#like. she's not just hardcore and untouchable. she loves just as much as everyone else and wants to BE loved

[mechieonu]

FROM THE START self-love and acceptance has been one of the major themes of the series and if ANYONE could benefit from that tigress is RIGHT THERE

[kittydeany77]

OH GOD this gif is perfect for todays chapter. I have not stopped writing chapter 5 since posting chapter 4 like yesterday. Yesterday? Yeah im pretty sure. I think this chapter is a bit shorter than the others but i had to leave it where it ended and i didnt edit for making it longer or anything. Honestly i should edit these chapters but im lazy lol. Okay here you go enjoy chapter 5!!!

ALONE AGAIN

chapter 5

Dean Winchester x Y/N

Warnings: mention of sex, hardcore teasing/flirting, is it considered PG13? Probably. Mentions of danger or being hurt and heavy emotions. Not really much “warning” but didnt want to hurt someones feelings.

A/N: also please keep in mind i dont own anything from The Walking Dead or Supernatural and i do not claim anyone from the shows or writers as my own work. Full credit to the original writers and creators if the stories and shows and characters. This is simply FANfiction and i take ZERO claim for the work when i quote from them. Thank you!

Chapter 5

You walked through the camp, returning from your walk with Maggie. Dean still wasn’t back with Daryl, but you’d find him later in the day after some chores. Carol was helping Lori with the laundry and Andrea was keeping watch on the RV. Although you didn’t know why because the farm seemed untouched.

“Hey Y/N, are you okay helping us with dinner tonight? Lori had Rick ask if we could cook for our host in their kitchen tonight and they said okay. Just wanted to do something nice for them and keep myself occupied.”

“Sure, that sounds lovely. A really nice gesture Carol.” You smiled sweetly at her and helped finish folding the laundry for Lori.

“Walkers!” Andrea was standing up and yelling on the RV. She grabbed her rifle and laid down to line up a shot. Everyone ran over to see if walkers truly did come across the farm. No one seemed to breathe or move. The thought of the dead finding the farm gave you an uneasy feeling. Where would everyone go if the farm became unsafe?

“Best let us handle it.” Shane was holding a shotgun and walking out towards the field where the alleged walkers were. Rick followed him with Glenn and T-Dog not far behind. Andrea still hadn’t taken a shot but was growing impatient. Her stubbornness finally won over and she went back to lining a shot up and whispering to herself, “fuck this, I can take the shot without them.”

“Andrea dont, you dont need to.”

“Shut up Dale, I got this.”

“Andrea just listen to Dale, the guys are out there and you dont want to accidentally hit someone else.”

“Let her be Y/N, she made up her mind.” Lori walked away and back to the laundry baskets with Carol. Thats when you heard it.

BANG!

Andrea took the shot. Rick screaming. You couldnt see what was happening, the men were too far from you and Andrea was gleaming with pride until the screams made it past the egotistical air bubble around her. Turning towards Lori, she started sprinting to the guys in hopes Rick was okay and you joined her.

When you finally reached them, you saw Daryl limp and being dragged. Andrea had jumped down from the RV and ran up with Dale next to her. “Oh my god. Oh my god is he dead? I shot daryl. Fuck.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?! Do you just shoot blindly at everything that moves?!” Dean was alive. He was here and back safely. Andrea recoiled from his yells. Dean was getting in her face, nostrils flaring and anger took over him. This was the side you hadn’t seen of him yet. The emotion. An emotional state can show you the truth about someone. Anger was one you understood all too well.

“Dean! Come on let’s get out of here, Hershel and Rick have Daryl. You need to walk this off.” Youd ragged him away from everyone out towards the treeline where you first found strawberries growing. Neither of you talked on the way over. He was a couple feet ahead of you, breathing heavily from the adrenaline rush and trying to sort everything out in his mind.

“Dean, what happened out there?” Finally asking him after an hour of silently sitting under a tree, watching him pace. He looked over at you and his features softened at the moment he locked eyes with you. Taking a deep breath, he ran his hand up through his hair with the other on his hip. “Daryl fell down a cliff. He got banged up pretty bad and I went to find a safer way down, but walkers appeared before I could find one. I had to slide down the same stupid cliff and we landed hard. One of his arrows pierced his side and he was losing a lot of blood.” Dean looked down at his hands when he took a seat across from you. You both sat there.

“Im glad you made it back safe, both of you made it back.” You were still leaning against the tree, picking at the skin by your nails while watching him. Dean just sat there in the grass, arms resting on his knees as he stared blankly at his hands.

“Then that blonde bitch shot at us and hit Daryl. She couldve killed him!” He raised his voice but did not look at you when he did so.

“She couldve shot you… she couldve killed either of you…” the realization was starting to set in. You couldve lost Dean today. In that moment. Slowly you rose, inching towards Dean. He looked up at you through his eyelashes and he looked exhausted. Standing above him you reached out your hands and he grabbed them. You helped him to his feet and stared into his eyes. His gorgeous, tired, green eyes.

Thats when the unspeakable happened. Dean wrapped his arms around your shoulders and pulled you in for a hug. Shock made you freeze and then reality set in as you slowly wrapped your arms around his torso.

“Im so glad youre here Y/N. Thank you for everything.”

You pull back a little and look up at him, and he looks down at you. The redness in his eyes point to him holding back tears. He keeps chewing on his lips as he waits for you to respond. This is your chance. To truly speak your mind. The soft breeze feels chilly on your burning, embarrassed skin. This moment with Dean feels like a dream. No walkers in sight. No danger around. Just you and Dean in each others arms. You could hear his heartbeat loudly and it mixed with yours. Your lips parted as you took deep breaths to try and stay calm.

“Please dont ever leave me alone again, Dean.” Your voice cane as a whisper on your lips. Unsure if you even said it, maybe you just thought it to yourself. Being pulled into a tighter embrace with a strong hand on the back of your head told you otherwise. You had said it finally. This man, he was becoming your best friend and you were falling for him all at once. The thought of him leaving you again scared you and theres no way the two of you would be apart.

“Sweetheart I’m not going anywhere without you, I don’t want to lose you.” His voice sounded gravely from holding back tears. Dean choked back his feelings and kissed you on your head.

…

This moment would change everything you ever knew. That losing someone you loved… would be the most painful feeling… and being alone was a living nightmare… worse than fighting the dead… worse than your past…

…

Everyone was sitting down for dinner at the Greene’s house. Most were at the large farm table but some had to sit at a folding table because there were so many of us. It was quiet. Just the sounds of silverware hitting plates and glasses of drinks being swished. You were sitting towards the end of the table by Carol. Rick sat across from you with Lori. Dean sat to the right of you next to Shane because he knew how you felt towards the man. All he wanted was to protect you from harm and you felt beyond grateful he came into your life.

Maggie and Beth were at the square folding table with Glenn and Jimmy. It felt like a movie during the holidays with a kids table and adult table. Even the tension in the air could represent drama in a family around the holiday season. How appropriate you thought. Poor patricia, she sat opposite of Dale with Hershel at the head of the table on her left, without her husband Otis. Her head hung low as she picked around her plate of food. T-Dog was sitting between Dale and Shane and across from Andrea. Carl normally would have sat between his mother and Andrea but he was still resting upstairs in a room. From todays events even Daryl was missing. Hershel had to patch him back up and force him to sleep in a spare bed for the night.

“Does anyone know how to play guitar? Dale found one out on the highway and I thought it would be nice to hear someone play.” Glenn spoke above the silence in the room.

“Otis did…” Patricia replied with a sob and now sat with her hands in her lap, probably not touching the rest of her food for the night. Everyone sat quietly, unsure of what to say next.

“Yes he did Patricia, and he did it beautifully. We can use this moment to remember him gracefully and honor him.” Hershel was a nice man, he knew what to say and that brought a smile to your face. You looked over at Dean who seemed lost in thought. His father and brother recently passed and it was still hurting him. That pain would never go away unfortunately. Thats when you remembered something. It would cheer everyone up with a nice distraction. More Dean than the others hopefully if you were being fully honest.

“Um, excuse me everyone?” When you spoke up it seemed to take everyone by surprise as they looked towards you. The anticipation of talking to the group got to you and suddenly you became too self aware if everh moment you made. Dean was staring at you in a serious tone, he recognized the feeling you were having of trying to speak up. Under the table he brought his hand over to your knee and slowly rubbed his thumb there. You knew it was in no way a sexual move from Dean. It was comfort and support. A gentle touch from someone who you were falling for… this gave you thr courage you needed.

“Sorry, but I just want to thank our host’s for letting us prepare this dinner for everyone and inside their home nonetheless. It was very gracious of you to take us in and help patch us up when we needed it most. The world has grown scary and this piece of safe haven came at the perfect time for Ricks group and even myself. As a physical thank you to everyone here, Carol made pie and I think we could all use a slice of it right about now.” With that you got up to head into the kitchen and returned with a pie in each hand. They were simple peach pies that Carol miraculously whipped up today. Honestly you weren’t sure when this woman found the time for all the baking and cooking tonight. Even if she had help from Patricia, Beth, and Lori.

“Carol, you are my super hero!” Dean perked right up as you placed the pies down on the table. His smile lit up the room and he clasped his hands together as he chuckled. If anyone looked ready for pie, it was the boy with a charming grin sitting next to you.

Bringing out the pies seemed to spark conversation in the room and the night became less tense. Carol got up to take a tray of food to Daryl upstairs and you took a moment to look around the room. Watching the scenery around you was force of habit from over the years. You noticed small conversations between people and then there was Glenn… he had just grabbed a note from Maggie under the table. Honestly Glenn was a horrible liar and not conspicuous about the note passing. Dale also noticed and had stopped his conversation with Hershel and thats when you panicked for Maggie. As Glenn (not so subtle) replied back under the table, Hershel watched and Maggie turned red of embarrassment. Glenn had no idea he brought all the attention to them as he sat proudly smiling from the exchange. Maggie was definitely going to hear from you tomorrow. Considering you just noticed how Dean had his hand back on your knee and you werent sure how to take it. The first time was comfort, but this time? All you knew was that it caused a storm of butterflies within you…

Dinner ended and everyone helped clean-up before heading off to their tents or finding a place to relax for a bit before bed. It was dark outside and you missed the sunset unfortunately. Before the world became infested with the rising dead, you were obsessed with catching sunsets and sunrises. You called it “chasing” them and would hike up mountains to watch from a high point or find bodies of water to catch the reflection of the colors. Those times were so peaceful and now to catch one seemed impossible. It could be the only thing you bring on this adventure from the past. Nothing else really seemed worthy of holding onto.

“Hey Y/N, want me to walk you back to the tents?” You turned around with a gasp and was pinned in place by the green orbs in front of you. Dean was good at appearing from thin air and spooking you from your skin.

“Oh uh, sure Dean that sounds great.” Smiling with your reply, you calmed down, but your heart rate sure didn’t want to. From the adrenaline of the scare and the realization of being walked 50 feet with Dean seemed to make your heart thunder from your chest. Why does he make you feel this way? Why does he have to be so charming? His muscles… his bowed legs… hes funny and kind… god he has you hooked, line and sinker in your opinion. When walking down off the porch, Deans hand grazed yours, and your breathe hitched in your throat. You thought it was an accident and that you just swayed too close to him. Until you glanced sideways at him and had noticed him already staring at you. Then he looked down at your hands and slowly reached out. Honestly, how could he not hear your heartbeat right now and see what hes doing to you. Both hands found each other and lightly slid into place for holding one another. Dean Winchester. Holding your hand. Maybe the apocalypse was a dream…

Dean walked up to your tent with you and not many others were around. Most of them already in tents or the RV and the fire from earlier had died down. You stood in fromt of Dean and he hadnt let go of your hand yet. The light glow from the embers barely gave enough light to see his features, but you could hear him in front of you. Breathing was heavier than normal and his feet shuffled back and forth in anticipation. The butterflies in you were going insane and all you wanted was for him to lean in… to fully show his feelings and prove what you hoped all along…

“Thank you for tonight. I know it wasn’t just you helping cook but i think what you said at the table was amazing. You are so smart and kind, Y/N. I can’t ever lose you and I don’t want to be apart from you.” He whispered this to you as he lightly pulled you closer to him. Dean rested his forehead against yours and brought his other hand up to your cheek. So badly you wished to see his eyes and face right now, but thankful for the dark to hide your red face. Oh god was he going to do what you wanted? Did you want this? Honestly you werent sure… but before you made a choice on how you truly felt in this moment, Deans lips brushed against yours ever so lightly…

[callsignavalon]

Published: 2/13

pairing: touya x sister reader

warning: incest, noncon, virginity, breeding, literally just kinda hardcore shit that makes people uncomfy

amorous entanglement

The youngest sister.

A prize to be fought for, innocent, teasing, always following the rules and getting whatever she wants. You were the only one of your siblings that had daddy wrapped around your perfect little fingers.

Soft and warm and hiding all those deep fucked up thoughts in your perfect little head.

Touya knew his little sister couldn’t be as perfect as you pretended to be. How could it be so? Soft tits poking out of your little sundresses you didn’t wear bras with, cute nipples straining against your big tee shirt you wore to sleep in, or even in those nice little school button up shirts.

Touya imagined there was much more to your perfect little act. Why else would your small hands pull a little extra hard when you played with your big brother's hair?

Why would you sit in his lap when everyone was gathered around watching a movie? Did you not notice the way his cock would twitch under the thin fabric of your shorts? Did you not mean for his cock to fit perfectly between your thighs when you took the liberty of sitting in his lap?

He had seen your eyes linger just a bit too long when he’d be working out, cheeks flushed as you bit down on your tongue. The way you always insisted on ‘watching’ him play his games so you could learn, but really he knew you got off to watching him get so worked up over a game.

Sometimes late at night, when nobody should be awake he could even hear the soft mewling sounds of you playing with your pussy.

Touya let his mind wonder to what it would sound like if you moaned out for your big brother, your nii-san. He craved to have your pretty lips around his pierced cock, to watch drool fall Touya needed to know what your pussy felt like clenched around his cock.

He wondered if you were untouched, pussy free of anyone's touch but your own. Perfect and innocent and waiting for your big brother to use.

When the opportunity presents itself to Touya, he doesn’t even hesitate to take it. Just the two of you were home, and would be the whole day, he would take perfect advantage of finally tasting his sweet little sister. He had called you into his room, asking if you wanted to come watch a scary movie with him. ‘You can sit in big brother's lap if you’ll feel safer.’ he had said, easily convincing you to watch the movie with him.

“Stop moving, you make it hard to concentrate.” Touya growled with annoyance as he squeezed your hips, a little whine falling from you as he did. “Touya-nii, don’t wanna watch this anymore.

You lazily leaned into his chest, craning your neck to watch him. His grip on your hips didn’t falter, “What do you wanna do?” his voice comes out softer, quieter than normal. His palms smoothed over your stomach, rubbing and slowly moving under your shirt.

“Nii-san will keep you safe.. I can keep you warm and protected from those monsters..” He felt you shiver as he let a single finger drag softly from under your breasts and down your stomach, he almost couldn’t wait. But he had to drag this out, had to make sure he hadn’t been imagining all the little things you did, had to know he was right about you. Touya needed to know his sweet little sister was just as fucked up as he was, or he’d never forgive himself for what he was about to try and do.

“Touya-nii, why are your hands under my shirt?”

“Just want you to be warm, you keep shakin’ so I assumed you were cold.”

You weren’t cold, but you shrugged it off and settled into the warmth of your big brother's strong hands, eyes focused back on the tv in front of you. Touya waited, let you get back into a trance of watching the scary movie before his hands slowly cupped your delicate breasts. Your body shuddered against him, a small pout forming on your lips as your eyes peered up at him.

“What are you doinggg?” Fuck, that whine. That whiney little pitch your voice held that made your brothers cock harden and strain against his sweats. “Touya-nii.. Stop ittt.” His attention finally came back as you squeezed at his arms to push your big brothers hands away.

“But they’re so soft, can’t nii-san just hold them while the movie plays? I won’t squeeze.” But he did, he palmed at them, rolled them in his hands as soon as the words left his mouth. Your entire body tensed, your aching, untouched pussy clenching in response to his touch. No, no, no. This wasn’t real, it couldn’t be real. Your silence brought an unwarranted pinch of the soft bud of your nipple, a small squeak leaving your lips.

“Nii-san, s-stop.” You could barely get the words out, because you really didn’t want him to stop, but you knew it was wrong. You knew your cunny coming to life at the small touches was wrong, but all you’ve ever wanted was your big brother to touch you.

“It doesn’t feel good?” He asks, pinching and toying with your breasts, sure to leave bruises on the sensitive skin. Your head fell onto his shoulder, reddened face hiding within the warmth of his skin. “It does, but it’s wrong..” You mumble, nails digging into his arms as he continues the assault on your breasts, all while you hold back little mewls of pleasure from leaving your mouth.

“Tell me it doesn’t feel good, that you don’t want this. Fight me and push me away, and I’ll stop..”

“Nii-san just wants you to feel good.. wanna keep you safe in my arms..”

Your death grip on his arm falters, your face and body visibly relaxes as you let yourself slip into your nii-sans touches. “Always dreamed about touya-nii touching me..” It wasn’t a lie, from the very moment you were born touya had been the one who loved and cherished you. He took care of you when you got hurt, showed you how to do things, was gentle with you in his own way. Your big brother, your Touya-nii, has always made you feel safe and loved, so why deny the pleasure of him doing this for you? Why stop your big brother from helping out his sweet baby sister, just like he always did. This didn't have to be any different.

“M’gonna make you feel so good baby, let big brother show you how good you can feel.” His hand moved down your quivering body, palm over the entirety of your heat. Your hips met his hand before you could even think, not that you had a coherent thought anyways, you were only thinking of your nii-sans cock in you.

Touya didn’t wait long, one hand keeping you firm against his chest as long fingers rubbed rough circles into your sensitive clit. “F-feels good..” You cry out against his chest, face hidden as you try to muffle the sinful moans leaving your lips. Touya moved his fingers quickly and harshly, he would make you cum before you got your big brother's cock. He had no intentions of being gentle, your big brother had wanted to watch you cream on his cock for months, and he wasn’t gonna take it easy.

Your first orgasm ripped through you quickly, but his movements didn’t stop. Touya had you on your back, face buried between your thighs before you could even reject it. His thumb kept a steady pace on your clit, pierced tongue dipping into your warm and sensitive cunt. He had imagined this multiple times in his head, came so fucking hard everytime he thought of how his baby sisters pussy would taste on his tongue. And fuck did he wish he wouldn’t of waited so long. He was devouring you. Both hands under your thighs, holding you in place as your body writhed and shaked at his touch.

You big brother had his tongue shoved as far as it could go, slurping and lapping up your sweet juices like you were his last meal he’d ever have. Your tiny hands had a firm grip in his bright white hair, whimpers and loud pleas for your big brother flowing out your mouth. “Please, please, please..” you were so fucking pathetic under his hold, but touya wasn’t paying attention to your words, he was busy eating your precious cunny out. His forbidden paradise. Touya could stay buried between your thighs for hours, making you cum on his face until you couldn’t handle it. But your big brother could barely handle it, he had to fill up your pussy right now or he’d cum in his pants.

The sound of clothes being thrown off brought your attention back to the present, eyes wide as you take in your big brother's cock. Your entire body shuddered as you took it in, mouth salivating at the sight of your nii-sans pierced cock. He moved between your thighs and rubbed his swollen cockhead between your soaked slit, groaning as he watched you clench around nothing. He was about to push himself in to your perfect, welcoming cunny when your small hand reached forward to stop him. Touya’s head tilted to the side, watching your wide eyes stare at him nervously.

“You’ve never been fucked before have you?” When your head shook no, he couldn’t help but be slightly guilty for the way his cock twitched in excitement. “You want big brother to take your virginity? Wanna let your nii-san show you how good a nice big cock feels baby sister?” Your hips jut forward in response, nodding your head quickly as you watch your big brother. “Want touya-nii to fuck me good.” And he sure as fuck did.

Touya pushed the tip of his cock in, groaning as he sank his length further into your wet cunt. He lets out a few praises, giving you time to adjust to his length before he gives a few needy thrusts. He was being nice by giving those first few gentle moments, but he wasn’t going to hold back. His thrusts began quick, sloppy and showed his neediness for you as low moans left your big brother's mouth. He loved the way your tight virgin pussy clenched around him.

“Tell me how good I feel.”

“Let big brother touya know how good he feels in your pretty pussy.”

“Nii-chan..” you purr, pussy fluttering around him as you grip onto his arm. “Touya-nii’s cock feels so good in meee..” He rubs your clit, growling as you clench around him again. You were so fucking tight. Everything he could've ever imagined. His baby sister, you were perfect. Soaking wet on your big brothers cock, begging for him to fuck your pussy like good big brothers do. He was right about you, he knew his sweet little sister was just as fucked up and needy as he is. And god, would he fucking cherish your sweet little cunt.

“Nii-san owns this pussy.. gonna fuck you so good.. gonna cum in my little sisters virgin pussy..” he moans, thrusts getting sloppier as he starts to lose control. “Nii-san no,.. can’t cum inside.. can’t-.” Your voice was cut off by a loud moan ripping through your throat, Touya’s fingers rubbing quick circles around your swollen clit to silence your complaints. “Cum on nii-chans cock.. cum for me little sister, show big brother who you belong to.”

“Nii-san… wanna cum all over big brother’s cock..” He continues his assault on your clit and soon your thighs are squeezing around his waist, eyes slammed shut and head lolling to the side as you cum on your big brother's cock. A few more sloppy thrusts and you’re milking your big brother's cock as his hot cum coats your walls, filling your pussy to the brim. “Fuck, fuck, fuck..” He groans out, ramming his cock into your cunt, mixing your juices together.

Touya goes to pull out, but you clench your pussy down on him, tugging your brother closer and begging for him to stay in. “Please nii-chan, please stay inside me, don’t wanna lose you..” touya nods, warm arms wrapping you in his embrace as he lays on his side, pulling you with him. His hands soothe over your back, letting your naturally cool body warm up in his embrace.

“Love you touya-nii, never wanna love no one else..” He grunts, soothes a hand over your sweaty hair, kissing your head. “Go to sleep.” He says, and you do, a content smile on your face. You finally had your nii-san and he had you, the bond between two siblings that could never ever be broken. You’d forever be tainted by your big brother's touch and never wanted to let anyone take you again.

a/n: idk I’ve never wrote smut and lowkey love this but anyways pls comment hehe.

[pappydaddy]

Tribulations (n.w.)

 A/N: I am slowing knocking these requests down! I am so happy to finally be able to get these imagines out for you guys who have waited so, so patiently!! This one is for the lovely anon who requested Nancy x fem!reader with a secret relationship. I had no idea what to title this so I just went with a word😅! This has some hardcore angst so I hope you don’t mind! Hope you enjoy it lovely💛!

Pairing: Nancy Wheeler x Fem!Reader

Show/Movie: Stranger Things

Requested

Inspired by: i love you by billie eilish (slowed + reverb) (first bit) and She by dodie (second bit) *creds to owners, found in links)                    

Warnings: Angst with a happy ending, argument, fluff.

masterlist | taglist | wips | navigation - my gif -

 There was a certain comfort about hiding something so tender from everyone else. Maybe it was the fact that it remained untouched by the menacing hands of the outside world, maybe it was the fact that it laid in the shadows, unseen by everyone else. Whatever it was, Nancy didn’t have a problem continuing this charade of hiding her relationship from her friends and family. She was perfectly content on hiding the loving touches and kisses that she and Y/N shared in the confines of their rooms. 

 Y/N on the other hand was growing tired of being hidden. She wanted nothing more than to hold Nancy’s hand as they walked down the street in the daylight. She wanted to kiss her in front of their friends just as Nancy had done with her boyfriend’s in the past. She wanted to have the sickeningly cute relationship you saw in the movies, but yet, she was restricted to stealing kisses when they snuck away under the pretenses of powdering their noses. 

 “Hey, Nance,” Y/N spoke up, her teeth picking at her bottom lip nervously. She didn’t lift her head off Nancy’s chest, remaining in her comfortable position of laying between Nancy’s thighs, their stomachs pressing together. Nancy hummed, her fingers continuing to comb through Y/N’s hair. “I’ve been thinking-”  

 “Uh oh, thinking almost always leads to something.” Nancy commented, trying to keep the lightness of the situation, almost as if she knew exactly what Y/N was going to try and talk about. Y/N sensed her girlfriend’s nerves rising, the panic stirring under her calm surface. She pulled herself from Nancy’s embrace, suddenly the calmness she once felt a second ago turned to undeniable tension. Sitting on her knees, she faced Nancy who sat up, pulling her knees to her chest. 

 “Yeah, that’s kinda the whole point,” Y/N nodded awkwardly, tangling her fingers together nervously. “Um, I was just wondering when we could maybe tell people about us,” She spoke the question that had been weighing on her mind for some time. “It doesn’t have to be everyone, it can start with Robin and Steve or something, or maybe just Robin, it doesn’t matter as long as you’re comfortable, but I just want someone else to know about us.” She rambled, worried that the thought of telling everyone they knew would freak Nancy out too much. 

 “I don’t know, Y/N, I kind of like this.” Nancy shrugged, wrapping her arms around herself. Y/N sighed, her shoulders slumping. She knew that Nancy had worked at breaking from the mold of the perfect daughter, trying to stop living with a safety net under her at all times, but she also knew that the safety net had only dropped so far. 

 “Like what, Nancy? Like only being able to hold each other within a certain four walls? Is this all our relationship will be? Hiding in our rooms, stealing kisses in empty public washrooms?” Y/N pressed, gesturing to the room they currently sat in. The walls of Nancy’s room was a sight that Y/N saw pretty much daily, but right now, she would rather be anywhere else. 

 “Of course not,” Nancy defended, her mouth falling open as she struggled to find a way to reply to her. “But you have to admit that there is something special about keeping this,” She gestured between herself and Y/N who remained at the foot of her bed, keeping as much distance between them as she could. “Keeping us away from them.” She pointed her finger towards her window. Y/N glanced towards it before shaking her head.   

 “Look Nancy, I get that you’re nervous to tell people and that’s okay, but honestly,” She took a deep breath. “You might be okay with hiding us from the world, but it makes me feel like shit. It makes me think that you don’t want people to know that you’re dating me and that hurts.” Tears stung her eyes, but she hurriedly blinked them away. She kept her eyes from meeting Nancy’s brown ones, knowing that if she looked at them, she wouldn’t be able to stop the salty tears from streaking down her cheeks. 

 “That’s not what I meant to do, you have to trust me, Y/N/N,” Nancy pleaded, rolling onto her knees to reach for Y/N’s hands. Y/N scrambled off the bed, standing in the middle of Nancy’s room with her hands raised in the air to avoid Nancy from teaching them. She shook her head, a lump forming in her throat. “I never meant for you to feel like that, I just think it’d be better if we keep our relationship a secret for a bit longer-” 

 “Yeah, a bit longer,” Y/N’s voice was weak as she tried to hold back her emotions, her bitter sarcasm straining through just enough for Nancy to recognize it. “That’s what you said two months ago! And two months before that,” She exclaimed loudly. Nancy sent a panicked look to the closed bedroom door, shushing Y/N. “Christ Nancy! We’re nearing our one year anniversary and we are still keeping us a secret,” She continued. Nancy opened her mouth to talk, but Y/N unknowingly cut her off, finally meeting Nancy’s eyes. “Why,” She spoke the word softly, so softly that it was almost unheard. “Why do you want to keep us a secret?” Hurt was evident in her voice and Nancy knew that nothing she could say would make that hurt go away right now.  

 “I-I,” She stammered, this time, it was her eyes that dropped from Y/N’s. “I-”  

 “Is it because you’re dating me, a girl,” Y/N posed the question with a strained voice. This time a tear did roll down her cheek. “Because I really don’t want to think that you would be ashamed of that, but I really cannot find another reason why you would be so adamant about keeping us a secret. And if you’re not ready to come out to people yet, that’s fine. I am completely okay with that because that’s something you have to do on your own time, but all I am asking for is for you to tell me so that we can figure out where we can go from here,” She ranted her voice wobbling. She looked up at the ceiling, trying to will the tears and lump in her throat away, but it was useless. “Because I don’t want to sit here and just be a secret forever.”  

 “That’s not the reason! Maybe it’s part of it, but trust me when I say that I am ready to come out to my mom and brother! Even our friends, but I don’t want to fully disclose our relationship with them.” Nancy told her, her eyes wide.  

 “That’s the thing, Nancy,” She sighed. “I don’t want to force you to come out to anyone if you’re not ready. If you were truly ready, you would have talked about it or at least thought about before you realized that you could lose me from this,” Y/N finally shuffled back over to the bed, sitting on the edge of it, just far enough out of Nancy’s reach to let her know she still didn’t want to be touched. “I’m not saying I want to break-up, I am saying that I want to talk about this with you, but I think we both need to take some time and think about what we want separately and then talk.”  

 “So you want to go on a break?” Nancy’s voice wobbled this time, her bottom lip quivering ever so slightly.  

 “No, just take a day or two, think about it and then we can talk and see where to go from there. We need to start communicating instead of just brushing everything under the rug,” Y/N paused, hesitantly reaching her hand out to lay in over Nancy’s, their eyes connecting. “But don’t feel like you need to come out to keep me, I don’t want to force you to come out, I just want to talk.” She reminded her. 

 “Talk,” Nancy nodded, swallowing thickly. “We can do that.”  

 “Okay,” Y/N whispered, pulling her hand off Nancy’s slowly. “I’m going to go now, call me when you want to talk?” She asked, picking her bag up off the floor. Nancy nodded, her lips pressing together in an attempt to stop the trembling. She didn’t answer, too scared that she’d break down if she opened her mouth to speak.  

 With a final nod and a tight smile, Y/N opened the door to Nancy’s room. It felt like even more of a weight settled down upon her now that the fate of their relationship hung in the balances of uncertainty as she closed the door behind her and quickly made her way out of the Wheeler household. “Leaving so soon, Y/N, I was just going to go up and ask if you were staying for dinner tonight.” Mrs. Wheeler perked up as the teen rushed past the entrance of the dining room. Y/N stopped, backing up to peek her head around the wall, a fake smile on her lips.  

 “Uh, not tonight Mrs. Wheeler, thanks for the offer though! I’m just really swamped with College Applications and stuff, the busy life of a Senior!” She lied, hoping the older woman would buy it. Mrs. Wheeler hummed, nodding as if she hadn’t bought the lie she gave her. 

 “You’re coming to the movie night this weekend though, right?” Mike popped up, blinking at the girl. The monthly movie night. It started with just Y/N, Steve, Robin, and the kids before it expanded to include Nancy after her break-up with Jonathan. 

 “I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” She told him, earning a smile from the lanky teen. “See you, Mrs. Wheeler, thank you for having me!” She called over her shoulder, escaping the seemingly cheery house as she felt like she was suffocating. She regretted bringing the topic up. She wanted to huddle back under the shade of the shadows, the protection of blissful ignorance, but she knew that if they wanted to progress this relationship any farther, they had to talk about this sooner or later.  

 She held onto her tears long enough to slip into her car, but the second the door slammed, her shoulders shook as tears rolled freely down her cheeks. The fear that maybe this might be the end of her relationship weighing heavily on her mind. ____  

  “Nancy?” Y/N gasped in shock when she pulled her front door open to see her girlfriend standing on her porch. Nancy looked up from her feet, her eyes connecting with Y/N’s. Tension and an air of awkwardness surrounded them as they stood there staring at each other. 

 “Um, I know you asked me to call you, but I was out driving and I thought that there was no better time to talk than now,” Nancy explained, shuffling her feet. Y/N blinked, not having expected Nancy to be ready to talk so soon (a day) after the fight. “Could I come in?” She asked the stunned girl, pointing past her into her house.  

 “Yeah, yeah,” Y/N nodded, stepping aside as she ran a hand over her face. “Come in, and uh, sit down, my parents are out for the night so we can talk in the living room if you’d like.” Y/N swallowed, gesturing towards the empty living room. 

 “Thank you.” Nancy whispered in passing, slipping into the house and practically beelining towards the living room. Y/N softly closed the door, leaning her forehead against the wood of it before pushing off it and joining Nancy.  

 “Would you like a drink or something before we start talking,” She asked, rubbing the back of her neck. Nancy shook her head, settling down on the couch, placing her bag by her feet delicately. “Okay,” Y/N nodded, rubbing her nervous palms on her jeans. She sat on the opposite end of the couch stiffly, clearing her throat. “So, you’re ready to talk about us?”  

 “Yeah, um,” Nancy shifted, angling her body to look at Y/N better from the corner of her eyes. She kept her gaze on her interlocked fingers that were placed in her lap. “I gave it a lot of thought.” Nancy informed her. Y/N hummed, turning her head to look at Nancy, waiting for her to continue, but she didn’t.

 “And?”  

 “And I am ready to come out to our friends and my mom, but I just don’t know about telling them about us.” Nancy slowly let her eyes flirt up to look at Y/N, avoiding eye contact despite being glued to her face. Y/N nodded, pulling her face away from the girl, looking off towards the wall in front of her. The lump returned, blocking her airway.  

 “Okay, may I ask why you don’t want to tell them about us?” She wondered, trying to keep her watering eyes from developing into tears. Her heart sinking to the bottom of her feet. 

 “I don’t really know, it’s just that this is good - what we have is good.” Nancy tried to explain.

 “Can I ask if you feel scared to tell people about us?” Y/N once again wondered, not wanting to push Nancy into doing something she didn’t want to, but also wanting to be happy in a relationship. She wanted to be with Nancy, but if Nancy wasn’t willing to consider the option of telling someone about their relationship, Y/N wasn’t sure she would be happy in the relationship.  

 “No, of course not,” Nancy defended honestly, slumping when she realized that she would have to expose the real reason to Y/N. “I just don’t want anything to change. I like how this is going and I don’t want to let the world at what we have, it’s too tender and too soft for the world.”  

  “If what we have is too soft for the world then it’s doomed because even hidden behind a curtain of secrecy, our relationship still had to stand the test of the world,” Y/N told her, still not looking towards the slack-jawed girl. “Look, Nancy, the world will get to us, maybe even more if we keep this a secret. Change is inevitable, it will get us either way.”  

 “I get that, but for right now, we can protect this from the world for just a bit longer!” Nancy cried, trying to prove her point. Y/N shook her head, turning her watery eyes to look at Nancy. 

 “Don’t you see it, Nance? This right here,” She gestured around the room and between them. “This fight, this argument that we’re having. This is the world getting at we have. And as much as I respect your desire to stay a secret, I just can’t be happy in a secret relationship that has no signs of becoming public at all.”  

 “So you want to break-up?” Nancy’s question was so similar to the one she asked the other day and she wished that Y/N’s answer would be the same as it was that time. Nancy let out a breath when Y/N shook her head.

 “No, I don’t want to break-up, but I want to know that eventually, we will tell our friends at least because I love you and I want to hold your hand, I don’t want to pretend to be just friends in front of everyone. I love you Nancy Wheeler and I want to show you that I love you in front of our friends because it kills me to hear them asking you if you’ve met anyone and for you to tell them no.” Y/N ranted, her eyes darting away from Nancy’s once again.  

 Nancy sat there, her world shattering around her at the words Y/N spoke to her. “You love me?” Nancy whispered, hoping that Y/N didn’t mean those words.

 “Yeah,” Y/N whispered back, her body riddled with anxiety. She could hear Nancy swallow from the deafening silence blanketing the room. Y/N’s tongue darted out to wet her lips nervously, waiting for Nancy to say something. “If you don’t want to say it back, it’s fine. Really, and it’s okay that you don’t want to tell people about us, but I just want you to tell me that there is a chance of us telling people about us before I fall any deeper.”  

 Nancy watched the glistening tear roll down Y/N’s cheek, a ball forming in her throat and a suffocating weight being placed on her chest. “I-I don’t know,” Nancy stuttered out, standing from the couch, her purse dangling from her fingers. “I need to go and think more, I guess I wasn’t ready for this yet, I’m sorry, Y/N,” She rushed out. Y/N stood, her heart falling from Nancy’s hands and splattering on the carpeted floor under their feet. “I’ll call you when I’ve figured it out, okay?” Nancy fled to the door, yanking it open and darting to her car before Y/N could even get to the front door herself. 

 “Wait, Nancy,” Y/N called, scrambling onto the porch, watching as the girl she loved slid into a Station Wagon. “Where does this leave us?” Her voice echoed into the night, but it didn’t receive an answer. ____

  The weekend rolled around faster than Y/N wanted to. She had waited for so long for Nancy to come and talk to her, but her phone never rang nor did her doorbell. Y/N regretted a lot of things. The deep regret of bringing this up in the first place still grew in her stomach, the regret of saying that she loved her in the height of emotions piled on top of that to great a giant pile of regret. 

 Nancy on the other hand was high strung. Her mind ran a mile a minute. Her thoughts were all occupied by Y/N. The way her touch made her feel, the way her smile lit up the world, the beautiful melody that was her laugh. Before, she wasn’t sure why she wanted to keep the beautiful relationship between them a secret, but it came to her suddenly. She was scared, scared of having this relationship fail too. She had fallen out of love with Steve easily when Jonathan crept his way into her heart then she fell out of love with Jonathan due to the struggles of long-distance. When Y/N had uttered those words to her, it re-enforced that fear, but also made it clear that Nancy was once again free falling. She couldn’t escape her feelings, they were there and they needed to be tended to.  The doorbell to the Wheeler household rang through the still house, jolting Nancy out of her thoughts. It was Y/N without a doubt, the others were already piled in the basement waiting for the movie night to begin. Swallowing thickly, Nancy chewed on her bottom lip. She stood from her bed, rushing down the stairs when she heard her mom greeting Y/N with excitement. She always loved Y/N. “Y/N,” Nancy exclaimed, stopping on the turn of the stairs. Y/N snapped her head up at the call of her name as did Mrs. Wheeler. “Could I talk to you in my room for a second?” She nodded her head up the stairs, her eyes pleading.  

 “Yeah, of course, Nancy.” Y/N nodded, her voice full of worry and nerves. She was convinced that Nancy was going to break up with her. That this would be the end to Nancy and Y/N. Mrs. Wheeler sent her daughter a wink and a smile, causing Nancy’s cheeks to flush, but Y/N was too wrapped up in her mind to notice it.  The walk to Nancy’s room was short, but right now it felt like the length of Indiana itself. The silence between them was absolutely stifling. Nancy closed the door behind them, not missing the way Y/N moved to the other side of the room - putting as much distance between them as she could. 

  “Hi.” Nancy breathed, turning to face the silent girl. Y/N blinked, obviously filled with anxiety.  

 “You wanted to talk to me?” Y/N reminded, her hands slipping into the pockets of her denim jacket. Nancy cleared her throat, nodding. She took a few hesitant steps towards Y/N, not too many that she made her feel uncomfortable, but enough for her to get closer. From there, she was able to catch a whiff of Y/N’s calming scent from the spring breeze rolling in from the open window. Nancy took the chance to breathe it in, having missed it for the past few days.  

 “Yeah, I realized something while we were apart,” Nancy paused, looking down as she fiddled with her fingers. “I realized a lot actually and I’m not really sure where to start-”  

 “Just start where it feels natural, let your gut choose.” Y/N offered, making Nancy look up at her. The last rays of the sun shining through the window, creating a glow around her, making her look like an angel. Nancy lost her thoughts as she gazed upon her, the hues of pink and orange glowing off her skin, looking like a painting you would find in the Le Louvre.  

 “You mean everything to me,” She exhaled, startled that it had slipped out of her mouth. “Oh wow, okay, guess we are going with that first,” She admitted bashfully, dropping her head to face the carpet to hide the blush dusting her cheeks from Y/N. “I love you Y/N, so much and the reason I ran after you said that was because you were right, right about me being scared,” She sucked a breath in, trying to keep all the mustered up confidence that she had in her. “I was scared of those words, scared of yet another failed relationship and that’s why I was so against us telling people.”  

 “And what about now,” Y/N stepped one step closer, feeling hopeful. “Are you still scared?”  

 Nancy shook her head gently. “A little, but I’m more excited to see where this goes if you still love me.”  

 “Of course I still love you! It would take an awful lot for me not to love you,” Y/N smiled, taking a few more steps towards Nancy. Nancy took two steps, the two meeting in the center of the room, face to face. Their mouths were both stretched into large smiles, matching blushes painting their cheeks as they held each other. “You mean everything to me.” She whispered, leaning her face closer to Nancy’s. Nancy giggled, closing the distance between them to press their lips together.  

 They both welcomed the taste of each other, missing it desperately. Warmth spread through Y/N’s body, feeling like every single nerve was alive with happiness from the touching of their lips. Pulling back from the tender kiss, Nancy still held Y/N tight to her. “I want to tell them.”  

 “Tell them that you like girls and guys?” Y/N questioned, not knowing that Nancy had come out yet. 

 “I already told my family that, they are very accepting, my dad was a bit cold, but mom talked to him,” Nancy told her as if it wasn’t a big deal, but the growth of her smile told Y/N otherwise. “I want to tell them about us. I am pretty sure my mom already knows, I think she knew before I came out, but I want to tell our friends. Tonight.”  

 “Are you sure, I don’t want you to think that you have to do that in order for me to stay with you because I’ll stay with you regardless.” Y/N worried, not wanting to pressure Nancy into anything she didn’t want to do. 

 “I want to, I think it’d be a good baby step for us to slowly not be a secret anymore.” Nancy confirmed, pulling away from Y/N, but keeping one of her hands tightly in her grasp, her eyes twinkling with pure happiness. 

 “Only if you’re sure. You can take the reins on this one in case you change your mind, okay?” Nancy ignored this, pulling Y/N towards the door and into the hall, her fingers intertwining with Y/N’s absent-mindedly. Their hearts beat wildly in their chests as they rushed down the main stairs and dashed to the basement door. The room was already dark, the only light being from the blue screen coming from the TV, the VCR already prepped for the movie night.  

 “ ‘Bout time you two got down here.” Dustin grumbled from his spot on the floor next to Mike. 

 “Sorry, but we had to discuss something that we want to share with you guys,” Nancy could barely contain her excitement as she shared a giddy, love-struck look with Y/N. The group looked at her, Steve and Robin sitting on the couch with their feet propped up on the middle cushion. Max and Lucas sat on the floor with their backs pressed against the couch. “We’re dating, have been for almost a year.” They looked back at the group to see them all sharing looks.

“So,” Mike spoke up, as they all turned to look at the two girls again. “We already knew that. For a while now.” 

 “Wait, what?” Nancy sputtered, her eyes wide, her mouth falling open in shock.  

 “For starters, you guys are not discrete at all.” Steve broke the news, tossing a piece of popcorn into his mouth. Nancy scoffed, rolling her eyes, muttering a small ‘says you’ under her breath, earning a whine from her ex-boyfriend.  

 “Secondly, you should see the way you two look at each other, it was so obvious that you guys were mad for each other,” Robin shrugged. “Now hurry up and sit down so we can start this movie, I’ve been itching to see it.” Robin ordered, pointing to the armchair that was conveniently the only chair left for them.  

 “And we thought this would be ground-breaking news,” Y/N chuckled, shaking her head as Nancy led her across the darkroom. Plunking down in the soft chair, Nancy pulled Y/N down to sit on her lap, but Y/N shimmied so that only her legs rested over Nancy’s lap. “I love you.” She hummed, snuggling into her girlfriend.  

 Nancy pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I love you too, Angel.”

[randomfandomimagine]

Love Spell (Jaskier x Nissa)

Characters: Jaskier, Nissa (OC), Geralt

Fandom: The Witcher

Series: Soul of a Warrior

Tags: Original character, hardcore fluff, mild angst, sorcery

Warnings: None

Word Count: 4k words

Summary: While Geralt goes on a witcher job, Jaskier and Nissa wander around the woods. When they stumble upon a strong magic, it comes to Jaskier to help Nissa overcome the spells that falls upon her.

A/N: I wanted to give this a try, so here’s a Jasnissa ficlet because I love these two nerds. This is set after Soul of a Warrior, but has no spoilers, just a few references. I might write more stuff like this if you enjoy it, and maybe even take OCs requests if anyone’s interested :)

Written in Jaskier’s POV!

_

Oh, the way the sunlight falls on her, shining down on her silky raven hair, stealing the light off her emerald green eyes. Oh, the way her smile brings more life to the world than the sun above us itself. I should put this in a song. What rhymes with perfection?

“You’re staring again, stupid bard” Nissa tells me, despite the delighted grin in her enticing pink lips. 

Something about her disarms me at this very moment. Perhaps it is the resigned fondness and adoration in her eyes, or the way she tilts her head and smirks in smugness at the smitten manner in which I admire her. 

“How could I not?” I sigh, grinning when she laughs at my dramatic tone. “You have enchanted me, you cruel goddess” 

Nissa’s hand tugs at mine. Her gaze falls on the ground, and there is that flush on her cheeks, the one that makes her seem ever so beautiful. More so than usual, that is.

“That’s your punishment” She glances up at me, wrinkling her nose. “For being so insufferable” 

I am tempted to retaliate, though I only admit defeat and drop my head in resignation. Her eyes linger on me in expectation. 

“Well… love will do that to you” I blurt out, and the sound I was waiting for follows: her genuine guffaw of laughter. It makes my heart sing. I can overcome anything as long as she is happy.

Still laughing, Nissa stops on her tracks and throws her arms around my neck. I wasn’t expecting that part, but I am certainly not complaining. My hands immediately move to the small of her back to keep her close. We move to kiss, though something in the distance gathers my attention. Our lips are already grazing, though Nissa looks over her shoulder to whatever has caught my eye behind her.

“What is that?” I utter in fascination. Before us is an empty yet untouched building.

“A temple? It seems abandoned” She retrieves my hand before heading there. Our fingers play with each other as we advance together and soon reach it.

The temple, made of faded white stone, stands in ruins. Despite it all, there are no weeds clinging to its structure, no flora whatsoever. An eerie atmosphere surrounds the building, settling an unpleasant feeling in my gut. However, I am not worried as long as Nissa is by my side. 

Our footsteps echo across the temple as soon as we trespass the big arch at the threshold. The inside is incredibly spacious and the distant sound of water dripping somewhere fills the silence that we dare not break as we continue on our way, tightly holding the other’s hand. I can hear Nissa breathing next to me, trying not to let it show how restless she is. Nonetheless, I know her too well and merely taking a look at her expression I can tell how she’s feeling.

“Who goes there?” A voice erupts from nowhere, bouncing against the walls of the temple. I nearly jump out of my skin at the sound, and so I press my side against Nissa’s.

We turn to the noise, finding that a figure stands there in the distance, behind a white marble table that delimits the end of the long corridor we are on. She is a woman with long brown hair and piercing black eyes that lurk into my soul, like a black hole that threatens to swallow us whole if we get too close or stare too long. Her skin is white and smooth like porcelain, and I find myself attracted to her in a way I can’t explain. It is definitely not the way I am attracted to Nissa, this is quite like looking at an eclipse: I can’t stop staring yet fear something bad will happen if I linger. Something in her makes me shiver. Perhaps it is the fact that she reminds me of someone else. My free hand instinctively moves to protect my jewels.

“You dare break into my home?” The sorceress says, and eyes us with disinterest and contempt. “Leave, before I kill both of you”

I open my mouth, unsure of what will come out. Perhaps it will be a defensive statement, or a complaint, or a nervous apology. Whatever the case, Nissa takes a step forward and bluntly retaliates against the mage’s nonchalant warning.

“We were doing nothing wrong” Nissa assures vehemently. “Don’t-”

“Shush!” The woman quiets her, and I can feel how Nissa seethess next to me. “One more step and you will drop dead”

“Are you threatening us?” I gasp when Nissa steps before me and pulls out her dagger. “I won’t stand by and-!”

“Uh… Nissa, love?” I mutter, tugging at her hand pressed against mine. “I don’t think you should-“

“And you defy me” The smirk the sorceress dedicates us causes my stomach to churn in anticipation. Oh god, what is she going to do? We didn’t actually mean any harm!

“Alright, everyone calm down!” I exclaim, noticing how they watch each other. The energy is dangerous and electric and I fear what might happen next if I don’t intervene. “Nissa, we can just leave, can’t we? Yes, of course, we didn’t mean to break in. We didn’t know someone lived here”

Nissa stops, glowering at her while she slowly saves her weapon. The woman’s black eyes languidly fall over me. I gulp. I really genuinely don’t like mages. Her gaze is piercing me, seeing deeper, I can feel it. The imposing expression fades from her face, being replaced by a smirk.

“I see” She briefly glances at Nissa before staring at me once more. I don’t like it… I don’t like it at all. “Perhaps you will think twice before doing anything of the like again”

“I… Y-Yes, absolutely” I squeeze Nissa’s hand as I restlessly step back, hoping she will follow after me. “We will be more careful, that’s for certain. Isn’t that right, love?”

Nissa doesn’t reply, only lets her head fall forward. I could be hearing wrong, but I swear I heard a strangled noise escape her throat. I frown in concern, confused as to what she is doing just standing there. Why won’t she move?

“Thank you very much, we are on our way” I insist, tugging harder at her. Moving my gaze, I realize the sorceress’ smirk has widened. “Come on, Nissa, we… Oh, god!”

A movement out of the corner of my eye gathers my attention away from the mage. I move just in time to catch a falling Nissa. My breathing is suddenly erratic as she limply lies in my arms. I swear I am having several heart attacks at once as my mind races with reasons why she has suddenly faltered. Is she conscious? Is she ill? Can it be that she was frightened enough to faint? No, that doesn’t seem right. What has happened then?!

“I have dealt with enough people seeking power and fortune” The sorceress is unfazed as she watches us. “Fear not, bard, if she truly harbored no bad intentions nothing will happen”

I gape at her as the recognition slowly settles in. This is her doing, isn’t it? Shit. I hate mages.

My hands are shaking as I adjust my hold on Nissa. One arm firmly wraps around her frame as she rests against my torso. With my free hand, I nervously move the curtain of soft dark hair away from her face. Her emerald eyes are indeed closed. There are no signs that betray her unwell, instead she seems to sleep peacefully. She would look beautiful if it weren’t because I am still worried out of my mind that she might not wake up.

“W-What did you do to her?!” I exclaim, in my fervor causing Nissa’s head to tilt to the side. The weight and inertia causes her body to lean off as well, and she would fall were it not because of my grip on her. “Y-You, sorceress! Undo this right now! She was only trying to protect me, I-“

“Save it” She rolls her eyes, and I pay no more attention to her as I try to shake Nissa awake. She still doesn’t respond. The mage continues speaking. “You will find a way, now leave”

“A way to what?”

“Leave!!!” Despite her furious roar that echoes against the walls like a bad omen, I glare daggers at her. She did this to Nissa, whatever it is. No one should dare touch her, not my Nissa…

Alright, calm down, Jask, or you’ll make it worse for her. I clench my fists, ignoring the bubbling anger heating me up from the inside. I can’t retaliate, for Nissa’s sake. Enough harm has been done to her. Leaving is the only thing I can do.

Still gritting my teeth, I maneuver with Nissa’s limp body until she is scooped into my arms. I tenderly cradle her, lingering as I fear that abandoning this place will somehow mean her doom. Though I know not what to do, I decide to walk away. Who knows what this unstable sorceress might do if I disobey and stay. In any case, I have no reasons to remain in this place for myself, yet I doubt it would help Nissa.

Gingerly leaning her frame against my torso so her head falls against my shoulder, I begin to move. My footsteps echo around the temple once more, now bearing the anger and fright that I try so hard to conceal. Her weight on my arms seems to be nothing compared to the one that has established in my heart, sinking it into my stomach.

“Shit…” I mutter as I exit that wretched place.

As I walked hand in hand with Nissa, the sound of the birds chirping and the warmth of the sun in the back of my neck felt like a blessing. Now it all feels wrong as my light has faded and I hold it in my arms, desperately trying to keep it alive. Hoping I can keep her alive. Gods, I don’t even know what she has, how am I to look after her?

Wait… Geralt! He is a witcher, surely he knows about the subject and can find a remedy to whatever ails her. My heart had been racing ever since Nissa fell, but now it follows a crazed pace as I start moving faster.

“Geralt?” I shout to the void, looking around searching for a burly figure with silver hair or a bay mare. “Geralt, are you back yet?”

Where is this witcher? Surely he must be done with his hunt soon… we had the time to endlessly walk and wander around the woods. Time had flown by, of course, being by her side, but now… Shit. How long could it possibly take him to return? I can’t stand this helplessness for much longer, it is torture. I move to one side and the other, but realize there’s nothing I can do until he gets back. There is no way I can help her, not this time. Hence, I slowly kneel down and carefully lay her on the ground. I fear she might grow cold, and so I take my doublet off and put it over her. Is it my imagination or does she look a bit pale now?

Wanting to kill the time, I lean closer to her and check her vitals. After traveling so long with her as our medic, I must have caught on to some things. Her pulse under my fingertips seems normal, and so I gently let go of her wrist. Her breathing seems calm and paused when I lean my ear close to her mouth. Nothing seems wrong with her. Again, it is as though she merely sleeps. My anguish comes from the question of when she will wake up, or if she will wake at all.

Though I know it is in vain, I shake her shoulder. I tirelessly call her name as well as any and all of the terms of endearment I have addressed her as ever since we met. Love, delicate flower, sweetheart, my dear… None seem to work as she remains unconscious. I tap her cheeks, I move her head and her arms and yet nothing works. I even squeeze her sides in the hopes that she will move away as she has done before, lecturing me about tickling her. She doesn’t.

I let a big timorous sigh out as I restlessly sit down, passing a hand through my hair. If only she could open her beautiful green eyes and look at me that way she does, playfully and with a fond exasperation. I want to see her breathtaking smile once more, even if it is as she laughs at me in amusement to my foolishness or smirking with superiority and smugness. I would give anything to hear her call me stupid bard again, or to say my name angrily like the time I first kissed her, back then when I didn’t know what it truly meant to her.

“I need you, Nissa…” An unexpected sob tears my throat as the panic sets that she might not wake from this mysterious and magical slumber. “Come back to me, love… please…”

Tears are already welling in my eyes when the sound of hope comes to rescue me before I completely give in to despair. Two pairs of hooves rhythmically hit the ground as the horse’s rider urges his mount. I jump to my feet and turn my body to the sound, breathing once more when I recognize the witcher’s black leather clothes and silver hair.

“Oh, Geralt, thank the gods…” I stutter, gulping as I also stumble over my own two feet. Negative thoughts haunt me, and I try to ignore the possibility that he might not know how to aid Nissa either. “You’re here, I need… Geralt, please, I…”

“What happened?” The witcher jumps off Roach. He quickly hangs a creature’s head from his belt to the hook that his mare carries in the saddlebag. I don’t even pay attention to the monster he slayed, and he barely does either as his amber eyes fall upon me.

“It’s Nissa…” I drop to my knees beside her once more, clutching her hand in mine as I peer up at him with pleading eyes. “She has fainted and won’t wake up”

“Suddenly?” His deep voice grows near as he crouches by my side to look at her.

“N-No, we were in a…” I have to pause, forgetting to breathe and needing to focus on it for a moment. “A temple, we found it nearby and… this sorceress…”

“Sorceress?” Geralt interrupts my feverish ramblings. “So this is the work of magic”

“Yes, exactly. Or at least I think so. Oh, god… Geralt, please tell me you know how to reverse it”

I notice he clutches the wolf medallion hanging from his neck, though his amber eyes are fixed on her unchanging face. His other hand falls on her cheek as he moves her head from side to side as though examining her like a medic would.

“It depends” He only says, frowning in concentration as he stares at her. “Did this sorceress say something?”

“She did, she said…” Trying to recall the exact words, I stop to think for a moment. “That if she didn’t harbor bad intentions it would be alright”

“Bad intentions?” Geralt glances up at me, and I do not like the way he watches me. “What the fuck did you do, Jaskier?”

“Nothing!” I exclaim in outrage. “She is the one that cursed Nissa! My poor dove was only trying to protect me”

“Hm…” Oh, that is a frustrated and vexed grunt for sure. Geralt’s gaze lingers for a bit until it eventually falls on her again.

“Talk to me, Geralt” I beg of him, squeezing her hand tightly in mine and pressing it against my chest. “What did that bloody witch do to her?”

“Judging by what you said, it is a spell” He rummages through the small satchel hanging from his hip, though seems to find nothing useful. “From what I know, it searches within her heart and will kill her if the magic finds ill intent“

“K-Kill her?” I suddenly feel light-headed and have to lean on his shoulder not to fall flat on my ass, even from my kneeling position. My hand flies to my forehead. “Geralt…”

“Calm down” He brushes my hand off him in exasperation. “She had no ill intent”

“I know, but…” Remembering how Nissa brought out her dagger, I wonder what the so called magic considers ill intent. “How do we wake her? Will she be alright?”

“Did the sorceress say anything else?”

“Uh… she… she told me I would find a way, whatever the fuck that means”

That seems to inspire Geralt, as he quickly tilts his head up and glances from me to her and back to me. I frown, confused as to why he stares now. Nonetheless, I can nearly see the wheels in his brain turning. Perhaps I have had the solution all along without knowing.

“Kiss her” He blurts out, and I roll my eyes at him in exasperation. What a moment to tease us about our relationship, no matter how much it usually upsets him.

“I won’t do such a thing, Geralt!” I shout in anguish. “This is serious”

“So am I”

“No, this is no time to be sarcastic. This is not a fairy tale”

“All fairy tales have some truth in them”

It seems to me like he is actually being genuine. He is a witcher after all, he must know the intrincacies of magic. I frown and stare at my friend. Geralt deadpans as he stares back at me. I hesitate.

“Are you sure?” Honestly, I am so scared. When she was wounded, we at least knew how to help her. Nnow I feel utterly useless as she just lies there with no way of waking up. The witcher nods, and so I sigh. “Alright…”

I reach forward, puckering my lips until they make contact with her forehead. Her skin feels slightly cold, and I hope there is nothing actually wrong with her. If it is, that sorceress will suffer my wrath, I don’t care that she has powerful magic, I don’t care if she threatens me like Yennefer did. As I expectantly stare at her, I promise myself to get back to that temple and give that witch a piece of my mind. If she has somehow hurt Nissa…

“On the lips, Jaskier” Geralt tiredly tells me, abruptly bringing me out of my obsessive thoughts.

“Oh” I only say, leaning forwards again. However, his hand urgently presses against my chest and pushes me back. “What? What’s wrong?”

When I peer at him, Geralt is frowning. He clutches the medallion hanging from his neck.

“The magic intensified when you kissed her” The witcher gravely says. “It is a love spell”

“So I should kiss her again, right?” I hesitate, fearing that something might go wrong. “Then she will wake up… like in the fairy tale”

“If your love is strong enough” I know by his tone that he is only teasing me, but for a moment I panic at Geralt’s words. However, I recover the faith quickly. No, our love is strong and resilient. After all, it has withstood all these hardships we have lived together.

I take a deep breath and lean closer to her. My breath catches in my throat and I freeze. Concerned, I lift my head to look at Geralt. He sighs impatiently.

“What if it doesn’t work?” I point out, absolutely terrified by the idea. “What will I do if she doesn’t wake up, Geralt?”

“She’ll be fine” Though there is only determination in his voice, I read the worry in his features as well. He speaks only to convince himself, as he is just as frightened for her as I am. “Kiss her already”

“But what if it makes it worse, what if-“

“Jaskier, this will be the only time you hear me ask this of you”

Although I don’t know whether this is some sort of display of his strange humor or not, I roll my eyes in any case. Witchers make unique friends, that’s for certain.

“Alright…” I nervously breathe in, leaning closer to her once more. Her lovely scent fills me, reminding me of flowers. This appears to be enough to give me the courage to finally press my lips against hers. The feeling that overwhelms me is no different from other times.

My heart picks up its pace in euphoria, just like when I’m playing a tune to a welcoming audience or when I make Geralt laugh. It is the same sensation that envelops me whenever Nissa interacts with me, one of pure joy. It doesn’t matter what she does, a mere glance from her beautiful eyes in my direction makes my heart sing the most wonderful ballad I have ever composed. When she smiles, the feeling multiplies. When she holds my hand, I struggle to stand.

I lean back, closing my eyes to linger in the sensation of the kiss. There, I have poured all my love for her in that gesture. Hopefully the magic wil work, although if we needed any magic to fight the one that falls upon her, we need to look no further than the one Nissa possesses herself. Despite it all, I had never felt this tingling in my lips at the graze of someone’s, only hers, not to mention the way it spreads through my body and settles in my stomach.

“Nissa?” Geralt calls her, bringing me back to reality as I try to anchor myself to these sensations she produces in me… perhaps because I fear they might have come to an end.

“Come on, love…” I whisper, carefully watching her face in search for any changes.

Nissa’s eyelids suddenly flutter, and her eyelashes seem butterfly wings as they separate. Once I am received with the sight of her stunning green eyes once more, I let go a breath I had been holding ever since she collapsed. Intense relief floods through me, and a strangled noise leaves my throat, though I don’t know if it’s a chuckle or a sob.

“What…?” She whispers, and I smile when she gazes at me. “Jaskier, what happened?”

“Thank the heavens, it worked” I throw myself at her, being careful as I lovingly wrap my arms around her frame and bring her as close to me as possible until I feel her torso pressed against mine. “You’re alright”

“But…” Nissa mumbles. Her voice sounds drowsy as she clumsily puts her arms around me as well.

“Welcome back” Geralt pats her shoulder, moving us both under the force of his strong hand.

“What the fuck happened?” She insists, yet despite it all she allows me to hold her still. Good, I don’t plan on letting go of her anytime soon.

“A sorceress put a spell on you” The witcher replies, for I am too busy burying my head on her shoulder and holding her still.

“Oh…” My lovely Nissa hesitates, though in the end chuckles as she pats my back. “You can let go of me now, Jaskier”

“Don’t do that ever again!” I reluctantly pull away, bearing a grave expression as soon as we are face to face once more. “I thought we had agreed you wouldn’t scare me like that”

It had been awful to see her crumble soon after we met. It had been worse to witness how she got gravely injured that one time, the one I truly feared for her life and Geralt and I had to attentively tend to her for days. My fragile heart simply cannot take that uncertainty and pain again.

“I’m sorry” Her words are gentle on top of her sweet voice, and her hand is delicate as she presses her palm against my cheek. “I will be more careful next time”

“I certainly hope so” I dramatically put a hand against my chest, theatrically throwing myself backwards as though I am swooning. “Or else I might perish from such tension to my poor hummingbird heart”

In reality, my poor heart is actually racing. It doesn’t matter, my attempts have been successful and Nissa laughs. Geralt grunts next to us, but I pay no mind to him.

“I will make it up to you, dear bard” Nissa takes my face in her hands and gifts me with a chaste kiss.

For a moment I tense up, still fearing that the spell hasn’t quite been broken and the exchange will somehow undo what mine magically cured. However, I sigh once more when I see her still lovingly gazing at me, awake and well. What a scare… but the anguish is over.

I stare into her eyes, knowing what she is thinking of. We possess a special magic that exposes each other’s thoughts. She regrets worrying us both, yet at the same time she understands my jokes are a reassurance that everything is alright. By now, Nissa understands that I will comfort her as I have all this time. Grateful for this, she smiles with the power of a dozen suns. That is enough to heal any damage done to my heart.

“That was too fucking close” Geralt complains, now having returned to his blatant dislike for our affection.

“I agree” Taking her by the hands, I pull the both of us up to our feet. “We know better than to mess with sorceress”

“Yeah…” Nissa grins, looking from the witcher to me.

“Next time, Nissa…” He pauses to drop a hand on her shoulder. “Try not to threaten a sorceress”

We are so surprised by his rare and unexpected joke that we break out in laughter. It is the ultimate test to show the positive end of this particular tale. Sleeping beauty has awakened. Nissa is alright, and so everything is alright with the world again.

Tag list: @x-joie-x / @x-jodi-x / @bravelittlesunflower​ / @golden-guide / @alwayshave-faith / @this-is-whump-dammit / @legallyblindgamer727 / @lilyevans1 / @kingniazx / @molethemollie / @a-somehow-functioning-dumbass // Let me know if you want to be added to the tag list for this series!!

[drifttosleep]

[ My Jonas Brothers : Chasing Happiness Experience ]

introduction: if you know me, you know how much if a Jonas Brothers fan i am. yes, the first band i ever REALLY got into was The Beatles. but the Jonas Brothers was a boyband i really did fall in love with. we all had that one band from our childhood that switched everything up. mine were the Jonas Brothers. the way the directioners loved One Direction was my love for the Jonas Brothers. when i say “the boys,” i mean Nick, Kevin, and Joe. they’re my “the boys.” if that makes sense. 

history:  i remember the day i got into them. i was 10 years old and it was during the summertime. i had just finished watching ‘taking 5.’ a movie about the click five. the girls in the movie had posters and cut outs of the click five on their wall from posters and magazines. at that age, i was already collecting TigerBeat, Popstar!, J-14 magazines. i was too plugged in to the pop culture and the teeny bopper life. my dad was supportive. i was somewhat, inspired, when i watched that movie and checked out my magazines. i found the jonas brothers. i knew OF them and the song SOS and When You Look Me In The Eyes but nothing else. i had a personal computer in my room back then and newly plugged in internet connection. it started with music videos, and then the stupid videos they had on their yt channel, and i just couldn’t stop watching their videos. i watched all their live chats and interviews. i fell in love LIKE THAT. it was the first i ever obsessed about a boyband like this. a boyband in MY LEAGUE, you know what i mean? i obsessed over hannah montana and lizzie mcguire. but it wasn’t LIKE THIS. i grabbed my magazines and starting taping the Jonas posters on the walls. my routine was to watch all their videos everyday. i even went as far as reading fanfiction on youtube. YES. fanfiction USED to be on YOUTUBE. and that’s when crushes began. my bias was joe, at first, of course. then i slowly crept onto liking nick more. until he was my ACTUAL favorite. nick was my first love, i’m claiming it. the boy had me feeling ALL SORTS OF THINGS. the boy had me WRITING AT 11. 

influence: they were a huge influence on me. other than taylor swift and my dad getting me to pick up a guitar and learning how to play it, the Jonas Brothers wanted me to fulfill the dream. their influence on me was HUGE. it was so big that they were my first fashion icons. i broke gender stereotypes (at least in my circle) at the age of 11, you guys. i wore skinny jeans, converse, collared shirts and neckties all the time. they had me wearing denim and corduroy and my parents were so into me being into fashion at that age cause they were all about that in their youth. i mastered dressing like a guy at the age of 11. it just became a thing growing up. cause that’s where i’m most comfortable. i remember when the JONAS show came out on disney channel and the first episode was of nick having a love interest, i cried. 

other facts: 

i collected all kinds of jonas brothers paraphernelia as a child. 

other than the magazines, i had merch. i remember begging my mom to get me jonas brothers merch from their actual website. when she finally gave in, i was ecstatic. 

i had a jonas brothers t shirt and a necklace (it was a guitar pick with their logo on it) 

i also had a jonas brothers mp3 player that i bought when i was in tampa.

i’ve been to their first concert in the philippines. I REMEMBER HOW I TOLD MY PARENTS. i ran to them and said “THE JONAS BROTHERS ARE COMING HERE” and i didn’t even have to ask cause they already knew. 

my bedroom walls were FILLED with their posters. i had over 150 posters on my walls. 

i cut out their photos from magazines and covered my notebooks and pens with them. i sold a couple at school, too. 

you caNT BELIEVE HOW MUCH I FREAKED OUT WHEN I FOUND OUT ABOUT CAMP ROCK. when it came out in the states, my dad bought a copy of the dvd and i was SO SO SO EXCITED. that’s why i love home made spaghetti so much because it was the meal i was eating when i watched camp rock in my old bedroom for the first time. i squealed half the time. 

them being christian played such a big part in my life because my mom was a strict-ass hardcore christian. and since they wore purity rings, my mom got me a purity ring, too. at 11. which now, seems rather stupid. for me, at least. 

nick jonas & the administration is still one of my favorite albums. HE REALLY DO BE MAKIN ME FEEL SOME TYPE OF WAY. for real though. 

i really watched Married To Jonas, Kevin and Danielle’s reality show. it was NOT great but i watched it. 

i even watched some of nick’s movies and i didn’t like any of them really but i enJOYED NICK’S SCREEN TIME 

i did not really stray away from loving them. but i did turn into a teenager. i got into other things and gained a different circle of friends. it was different, okay? i couldn’t just be in love with a rock star anymore. HAHAHA. there were real life boys i kissed now. but still, i did not obsess over anything like that ever again. 

the break up:  i was in high school when they broke up. and even if i had not been keeping tabs on them and watching their every release, i cried really really fucking hard when they announced their break up. i cried so hard that i missed school that day. i was heart broken. and it might not make sense because they are brothers and they’ll really ~never~ break up, it still hurt. 

when i found out about Chasing Happiness, i was stoked. of course, i already knew they had returned back together as the Jonas Brothers. after all the experimenting with other things, they really did return to their roots. 

reaction about chasing happiness:

oh my GOD 

BABY JONAS BROTHERS :( 

FUCK. 6 MINUTES INTRO PLAYING

baby nick in les mis :( 

okAY SO IM NOT THE ONLY ONE WITH A BAD EXPERIENCE WITH THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY 

okay so the purity rings were a fucking joke i dont feel so guilty about it anymore

niley :( lowkey cried to niley at a young age but whatever 

fuCK EVERYONE WHO MADE FUN OF KEVIN. HE’S AMAZING 

please be mine :( 

crying

joe and nick making fun of kevin on the phone with danielle

joe calling danielle “kevin’s future wife” :( 

JUST FRIENDS :( 

THE NICK J SHOW 

camp rock :(

more crying really 

YEAR 3000 :( 

okay so basically, it was a ride of emotions. 

it really was though. i also felt like i time travelled. LITERALLY. it felt like i was in my old room again watching the Jonas Brothers on old YouTube. you know. before google bought the damn thing. but for real, it felt that way. it felt like i was reconnecting with my old self, too. the 10 year old me. 

no, wait. even better. it felt like i was reuniting with old friends. the scene when the 3 of them were just drinking and reminiscing and confessing about the old times was so intimate that i felt like i was there. everything they talked about (except for hating each other and how they ACTUALLY broke up), i knew about. they were my whole life back then, really. it really felt like a reunion. like them getting back together meant we were getting back together. the love for the Jonas Brothers. my fangirling over them. god, it sounds so cheesy when i say it out loud. but it really does feel like that. 

it was so familiar and so foreign to me at the same time. they talked about everything they used to never talk about back then. they just let it out in the open, really. and i saw how much they’ve grown. and i saw how much i’ve grown. how i am far from who i was at 10 years old. 

but when they sang ‘please be mine’ along with the old video of them singing it, i felt myself reconnecting with my younger self. i felt her smile at me and hold my hand telling me that the good will always resurface. and fuck yeah, i got that out of the Jonas Brothers. they’re the part of me that remains innocent. they’re a part of me that remains untouched and untampered with. because my heart was whole when i loved them first. and i think it’ll remain that way. 

it hit me harder than i thought it would. and i knew it would hit me. the documentary, i mean. it was beautiful. downright, beautiful. they’re a huge part of who i am today. and i am so so so proud of that. 

[mimir-anoshe]

Family don’t End in blood.

(- Posted/Credit from this YouTube Channel)

You know, I haven’t been in the Supernatural Tumblr fandom long. Maybe about a year and a half? And there’s shitty people, and ship wars, and all the bs that comes with the territory. Yet there’s meticulously beautiful meta, ‘wig? snatched’ crack,  ingeniously immersive fics’ of deserving authors and amazingly awesome people in general too. But the show... 

Oh, I’ve been watching this show for years. Along with the cast shenanigans, the cons, the bloopers I’ve been a part of this huge beautiful troublesome funny quirky family since I was 12. And as I’m sure it’s true for everyone who loves this show, its characters and the spn family as much as I do - this show has gotten me through some shit. So coming home today, seeing the video from J2M and finding out season 15 is the last hurrah of this incredible series that feels more like an old friend than a TV show. Yeah. It's tough, and I was crying, still am a bit for more than a few reasons. 

Ok, Chuck knows I may not be a master storyteller, but I’ll try. For her.

Once upon a time there was a girl...

An amazing, intelligent, funny, brave soul who never backed down and always stood up for what she believed was right. And in every aspect apart from blood, she was my big sister, and my best friend.

If you wanted a comparison, she was the dorky yet bad-ass elder brother Dean - we both adored pie - to my nerdy yet freakishly wise little sibling Sam - even though I’m the bi one out of both of us. I could keep going for days talking about her, and how bright of a celestial wavelength of intent she really was, but I’ll just sum it up with this...

I loved her very much.

We got each other into spn due to a dare, as I told her to steal her Dad’s Series collections, as he usually kept them out of reach from our cheeky paws (yes there was also porn, but surprisingly we left that alone). I thought it would be funny, especially since we had to YouTube how to pick a lock.

Never knew it would change my life forever. We found the first 3 seasons of Supernatural tucked away in a dusty corner, watched the first episode and never looked back.  

We manage to co-binge (after scrambling to buy the next two seasons) all the way up to S5 ep23 - the heartbreaking last Kripke farewell - “Swan Song”, whilst I believe Season 8 was still airing episodes. She wanted to make our ringtones “Hey Assbutt”; I just remember shaking my head and laughing, even now, even after I’d sobbed into her shoulder over... Well you guys know.

Though the one thing I vividly recall is perhaps the most important. She’d turned to me, and I was instantly suspicious, but she’d just knuckled my head and hugged me. Definite chick flick moment lmao. Then she gripped my pinkie tight and raised it in hers, and she made us both swear that no matter how many seasons, how much it made us laugh and rage and cry, we would stick around until the very last season. And no matter what, we would watch and laugh and rage and cry over the last episode of this show we both loved. Together.

Supernatural was our Impala, and our shared pact was the initials we scratched into it.    

Not long after that she was diagnosed with lung cancer.

For a while there everything was numb and horrible and inside it was...shit. Yet she always tried to put on that stupidly persistent brave face of hers, and she was trying so hard even though she shouldn’t have had to. Like Dean, I suppose. So I tried to try harder, to make her forget about the pain and the tears, and to remind her that she was still there. I tried.  

For her.

She went out with me and her Dad on her birthday to a parlour to get the anti-possession tattoo, and told me that when I was old enough she’d be right next to me when I got a matching one over my heart. We caught up to the - then - currently airing episodes whilst she was still in hospital undergoing chemo. I’d bring in my laptop and we’d stream them late into the night, I think we pissed the nurses off a bit too much with our slightly too loud reactions hehe.

Even though she got weaker and sicker, she never wanted me to stop watching episodes with her, until we were in the hiatus heading towards season 10. She kept saying that Dean would come back to himself eventually, that the ‘going black-berry eyes’ wouldn’t stick. That he always would, because he “loves his family too much”, is what she said.

And then a little while later, she was gone.

My best friend. My big sister. We never got to watch the next season, and we played ‘Wayward son’ at her funeral. Everyone who was close to us both knew the lyrics by that point, along with Led Zepp and a lot of the other  grunge/rock/metal bands she loved.

For a while I stopped watching the show. I was so angry, and lost, and it was so dark there for a bit. I though what was the point if she wasn't there to watch it with me? I think it was almost half a year later when I finally got around to coming to her Dad’s house - her room having been left untouched because it hurt too much - to help finally collect things or give em to charity.

It was there that I rediscovered the first few spn series boxes that we’d rescued from that dusty corner so long ago, and I don’t know why, but in her room, tears pooling in my eyes staring down at the cover, I decided to watch them all again. And for the first time since that last watch at her bed-side, it felt like she was there with me once again, alive, laughing and crying and raging with me like always. I caught up to the current episodes, and a short-while later entered fandom, which leads to me writing this post. If you wanted a metaphorical Ouroboros no one asked for in this post, there you go.  

I’m an atheist, but if there is a heaven like in the show, or something else, some sort of ‘beyond’, I liked to think she was re-living all the best memories I’m thinking of right now. Including the day we found our favourite show, with the Winchester brothers and the best gay-angel in all of TV. And that if she were reborn into the meta-alternative world of supernatural, that she’d be kicking ass right alongside them.

I think she’d be just as fond as me of the Winchester’s nougat son.

Now don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a pity story. My sis has been gone a while now, and although it will always hurt, I’ll never forget the promise I made. That every single moment of this show since 2005 has been a blessing, and that I am so grateful that me and her got to be a part of it together, and share it as something so special that changed both our lives for the better. 

That even though she’s gone, next year when the final season 15 airs, I’ll keep my promise. Until the last fare thee well of the last episode.

Because family DOESN'T end in blood, and neither does the spn family end in it either. She taught me that. The three Winchester’s taught me that. 

All of you taught me that. 

We’ll all still be the spn family, the cast, the crew, the artists, the writers, the shit-posters, the people who do binge re-runs every other week, the hardcore shippers, all people that love one another with bonds made over years of laughter, blood, sweat and tears. In some form we’ll still be here, and so will these characters - in our hearts - just like she was for me.

I’ll make every second in this final season something to treasure, laughing and crying and raging and smiling until the last moment. 

I’ll do it for me. I’ll do it for the supernatural family. I’ll do it for this show I hold so dearly.

And I’ll do it for her. 

[thank-your-lucky-stars]

I’m about to post a mammoth essay about the Roles of Fandom, but just to prove that I’m not a total hypocrite who isn’t immune to the Fandom Game, I’m going to tell you the roles that I myself have played in fandoms over the years - and trust me, some of this is really ugly!!

I can actually say I’ve fit into several of the Roles I list in my post, at one time or another. I have been the Popular Blog (the nicer-version, I hope!), but I’ve also been a bit of a Troublemaker too (not in an extreme way, and only from time to time; I have definitely said slightly provocative things about a certain band or band member who I believed to be problematic in order to stir up a little debate. It was never about hurting or offending people personally, but it was definitely in order to get people talking.) I have been a “I’m Just Here to have a Good Time” blog, but I’ve never really been a Fence Sitter, although I guess there have been times where I may have dabbled in that area. I also tried to be The Peacekeeper, but....that never really worked out for me, that was definitely a forced role and not something I slipped into naturally, even though I am someone who strives for peace, that specifics of that role definitely wasn’t for me.

I have, however, been a Mean Girl. I wasn’t actually mean to anyone, but I was a part of a group that could be rather unpleasant (they weren’t like hardcore Mean Girls, but they had a vibe and could be cold and bitchy, although as far as I’m aware and can remember, they were never openly nasty to anyone (that I know of?), not like the more extreme level of Mean Girls) however, they could behave in ways that weren’t cool and even though I was never really a part of that aspect, being friends with them certainly didn’t make me innocent. Who you associate with speaks volumes, and if people judged me for who I was mates with at that time then I do not blame them for that, because by being friends with these people - being a part of their gang - I was enabling some of the more unpleasant aspects of the group, even if I didn’t agree with them. 

They were a clique, they had an edge, and I was kinda fascinated by it, which is why I somehow managed to get involved. It was very much a game to me from the start, it just took me a while to realise it. It was a toxic and manipulative environment, even after we left the forum where we met (this was long before the days of tumblr), and confined ourselves to an AIM chat. We literally named ourselves ‘The World’s Most Hated AIM Group’. It actually got worse then. The in-fighting and the power-playing and manipulation was gross, and I definitely played my part in that.

With a few of the girls in particular, it was sort of a fight to be the alpha-female of the group. It was feisty and filled with drama. I literally barely saw it as something that was real, it all seemed completely fake, like it was just all pretend - a game of make believe, if you will - because it was all so extreme and ridiculous and dramatic. These were mostly American girls, and they knew drama like no other. I wanted these people to be my friends because I kinda found it all entertaining, and incidentally I became closest to the worst one of the lot - she was the Queen Bitch™ for sure, a really nasty, manipulative girl. I didn’t trust my instincts. I went along with it because I was 18 and I was bored and I didn’t have many friends in my real life so I just thought it would be fun to be a part of something, even if it was a part of something with a bunch of people I barely even liked (one or two of them were alright actually).

I was actually already popular within that fandom (the MCR fandom) at that point (2007) and had been for over a year, but things had gotten a little stale and I was getting a little bored, which is why I wanted to sort of mix with these people who were as much fascinating as they were awful. It was only after I got out of it (after being absolutely ripped to shreds - publicly! - by the Queen Bitch - the one I had a rather bizarre relationship with) that I realised just how fucked up it all was, just how fucked up I had been to view something that ended up being so damaging to me as being a game. I mean, it was a game, but it certainly wasn’t a fun one.

I definitely had people distance themselves from me during the time I associated with those girls. My other fandom friends would say “that [Queen Bitch] can be so horrible” and I’d be like “yeah, I know.” Yet I’d still talk to her every single night. That made me fake, I didn’t pay attention to how it made other people feel by mixing with these people, and looking back that was 100% my bad. As a result of this, I am definitely somebody who judges people by the company they keep; be it in fandom, or in the real world. People were right to judge me or turn their backs on me, as I was enabling these people by “hanging out with them”, even though I knew they were shitty. My loyalty lied in the wrong place. I should’ve turned my back but I was ignorant at best and fucking stupid at worst. On some levels you could say I knew what I was doing, but I was a pretty messed up kid at the time and the biggest thing I learnt from that period was that I just desperately wanted difficult people to love me.

I only realised this a couple of years ago actually. I used to see someone edgy, popular, cool, stand-offish, and I’d make it my mission to “break” them, to make them care about me, when it seemed like they literally didn’t really care about anyone else. That’s what I did with the Queen Bitch. I wanted to be close to her because she appeared untouchable, because she wasn’t generally nice to people, and I wanted to be the exception. I suppose I wanted to make her not as much of a bitch anymore, I wanted to “fix” (ugh) her and make her nicer. And I said all the right things, things I didn’t mean, until I got her calling me her “best friend”. And when that wasn’t enough, I went even further. There’s stuff I won’t talk about, that I’ve never really spoken about, but it was so so messed up and while it taught me so much about myself and about other people and about fandom, it’s also something I’m pretty ashamed of to be honest.

But this was something that sort of went outside of fandom. Like I said, we eventually were banned left the forum where we met/were based, the most popular forum in the MCR fandom from 2005-2007, so it sort of went beyond fandom politics by the end. But that’s how we got there in the first place. There were power games at play right from the start.

I completely changed after that. I literally changed my hair and my wardrobe and made a new start for myself. That’s how much it affected me. I mean, I grew up, really, and that was the final kick up the bum that made me take steps to being more of the person I wanted to be. I’ve never mixed with shitty people since then. This was 10 whole years ago, so naturally people start to grow in their late teens/early 20s anyway, but I definitely count that period - about 6 months or so, I reckon - as a significant one in my young life.

And fandom led me to that??? The MCR fandom was absolutely wild from 2005-2007. The Black Parade era was insane. We just got so, so huge. Our forum had like 200,000 members or something. There were official monthly awards where everyone would vote in multiple categories; best writer, most helpful user, funniest member etc etc. - I won Best Writer about 4 months in a row, as I wrote a really successful fic. After that I used to win Most Helpful User, as I was a total nerd and knew everything there was to know, to the point where people called me Yoda. I lost that title once I joined the Mean Girls. These 200,000 members didn’t vote for me as much anymore.

So I’ve honestly had a taste of it all? I was at the top and I sort of sacrificed it because I got bored and wanted to spice things up by hanging with total bitches.

And it was years before I joined a fandom again, the Mnkees fandom in 2012, an already well established fandom with 2 or 3 very significant/popular blogs. I was there for the longest of any of my fandoms to be honest, before it sort of went to shit last year due to trolling. 

And my most recent fandom, the ED fandom, I wasn’t really a full-on, active member for long enough to really find myself in an established role. 

But like....I have definitely seen things from a lot of different perspectives, and I’m able to finish writing my essay about all the general roles within fandom a year after I initially started it, because I’m not currently in a fandom so I can sort of look at things from a neutral point of view and not be influenced by any current goings-on. 

But yeah, I just wanted to make it clear that I’m definitely unbiased when it comes to certain fandom behaviour as I myself have done some questionable shit in the past. I was young when I fucked up the most, and was able to grow, but while I know sometimes some people are sort of beyond getting past certain shit, it is also my belief that everyone has the ability to change and better themselves if their heart is in it.

Anyway I’m going to shut up as I’ve been writing for like two days straight LOL

[ecpwrestling]

Cruising for a Bruising

This past week ECPW hosted their yearly Cruisership Classic. Whether you liked it or not, I think we can all agree the Classic this year was certainly quite the adventure. Brought to us by Oceania Cruises and hosted on actual cruise liner USS Champion, the tournament had much to offer this year - an exciting venue, an interesting roster, and indeed, the ECPW debut of Brian Bryan fresh from the Developmental Leagues.

The tourney opened with a top-deck match between former manager Jack Stroker, now reinvented as Jack-Senpai, and new talent Bryan. The match was pretty impressive, with Stroker showing a surprising degree of skill and Bryan proving he deserves his spot up in the big leagues. But, as all things with Eternal Champions, the tourney was not without its troubles. Longtime lush Bobby Crood’s animosity towards Senpai saw him mercilessly attack the man following the opening match - resulting in yet another injury for the bruised Senpai and the booking of a vengeance match to be hosted in the future; Bryan’s win was left untouched.

There were a few unremarkable matches, such as the tag team match between The TerrorWrists and their long time rivals The SWOT Team, before returning to the main lineup with Yumi Shinisawa vs Akcer Jace (who the hell is he?). The famously antisocial Yumi was cornered by some fans who were left alienated before the fight, and many were bemused by her late arrival to the ring: tired, and tangled in cables. The subsequent arrival of ‘SwordBro’ Mako Takehiko revealed that the Japanese Hardcore hadn’t slept but instead been playing Tekken. Perhaps she’s looking to join Bullet Club with ingame items? Jace, however, was clearly unimpressed by his groggy competition, as, soon into the match, he dashed to the bar, returning with a glass of water to douse Shinisawa in a move of disdain that really got the crowd riled. After some solid wrestling, who else should crash the party but Jack-Senpai, ambushing Yumi as she neared the ropes. But that wasn’t the only interference with this match: going into a rage hearing the name 'Jack Stroker’, Bobby Crood charged from the hall bar to the ring, bludgeoning his target with a bottle for the second time in the tourney. After some tense moments, General Manager Cody B. Stabbe managed to break up the fight, Yumi finally finished Jace off with a fairly standard throw into pin, and everyone involved ended up exhausted at the bar, where Yumi managed to redeem herself in the eyes of some fans with a friendly exchange talking about the fighting game.

There were no major matches over the following two days, and time was taken instead to focus on promotional efforts. Bryan was seen shooting a video promoting fitness for all, and Senpai once again continued his exploits with the powerhouse that is Boss Coffee. Bryan’s video came tantalisingly close to being a disaster as he nearly brought a child to tears, but managed to salvage it at the last moment. Senpai somehow managed to avoid Crood long enough to make sure that this advert, shot on the Pacific cruise, was just as professional as all of his others.

Two thirds of the way through the tournament the Champion docked at Honolulu, where Yumi was billed in the semi finals against the seedier member of The Brits: Jack Vaden. Whether it was due to prompting from management, or just her own initiative, Yumi was far more prepared, and was drinking at the ringside with Takehiko well in advance of the fight. Vaden made his entrance in particularly anarchic fashion, bringing his battered old guitar with him in preparation for the hardcore match. Getting up from the bar to fight, Yumi had her drink pinched by her friend in an amusing move with a clear message: finish fast. Opening with a flurry of blows it wasn’t long before she’d driven her opponent in a corner but,  just as she was about to break Vaden’s own guitar against him, a shrill whistle from the crowd stayed her hand. In an uncharacteristically heel move, Sir Justin Thyme had assaulted Takehiko in an attempt to buy Vaden some time to recover. After a scuffle between all four of them the referee managed to break them up, but the rest of the fight saw more interference from the two noncombatants. Towards the end of the fight, Vaden was thrown from the ring to the sands of the beach, but in a surprise move blinded Yumi with pocket sand as she approached. Surprisingly, Yumi was counted out leaving Vaden to progress to the finals - a move that left many of us asking 'was that supposed to happen?’

Our second semi-final was a poolside bout with new blood Bryan facing Crood, who held the seeded place. Commentated by surprise guest Enzo CF, the match itself was a clear display of skill from both of them; Bryan eager to defeat his one time idol turned rival, and Crood showing that, despite his age and addictions, he’s still a competent wrestler. Despite the overall quality of the match there is definitely a moment that outshone the rest: after throwing Crood from the ring Bryan managed to execute an absolutely flawless Tope Suicida from BETWEEN the middle ropes and landing square on the defenseless Crood - something fans are already calling a Mythic Moment . Clearly running on ‘juice’ fumes at this point, Crood managed to get back up despite the crushing blow and the fight continued. A tense exchange began on one of the posts, with control exchanging between both wrestlers as they teetered towards the pool. Eventually Crood sent Bryan  crashing down into the water below. After some floundering, both fighters managed to make it back to the ring, though by now Crood was clearly looking worse for wear. Perhaps his body reacting to having something other than juice in it for the first time in what could be years. After a brief struggle it became clear that Crood wasn’t going to win it, and indeed he went down and was pinned by Bryan within five minutes of leaving the pool. Unfortunately for Bryan, Crood wasn’t to be dissuaded by something as small as losing. After the fight he left steaming, and many on site let us know that he’d been seen backstage - not only attempting an attack on Bryan shortly after his loss, but cashing in favours and leveraging his stroke in an attempt to reverse the ruling.

All of this unrest culminated in an obscene all-out brawl, already dubbed as the Ballroom Blitz by fans. Rendering the rest of the tournament irrelevant, the Blitz would give two wrestlers a ticket to the final. How you ask? By throwing their opponent out a window, and OFF THE BOAT. Classic slapdash brutality - the likes of which we’ve come to know and love from ECPW. After a few moments of uneasy calm, all hell broke loose as a bottle of 'juice’ was thrown from across the room at Jack-Senpai. While official cameras didn’t catch it, we can confirm that it was thrown by none other than Bobby Crood. Tables and chairs were smashed, blood was spilled, punches, kicks, throws, and more suddenly burst to life all across the room. Takehiko, now wielding Vaden’s patched up guitar and eager to settle a score, struck Justin Thyme clean in the face with the weapon sending him sprawling. Yumi struck in a similar fashion towards Vaden, breaking a chair across the Brit’s head as he attempted to charge her down. Across the room Senpai and Crood fought it out in a desperate and underhanded clash between the two older wrestlers, both of whom are know to go to extreme lengths to secure a win. Not to be outdone, Bryan interrupted the fight sending Senpai sprawling to the side. Perhaps it was his disgruntlement at having his win nullified, but he ignored the easy win with throwing Senpai out and instead focussed his attacks on Crood after his initial charge. Returning to Yumi and co. it became clear that The Brits had been utterly trounced by their Japanese opponents and were set to be thrown from the boat through a previously shattered window. With a tumultuous splash, Yumi’s place in the finals was secured. Takehiko, as a non-participant in the tourney, left the second spot open. Taking advantage of the momentary lapse in calm Yumi’s security caused, Crood attempted to break off his fight with Bryan to shove Yumi after The Brits, but was intercepted by Senpai and Bryan both. It now became a desperate race to second place between those three as they scrambled to push one another from the boat. In the end, Yumi was sent tumbling out the window by Bryan, and so the final was (apparently) settled. Crood however, was still raging. Arguing that it was in fact he who’d pushed Yumi from the boat, he successfully levelled his influence once more to demand the final of the Classic be a triple threat between Yumi, Bryan, and himself. It was at this point that Yumi, hands bleeding and full of glass, somehow heaved herself back in the window and latched herself to Bryan’s back, clawing at his face and smearing blood across him. She was dragged off her prey by security and the other wrestlers, but not before a good few blows were put in direct to Bryan’s head.

And so we come to the final. The big one. The culmination of every bit of violence and pettiness the Classic had shown us so far. Set in the terribly dramatic engine of the cruiseship, Brian Bryan was the first to enter, but no sooner had the electric guitars started the familiar riffs of Flight of the Valkyries than Tubthumping cut in and Bobby Crood attacked Bryan before the promising talent had set foot in the ring. Yumi Shinisawa entered last and the ultimate clash of the tournament began. It was a brutal battle, with all three combatants bearing the scars of past confrontations, punctuated dramatically by the engine room’s red lights. There were several close calls throughout, and for many moments it’s thought that not even management was sure who’d come through victorious - though ultimately, it was Crood who secured victory by pinning Bryan and promptly collapsing, exhausted by the strain of facing both the Eternal Champion and the hot blooded rookie. But the brutality was not yet done: Enraged and covered in blood, Yumi assaulted the unconscious Crood with a shattered bottle, before turning her blind fury on the shocked Bryan. Security intervened and Shinisawa was dragged, snarling, from the ring.

So finally, at the end of this confusing tourney, the USS Champion arrives at its final destination: Osaka, Japan. It was here that Cody Stabbe revealed that this Season of ECPW would be featuring the All Japan tour, culminating in their next pay-per-view: DOOMSDAY. Many are wondering what nonsensical shenanigans could untold next on the show, but one thing’s for certain. I’m watching that shit.

UPDATE: Thanks to an inside source from ECPW who wishes to remain anonymous, we can confirm that Yumi’s rampage at the  end of the finale was was in fact a SHOOT that left Crood and Bryan injured! While Crood and Bryan were left shaken, but with relatively minor injuries, Yumi is set to face serious punitive action from Management. Currently it appears that she’s to be suspended for an unknown duration - how will removing the home talent from the roster affect the All Japan Tour? Time will tell.

[newyorktheater]

Paul Rudnick

You’re getting attention for “Coastal Elites,” which was supposed to be a play at the Public Theater, but launches as a film on HBO September 12th, starring Bette Midler, Kaitlyn Dever, Dan Levy, Sarah Paulson, and Issa Rae in five separate monologues about coping with the new abnormal. Less heralded is your role as Tweeter of Trump family foibles; some of these Tweets strike me as mini-plays, and others just draw blood. How did you come up with the two enterprises, and do you consider them connected in any way?

Paul Rudnick: As with everybody else, Twitter lets me talk back to the Trump administration. It’s like an anti-anxiety medication, and I’ve been trying to make my tweets mostly funny, instead of just constant howls of anguish. The Twitter community intrigued me, from every side of the political divide; it’s like a global town hall. It’s insane and filled with crackpots, but I like logging on to follow the world’s reactions to unfolding events in real time. Trump has galvanized Twitter and the weirdest part is, he pays attention to it. He’s furious when #TrumpMeltdown or #TrumpIsAnIdiot are trending.

I wanted to capture some of this rawness and frenzy in “Coastal Elites.” Right after the 2016 election I went to see my doctor for a check-up. He’s a very circumspect, ultra-professional guy, and he looked shell-shocked. He said that all of his patients didn’t want to talk about any medical problems – they couldn’t stop talking about the election. I wondered if this obsessiveness would subside, but it’s only expanded. And that’s where “Coastal Elites” came from. I started writing it about a year ago, and I was able to rewrite up until shooting, which ended a little over a month ago. We filmed the show remotely, with every possible Covid protection, and our director, Jay Roach and the amazing cast were incredibly helpful – everyone was hyper-informed about every nuance of politics.

The piece was always a collection of monologues, which also reflects Twitter, where people can pour out their frustrations without getting interrupted.

Neither of these projects are theater in any normal definition of theater, although it feels like there’s a theatrical sensibility at work (whatever that means.) I know you’ve had a varied career as a writer [e.g. films such as  Addams Family Values and In & Out; essay collections such as I Shudder], but many people see you primarily as a playwright [The Collected Plays of Paul Rudnick] Or at least I certainly do, given that I’ve been attending your plays since “Poor Little Lambs.” Do you see yourself that way? Yet now playwrights are focusing online. Do you foresee any lasting effect on the theater of the current period, when “theater” and “online theater” are basically synonymous?

I very much think of myself as first and foremost a playwright. That’s how I started and that’s the world I love. When I started writing “Coastal Elites” it felt theatrical but I wasn’t sure where it would land; I wasn’t thinking that far ahead. I’ve written monologues before and combined them into full evenings – this was the structure of my play “The New Century,” which was produced at Lincoln Center. I knew “Coastal Elites” wanted to be monologues, because I was dealing with characters at peaks of emotion and storytelling; they’re all in crisis. Monologues can be like songs in musicals – they’re outbursts.

We were originally going to stage “Coastal Elites” for a series of performances at the Public Theater in NYC, with a live audience, which Jay Roach would film for HBO. When the pandemic hit this became impossible, but then HBO and the show’s production team, which includes Jeffrey Seller, Scott Chaloff and Flody Suarez, all with extensive backgrounds in theater, wondered if there was another route. Once we knew that our cast and crew could be kept safe, Jay and I talked about how the show could be filmed remotely. Because the pieces are monologues, they lent themselves to the intense focus and intimacy of being filmed for TV. It’s like having a front row seat for performances by an incredible cast.

I never anticipated any of this, but the format ended up feeling like a great match for the material, and thanks to Jay, it doesn’t feel limited.

I’ve watched a lot of online theater, and much of it is amazing, especially because the times we’re living in give the shows such yearning. But with all that, I’m like everybody else: I’m desperate for the live event, to see actors onstage, to react as part of a packed theater, and to be in a rehearsal room. I have a new play called “Guilty Pleasure,” which was scheduled for this Fall at the LaJolla Playhouse, to be directed by my long-time collaborator, Chris Ashley. The production has understandably been postponed to next Fall.

I love how theater people are adapting creatively to the shutdown, and trying to stay economically afloat. And online theater will continue to be a world to explore, but nothing replaces, or will ever replace, live theater. It’s too essential and too joyous.

Ok, but do you think this moment of online theater experimentation will have any kind of effect on live theater itself when live theater returns?

The online experimentation during the pandemic will certainly affect subject matter, in terms of plays or musicals taking place during this period. It’s part of the internet’s and social media’s ongoing effect on theater; artists are inventing ways to include the online world in live events, with regard to everything from dating apps to TikTok. The world lives online, and theater had already begun to reflect that. Also, auditions and meetings were already taking place virtually, but this may become even more commonplace. Zoom readings will probably remain a useful tool for writers, actors and directors, as a shorthand during the development of theater projects. Maybe the pandemic has normalized a new form of rehearsal, especially for performers whose personal lives and schedules don’t always allow everyone to be in the same room.

Even more than the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement is already having a huge and welcome effect on theater. Artists have been using this downtime to examine how theater, at every level, can become truly inclusive. Whenever life returns to something resembling normal, theater may, in many necessary ways, be changed forever.

What was lost in “Coastal Elites” by having it become a film on HBO rather than a play at the Public Theater?

I’m not sure what was lost in transforming Coastal Elites from a theatrical experience to a filmed one. On one hand, comedy benefits enormously from audience response; but I watched our cast navigate this potential obstacle with incredible skill, and the script gained an intensity. Most of our cast has stage and film experience, so they drew on both. Also, on a sheerly practical level, it most likely would have been impossible to assemble this particular group of actors for a stage run, due to their schedule demands and other commitments. So while I miss having a live audience, and the thrill that can provide, I’m so grateful that these performances have been captured on film.

In the monologue The Blonde Cloud in “Coastal Elites,” Issa Rae portrays a former schoolmate of Ivanka, who calls her “Dracula with a blowout!” In your writing (especially in your feed), you focus more attention — more venom and more wit — on Ivanka than Donald. Why? Is there a strategy in that?

Trump has become a hopelessly easy and infuriating target. We know he’s a horrific tyrant. I’ve tried to approach his ongoing damage from an angle. Ivanka, who claims to empower women, has denied all of her father’s sexual assaults, and when asked about his war on women’s reproductive freedom, she smiles brightly, and refuses to answer, claiming such matters aren’t in her “portfolio.” She, along with her family members, have wholeheartedly supported Trump’s bigotry, lies and his many other crimes.

Ivanka has tried to remain in an untouchable bubble, which is insulting to all Americans. She’s constantly retweeting praise for herself, along with hopelessly privileged and out-of-touch advice: in the early days of the pandemic, she posted photos of herself making pillow forts with her kids at her Washington estate, and flew private to her family’s resorts. None of this is okay and a lot of it is ripe for satire. In Coastal Elites, I examined this situation through a character who’s every bit as rich and powerful as Ivanka, but her moral opposite. The brilliant Issa Rae plays Callie, who attended boarding school with Ivanka, but who’s been raised with a sense of responsibility and service. Their reunion, at the White House, raises the stakes for everyone involved.

The five monologues of “Coastal Elites”  each seem to represent different aspects of the new abnormal. Which are you most hopeful about?

I can be as anxious and pessimistic as anyone, but this can be self-defeating. I’ve been inspired by the millions of people, all over the world, who are figuring out work, family, love and basic survival right now. One of the Coastal Elite characters is a young nurse from Wyoming, superbly played by Kaitlyn Dever, who comes to New York to volunteer as a frontline worker, The courage of doctors, nurses and healthcare workers remains astonishing. Even in the early days, without any protective equipment, they worked around the clock, providing care and whenever possible, saving lives. This degree of sacrifice is both staggering and hopeful; these workers are an inspiration to all of us.

In addition, I wanted Coastal Elites to be a tribute to the sense of humor that’s helping everyone cope. Bette Midler plays Miriam, a public school teacher and hardcore New York liberal who’s very much a tribute to my Mom and her sisters. Their passion and wisecracks always gave me hope, and I see their spirit in so many people. Bette Midler herself gives me hope: she’s a legendary performer whose tweets are hilarious and outrageously committed to changing the world for the better. Theater artists always give me hope. No one pursues theater to make a fortune or have an easy life. People work in the theater because they can’t imagine doing anything else. The pandemic has made theater almost impossible, but the theater community has stayed in constant touch, Theater people don’t give up, and that’s hope itself.

Paul Rudnick On Coastal Elites, Trash-Tweeting Ivanka, and How Bette Midler and Theater Give Him Hope You're getting attention for "Coastal Elites," which was supposed to be a play at the Public Theater, but launches as a film on HBO September 12th, starring Bette Midler, Kaitlyn Dever, Dan Levy, Sarah Paulson, and Issa Rae in five separate monologues about coping with the new abnormal.

[longboner]

toxic infatuation

Just got back from a wedding today. It got me feeling the full spectrum of emotion with only a downfall at the end, similar to the high of being on ecstasy followed with the deadly “come-down”. Unfortunately, this come-down is a lifestyle I’ve grown accustomed to.

It comes to no surprise that I’m incredibly lazy. Even when things are vital to my future, I’m known to slack hardcore, so it somewhat makes sense that I haven’t put too much forethought to my current situation. I’ve come to hate my life. Before I really felt it now, I’ve only ever used that phrase ironically. I hate this place, I hate my housemates, and I hate myself. Hate, hate, hate. I can’t even find things to enjoy anymore.

Being in a new environment felt invigorating at first, mostly due to a sort of honeymoon phase. It quickly came down. My roommate is a complete weirdo who also stinks and overall lowers my quality of life. I actively despise his presence because his existence just worries me. Another Chinese fob housemate is incredibly annoying too. He’s always so nosy and goes out of his way to bother me.

Sure I haven’t done anything to completely mitigate his annoyingness, but for my roommate, I’ve gone through hell just to get this guy to a seemingly normal state of being. Just the act of replacing a towel took over a week to solve. The inner machinations of this guy’s mind is an enigma.

Amazingly, these housemate problems are only icing on this shitty cake I call life. I’m in the worst spot of my life. Or at least that’s how it feels. Every year feels the same to be honest. I’m always stuck in this shitty hole. My self-esteem is at an all-time low. I look in the mirror and I hate the person I see. Every time I look at a picture of myself I physically wince.

There was a time in my life where I thought I was somewhat attractive. It even came with the perk of not having to know how to socialize with people because girls just came to you! Delusions get you pretty far. All that self-confidence went to shit over time, as I started packing on the pounds and caring less about maintaining my appearance.

It all really leads to now. I feel like such a piece of shit. Like how did I become such a huge piece of shit. My life just feels meaningless. I don’t remember any phase in my life where just thinking about being alive would almost jerk tears out of my eyes. To die or cry, I can’t decide if I want to do one, the other, or both at the same time. I have so many things I want to happen, but I don’t have the confidence to do anything. I want to fall in love and be loved, I want to be smart and sociable, I want to enjoy my life; I want and I want and I want.

I can’t even talk to people normally without feeling self-conscious about being awkward, weird, or just plain out uninteresting. It’s fine to tell someone to be themselves, but if they’re just an uninteresting piece of shit then who would want to talk with them? Sure you could make the argument that everyone is a piece of shit in their own right, but you can’t help feeling how you feel about yourself. Kinda flawed argument because you can gain self-confidence, but you get what I mean.

Talking to people legitimately depresses me. The moment the excitement in their eyes from meeting a new person disappears gives me such a deep sinking feeling of depression that I’m scared to talk to new people. The constant conflict between my fear of rejection and my yearning for companionship defines me.

And speaking of companionship, the one thing I love writing about is girls. When I was younger, middle school for example, I put girls on an incredibly high pedestal. Talking to ugly girls, piece of cake, maybe even add a little sprinkle of disgust in there too. But talking to girls I thought were attractive was a big no from me. I felt a massive divide between these two types of girls, and I immediately felt intimidated by them. It surely explains my storied history of relationships, seeing as, romantically or not, I’ve never approached any girl I’ve liked.

My life is built upon a growing list of unrequited infatuations. I never even saw them as human. To a spectator, it would look like girls were pretty much angels descended from heaven from how I treated them: untouchable and revered. Fuck, I had a huge crush on this girl I met in kindergarten that lasted the majority of my life. I barely even talked to her, it was too frightening. It was easy to just watch from a distance, I never had to do anything. Just her presence was enough to make me feel happy to be alive. After all, my mind literally couldn’t fit anything else but her.

Somehow, I didn’t learn about the merits of expressing your feelings until the end of high school. I had a group of guy friends and one thing they used to talk about was their relationships and others’ relationships. Needless to say, I was living under a rock. People were fucking each other left and right. Sure that sounds completely normal, but these were people that I actually knew. I never knew that people I knew were capable of this shit. Makes sense that I was living in a fucking cave if I thought people weren’t doing anything. I’m a human, and my desires could be shared with many, many others.

Actually, one of the guys in this group went out with that girl I’ve liked for over a decade at that point. Fascinating to hear about that person in your mind that you’ve put on a pedestal as some saint getting her ass plowed every Tuesday. Heart-breaking wouldn’t be the right way to put it, I’d say it was more of a soul-twisting, enlightening experience.

The real hard hitters are when a girl likes you and you completely fuck it up. In my senior year, a girl I knew in middle school messaged me. It was the old, “hey I used to like you” kind of spiel, so you already know she was looking for something here. My decline in self-esteem was already nearing its peak by this point, and I ruined everything that could have happened by making explicit the fact that I’ve become this empty shell of a human being.

And this feeling of mutual interest is something I find intoxicating. In high school I never really checked out girls because I was too obvious about it, and in high school, everybody knows everybody. I already put names and stories to these faces, and it was hard to sexually objectify them unless their bodies were fucking insane. When I met new people, I do that stupid movie shit where you’re always trying to steal glances from a girl and haha yes we met eyes hahahaahhhahaah. It’s a nice connection before you actually talk to a girl, since you almost entirely get rid of the initial factor of whether or not she finds you attractive.

The fear of rejection comes in many forms, so even after that preliminary ritual, I’m faced with the decision of approaching this girl. At this point, I’ve checked things off my inner list: she’s cute, she’s obviously interested in me, and I’m interested in her. All I have to do is talk to her, so why not? Well first of all, I’m a fat piece of shit. Every time I’ve talked to someone new, they almost immediately lose interest. And what if she’s not even interested in me in the first place? What if I’m misinterpreting these signals? God I’m so conceited to even assume someone as cute as her would even think to find someone like me attractive.

After a pep talk like that, it’s hard to think I wouldn’t approach her. I had that happen at the wedding. I noticed a girl there that was really cute, but I didn’t pass the initial ritual. Hell, there were near zero signs pointing to yes, but I thought she was cute so why not? Give it a go. But it got me thinking, I’ve already failed the ritual, so I don’t even have the comfort of that going before I go for it. Not to mention my hair is complete shit since I didn’t shower in the morning on top of my hair product being trash from Target. I’m a complete mess in a suit and tie without even a belt to hold my outfit together. God when I look in the mirror, some ugly fat disheveled retard is looking right back at me. At the end of this stupid monologue, I told myself I already failed. Every single time this happened in the past, I always ended up doing nothing and it all was stupid overthinking, and it just happened all over again.

Long story short, I thought she was too cute for me to approach. What kind of girl do I think I deserve? If I “settled” for a girl, wouldn’t that be disingenuous? I keep beating myself up for just existing and thinking I deserve someone that I like. Not to be that kind of guy, I see plenty of ugly guys going places and getting girls way out of their leagues. Logically speaking, they gotta work for their pay, so they’re doing something right.

Leads me to think that there’s some form of merit to being a fuckboy. Living solely to put your dick in some vagina could produce some results. It’s like bruteforcing; you’re mindlessly practicing over and over just to get some result that has no emotional significance to you other than sexual gratification. Maybe if I became a fuckboy, I’d get friends, albeit they’re like-minded in that they’d be fuckboys too. Maybe I’d be more confident, well, hopefully since at that point I’d be telling myself I’m confident everyday until it became reality.

I had a conversation with my cousin who told me, in short, that I just sound like I’m bored. I lose interest easily because it’s hard to stay interested in people. He told me to at least act interested, and act like I care. Fake it til you make it right? At that point why not be a fuckboy? But honestly there is merit to that advice. Nobody wants to talk to a wall, but if I’m forcing myself to be interested, would it make me happy to push this relationship further if I’m just going to continue to force myself to act like that? Maybe I’m being a hypocrite with that other shit I have going on.

Anyways, tired. Dunno how to end it, it’s gotten super long. This is something I think about a lot, so I’ll be writing the heck out of it.

[royal-wedding-quest]

This might be a little long so my answers will go under the cut! Also if I have time I might make models of their rooms for fun so stay tuned for them ;D (it’s unlikely the mc will ever visit these places given their itinerary so it’s really an extra!) Also if you want to know more I’m still open to these ask meme questions!

Astrill Fragrance: Astrill tends to smell of leather from wearing a lot of it, and plain soap or hay as he does like to keep clean but also likes to spend time outside. He’ll sometime also go on walks in forests and may smell of mud and dried leaves though it’s a little more subtle. He doesn’t wear perfume and may sometimes simply smell of sweat too, despite his best efforts, since his job can get physical. When he’s at his home he likes to slip a bit of dried lavender in his pillow and the smell will follow him for a bit.

Ariavik Fragrance: Ariavik likes taking care of himself and perfume so you’ll often smell that on him. He’s epecially fond of bergamot and light smells. If he were to wear a perfume from real life it’d likely be 4711 kölnisch wasser. He may also smell a little of dried blood due to his job and propension to fight- and maybe a little of women’s perfume, depending on how successful he was that night ;)

Squad: It’s already obvious in game for Eleonore and Marguerite; they do not get along. In the team itself, Astrill and Daniel have a fairly close relationship. Astrill is the only one patient enough to deal with Daniel’s temper and Daniel appreciates the attention and friendly way Astrill talks to him. Yuriko is not a fan of Daniel’s and finds him frankly annoying but tries to be polite despite being a bit snippy at times; she agrees with Astrill when it comes to work ethics but their relationship isn’t especially close. However her and Ariavik are good buddies overall. Daniel doesn’t really like Ariavik as he finds him too carefree, and Ariavik doesn’t like Daniel for being too much of a stick in the mud. Astrill overall only feels somewhat close to Daniel but otherwise respects his team members despite finding some of their aspects aggravating. Usually they’ll tend to either go each in a corner to take care of things or pair up with Yuriko and Ariavik together and Daniel and Astrill together a little further away. Marguerite is likely to get along well with Ariavik and Astrill while Eleonore would find an interest in Daniel and Yuriko. Of course their relationship with the main character is up to you!

Zodiac Ariavik: Ariavik is a Libra, born on the 20th of October. I tried to make them have birthdays and zodiac signs that matched them at least a little, and he does have the fun, adventurous and sociable traits of a libra. When it comes to bad traits, he does tend to be pretty vain and may be spoiled or melodramatic at times,so it’s overall pretty fitting.

Zodiac Astrill: Astrill is a capricorn, born on the 2nd of January. He’s definitely got a lot of similar traits; he’s family minded and likes to stick to a safe plan, as well as tend to follow traditions. He’s also pretty resilient so his sign is fairly fitting. He does tend to hold grudges if he feels wronged and may become very cold if he takes a dislike to you.

Zodiac Yuriko: She’s born on the 20th of March, an Aries. She most certainly is a stubborn, slightly reckless young lady who isn’t afraid to go after her goals even if it doesn’t look like a good choice. She’s also caring and heroic when needed, despite her pride sometimes getting in the way. I’d have liked to make her a Leo due to her feline nature but her character really is more of an Aries like one.

Zodiac Daniel: He was more of a tricky one since his main pursuit is knowledge but he operates mostly on spite. In the end I went with Virgo and being born on the 5th of September. It works well with his more introverted like ways and how uptight and critical he can be, as well as his dedication and wittiness.

Overall though none of them really care about astrology, since it’s not really popular in their world. They tend to use stars more as a way to navigate or travel over divination purposes. If they were to read horoscopes in our world’s magazines, Ariavik would laugh at them, Yuriko make fun of them and secretely check what it says on her love life, Astrill read them to pass time but pay it no mind and Daniel would likely find it interesting and learn how to do it himself.

Chess board: It all depends on what field; Yuriko knows a lot on combat theory and could organise any type of fights to win them, from ambush to siege to an all out war campaign. Daniel is a big nerd who loves logic games so when it comes to strictly logic, he’d be the best at it. Astrill has experience and a lot of common sense, and knows how to proceed to build a good plan and stick to it. Ariavik on the other hand, despite his carefree attitude and lack of care for leading, could use his knowledge of the field and experience in street fights to hold his on successfully. If they were to pick one schemer/planner for the game’s events though, it’d have to be Astrill. Since he’s got his experience and is on decent terms with everyone, he probably would be able to bring out the best out of them all and plan accordingly.

Shooting star Daniel: Daniel’s one wish is to be successful in his field so really, any kind of breakthrough in magical theory that would make him a famous (positive) figure for centuries would be his wish.

Shooting star Ariavik: Ariavik already has a life he enjoys but he’d probably wish for a lot of money to afford an even more comfortable life- one here he would be untouchable and get as many ladies as he want. Basically a life of luxury.

Shooting star Astrill: His wish would be for money but in a very different way; he’d like to ensure his family a comfortable life, and having enough money to do so would allow him to relax a little and start living a bit more for himself.

Interiors: Daniel’s room at the guild is small; he asked to be alone in one and got one under the roof in the dorms. There is litterally one path from the door to the bed, with a branch out towards a desk; everything else is covered with books and scrolls. It’s quite messy but it seems he finds order in chaos as he never really seems to lose anything. His bed actually is pretty tidy and so is his desk; he makes sure his workplace is incredibly organised, which contrasts to his room otherwise. He proudly uses the colors of the guild mages, all nice purples and gold. It looks like his sheet actually are made of fine materials too. He doesn’t have a single mosg prized possession, more like all the content in his room is priceless to him- and he keeps on adding magical trinkets to it.

Astrill doesn’t have a room of his own. He tends to not be home often but spends most of his time there in the living room, sleeping in a little outside building where they store all sort of things. He just puts some sheet over a stack of hay and wraps himself in a blanket. His favorite place to go to have time to himself is asmall ruin on the other side of the hill behind his house; he finds some peace seeing nature took over the old building. His most prized possession is a small charm bracelet made by his siblings; they all crafted something added on it for him, to wish him good luck.

Ariavik is nomadic and doesn’t have much of a room. He likes to stay in Inns but owns a small tent he can pitch easily; it’s magical in nature. It can fit in a backpack easily as it’s really small and expand on the owner’s demand. It’s the size of a decent room with a bit of clutter. He especially enjoys a cozy corner of the floor covered in decorative pillows, where he often lounges; there’s a small hamac hanging from the tent’s roof in a corner to sleep, an opening over a small fire powered heater where he may also cook. One of his most prized possessions is an old ornate kettle, left by his mother, which can often be seen brewing tea. There’s also a small portative washbasin and a collection of perfumes as well as an ornate box full of clothings.

Poison: Yuriko tends to bite her nails out of boredom, which sometimes cause her pain when she bites a bit too much. She’s otherwise doing her best to be strict with herself, though she also sometimes pushes herself too hard in her eagerness to become stronger. Astrill’s bad habit is to always put others ahead of himself, which comes to bite him in the butt by making him somewhat unhappy with his life, though he doesn’t change it. He also admittedly enjoys alcohol, though so far he’s been able to keep his wits about him. Ariavik loves to fight which has obvious bad consequences on his health; his habit of picking up ladies also alienates him from people a bit, since he tends to prefer one night stands to lasting relationship and doesn’t care if the lady is already taken. Daniel’s bad habits tend to stem from his hardcore studying. He tends to snack mindlessly while reading which leads to a bit of pudge on his belly. He also tends to be so absorbed in his studies he forgets time and either skip bath time or sleep, making him more irritable and likely to be bullied because he’s dirty/smells, though he’s doing his best to curb the no-shower thing.

[williamalderwick-blog]

Love in the age of Facefuck: Iphigenia Baal’s Merced es Benz

Original unedited text; a poorly edited version appeared in Real Review issue 4, Summer 2017. I guess I always was a little bit in love with Iphigenia Baal. I remember seeing glimpses of a whirlwind careening through parties, pubs, gigs, the backstages of shows with all of London’s seedy nightlife scrolling behind her as if the rolling backdrop of a private theatre, moving like a comet burning its own path through the heavens, a singular orbit governed by laws all its own and beware all those that fall within its thrall.         I recall a hazy cloud of curling hair, gap toothed, cheekbones, eyes that I now want to say were green, deepest hazel green flecked gems. Eyes that burned right through you, unforgivingly. Contemptuously. They had an intensity, a holding you to something, whatever it was. That’s what I remember most, a kind of smouldering raging intensity to truth — the kind that no one can really live with.         She was staff writer at Dazed at a time when, on the dole in a band and sleeping on friends couches or at the studio, I thought being on staff to write was just about the greatest job anyone could have. Somethings never change. And she was simply beautiful. Beauty like in a Greek myth, with something timeless to it, otherworldly, at once raw and serene. All carried with such attitude, an always more hardcore than you kinda attitude. I guess I was struck. Intimidated.         From afar, a distance. I never really knew her, of course, friends of friends of an acquaintance, the occasional party, a couple of words here or there, nodded acknowledgement outside an opening, doorways, corridors, street-level passings by. Stories and rumours and gossips…I guess I was a little bit in love with the idea of Iphigenia Baal. I’m probably wrong about the eyes.         And so a decade later, in another life, Miss Baal’s second novel arrives in a package for me at the office sent by her publisher. Merced es Benz is a love story, a non-fiction novel charting the relationship between the author and one Ben Thomas — seemingly the love of her life.         Bookended by Baal’s own reflective prose, we’re witness to the relationship through a little over eight months of Facebook posts and chats, SMS, BBM, email, and google searches. It’s an exhaustive record of every digital exchange between them. From SMS setting up a date or time to meet, likes on each other’s posts or updates, arguments raging across different handsets, emails, sponsored posts, Merced Es’ google search results into drug networks, police informants, flights to Australia. A transcript of all the links and communiques between them logged in the system run out in chronological order. Objet trouvé. Print All.         It’s all text-speak dialogue, slanged abbreviations, the ping-pong chat messaging we’re conditioned to now. Bite-sized fluid snippets. Situated in the media that now frame our social exchanges, it feels utterly modern. And it reads quickly. Pages are scanned, scrolled rather than read. The layout echoes user interfaces — like the wireframes used to blueprint a webpage design. And yet it’s also antiquated, a rolling-back to an archaic version — Facefuck v1.3.2 circa 2011.         The drama is often in the details. You find yourself checking the timestamps of text exchanges, noting the gaps, the jumps, the ellipses. Merced Es traveling across London to meet Benz, only to be stood up, the messages repeating, ten minutes, twenty minutes, two hours no response, ‘where are you’s turning to anger then rage towards the other who only resurfaces the next morning. Everything feels real, and these are conversations, relationships, exchanges, acts of dickishness and inconsolable rejection that everyone can relate to, has been, played out. It’s London love baby, utterly relatable stories as old as the hills and bitched across spilling pints in pub corners across the capital forevermore.         As a teen, Baal was nicknamed ‘that Mercedes chic’ by her friends for wearing one of the iconic three-pointed-star-in-a-circle emblems snatched from the hood of a fancy MB motor around her neck. In Benz, she finds her completing half. Star-crossed lovers, a real-life Romeo and Juliette for the digital age. Merced es Benz has that touch of fate about it.         Love is a fiction, a story we weave, to entwine us together.         After opening with their first exchange online, Benz responding to a characteristically disdainful ‘Facefuck’ status update from Merced Es, the book jumps ahead to the immediate aftermath of Thomas’s untimely death from a drug overdose in July 2012.         Everything unfolds under the shadow of this tragedy — a death that perhaps if not accidental, if not a suicide, might awfully be wilful. Heartbreak even. A deep sadness pervades the reading of the couple’s exchanges. A constricting fatality born of the knowledge of what is to come. The whole book is a looking back, involving both a deciphering and an occlusion. You read searching for clues why, as well as vainly attempting to forget what you know so as to experience the couple’s shared moments in something approaching an authentic innocence. But death shadows, a constant companion inexorably pulling us back towards the curtain closed.         It’s a story of a doomed love told from the surviving half. A story of survival, of the telling required to ensure the other half lives on, can become full again once more. No longer simply that Mercedes chic.         There is of course the gap here between the author and her avatar or handle, between Ben Thomas and Benz. Merced Es both is and is not Baal. They elide, and this layering, merging, pulling away, leaving out, this différence, is dynamic.         In the same way, all the events and action of their relationship are absent. In between texts or emails we have to guess and imagine what transpired. Read between the lines, and project our own experiences into their exchanges, in order to make sense of the trace. A deciphering of what-must-have-to-have-happened to provoke this.         Thus as one looks for the source, for the reasons why, all we have are the traces of events that have always already happened elsewhere. Events that have been removed, isolated, quarantined. What we read is reductive — reduced to a trace that itself is raw, it’s copy itself, a copy of a copy, and we’re left with the bare bones. We see the outlines of rich media, image boxes with no filler, YouTube links vacant. Absentia in media res. Just like the object of love (Benz) himself.         Severed from both real life and the interconnecting digital web, the printed page is a mausoleum, but doubly here, triply even. Perhaps the only true archive or resting place of our online conversations is precisely offline — otherwise they are still live, active, full of potential to change, be rewritten, re-skinned.         I toy with the idea of looking up the video links on YouTube, copying the URLs out verbatim, for veracity, to establish the mood, to listen to the same track by The Rutts. But somehow that’s not the point. Memory, clouded and somewhat made up, filled in over the gaps, feels more authentic to this story.         Across the transposed Facebook group patter names are scratched out, effaced for anonymity but still recognisable, half legible, if you know what or who you’re looking for. Photographers, stylists, former colleagues from one magazine masthead to another, public house heroines and pinups. It’s a familiar world, that London of the turn of the decade.         Perhaps always in negative, Baal captures the nihilistic decadence of modern urban twenty-something living. Our protagonists are neurotic, directionless within a drifting affluence, never short of a party full of people they loath who are their best friends. Alienation for the trust-fund generation at the end of history. All this… and nowhere to go, nothing to do. Baal’s unforgiving cynicism and rejection of this scene shines through. The tawdry sub-gossip milieu of rich kids idling the world from party to party to beach to island to who cares where next with the touch of overly perfumed Louis XIV court intrigues in their drama and tousling themselves up with all the braggadocio of a rap promo. This centrifugal star-lit social scene is contrasted with hints of stunning dawn views from her 15th floor flat in a Bow housing estate tower block out in deepest East London.         But how much of all this is true I ask myself, is this real? I certainly remember seeing some of these posts on Baal’s Facebook, the letter that got her fired from Dazed, the ‘I fucked… and all I got was this petty vendetta’ t-shirt. Maybe one of those anonymous likes is mine.         Who was Ben? Did the author make him up? If not, what would his friends or family make of who you read about here? Did she write/ make all of this up? Within a couple of quick searches Benz is revealed in the tabloid daily reports of his death. But even these always by a kind of second degree, headlines that the friend of so and so rock star kid it boy died. His death simply isn’t the story, isn’t the news, it’s his associates. Even here we miss him.         I think perhaps Merced es Benz is an attempt to reclaim part of this person lost. A way of saying it did happen, that for all of everything else he was/is/was this, at least to me. The idea and love of a person is surpassed on all sides by them, until that love is all we have left.         How much of this is a transcript? Untouched, unedited, unwritten? To read is to be invited in to be a witness, but of what? All the events here, everything that happens, happens elsewhere, IRL somewhere, off read, off piste, off script.         Merced es Benz is an account from the aftermath of a cataclysm. It’s the act of piecing together how we got here, a looking back and re-reading of archives. It’s the act of the bereft that Baal puts us as readers into, into her shoes.         It’s also the act of writing today. Through technology tracing our every move, thought, exchange, calorie burnt, website visited, link clicked, the great book of being is being written by machines in a language we can’t read. What we mean is our trace, the trail we leave behind through the systems we traverse. In this way the writer is effaced from the writing. Baal tries to take herself out of the equation, effacing herself, by instead reaching towards becoming a pure conduit to this trace of her past. It’s an act of carrying that trace forward — an act of not acting, of not writing but rather of reading — the writer in negative. In absentia.         But in this way we become her — recalling and returning to the aftermath, trying to make sense of the event(s) of our lives. This non-writing — this archaeology, this digging up — this is ours, perhaps all that we have ultimately.         There is a great vulnerability and honesty in Baal’s non-fiction novel. It pulls no punches, about anyone, least of all herself. If we’re sympathetic to her characters, they’re not faultless. We’re welcomed inside the expressions of their neuroses, doubts and rages to each other just as much as any love between them.         And here’s the thing, thinking back I wonder if there is really love in this story, in so far as it’s a story of a failed, doomed romantic encounter. Almost as if the love each of our protagonists held for the other, living outside the book, the traces of its expression and thus their ability to communicate it to each other, couldn’t navigate these mediums between them — perhaps it’s a warning about love being innately atrophied in the age of Facefuck. You’ll only find love in the real world.         Recently I’ve been seeing clips of scorpions and crabs shredding their shells recur on my social feed. There’s something strangely satisfying in watching the disconnecting, withdrawing and pulling away under the hard surface, the reveal of the soft vulnerable pink fresh skin exposed underneath and then the empty husk left behind. The hollow shape of the thing, there but without substance, without content.         I think of this husk in relation to Merced es Benz. There is bravery in letting oneself be so laid bare, opening out the vulnerability and shape of oneself. An affirmation to say a kind of, I once was this.         To be a writer is to share of yourself, invite others to step inside this externalised piece of you. You can only really write what you know, or write to unlearn yourself. Perhaps in reaching for an already externalised trace of herself at the intersections with another person, Baal finds something that enables an authentic intimate encounter with an other for a reader, a kind of genericity that everyone can reach towards.         Ultimately, I think Baal suggests that writing today is neither simply the digital trace nor using that trace as a medium of expression, but lies beyond, within a composition or choreography that primes the possibility for encounter. And against the comforting alienation of our self-reinforcing media bubbles, her book asks how one can encounter the other, perhaps even how can one love today?         Told almost entirely through social media posts and digital communications, about love and about death, Merced es Benz is an uncovering of the past and a trying to come to terms with it; it addressing the nature, and thus future, of writing itself as confronted with technology and the mediations of today; and, for the old Badiouian in me, it is about fidelity to an event, twice over, that of their love encounter, and that of his death; the one nested in the other, for only by faithfully expressing the truth of the first can one face that of the second.         I guess I’m still a little bit in love with Iphigenia Baal, but not in the way I was before. Now, perhaps on her terms, in the way that she invites us readers all into a love that is forever lost, to step into these moments, and feel and watch and recall through the moments of our own lives, what it is to know, to love someone — if not the writer then perhaps her Benz.

Merced Es Benz by Iphgenia Baal is published by Book Works as part of the Semina series guest edited by Stewart Home. Order a copy here.

[theworstbob]

the thing journal: 6.4.17 - 6.10.17

capsule reviews of the seven+ pop culture things i took in last week. in this post: solid state, the untouchables, in-ter a-lia, noenemies, the beautiful game, more issues than vogue, let’s not be friends, looper, the last man on earth, and selma

1) Solid State, Jonathan Coulton: This was a very good album of nerd-leaning alternative-rock songs made by a very smart individual who has been making those songs for decades. I feel like, in this capsule, I'm doing the thing where I'm saying "it fulfilled my expectations" as a piece of criticism, when this album was not made with my expectations in mind? I'm gonna do it with the Flobots review, and I'm doing it here, and I'm not sure how much that statement has to offer y'all, because a) you don't know my expectations, and b) this album was not made with my expectations in mind. It's why I think overrated/underrated are bullshit nothingwords, y'know? I can tell you this album did everything I wanted it to do, but it doesn't tell you what I actually thought of the album. What happened is, I thought this album was Very Good, and then I didn't have much to say beyond that, so I threw in the thing about what I wanted, and that sounds like I'm saying something when I'm actually saying nothing. So: this album was Very Good, and then other words until the paragraph looks as full as I want it to be.

2) The Untouchables, dir. Brian de Palma: There's nothing like the sense of relief which comes from finally seeing one of those movies with a dozen all-time quotes you've been hearing for years and years. Like, I can't remember any specific instance of my father using a line from this movie in place of advice? But I'm sure it happened, and I am thrilled to understand him better. This is just a solid film, this would be one of those films I'd watch if I had basic cable and it came on while I was flipping channels. Brian de Palma knows how to direct a B+ movie, and Sean Connery is fucking amazing as the wizzened Chicago veteran, like half the reason this film has so many iconic lines is his delivery. I am about to say something blasphemous, given I am trying to tell y'all I'm a film nerd, and say I didn't like the score? It's Morricone, I know, I know, he's great, but I think the film loses something by scoring this film about Prohibition-era Chicago with a standard orchestral score. I feel like jazz should have figured more prominently into the equation.

3) in-ter a-lia, by At the Drive-In: I have no idea why I listened to this album, to be perfectly frank. I like "One-Armed Scissor," but with all the music that has ever existed being immediately available to me at my leisure, I could have picked up the At the Drive-In album with "One-Armed Scissor," I believe it is called This Station Is Non-Operational, though that might just be a line from "One-Armed Scissor" I thought was cool. I am not a hardcore fan of this band and didn't need to listen to their reunion album. I didn't need to hear lines like the poetry book of the balding dude with dreadlocks, "How many bites do you think it takes to get to the cyanide tooth" like ugh, being howled wildly over abrasive guitar tracks, just loud and fast and never stopping. I didn't have a pleasant time with this one.

4) Noenemies, by Flobots: The most surprising thing about this album is that it isn't just Flobots saying "I told you so" for 50 minutes.That would've been my move, given that, after 2016, I started to listen to the Flobots songs I thought were way too left for me and saying, "You know what, fuck. I should've listened. I'm sorry. I get it now. Please help." It's an album that doesn't yet know how to get unstuck from the mire, but is absolutely certain that the mire is the only obstacle in their way, that justice will prevail and the good people will win. It's not my favorite album of all time, but it's exactly what I wanted and needed from a Flobots album in 2017.

5) The Beautiful Game, by Vulfpeck: As far as albums I listened to because someone played one of the songs in a donation message on a Twitch stream, this was decent! I think reading the summary of this band's history colored my opinion on it, because it does sound like a couple of white kids who met in college, discovered they both loved Kanye West, talked about the old-school samples on his tracks, actually took the time to listen to those songs, realized they loved those songs as well, and decided to make those songs. It's a pretty OK album, maybe I wouldn't have paid $3.50 to convince 200 strangers they should listen to it, but OK enough backing for a bus ride.

6) More Issues Than Vogue, by K. Michelle: I think I might have the least to say about this album than anything else this week. It's an eminently enjoyable pop/R&B album that doesn't give you a lot to chew on, but does give you a lot to love. And while I know that the challenge of the Thing Journal is to get me to think about the pop culture which I experience, you gotta sometimes recognize when an album has such an infectious charm and tight production and solid vocal work that thinking about it might distract from the experience it wants you to have, that you should just listen to the thing because it wants you to hear it. It's an album of great joy, and I'm glad I got on its wavelength in time to let go and enjoy the hell out of it.

7) Let's Not Be Friends, by The Girls!: On the bus the other day, I was looking up Lydia Loveless, because I knew Lydia Loveless was right up my alley but hadn't actually listened to any of her stuff beyond her AUdiotree session, and in looking up and adding all her albums to my library, I discovered she had a sister in a punk band with an exclamation point in their name, and "female-fronted punk band with an exclamation point in their name" checks off three things I need from a band to love them, so I knew I was gonna love this, which is why I listened to this before any of that Lydia Loveless nonsense. I fucking loved this album. I love anything that's 12 tracks of pure, joyous punk/rock with a tinge of '50s-pop influence and no shortage of eternal teen angst. It bums me out that this is the only full album listed on their Wikipedia, and that they haven't been active on any sort of social media I could find for nearly a year. I need more of this in my life. (Also: I have now listened to 20 2014 releases! I actually hit a point where I felt I was caught up on my queue and, needing new things to listened to, am gonna go back and fill in the gaps in my musical experience, starting with 2014. Like, I've listened to all the punk things, I know I covered that ground, but that year and all years in music have so much more to offer beyond what I was looking for, and I'm stoked to finally listen to offerings such as Beyonce's self-titled, Anderson .Paak's Venice, and 2NE1's Crush.

8) Looper, dir. Rian Johnson: As someone who spends most of his time either yelling at his past self for the poor choices that put him in his present situation or making choices with little to no regard for how they impact my future, I loved that scene in the dinner, where JGL and Bruce Willis are basically doing that, Bruce Willis sternly warning JGL of the mistakes he'll make and the need to find the woman in China, and JGL being flippant and focused solely on the present danger being brought by Bruce Willis.I also have made respect for, in that same scene, Bruce Willis saying, "Look, we could sit here for fucking days trying to figure out the science, but fuck that, 100% fuck that." I assume the time travel makes sense and am mostly unconcerned with how it works, so thank you, movie, for being a movie! I do kinda wish the film had done more with the concept of chasing your past or future self, the film goes somewhere and then stays there for an hour, and like it's still a pretty decent movie, Rian Johnson has no shortage of imagination or skill, but it didn't need to be a movie about time-travel if you were just gonna put one of the characters in a barn the whole time? But, whatever, solid B+. Dope film. Not a lot of complaints. (Perhaps because I watched it between the hours of 2 and 4 AM Saturday morning because MY LIFE IS TOGETHERRRRRRRRRRRR and might need to rewatch this at a more reasonable hour?)

9) The Last Man on Earth s1, cr. Phil Lord & Christopher Miller: I love how unafraid this show is to let its characters be horrible fucking people. At no point after the first episode does the show let you feel anything like sympathy for Tandy; he just does awful thing after awful thing, all in self-interest, and always making things worse for the small community. (And he drags everyone down with him! He corrupts Todd, he tricks Carol into abandoning Tucson for him, he goads Phil into leaving him in the fucking desert. No one on this show is good, but that’s in no small part due to Tandy’s influence. (Also, as you can tell, I loved when the show just switched to calling him Tandy. Like, minor initial resistance, and then he was just Tandy.)) It's such a fascinating concept, the idea that one of the last people on earth is an anti-social monster, and I can't believe that a broadcast television network aired this experiment. I'm bummed I've been missing this for so long but stoked to finally be beginning this journey.

10) Selma, dir. Ava DuVernay: For the longest time, I was watching this film, trying to figured out why everything looked so muted. Every shot was filled with earth tones, reds and browns and greens always, and it looked like they left it just a couple notches above sepia, and while I was never removed from the film, it was in the back of my mind the whole time, what is the reason for this choice. And then near the end, when they added in the archival footage that was sepia-toned, it hit me: it was trying to be two notches above sepia-toned. It wanted to have that feel of the archival footage, a matter of historical record, but it also wanted to root itself in something modern, because this is very much a modern story. We still see horrible acts of police brutality, we still see black people being denied the right to vote, we still see out government leaders doing nothing but wishing these people would stop bothering them. Or, perhaps it goes for half-sepia because sepia is typically associated with nostalgia, we color over our memories of the past to make it better, but they leave some color in there because there's no making the past better in this instance. It's a remarkable film, and one I bet won a thousand Oscars! I don't see how it couldn't!