the terrible joke spinning through his mind that she had come out on top in more ways than one.

“Here,” he said, easing her down from the dresser and turning her away from him. “Just like that.”

She bent over the dresser of her own accord, turning back to watch as he finally loosened his pants. She licked her lips when he lowered his underwear and allowed his cock to break free, beads of pre cum already gathered at the tip.

He took hold of her hip and gripped onto his cock, both of them hissing in relief as he guided himself into her. Her pussy was still pulsing with aftershocks of pleasure and he knew that neither of them would last long. He dug his fingers into her hip, slamming into her with such force that she fell forwards across the dresser. He reached to grab one of her arms and twisted it against her back to steady her as he thrust into her.

Neither of them were bothering to be quiet anymore, MC gasping at every thrust and Victor groaning at the tension in the pit of his stomach; a spring wound unbearably tight.

MC was already overstimulated and it took only a few rapid thrusts to leave her bubbling over again, looking into his face as she lost control. Victor glanced up at their reflection in the dresser mirror, taking in the view of MC’s breasts bouncing as their bodies collided and his own lust filled expression. He didn’t recognise himself and didn’t are.

He slowed down completely as his own release took over, sighing as his dick quivered inside of her and all of the tension left his body, pleasure washing over him like a hot bath.

He let go of the arm he had been holding and MC rested it against the dresser, each of them so content at being connected that time fell still.

In that moment, as the dust settled, it was only too clear to Victor that he had never been, nor would ever be, the one in command when it came to MC. While on a surface level it might have seemed like he pulled the strings and made the decisions, each and every one of his actions came from a desire to honour MC’s thoughts and wishes. Swords did not rule kingdoms and she was nothing if not a queen, even with her ass in the air and his dick deep inside of her.

His every action was an act of worship, an unspoken and implicit bended knee. He pulled himself out of her and watched his seed spill from her onto the floor-the only evidence that even just for a moment they had belonged to one another.

She straightened her back and took a deep breath, resting her head against his chest without a care if it smudged the makeup she had so carefully applied to the point of being late.

“I should get dressed,” she murmured.

“Yes,” he said, “I imagine we’ll get more than our fair share of second glances if you walk out there wearing nothing but a smile.”

“You could always go out with me...for moral support.”

“I don’t think so,” he said, straightening his tie. “The world isn’t ready for such a display.”

He waited for MC to get her dress back on before heading to the door, wondering if he might have to pay more for the restaurant employee’s silence.

“That’s one point to me, by the way,” said MC, reapplying her makeup.

“Oh?”

“Yep.”

“Hmmm…interesting.”

He said nothing more of it, instead smirking to himself as he returned to their table, knowing that his silence on the matter would leave her imagination running wild.

That point truly was hers, after all, even if she had no idea he had conceded it.

[johannesviii]

Top 10 Personal Favorite Hit Songs from 2016

I think everyone will agree that 2016 had “Impending Doom” written all over it, and as a result a lot of pop music became very depressed very quickly, and as such, I’m less enthusiastic about this list than some of the previous ones.

Disclaimers:

Keep in mind I’m using both the year-end top 100 lists from the US and from France while making these top 10 things. There’s songs in English that charted in my country way higher than they did in their home countries, or even earlier or later, so that might get surprising at times.

Of course there will be stuff in French. We suck. I know. It’s my list. Deal with it.

My musical tastes have always been terrible and I’m not a critic, just a listener and an idiot.

I have sound to color synesthesia which justifies nothing but might explain why I have trouble describing some songs in other terms than visual ones.

For a year that was so cataclysmic worldwide, 2016 was pretty mundane for me, so let’s just skip to the albums that came out that year and which I consider relevant to my tastes. Obviously (and unfortunately) there was David Bowie with Black Star. We should have known we had jumped right into the Worst Timeline when the year started with the death of Bowie. Nine Inch Nails also released Not The Actual Events, which was pretty good, and as I said previously I consider Coldplay’s A Head Full of Dreams to be more of a 2016 than a 2015 album. And then there was the biggest surprise of all, the return of Enigma after eight years of silence, with the very good Fall Of A Rebel Angel (even if A Posteriori is still my favorite “modern” Enigma album). EDIT: I forgot Ghostlights by Avantasia. Took me YEARS to listen to it & realise how good it was.

But no. Surprisingly enough, my favorite album of the year wasn’t any of those. It was... oh god, that title. Here we go. It was I Like It When You Sleep for You Are So Beautiful yet So Unaware of It by The 1975 - which I like to call “The 1975′s second album” instead, because what the hell, guys. Anyway. It had been a while since I had found a new band I’d consider to be one of my favorite bands. I really liked Chocolate from their previous album but that was it. But this one? What a breath of fresh air. A Change of Heart, She’s American, Please Be Naked, The Ballad Of Me And My Brain, Somebody Else, The Sound, This Must Be My Dream? That’s only the songs I listened to on a loop and that’s already nearly half of the album. Great music, love the vocals, but I especially love the writing, full of strange and awkward details and lines that make everything feel so alive. The first time I listened to some of these songs, some lines actually got a chuckle out of me, like the American girl wanting the narrator to fix his teeth, or him hopping on a bus to ask the passengers if someone found his brain, or his girlfriend complaining about his shoes and his songs then immediately adding “I thought that you were straight, now I’m wondering”.

As someone who’s constantly puzzled by human relationships and tends to act super awkwardly, all of this is extremely relatable. So yeah. Album of the year, love this band - impatiently waiting for that fourth album!

As far as unelligible songs go, as you can guess I’m furious The Sound (The 1975) wasn’t a hit because I was and I’m still listening to it on a loop. And that’s about it. Wait there’s also Kids by One Republic. It was super good. Apart from that, there’s also one (1) elligible song that I’m gonna put on the 2017 list instead because I really struggled to find enough songs I liked for that list, and that particular one is elligible for 2016 thanks to the French year-end list and 2017 thanks to the US year-end list, so eh.

Time for some honorable mentions.

This Girl (Kungs vs Cookin’ on Three Burners) - Number one of the year here. Every time I heard it (and I heard it a lot) I enjoyed it until that wretched drop.

Fast Car (Jonas Blue ft Dakota) - Not a good cover, but I love the original so much I’d be lying if I said I hated this completely.

Sucker for Pain (Lil Wayne & Imagine Dragons) - No, that slow, heavy, tortured beat that all recent Imagine Dragons songs have doesn’t work on topics like being a natural at something, being a believer, or describing thunder. It does work, however, with a chorus saying “I'm just a sucker for pain”.

Cheap Thrills (Sia ft Sean Paul) - Sean Paul, and a song about having fun without any money. Everything I want from an average hit song on the radio.

In the Night (The Weeknd) - This would be much higher if I didn’t find The Weeknd’s upper register slightly painful to listen to.

J’ai Cherché (Amir) - Hey look, the guy France sent to Eurovision that year. He’s still around, too. He’s pretty good, and that song is super cute.

Ride (21 Pilots) - Not the last time they will appear on this list.

Je Suis Chez Moi (Black M) - Pretty good song about racism, and the singer explicitly calls out a far right political figure who said some pretty terrible shit about him, and it’s a good answer.

Perfect (One Direction) - This is just Style by Taylor Swift all over again except slightly less good. But as I said before, copying good songs isn’t always a bad thing.

Human (Rag’n’bone Man) - Would definitely be on the list if listening to it didn’t feel like working.

Into You (Ariana Grande) - The last cut. The ending is wonderful and explosive, it’s just a shame that the entire song doesn’t sound like that.

And now... the list.

10 - Stressed Out (21 Pilots)

US: #5 / FR: #9

Defining song of the entire year, whether you liked it or not.

Fortunately, as you can see, I liked it a lot, even if I don’t have anything interesting to say about it.

9 - Don’t Be So Shy (Imany, Filatov & Karas remix)

US: Not on the list / FR: #2

I often joked that the melody sounded weirdly similar to Goldman’s “Envole-moi” by singing the lyrics of the verses over the Don’t Be So Shy verses, and it fits nearly perfectly. But apart from that, great song, great remix, very overplayed but never to the point of being annoying.

8 - I Took A Pill In Ibiza (Mike Posner)

US: #15 / FR: #29

There’s nothing I could say about this song that Todd hasn’t said before in what I consider to be one of his best reviews, if not the best, so here it is.

7 - Heathens (21 Pilots)

US: #21 / FR: #23

Super ominous and tense. It’s rare when a mostly grey song looks interesting, and this one definitely does. I also like the ending a lot. Don’t hang out with too many toxic people, guys, they will influence you over time.

I had no idea this was made for the Suicide Squad movie until very recently and frankly I wish it hadn’t because it’s way better on its own, especially the hand grenade line which works a lot better as a metaphor for self-destructive tendencies.

6 - Starboy (The Weeknd)

US: #58 / FR: #16

As I said before it took me ages to like The Weeknd. His voice is great but I found most of his songs fairly boring or disliked their lyrics. And then he teamed up with Daft Punk and to be honest, I didn’t even care if the lyrics of this one included weird lines about drugs on furniture, the beat was completely worth it and the singing was great. Not enough to put it on my mp3 playlist, but a delight every time it was on the radio.

5 - Faded (Alan Walker)

US: Not on the list / FR: #11

I adore this post-apocalyptic, contemplative music video. The music itself has this weariness and this quiet despair that felt super relevant, and even the drop is a bit slow instead of energetic. I usually don’t like this kind of song but this one found the perfect balance. If we really need to have more sad, exhausted hit songs, more like this, please.

4 - Closer (The Chainsmokers)

US: #10 / FR: Not on the list

I usually don’t like love songs if they are just that, random love songs without a good melody or good colors or good stories. If the melody isn’t particularly great and the colors boring, it needs to paint an interesting picture, and the more details the better, even if they are super awkward, like, as I said previously, in some of The 1975′s best songs mentioning bad shoes, or people’s jobs, or how a car smells like.

So yeah, what I’m trying to say is that my favorite thing about this song is the over-abundance of weird and kind of off-putting details that most people consider to be its main flaw. To each their own, I guess.

3 - Never Forget You (Zara Larsson & MNEK)

US: #46 / FR: Not on the list

See, this is one of the reasons why I decided to make these lists: to find great stuff I missed over the years. I discovered this song while making the 1.0 version of the lists on a google sheet in early December, and now this has a spot on my mp3 player. And it’s so weird because this song shouldn’t work. The drop is ridiculously lifeless compared to the soaring quality of the chorus and it actively works against the rest of the song. It takes a while to get used to it and I’m still not entirely sure it does work, at all.

But what can I say, framing is, once again, everything, and songs about imaginary friends are super rare, and that music video made me cry and catapulted this song from “that’s pretty good” right into the “holy shit that’s fantastic” category. And it made me rewatch Where The Wild Things Are, so yeah.

2 - Perfect Strangers (Jonas Blue)

US: Not on the list / FR: #70

This, on the other hand, stayed on my mp3 player for about two years, and the music fits the lyrics perfectly. It’s not a groundbreaking song, it’s not even that original, but in such an average year for pop music, “happy energetic song with beautiful colors and nice lyrics” meant the world to me. It’s kind of telling that it was enough to put it as high as #2, though.

1 - Hymn For the Weekend (Coldplay ft Beyoncé)

US: #73 / FR: Not on the list

And with this, Coldplay has officially topped as many of my lists as Linkin Park. If, back when The Scientist dropped, you had told me how much I would love this band in the future, I would have laughed pretty hard, but here we are.

But yeah, it’s one of my favorite songs on the album and it’s a super weird combo of heavy and aerial sounds, soft and super colorful notes, and I love the lyrics that completely mirror that feeling, feeling “drunk and high", “poured on a symphony when I’m low, low, low”. A great party song that’s also strangely melancholic. Exactly what I needed.

And then the Seeb remix happened and added a truely fantastic drop on top of an already great song, like turning the saturation up and adding little pulsing lights and transparency effects and shit. It’s sincerely hypnotic and visually so complex and fragile I’m afraid I won’t be able to draw it if I ever attempt to turn it into a synesthesia drawing. Just like A Sky Full of Stars, I was driving the first time I heard that remix on the radio, and I wasn’t expecting that drop at all, and I was gawking.

Godspeed, Coldplay, I’m so glad you’re still a positive force in my life, especially in these trying times.

Next up: Oh my god are you telling me that after 15 years I can finally put a song from that other band at the top of one of my lists

[atomic--peach]

Southern Saying

 Because it’s not just Australia that has weird saying.

Cadiwampus: slightly crooked or messed up

“Does this picture frame look cadiwampus?”

Cadycorner: not quite next to, kind of diagonal to something.

“They live cadycorner to me”

Way out yonder: Someplace far off, usually at least 20-45 minutes outside of town

“Wow, you live way out yonder”

Dagnabit: A more polite version of God Dammit. (Also see Dagumit)

“Dagnabit! I burnt the cookies”

Goober: an unpleasant or annoying person or another word for a penis. sometimes used playfully for a child

“What a goober!”

Fixin’ to: Going to or getting ready to do something or go somewhere.

“I’m fixin’ to fry up some eggs, do you want some?”

Ugly as homemade sin: used to describe something particularly ugly, like your great aunt’s couch or your sister’s wedding dress

“That paint in her parlor is ugly as homemade sin”

Jerk a knot in your tail: Scold someone, something your mama threatens to do to you if you don’t stop acting a fool

“I’m fixin’ to jerk a knot in your tail if you don’t straighten up”

As all get out: Completely or ridiculously

“He’s rich as all get out”

Can you carry me to___?: Can you take me to this location?

“Can you carry me to the hair salon?”

Gussied up: Dressed up, looking your best.

“What are you all gussied up for?”

Just fell off the turnip truck: Stupid or gullible.

“Does he think I just fell off the turnip truck or something?”

A month of sundays: A long time; how long it’s been since you called your aunt.

“I haven’t seen you in a month of sundays”

Mosey: To go or get along.

“I’ll just mosey on over to the bar while i wait for you.”

What on God’s Green Earth?: What in the world?

“What on God’s Green Earth are you talking about?”

Fifty-leven: The under of times your mama told you something

“I done told you fifty-leven times you needed to get your oil changed”

You can’t ride two horses with one ass: You can’t do two things at once.

“I know you wanted to run track and play football, but you can’t ride two horses with only one ass”

Up one side and down the other: Completely like something, very similar.

“She’s her mama up one side and down the other”

All-yins: Similar to Ya’ll or all ya’ll.

“Get out of my house and go play somewhere, all-yins!”

Like you own cotton in Augusta: being lazy or unproductive.

“Don’t just sit around like you own cotton in Augusta, get a job!”

The Sun don’t shine on the same dog’s tail all the time: You won’t always have good luck.

“You’re smiling now, but remember; the sun don’t shine on the same dog’s tail all the time”

Shake the dew off your lily: Hurry up, a polite version of “shake the piss off your dick”

“Shake the dew off your lily and get out here to see your grandma!”

Nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs: Very anxious or skittish.

“Waiting for my test score, I’m nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs”

Sweating like a whore in church: Sweating a lot, either from the heat or from nerves.

“It’s so hot, I swear I’m sweating like a whore in church!”

Don’t act ugly: Don’t be unpleasant.

“I don’t care if she’s sleeping with a married man, don’t act ugly”

Bless her cotton socks: A version of Bless her heart, usually used in pity/ amusment.

“Her brothers took her on a snipe hunt, bless her cotton socks”

That dog won’t hunt: That thing won’t do what you want it to, and you can’t make it.”

“I tried to get my TV working, but that dog won’t hunt”

Eat the south end of a north bound goat: Something gross or disgusting but you’re too hungry too care.

“My son used to be so picky, but now he’d eat the south end of a north bound goat.”

Seven ways to Sunday: Completely, all around.

“I know I’m supposed to go to the PTA meeting, but that yoga class wore me out seven ways to Sunday.”

Slap you to sleep, then slap you for sleepin’: Unreasonable, extremely annoyed or angry.

“You can’t please my manager, she’ll slap you to sleep and then slap you for sleepin’“

Kick your butt to Christmas and dare you to walk back: Beat you up and dare you to mess up again.

“If you throw that football in my house again I’ll kick your butt to Christmas and dare you to walk back!”

Useless as a screen door in a submarine: Something worse then useless.

“Johnny want to go hunting with his daddy, but as loud as he is he’d be as useless as a screen door in a submarine”

Anybody’s dog that’ll hunt her: A promiscuous person, or a person with low standards

“She can says she’s picky, but she’s anybody’s dog that’ll hunt her”

Faster than a knife fight in a phone booth: Moving fast or quickly.

“He’s on a diet, but when the pie was served he was on it faster than a knife fight in a phone booth” (Also see “a one legged man at a butt kicking contest”)

Shit’n’get: Got fast, do something with haste.

“You took twenty minutes to do your hair, so we’ve gotta shit’n’git if we’re going to get there on time”

Messed in your Easter bonnet: Done something embarrassing in public”

“I told you not to talk to his new wife at the church barbecue, but now you done messed in your Easter bonnet”

Couldn’t pay respect: Being broke, out of money.

“I know I just got paid, but now I’m so broke I couldn’t pay respects”

Depress the devil: something an extremely negative person could do.

“I hope Karen won’t be there, bless her heart but she’s so negative she could depress the Devil”

Hunt Geese with a rake: something really tall people are said to do.

“That girl on Kate’s basketball team is so tall, she could hunt geese with a rake”

____ The fool out of___: To do something really effectively.

“Shit! I just cut the fool out of my finger!”

The Hell you say!: A saying of disbelief.

“Jessica found her boyfriend doing what?! The Hell you say!”

More than a hat rack/ More than a coat rack: Use your head or your brain, or put some elbow grease into something.

“It’s a push door bot a pull, try using your head for more than a hat rack”

“It’s not that heavy, use your body for more than a coat rack!”

You know not: You don’t know the half of it, usually used during gossip sessions.

“I heard Mary is sending her daughter to charm school” “Oh you know not”

Snockerpussed: Drunk

“Slow down! The last thing you need is to get snockerpussed”

Rub some whiskey on it from the inside: Drink and you’ll feel better

“You’ve got a back ache? Try rubbing some whiskey on it from the inside.”

Beats all I ever did see: Seeing something strange or ridiculous.

“Did you see what happened to Mary Jo’s roof? Beats all I ever did see”

Shootfire!: An expression of frustration

“Shootfire! My car’s got a flat tire!”

Hitch in your giddy up: Walking strange for one reason or another.

“I spent all day in the garden yesterday, and now I’ve got a hitch in my giddyup.

Tore up from the floor up: an absolute mess.

“Did you see her after the block party last night? The girl was tore up from the floor up.”

Too busy to cuss the cat: too busy to be bothered by something small.

“Bake sale? Girl, with football season and graduation coming up, I’m too busy to cuss the cat!”

Like a chicken with it’s head cut off: Running around frantically or hysterically.

“She found out there’s a project due tomorrow and now she’s running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off”

You can’t swallow a quarter and crap a dollar: You can’t take poor quality and make it better.

“I know you said you can change him, but you can’t swallow a quarter and crap a dollar Darlin’”

That’s their tale, I sit on mine: Just because they’re gossiping, doesn’t mean I will.

“Is that what she said? Well, that’s her tale, I sit on mine thank you very much”

Too big for your britches: Acting more important that you are.

“Since you got that promotion, you’ve been acting too big for your britches”

Scare the beard off Jesus: Something particularly startling or disturbing.

“Did you see what color her daughter died her hair? Why it would scare the beard off Jesus!”

Act like you got some raisin’: Act like you had good parents. Don’t act wild.

“What are you doing with your shoes on my couch?! Act like you got some raisin!”

Useless as tits on a bull: Not only is it useless, it doesn’t make an sense.

“I love these new jeans, but these tiny little pockets are as useless as tits on a bull”

Been done gone: have been gone for a while now.

“John? He moved out of town a year ago, he been done gone.”

Within a gnat’s ass: way too close. usually used in dangerous situations.

“I came withing a gnat’s ass of cussin’ her out.”

Does a cat have climbing gear?: A obvious question with an obvious answer (Also see “Is a frog’s ass watertight” and “Does a one legged duck swim in a circle”_

“Do I want to go to the football game? Does a cat have climbing gear?”

A Job that don’t pay: a waste of time.

“Girl don’t even think about it, that man’s just another job that don’t pay”

Could kill knee high cotton: Something that smells really bad.

“She’s a pretty girl, but her breath could kill knee high cotton!”

Only got one oar in the water: Not all there, a little crazy.

“She’s only got one oar in the water, bless her heart”

Plumb: Extremely, completely and totally.

“You don’t need to be out there acting plumb crazy”

Like a cat’s been sucking on it: stringy, thin, unhealthy or ugly looking.

“Ew, my hair looks like a cat’s been sucking on it”

Tuck your tongue behind your teeth, you’re crazy’s showin’: Stop talking, you’e starting to sound insane.

“Tuck your tongue behind your teeth, your crazy’s showin’. I think you’ve had enough to drink”

My stars in heaven: Oh my God

“Oh my stars in heaven, have you seem these china patterns?”

Like a bag of cat’s fighting: what you look like in unflattering clothes.

“Darlin’ I love you, but your butt looks like a bag of cat fighting to get out in those jeans”

Backsass: Back talk, something that will get you whooped.

“Don’t you back sass me, I’ll whoop your ass”

Even Jesus can’t save you: you’re in big trouble, not even the the Lord can save you. 

“Your mama found out what you did last night, not even Jesus can save you now”

[smokescreen24]

Get to know me Questions

1. What is your full name? Jessica. I only hear my full first name when I’m in trouble. 

2. What is your nickname? Jess to family, Jazz to @sabotage-prowl, since she’s the one who gave me that nickname. 

3. What is your zodiac sign?  Taurus/Gemini cusp, but I have more Taurean traits, so I just say Taurus for simplicity’s sake. 

4. What is your favorite book series?  Oof, that’s tough. Probably either the Nightside series or the Secret Histories series. They’re both by Simon R Green. I’m actually reading the last book in the Secret Histories, and I’m ready to cry.

5. Do you believe in aliens or ghosts? Aliens? Not so much. Ghosts, yeah, a little. Hard not to when you’ve actually seen spooks in real life and in real time. 

6. Who is your favorite author? Simon R Green. Seriously. I love his writing. 

7. What is your favorite radio station? I don’t have one - I don’t listen to the radio that much. Why listen to mostly commercials and some music when I can pay Spotify 10 bucks and listen to just music?

8. What is your favorite flavor of anything? Vanilla. I drink and eat a lot of vanilla flavored stuff. 

9. What word would you use often to describe something great or wonderful? My instinct would be to use the word awesome. I use that one a lot, to be brutally honest.

10. What is your current favorite song? Currently? Probably either Legend by The Score, or Superpower by X Ambassadors. 

11. What is your favorite word? Fuck. I say it A LOT. 

12. What was the last song you listened to? Miss Jackson by Panic! At the Disco. It’s damn catchy, and thus is stuck in my head. I’m humming it now, tbh. 

13. What TV show would you recommend for everybody to watch? Huh. That’s tough. I watch a lot of shows, so I don’t think I could recommend just one. 

14. What is your favorite movie to watch when you’re feeling down? The Man From Uncle. That movie is hilarious, and Napoleon Solo gives me life. 

15. Do you play video games? Uh, yeah. Fairly frequently. I’m a FO4 fan, and I also play a lot of Diablo 3. 

16. What is your biggest fear? Spiders. This girl will nope the hell out of the room. Then make my guy go kill it. 

17. What is your best quality, in your opinion? I’m not too sure, actually. My reliability? 

18. What is your worst quality, in your opinion? Oh, this one I know, though. One of them is my inability to communicate. I’m bad at it - I miss calls, I miss texts, or alternatively,  I get the calls, or get the texts, then forget to call or text back. For like, days. Then wonder why everyone’s mad at me. I’m trying to work on it, but it’s a work in progress. 

19. Do you like cats or dogs better?  I really do like both, but I like cats that little bit better. 

20. What is your favorite season? Summer. Otherwise known as Monsoon Season here in Central Florida. 

21. Are you in a relationship? Yup! I’ve been married for about 7 months now, but we’ve been together for a lot longer than that. 

22. What is something you miss from your childhood? Naptime. I’m so serious. 

23. Who is your best friend? @sabotage-prowl!! This chick! She’s my ride or die, she’s got my six, and she’s the Prowler to my Jazz. 

24. What is your eye color? Uh, right now? They’re silver-blue. I’m wearing a light blue shirt. 

25. What is your hair color? Brunette/Purple. I’m letting my hair grow back out, so the ends are a light purple. 

26. Who is someone you love? My other half. He’s in the shower right now, humming to himself, even if he thinks I can’t hear it. 

27. Who is someone you trust? Again, my husband and my bestie. I trust those two with everything. 

28. Who is someone you think about often? My Dad, interestingly enough. I have a lot of his things in my apartment. 

29. Are you currently excited about/for something? Not particularly? Today’s Monday. Who gets excited for Monday??

30. What is your biggest obsession? My obsessions come and go, tbh. 

31. What was your favorite TV show as a child? Oh my Lord, that’s tough. I watched a LOT of TV as a kid. 

32. Who of the opposite gender can you tell anything to, if anyone? I married the dude, if that tells ya anything. 

33. Are you superstitious? Yeah. The only superstition I don’t believe in is the black cats. I’ll cross a black cat’s path, just so I can pet it. 

34. Do you have any unusual phobias? No, they’re pretty usual. Spiders, heights. 

35. Do you prefer to be in front of the camera or behind it? Behind it, but every now and then, I get my picture taken anyway. I don’t mind it. 

36. What is your favorite hobby? I read. My other hobbies come and go. 

37. What was the last book you read? I’m currently reading Night Fall, by Simon R Green, which combines the Nightside and Secret Histories. Someone’s gonna die, and I’m gonna be sad, I know it. 

38. What was the last movie you watched? Who Framed Roger Rabbit? God, that film is not for kids, and the villain STILL creeps me the hell out. 

39. What musical instruments do you play, if any? None - though I have been known to torture a guitar from time to time.

40. What is your favorite animal? Cats. Big cats, small cats, I DON’T CARE. GIVE ME ALL THE CATS.

41. What are your top 5 favorite Tumblr blogs that you follow? @argentlune, @sabotage-prowl, @m-is-for-mungo, @leggylance, and last but certainly not least, @shiroismydadson

42. What superpower do you wish you had? Teleportation. Do you know how much easier my life would be? 

43. When and where do you feel most at peace? I’m such a homebody, so home and late at night, usually. 

44. What makes you smile? It doesn’t take much to make me smile. I’m pretty cheerful as a rule. 

45. What sports do you play, if any? Paintball, and some backyard football, if the appropriate people are there. 

46. What is your favorite drink? Coffee. I’ll drink coffee all damn day if you let me. 

47. When was the last time you wrote a hand-written letter or note to somebody? Man, years ago, back when my babe was doing his hospital rotations. We passed a journal back and forth for about six months.   

48. Are you afraid of heights? OH YES. The last time I was on a roller coaster, I passed out. 

49. What is your biggest pet peeve? This stems from my time in retail - if you have exact change, GIVE IT TO ME BEFORE I OPEN THE TILL. DO NOT HAND IT TO ME AFTER I’VE OPENED THE TILL - I HATE THAT. I’M NOT GOOD AT MATH, AND NOW I HAVE TO BALANCE IT IN MY HEAD.

50. Have you ever been to a concert?  No, not to my knowledge. 

51. Are you vegan/vegetarian? Not at all. I did not claw my way to the top of the food chain to eat leaves. 

52. When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up? An astronaut. Oh, little me, so full of hope. Then I discovered I didn’t like heights. 

53. What fictional world would you like to live in? The Transformers universe. G1, though. It has to be G1. 

54. What is something you worry about? I’m an adult, so bills, usually. 

55. Are you scared of the dark? Nope. I like the dark. 

56. Do you like to sing? Yes. Can I sing? Not really. 

57. Have you ever skipped school? Once, and it wasn’t even for fun - I had to clean the house to make sure that my mom’s ex wouldn’t ground me for the next eternity. Never mind that the house was already stupid clean. 

58. What is your favorite place on the planet? Um. I don’t know? 

59. Where would you like to live? London. I’d love to live in London. 

60. Do you have any pets? Yes. My cat, Cleopatra. She’s fat, old, and spoiled. 

61. Are you more of an early bird or a night owl? Night owl, for sure. 

62. Do you like sunrises or sunsets better? Sunsets. If I’m up early enough to see the sunrise, something’s wrong. 

63. Do you know how to drive? In theory. I can drive if I absolutely have to, but it stresses me out so much. I do better on two wheels. 

64. Do you prefer earbuds or headphones? Earbuds. I wear glasses, so headphones actually press the stems into my skull, and that hurts. 

65. Have you ever had braces? Nope! 

66. What is your favorite genre of music? Pop, with rock thrown in. 

67. Who is your hero? My Mom. She’s done so much, with so little, it’s honestly amazing. 

68. Do you read comic books? Yes - I loved the Spidey/Transformers crossover! 

69. What makes you the most angry? I’m super defensive of my family and friends. Mess with any of them, and get ready to catch these hands. 

70. Do you prefer to read on an electronic device or with a real book? It’s a pretty even split. It depends largely on where I am. 

71. What is your favorite subject in school? English. Can’t you tell? 

72. Do you have any siblings? Yes! Two brothers and a sister!

73. What was the last thing you bought? Groceries, unfortunately. Because I’m a grownup. 

74. How tall are you? 5′2″. I’m tiny. 

75. Can you cook? A little? I’m not great at it, but I don’t set things on fire, either. 

76. What are three things that you love? My friends and family, music, and books. 

77. What are three things that you hate? Boredom, blood, and spiders.

78. Do you have more female friends or more male friends? More guy friends - I get along better with dudes

79. What is your sexual orientation? Heterosexual! 

80. Where do you currently live? Central Florida. 

81. Who was the last person you texted? @sabotage-prowl! She was giving me shit because she can. 

82. When was the last time you cried? A while ago. It’s been a while. 

83. Who is your favorite YouTuber?  I don’t really watch enough Youtube to have one. If pressed, I’d say either Markiplier or Tobuscus. 

84. Do you like to take selfies? Sometimes - I’m not super into selfies, I tend to take more pictures of my friends and family. 

85. What is your favorite app? Uh, Tumblr. I spend waaayyy too much time on here. 

86. What is your relationship with your parent(s) like? My ma and I get on like a house on fire! She’s an extremely tolerant woman. 

87. What is your favorite foreign accent? An English accent. Take your pick of region - I love them all. 

88. What is a place that you’ve never been to, but you want to visit? *points to above answer* Take a wild guess. 

89. What is your favorite number? I don’t have one, as such. 

90. Can you juggle? Not at all - my hand eye coordination is AWFUL. 

91. Are you religious? Yes. 

92. Do you find outer space of the deep ocean to be more interesting? “Kick ass, go to space, represent the human race!” applies here. 

93. Do you consider yourself to be a daredevil? A little - there’s not much I won’t try. 

94. Are you allergic to anything? Penicillin and Codeine. I’m allergic to one of the most common antibiotics on the planet. 

95. Can you curl your tongue? Yup! Into a very tight curl if I try. 

96. Can you wiggle your ears? Yup! It feels weird when I’m wearing my glasses, though. 

97. How often do you admit that you were wrong about something? Um, fairly often - my hubby is more right than I am, usually. I hate admitting that, though. 

98. Do you prefer the forest or the beach? BEACH, BEACH, BEACH!!!!

99. What is your favorite piece of advice that anyone has ever given you? “You have to take the leap. Because if you land on the other side, you’ve reached your goal, but if you fall short, you have tried, and are wiser for the attempt.” - My Uncle Steve said that to me years ago. 

100. Are you a good liar? Not really. I’m a bad liar. 

101. What is your Hogwarts House? Slytherin! 

102. Do you talk to yourself? All the time. I get asked to repeat myself a lot by folks who hear me mutter, and think I’m talking to them. 

103. Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Ambivert. A little from column A and a little from column B.

104. Do you keep a journal/diary? Nah - I’m bad at keeping up with the entries. I don’t write often enough to justify it.

105. Do you believe in second chances? Depends very strongly on what happened to make the first one go away. 

106. If you found a wallet full of money on the ground, what would you do? Try to find the owner. I’m not a complete monster - I’m a broke millennial, I know that something like that could fuck your week or month up.  

107. Do you believe that people are capable of change? Yes. My youngest brother is a good example of that. 

108. Are you ticklish? INCREDIBLY TICKLISH. TICKLE ME AND PAY THE PRICE. 

109. Have you ever been on a plane? Yep! It was fun! 

110. Do you have any piercings? My ears! I wanna get my nose pierced, but it’ll have to wait till allergy season is over. 

111. What fictional character do you wish was real? That’s tough! I have several I’d like to meet! 

112. Do you have any tattoos? Two! My family’s zodiac on my right wrist, and the Spartan II’s insignia from Halo on my left clavicle. 

113. What is the best decision that you’ve made in your life so far? Tough to say. Lemme get back to you on that.

114. Do you believe in karma? I believe that it’s a bitch, and the wheel turns for all of us. 

115. Do you wear glasses or contacts? Glasses! 

116. Do you want children? Eventually. I’m not ready for them yet - I’m too broke. 

117. Who is the smartest person you know? @sabotage-prowl

118. What is your most embarrassing memory? So not telling you that! 

119. Have you ever pulled an all-nighter? From time to time. It’s not fun. 

120. What color are most of you clothes? Blue, black, or red, primarily. But I’ve got other colors in there. 

121. Do you like adventures? Heck yes! I’m ALWAYS down for adventure! 

122. Have you ever been on TV? Nope. I’m not important enough. 

123. How old are you? 30. Yeesh, I’m old. 

124. What is your favorite quote? “So, you’ve got a plan?” “Oh, yes.” “Am I going to like it?” “Almost certainly not.” “If I weren’t already dead, I’d think I’d be very depressed.”  

125. Do you prefer sweet or savory foods? Both. Both is good.

[blooblooded]

Marty goes through Lee's files

Ajax Guttierez’s face was shiny with sweat when he called Marty back. “Man, that was close,” he said. He straightened the collar of his shirt. “I don’t think he suspected anything though. But, what he said in there, at the end...he looked like he wanted to hit me. His eyes went all dead and shit, what a fucking freak.”

“That guy couldn’t punch through wet tissue paper,” replied Marty, as he sat in his chair with his legs drawn up. He had been so stressed out during the period of radio silence where AJ had presumably made copies of every file on Lee Harlan’s laptop that he had snapped every pencil he owned. Not that he had been worried about AJ’s safety. No, he just desperately wanted to figure out whatever it was that Lee was hiding. “You got it right? You got all of it?”

“I got it.”

“Tres bien,” Upon hearing him speak his native language, AJ furrowed his eyebrows. Marty ignored that. “Send it to the email address I gave you. I have a feeling it’s going to take me all night to go through everything.”

“Right.” AJ paused. He passed a hand over his face. “You think there’s something on there that will pin him, get the cops on his ass? Because if there isn’t, if he goes near my kids one more time, I think I’m going to kill him. I’m really going to kill him.”

Would it really be so bad if AJ killed Lee? Marty allowed himself to imagine it, brass knuckles breaking his glasses and smashing his nose. It was the least he deserved, after all the things he knew he had done. Giving underage teenagers alcohol. Messing with Kip’s mind, convincing him to stop taking his medicine. Scaring Esther’s dad, hitting Eddie Bellamy. Making Rome roll up his sleeves to show him the bruises on his body. Probably worse things too. Someone who was capable of doing what he knew Lee had already done, was also capable of doing worse things.

Marty wished he had another pencil to break.

“Yeah,” he said, with finality. “I’ll find something on him. I know that.”

###

It turned out that AJ had copied 500gb of data from Lee’s computer. The process of going through it was taking hours, agonizingly slow work. Determined to work through the night, Marty went into the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee. He made it quietly so that he didn’t attract Jules, or worse, Dog. Talking to them would only delay his discovery of whatever fucked up shit he knew that Lee must be hiding. Even a small delay would get in the way of the pleasure he would feel when he anonymously sent evidence of Lee’s formerly unknown crimes-- whatever they were-- to every detective in Eden.

Before he returned to his bedroom, he had already drunk half a mug of coffee.

A lot of it was writing. Which tracked, since Lee was always going on and on about being a writer. Or journalist, or whatever he was. There were no journalists in the Northern Territories, so Marty didn’t fully understand all that. To him, it seemed like an unimportant profession. He read a lot of Lee’s work anyway. Maybe it was good-- he had no way of knowing the quality of the writing, since English was not his first language.

Soon, Marty grew bored of reading about Lee’s idiotic political beliefs. Compared to the fiery diatribes he had heard from Florence Gauthier as he had grown up, Lee’s words seemed tepid. He did not know what he was talking about, how could he-- he had not lived what he was talking about. He went to the folder that contained his pictures and clicked through them. The majority were selfies; Lee in various outfits that were increasingly fussy, always tight pants and stupid looking scarves, color coordinated sweaters. What kind of man cared that much about fashion and the way he looked? The vanity. It was basically like being a woman, it was embarrassing and effete.

He continued to click through pictures, and a greater understanding of Lee’s life formed inside his mind. This was a person who cared a lot about appearances, but rarely seemed to have the same friend in more than one picture. He took a lot of pictures of his food, of different coffee drinks. Pictures at various rallies and protests. It all seemed very empty, almost performative.

At one point, he came to a picture of Lee as a child, hugging a woman that was probably his mother. Lee was maybe 10, and lacked the fussy pretension he had developed as an adult-- no, as a child he appeared dweeby and scruffy. His glasses were cracked and there were patches in his jeans. Still, he looked truly happy, smiling a full smile that showed his crooked front teeth, so unlike the sly, closed mouthed smiles of his adulthood. His mother looked a lot like him, same mousy brown hair and eyes. She wore a jean jacket with lots of pins on it, her fist was raised up into the air, Lee’s small fist was raised in mimicry. So this was the mother who had hung herself in prison. It was hard not to feel something for the child who had lost his mother that day.

So Lee had had a mother who had loved him. Marty didn’t know what that was like. Their similarities ended with the shared experience of having mothers who were dead.

As he clicked through hundreds of pictures, he discovered that Lee liked to take pictures of himself and of other guys who were naked. Sex stuff. Marty had heard about people taking pictures with their partners, it wasn’t particularly abnormal, but still gave him a shock the first time he opened a picture to see Lee had taken a nude. Marty stared for a second and felt his ears get hot and embarrassed. Lee looked a lot different without any clothes on, all pink and skinny, but with a little bit of a belly that was otherwise hidden. He had seen naked men before, but was suddenly uncomfortable seeing his enemy in a vulnerable state.

There were a lot of nudes. Of course there were, considering how vain he was. Lee had had a lot of boyfriends, and as with the pictures of his friends, none of them seemed to hang around for very long. Marty suddenly felt uncomfortable. He was looking at pictures that were not meant for him, intimate moments shared between Lee and various strangers. It was voyeuristic, but wasn’t this what he was supposed to be looking at? Surely there was something here, some indication of great perversion? The selfie pictures of Lee, taken while embracing various guys in his bed, didn't resemble him at all. He looked happy.

This was, of course, jealousy. Marty knew that he would never be able to have it, but he desired love and intimacy with another boy someday. This was not a possibility in his Colony. Seeing someone he hated have something unattainable was hurting him.

He drank the rest of his coffee, telling himself to pull it together. There was no reason for him to feel jealous.

There was no reason for him to feel the other shameful thing either: a strange, hateful attraction towards Lee. Marty pushed that down, chalking it up to being 13 years old and sexually frustrated due to puberty.

There was a picture of AJ in there too. Marty wished he hadn’t seen that.

Of course, there were also videos. Marty knew the content of these from glancing at the first frozen frame. He did not believe he had the mental fortitude to watch them yet. This was also not completely abnormal. Being 13 years old and completely wracked by puberty, he had watched a lot of pornography, but it was different when it was someone he knew. Eventually he would have to watch them, he just hoped that his brain wouldn’t be into it.

This was all normal. If Lee was just a normal guy, just a weird guy who had never done anything wrong, then this was all for nothing. He had convinced AJ to steal the data for nothing.

But it couldn’t be nothing. Lee was hiding something. Marty kept clicking through files. The night grew longer. He made more coffee, careful so that he would not wake Jules.

By 2am, he discovered something bad enough to make him grit his teeth, but not bad enough to send to the police. Or was it? He didn’t know. It appeared that when Lee had cornered Rome Prospas, claiming to be concerned about him, he had taken several pictures of him. Maybe this had been out of concern, or as evidence to send to social services, but it didn’t sit right with Marty. It didn’t seem normal. And Rome looked scared.

He had known that it had happened when Rome had been by himself in Kip’s bathroom. He knew that Lee had seemed worried and had asked Rome to roll up his sleeves to show him the bruises that had formed on his arms after his dad had grabbed him. But seeing pictures of his friend looking all scared like that made Marty feel angry. There were three pictures. In the first, Rome’s big yellow eyes were watery, looking directly at the camera, or directly into Lee’s face, with his arms held out in front of him. The other two were close ups on the purple bruising, and one of Lee’s white thumbs was visible, as if for scale. So Lee had put his hands on him. Marty felt himself bristling, knowing that Rome was more scared of Lee than he was of his dad. At least he knew what to expect when it came to his dad.

It was bad, it was, that Lee had been alone with a kid and made him roll up his sleeves, then took pictures of him. But it wasn’t bad enough. It wasn’t like he had told him to take off his shirt or had done anything that could not be filed away under the category of ‘concerned, responsible adult’. Marty kept gritting his teeth. He thought about calling Rome and checking in on him, but didn’t want to give the wrong impression, calling in the middle of the night. Rome liked Marty a little too much.

Still, it was something. Marty grabbed a piece of paper and wrote down the file names, just in case.

Another hour passed before Marty found anything of note. What he did find made him feel even more upset.

It was a video, like the others. And like the others, Marty would have clicked past it, if Kip had not been so clearly in the first frame.

For a second, Marty saw red and he clenched one hand into a fist. All this time, he had known that Kip was obsessed with Lee, that he would do anything to make him like him more. It was evident in the way that he looked at him, in the way that he was always talking about him like he was some kind of genius. In his heart, Marty knew that Kip wanted to sleep with Lee, but up until now, he had believed that Kip was too scared and inexperienced to follow through. If they had done anything, if they had messed around, surely Kip would have bragged about it to at least one of his friends. He was not a person who was capable of keeping secrets. Why the silence? Was he ashamed?

Marty’s finger hesitated over the mouse. If he watched a video of Kip having sex with Lee, he would never be able to look at his friend the same way. And of course, deep down in his most private thoughts, Marty often found himself wishing that he lived in Eden, because maybe, one day, Kip would see him as more than just a friend. If he lived in Eden, maybe one day Kip might touch him or kiss him, maybe more. It wasn’t like the constant low-level horniness that every teenage boy experienced. Marty liked Kip. He really liked him, and it was his first time really liking anyone. He didn’t want to see him being intimate with anyone.

But he also wanted to screw over Lee in any way he could. If there was anything weird on this video, anything at all and even though Kip was 18 years old, he could send it to Kip’s mom. Kip would hate him forever, but at least Lee would be out of the picture.

He pressed play and steeled himself to watch something that he knew would upset and horrify him.

Lee held the camera and pointed it down at Kip, who knelt on the floor in front of him. Kip still had all of his clothes on. In the dim light of Lee’s apartment, his face was shadowed and the dark circles under his eyes were exaggerated, making him look sick. He was smiling nervously.

“You still want to do this?” asked Lee. Hearing his voice, so smug and self-satisfied, made Marty’s heart pound. Hate. He hated him. It would be easy to stop watching this, he knew he needed to stop watching this, but could not bring himself to turn it off.

Kip nodded. “Uh-huh. I want to. It’s just-- I don’t know how--”

“It’s OK.” At the bottom of the screen, Marty could see Lee unzip his trousers and pull his dick out, jerking himself off to get hard. Marty could hear his own blood pounding in his head as he watched this and was aware of how hard he was clenching his teeth. He shouldn’t be watching this, it was like a train wreck he couldn’t look away from. “Put your hand here.”

His friend’s face was eager, but unsure, and Marty watched Kip’s eyes glaze over as he clumsily fondled Lee. He had seen this before. One minute, Kip would be there, the next, he had a thousand-yard stare and was blank, like he was somewhere far away. The only times that Kip got like that were when he was scared or upset. Marty would have strangled Lee for not noticing that, for being too stupid and wrapped up in himself to notice that. How could you not notice that?

If he sent this to Kip’s mom, it would be all over.

“OK, good,” Lee was saying, and he was putting his hand on the back of Kip’s head to pull his face towards his crotch. “Good. Now, please don’t bite me.” He laughed, like he was laughing at Kip or making fun of him, making fun of his teeth. Marty’s mind was filled with hate.

Light suddenly gleamed back into Kip’s eyes, which widened in alarm. He jerked away from Lee with great strength, scooted back on the floor, then stood up, shaking, his arms held defensively in front of him. He shook his head several times. “What the fuck are you doing?” he asked in alarm. “Don’t touch me! Stay away from me!” He wiped his hand on his pants, watching Lee like a wild animal.

“Kip?” Lee asked. “What’s wrong?”

Kip hit his own head. He looked at Lee savagely. “Were you gonna try to fuck me?” he asked. “Huh? You fucking freak. Are you kidding me? I’m your friend! I’m your friend! Who does that? Huh?”

“If you don’t want to do this, it’s OK, I don’t want you to feel upset, I just--”

Kip’s face contorted when he looked at the communication device that was still trained on him. “Don’t fucking film me!” The camera was suddenly obscured by opaque blue, and the video ended.

For several moments, Marty sat there without moving. “What the fuck,” he said, confused by his friend’s sudden mood swing, but glad that he had seemed to come to his senses before he got in over his head and lost his virginity to a loser like Lee Harlan. “What the fuck.”

It was disturbing. He leaned back in his chair. 4:30 am. In the kitchen, he could hear Jules rustling around, she always woke up so early, she always had so much to do. The smart thing would be to try and get some sleep so that he could look through Lee’s files with fresh eyes. When he did not get enough sleep, he was more prone to seizures. But he also had so much to do.

Marty rubbed his face. He did not want to make himself sick and exhausted, but still did not want to go to sleep. A sense of dogged determination had overtaken him at this point. A singular desire to destroy a man who lived hundreds of miles away was his only thought. If he could get something on Lee, he could ensure that his friends were no longer bothered by him. They were unable to see him for what he truly was. They were unable to do anything about his presence in their lives; by some method of psychic charisma, Lee had pulled a blind over all of their eyes. But not Marty’s.

This was not his responsibility. He was just a kid.

Sleep was not an option. Marty clicked out of the pictures and went back to Lee’s writing.

Meaningless words and treatises on economics bored him to tears but he kept reading, reading and reading. Finished articles, works in process. Grocery lists. Journal entries. The private life of a man whose true face was kept carefully hidden. By now, Marty knew him about as well as he knew himself.

He had been right about him. For the most part. He had been right about how he was shallow and angry, someone who wanted to lash out at systems that he perceived as unfair, but was mostly helpless to do so. This was not so much different than the types of people Marty had grown up around during the civil war, except Lee lacked the power of will that they all had to make considerable changes.

To make true change, a person had to act in ways that were drastic. Lee did not have it in him.

That’s what Marty believed, anyway, until he found a receipt for the purchase of 200 pounds of nitrate fertilizer.

As Marty looked at this receipt, the only thing that struck him as odd was the knowledge that Eden was completely underground, and had no space for large scale agriculture. Most of the food that they ate there was grown from cells in laboratories, unless someone had enough money to buy the rare real stuff. And Lee was a writer with no interest in things that could grow. Why would he even need fertilizer?

Something inside of him became scared and he didn’t know why. What could someone do with that much fertilizer? Marty leaned back in his chair.

Something bad, that’s what. He thought back to the nonsensical vision he had had a few weeks ago of buildings in Eden crumbling onto streets below. It hadn’t made sense then. Now, the vague memories of listening to Florence’s Partisans talk about the improvised explosive devices they had set beneath roads the Royalist armies marched down came flooding back to him. A few years ago, they had blown up a school with a home-made explosive. Bombs. You could blow stuff up with fertilizer. You couldn’t do it well, but you could do it.

That was crazy. Lee didn’t have it in him to actually hurt people. He was a creep, and he had crazy political beliefs, but he was not a killer. Marty had grown up around killers. He could see it in their dead eyes. Men like Field Marshal Anatole Surkhov had killed dozens. Reed Kimble was a killer. Even Beatrice Kosarin had killed, and she was only a woman. Lee lacked what they had. He was just some dorky, creepy journalist with ideas that were too big for him.

But what would he be doing with that much fertilizer?

Anxiety grew inside of him. This was crazy. He had started the night looking for proof that Lee was some kind of sex criminal, found nothing, and now had made himself so paranoid that he was starting to think he was some kind of terrorist. This was what lack of sleep and stress were doing to him. Marty got up and left his bedroom so that he could reset his brain.

In the kitchen, Jules was busy cooking breakfast. She still wore her shapeless undershift that she slept in, and her limp black hair was unbraided. She clattered around at an alarming speed, stirring a pot of oatmeal and frying eggs as the coffee pot squealed. When she saw Marty, she glared at him.

“You stayed up all night again on that computer,” she said accusingly, and crossed her skinny arms in front of her like a bat. They spoke French at home, and Marty’s mind subconsciously made the change away from English. “Really? I don’t understand why you do that to yourself, Mari, I don’t understand why you don’t take care of yourself. Sit down, what do you want to eat?”

Marty sat down at the table numbly, images of explosions replaying in his head. Jules tried to smooth down his fluffy hair and he flinched away from her. He hated people touching his head. It was 5 am.

“I worry about you,” said the gristle-sharp woman who had raised him. “What happens if you have another big seizure and I’m not there, huh? The Prime Minister has me working at the hospital in Ill de Matane too much, I’ll see if she’ll let me stay here with you more.”

“I’m not sick. You don’t have to do that.”

“I’ll do it if I want to.”

Explosions. There was no way that Lee would do that. He was a bad person but he wasn’t that bad. Marty suddenly felt like laughing.

Jules poured steaming coffee into 3 unmatching, chipped mugs. She watched him. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing.”

“You look upset.”

Marty took a cup of coffee from her and didn’t answer. His brain felt like it wasn’t working anymore, the way it got when he was overstimulated. In an hour or so, Ayda would wake up for school and he could talk to her about this. She would be able to talk some sense into him. Ayda was good at that. He drank the coffee and felt it warm him from the inside.

Dog, the big quiet man who lived with them in the quarters that Florence Gauthier had so… generously given to them on her vast estate, came into the kitchen, sensing that breakfast was almost ready. His weak chin and round eyes made him appear nervously rabbit-like, despite being almost seven feet tall and broad shouldered. He sat down next to Marty and Jules handed him a cup of coffee without a word.

There was something going on between Dog-- Ivan Kosarin-- and Jules, and Marty didn’t like it. Sometimes Jules would say things to make Dog blush, or sometimes he would put one big hand on her lower back. Marty accepted that she had a life outside of being a sort of elder sister figure in his life, but he still worried. When he watched Jules rattle around the kitchen, cooking breakfast for more than just the two of them, it made him worried that she would get hurt. Yes, Dog was a gentle person and had never given Marty any reason to distrust him. Except--

“You fought with Florence’s Partisans,” Marty said, directly to Dog. Although he had known him since he was 6, they rarely spoke to one another. “When the fighting was bad.”

Dog seemed taken aback by Marty’s blunt question. Both his hands grasped his mug of coffee. “I followed the Blue Army.”

“Right. Surkhov fought alongside the Partisans.”

“Mari,” scolded Jules. Her mouth twisted in distaste.

“So you know all about Partisan tactics.”

Dog’s watery eyes moved from his mug of coffee and up to Jules, then back. His mouth tightened. The war was not something often discussed in this household, although it had raged for nearly a decade. Even now, the dead king’s Loyalists still gathered in the Hinterland forests.

Jules shook her head. “This isn’t something to talk about at breakfast. Florence Gauthier’s men were- are-- animals, she had no control over them. Why are you even thinking about this, Mari? You spend too much time looking at that computer. Eat.”

But Marty could not eat. “Ivan,” he said, using Dog’s given name, the name that he despised, his voice accelerating with emotion. “Three years ago, when that school was bombed in Ille de Matane--“

The mere mention of the act made Dog’s face turn white. Marty had only been 10 at the time, but he could remember hearing about how Anatole Surkhov and his men had dug through the rubble for two days, looking for survivors. The Partisans had been disbanded immediately after that, and Florence had hung many of her own people. At 10 years old, his imagination had held onto the images of little kids getting blown to bits. Now, he could only think of the same thing happening in Eden.

Lee Harlan was no Partisan, no desperate soldier. Or was he?

He continued: “They used bombs they built themselves, right? They used fertilizer because the embargo made gunpowder so scarce.”

The coffee was scalding hot but Dog drank it anyway. There were lines under his eyes. “People will use whatever they can get their hands on when they are desperate and angry,” he said carefully. Behind him, Jules fiddled with a crystal she wore around her neck, movements tense. “That’s-- it’s over now. That was a horrible time, it should have never happened. The Prime Minister should have never let that happen. I don’t know why you’re thinking about it. It’s over.”

“I just want to know how it works.”

“Ammonium nitrate can be manufactured from fertilizer.” Jules was growing angry, maybe even protective over her friend. She shook her head and made the sign against evil, her thumb pressed to her blackened middle and ring fingers. “It’s easy to make, even for an idiot. That’s why it’s so dangerous. Gauthier’s men annihilated that school with only 30 kilograms of ANFO, they stole it from a farm and were able to build a bomb that killed 24 children the next week. Is that what you wanted to know, Mari? You should feel blessed for the privilege of not knowing these things. The war is ending, we don’t have to think about this anymore. Eat your breakfast.”

Easy to make, even for an idiot.

Marty felt very sick. He stood up and realized that his knees were shaking. Suddenly, all he could think about was the people he cared about in Eden. Ayda. Kip. Rome. All he could think about was how far he was from them, how helpless he was to do anything if something went wrong.

Easy to make, even for an idiot…

This was wrong, of course it was. He was being paranoid, crazy. He had no reason to think that Lee would do something like that, or be involved with something like that. This paranoia was the byproduct of his obsessive thoughts, of his constant fixation on Lee Harlan. In trying to sniff out something that he had done wrong, he had created problems in his mind. Problems that didn’t exist.

But Marty had been right about things before. He had seen things before, things that ended up happening. He thought about the vision he had had, the vision where huge buildings crumbled into chunks.

He got up from the table and did not realize that he had knocked over his mug of coffee. Both Dog and Jules jumped, looked at him like he was crazy.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Jules demanded. “Mari, you have to eat.”

Suddenly delirious, suddenly sick, he shook his head, pushing his way back to his bedroom and his devices. “No,” he said. “No, I have to call someone. I have to call Kip.”

[sure-as-eggs]

can you tell more about ed’s (and oswald’s) ways of thinking? god i can listen to you going on about them forever

…Well since I don’t seem to be capable of shutting up about them, I’m thrilled you feel that way?? (I’m sorry this took so long… Honestly I kept putting it off because I was waiting to see how Defrosted!Ed would handle things on his own before I committed to a reading on him!)

Anyway:

Ed is a chess player.Oswald is an artist.

There are a finite number of variables Ed is interested in at any given moment, and he operates within a closed system of actions and responses. He also always has a predetermined Winning Condition: after all, there’s only one definition of ‘checkmate.’

The problem for Ed is that he’s not always a particularly good chess player, because he has blinders a mile wide that prevent him from seeing if he’s made a bad move or if he’s underestimated an opponent. And that happens quite a lot?? Because Ed has very poor social skills and a fascinating ego problem.

Rather than a narcissist (which is 100% Oswald’s issue), I’d almost call Ed a solipsist?? Solipsism is the philosophical idea that you can’t be sure if anything exists except your own mind, and between his hallucinations and his compulsions and his empathy issues and his social difficulties, Ed has very very few anchors in reality. He has to find a way to view the world in concrete terms if he’s going to interact with it, he has to know that he can process and catalogue and make sense of things. Riddles are a perfect expression of that: by framing things in questions he knows the answers to, he swaps places with the rest of the world temporarily, because HE’S the one who’s anchored and it’s EVERYBODY ELSE who’s on uncertain ground.

That’s why it breaks my heart when he gets those riddles wrong. It’s all tied up in his Riddler persona, this assurance that he’s real and knows who he is and what he’s meant to be doing, and it unwinds him. Oswald telling him his riddles don’t make sense is Oswald telling Ed that his grasp on reality is wrong, that his identity isn’t real and that he’s completely lost sight of the chessboard patterns and reasoning he held on to so tightly in the first three seasons. Of COURSE he accepts being frozen again.

“Fogginess of the mind,” “decreased capacity to think ten steps ahead,” and “inability to solve riddles” are all basically the same complaint. He can’t make sense of the chessboard anymore. He knows it’s all there, he knows there are patterns to follow and questions with answers, he just can’t see it.

And he doesn’t make any attempt to adapt or look at things differently, either?? (Not yet, anyway.) He manages to develop a complete plan, and when it falls through, he temporarily gives up, and then comes up with another one. (Make money -> Fix brain) 

Honestly, the quality of his plans has declined significantly from when he went up against Jim or orchestrated Oswald’s downfall, but I don’t think his mental cycle of futility and single-mindedness has changed at all from before being frozen??

Ed doesn’t adjust well to unexpected circumstances or reactions. He’s at his best and happiest when he’s protected, removed, when there’s a buffer between him and whatever he’s trying to do. He doesn’t tend to do well in the thick of things, because he can’t account for complicating variables or micromanage from the front lines, and because he has no time or space to develop alternate strategies when he feels like everything he’s planned is falling apart around him.

For example: Kristen wasn’t supposed to get mad at him over Dougherty. He doesn’t know what to DO with that, he didn’t plan for it and so he panics, he tries to get things back on track with such violent desperation that he kills her. He has absolutely no problem-solving skills in situations like that.

Compare it to literally the next time he wakes up, when he’s alone and can start to rationalize the situation and the stakes. Compare it to him trying to sabotage the investigation into Kristen’s death, where he absolutely expects Jim to be out to get him, but there’s no immediate danger; he has all the time in the world to come up with and commit to a course of action, and to handle it all cleanly and precisely.

Ed has plans, and then potentially back-up plans, and quite often they’re brilliant. But if they fall through and he’s not in a position to retreat and reassess… He’s screwed. (“I was arresting Jim!!”)

(He has the /capacity/ to improvise, and sometimes he’s even successful, but generally only when whoever he’s trying to manipulate doesn’t have a good reason to doubt or make things difficult for him. He lies to Lee several times, and to Kristen, but in all those situations they go out of their way to give him the benefit of the doubt. It’s the same thing when he tricks Oswald; Oswald doesn’t believe what’s happening even when Ed pulls his gun.)

Ed gives his stance on manipulation in Arkham, which is that people are just puzzles, and there’s a solution to them: give them what they want. Contrast that with Oswald’s perspective: “when you know what a man LOVES, you know what can kill him.”

Ed is thinking in terms of cause and effect, black and white, fixed identities and desires because that’s how he operates, that’s the only way he can anchor himself and create a strategy that gets him closer to some objective ideal of control over his own reality.

Oswald isn’t.

Oswald is entirely contextual. He’s not looking for truth or answers, he’s not interested in objectivity or what’s really going on, all he cares about are feelings and experiences. Even his big-picture view is in terms of his own relationship to Gotham: it’s not just a prize or a proving ground, it’s his home.

I love his relationship to Ed’s riddles, because the ones he solves are the ones that are wrapped up in an immediate experience. He’s brilliant, but he’s not interested in being smart for its own sake. He gets nothing out of solving puzzles which aren’t relevant to him.

“What I want, the poor have, the rich need, and if you eat it, you die.”…Who gives a shit? Literally, who gives a flying fuck? If you want to say something, say it. If you want to lie, then lie. He doesn’t understand what Ed gets out of knowing the answer to his own question, he doesn’t understand why you’d separate the fact that you know something from the thing that you actually know unless you’re going to USE that somehow.

“I can’t be bought, but I can be stolen with a glance. I’m worthless to one, but priceless to two.”He is so not interested in this while he’s pissed at Ed and trying to run a goddamn campaign, but, fascinatingly, he remembers it word for word. Because the scene where Ed tells him this riddle is Ed pulling out all the stops, every rational explanation and concrete example he can think of to communicate something to Oswald, and I think Oswald can tell. He shuts Ed down because love is such a huge insecurity for him, acknowledgement is such a weak point, and he doesn’t want to accept that he has any interest in what Ed’s trying to tell him.But he does.And when it turns out Ed’s right, Oswald proves that he totally subconsciously solved that riddle because he could FEEL it, not as a question with an answer but as a hope and a fear he was trying to pretend Ed hadn’t brought to light.

…That was a digression.

Anyway: Oswald is at his best when things are an absolute shitshow. In tense, high-stakes situations where everybody’s already burned through Plans A through F and nobody has a precedent for what to do next, or when he’s stuck with no resources and an impossible task, Oswald shines.

My favorite example of this is the Season One finale, where he’d planned to go quietly murder Falcone and instead ends up arrested and chained in a warehouse by his two OTHER worst enemies (one of whom he thought was dead) who are suddenly working together. There is no way in hell he even considered that this was how his day would go. In Ed’s chess metaphors, this would be like if halfway through the game somebody gave your opponent all their captured pieces back and then let them take several consecutive turns. This is a Problem in a proper noun sense of the word, and Oswald has absolutely nothing to work with.

…Except he does. Because he can feel the tension, he can feel Fish’s controlled fury and Maroni’s self-satisfaction, he has history and connections with both of them, and he channels it all through about three sentences. He reads the situation like a painting and changes the entire mood and meaning of the piece with three well-placed strokes.

He can do this most effectively when he only has to worry about himself, because whatever he creates is (by default) going to suit his own vision. The most extreme version of it manifests as one of my favorite Oswald Things: what a tremendously bad idea it is to let him go off screen.

If you let him out of your sight, you’ve given him free reign to choose his own relationship to whatever’s happening. You’ve given him total creative control, and by god he’s gonna use it.Some examples off the top of my head:-When everybody scatters in the Season One finale and he unhooks himself and disappears, he comes back minutes later with an assault rifle and takes over the city-When Jim and Harvey leave him downstairs at Loeb’s farm, he stages the escape of the captives he’s supposed to be guarding and later murders them at his club-Ed shoots him and puts him in the river and he survives and turns up as Ed’s roommate in the super secret Court of Owls dungeon(I like to think everybody is fully aware of this phenomenon by the time the hostage exchange rolls around, and it’s part of what’s going through Ed’s head while chasing him out of the warehouse: “If I let him get out that door, I am fucked.”And hey, what do you know.Oswald gets out the door about four seconds before Ed.And four seconds is all he needs.)

Oswald has his weaknesses too, obviously. He’s actually, generally speaking, pretty terrible at being in charge of things. (Remember what a piss poor job he did with Fish’s club before Butch showed up?? He made it too much about himself, took it too personally, disregarded too many things he wasn’t personally interested in, and it nearly flopped.) Being in a position of authority really doesn’t capitalize on his skills, because it restricts the perspectives he can take, it dictates his relationship to the city and its workings in a way that can undermine the things he wants and feels.

In that sense, the team up of Oswald as mayor and Ed as chief of staff really could not have been better for either of them: you got the sense that Oswald ranted and fumed about things and worked through to what he wanted, and Ed translated it all into itemized lists to be discretely handled after tea.Oswald was in a position to see and interpret everything, but he didn’t have to worry about micromanagement. Ed had a constant stream of ego-inflating tasks to optimize and complete, but he could do it all from a position of total security.

(…I have to bring up one last thing, which is part of why I picked chess player and artist as my metaphors for Ed and Oswald: 3x15. Oswald leaves behind an oil painting of the two of them together, layers and shades and impressions, and Ed leaves a huge question mark over it because he can’t PROCESS them that way. He goes to the chess tournament, one stage in a meticulously choreographed master plan, and hallucinates Oswald telling him he’s being absurd because Ed is coping by moving pieces around for their own sake, assembling a puzzle without any regard for whether it actually makes a picture in the end. It’s such a good contrast and such a good episode, I’m still not over it.)

[gaydemogorgon]

I want you to answer all 20 facts for any of ur ocs

Kityy you really did this just to spite me? Foolish, but I’m gonna use my destiny guardian Ulysses

1: List five basic facts about your OC.

1) He’s the oldest Guardian, technically. 2) He couldn’t talk for couple hundred years and had to communicate through his ghost, writing and occasionally sign language. 3) the vanguand don’t like letting him out of the tower for his own safety and also for everyone else’s. 4) He has a part of the traveller jammed in his chest, which is why he has outlived a lot of people and why he can switch bodies. 5) he’s a deadly shot with a hand canon 

2: Post a line of dialogue from your OC.

Guardian: so what? He doesn’t talk? Is that his gimmick?

Ulysses: *static*

Guardian: this is ridiculous, how the hell is a voicless relic supposed to lead us?

Ghost: if you would wait a minute and let my guardian adjust to the modifications you will recieve your orders fairly soon

Guardian 2: so you speak for him? What’s wrong?

Ghost: My guardain suffered extensive damage before I revived him, leaving him without a voice module. It left us with-

Ulysses: *static and crackling* -ts enough, ghost, *crackling* -hank you. Just needed them to warm up a tad.

Guardian: so you can speak?

Ulysses: yes, and next time you say something like that I’ll show you why the smart fallen don’t come near my convoys into the deadzone 

- Ulysses-9 meeting the new wave of guardinas that entered the city, some years after Zavala arrived 

3: Post a snippet from your writing that describes your OC.

“Stealth?” Uly repeated, “of course my plan involves stealth. All of them do” This wasn’t a lie, technically. But it wasn’t exactly the truth. What Uly considered ‘stealth’ was spending at least 15 minutes undetected by the enemy, and by his count they’d surpassed the quota. Already loading Last Word and working out the finer points of his 'plan’. “So how about we follow our usual plan?”Virtue’s head dropped, and she breathed in deeply. She knew exactly what he was about to suggest, and was about to argue “No. No, we’re going in quietly with-”“Stealth tech, yes I heard”He was used to cutting people off. Not a shining quality, but for him or stream lined situations. He reached around under his cloak and unhooked a cluster or wires and metal that had clearly been salvaged and tinkered with,“This”he began,“This is a stealth field freshly pulled from a particularly flammable captain and I may or may not have adapted it for use by guardians”he handed the device to virtue and told her how to operate it, then slipped his helmet on, “okay, so you two use your stealth tech to secure the cache and I’ll do what I do best-”But it was his turn to be interrupted, and before he could finish kord and virtue chimed in with “Be a huge jackass?”“Be the loudest most obnoxious person possible?”“I’m gonna draw their fire, God you guys can be so mean” He slipped on his helmet, vaulted over the wall and let off a whole mag before his ghost started playing high pitched music. Not soon after he disappeared, followed by a horde of fallen

4: Post a snippet from your writing in which another OC describes your OC.

As Virtue listened to Uly’s plan, she felt her expression grow more and more stark. This was hardly the time or place for some of his questionable tech. Kord’s stealth was warranted - he was a hunter; it was certified hunter gear. Uly’s 'stealth field’ certainly was not. She could wager that the Vanguard didn’t even know he had it. Before Virtue could protest, perhaps offer an alternate solution, Uly had darted off, drawing Fallen like a steak draws a ravenous pack of hyenas. He was efficient, she’d give him that. 

5: Describe your OC’s physical appearance.

A tall and broad exo. Basic plating, yellow inner lighting. Usually donning some form of long coat or cloak with a hood and mask or an animal skull helmet. Alwyas has some sort of alien tech strapped to his gear, be it a trophy or a piece or re-engineered tech, with his pistol holstered

6: Describe your OC’s love life.

Non existant due to his emotional issues, recklessness, general personality and lack of the ability to fuck in most capacities

7: Describe your OC’s fashion sense.

Space glam or old as hell with shit stitched on

8: Describe one of your OC’s bad habits.

Killing himself to evade capture. He can survive most fatal wounds even without his ghost and he has a tendency to shoot himself in the head or set himself on fire 

9: Your OC is having a nightmare. What is it?

Seeing his wife and friends die again, or being helpless against Oryx 

10: You are conducting a ritual. What 5 items would you need to summon your OC?

Loose wires and micro chips, candles, dust/ashes/sand, something related to time (pocket watch, stop watch, hourglass, etc) and something that burns, like matches (can’t be candles again)

11: What does your OC want for their birthday?

picture frames with pictures 

12: What does your OC give another OC for their birthday?

modified tech that lets them turn invisible, teleport, stop time, push things away, stuff like that 

13: Describe your OC’s living situation.

an entire workshop in the tower to himself that keeps him out of harm’s anf temptation’s way

14: What is one of your OC’s secrets?

He became an ascendant hive the day his wife died and because of that he’s a target for Oryx personally 

15: Your OC is given the chance to go back in time. Where do they go and what do they do?

He goes back to see his kid from before he was an exo and says goodbye again.

16: If your OC could have any superpower, which would it be and why?

Invisibility. Unlimited mischief 

17: How does your OC do during the zombie apocalypse?

very very well becuase he isn’t a food source 

18: What is your OC’s dream job?

Archaeologist 

19: Your OC’s life is a musical. What’s the title of their big show-stopping song?

Ulysses’ Odyssey: How The Fuck Do I Keep Doing This Shit?

20: Post a picture or gif that describes your OC.

I can’t find a single good one ;-;