#my blog has morphed into like a music corner

[writteninlunarlight-years]

Please Don't Prove I'm Right

This is based on the song Please Please Please (Epic Version) - by Morgan Clae. I haven't written in a long time; my mental health has taken a significant toll not too long ago. I have been going to some consistent therapy as well as taking things slowly on my own terms. I thank my support and followers right next to me as I recover. The banners are all from @venomhound. Please reach out to them for some excellent help with the Tumblr blog. They have been a big help to me. @literallurker is their main account. Thank you everyone for bearing with me. You are all amazing. My moons~

TW: AFAB Reader, Hurt, Graphic Details of Harm, Religious Truama's, Yandere Reader for a moment

In the beginning, heaven was a breathtaking expanse of glistening white, where clouds floated like soft pillows in an endless sky. The angels above drifted gracefully among them, their laughter echoing with pure joy, and the air held an ethereal light that felt almost alive. It was a realm of boundless beauty reserved solely for God’s beloved.

But everything changed when Lucifer, once the most cherished of all angels, was cast down. The pristine clouds darkened, their softness replaced by a bitter heaviness that weighed down the heavens. The once-gleaming landscape morphed into a realm of towering structures and watchful exorcists. The loss was palpable, as if the heavens themselves mourned the fall of its brightest star.

When you first encountered Lucifer, you were just a baby angel, a mere child of the heavens. You were newly formed, wide-eyed, and full of wonder, destined to guide the three humans wandering in the paradise of Eden. You felt an unshakeable bond with him—a connection transcending mere friendship. He was your sun, your air, the essence of your existence in this perfect world. 

Lucifer was intoxicatingly brilliant, his spirit igniting something that felt sinful within you. Yet, whispers of his rumored affections for a human stirred around you. It was said that he had fallen for one of them—impossible, you thought. God’s favorite should follow divine order, untouched by earthly desires, especially for a mortal once destined for Adam and soon rejected.

As you flitted anxiously through the heavens, awaiting his return, you could feel the eyes of the other angels upon you, judgment simmering in their stares. Sera, a newly appointed Seraphim, approached her voice a gentle choir against your rummaging thoughts. 

“Y/N, you seem troubled. Is everything all right?” Her youthful features were unmarred by the weight of time, yet you could sense the unspoken warnings in her tone.

“I’m just waiting for Lucifer,” you replied, forcing a smile. “He’s never taken this long before.” 

You could hear the skepticism in her voice before you even looked up. “Y/N, he’s trouble. He doesn’t see you the way he sees that woman. His heart is blind to your devotion, lost to her instead.”

Each word struck like a dagger, stinging your eyes with tears. “No, Sera. He cares for me. He tells me everything about his adventures in Eden. He will come back for me.” Your voice trembled with hope and desperation as if your sadness could summon him.

Just then, like a flash of lightning, Lucifer burst through the gates, the embodiment of energy and life. He swooped down, wrapping you in a joyous embrace, spinning you through the clouds, laughter spilling from his lips like music. You could feel Sera’s disdain radiating from behind, but you didn’t care. In that moment, you were weightless, untouchable...his.

In an instant, he whisked you away to a secluded corner of heaven, where you could gaze down upon Eden. Confusion washed over you as you settled on a fluffy cloud, watching him pace with uncontainable excitement, his wings shimmering behind him. He was always so proud of his beautiful wings.

“Y/N! I’ve discovered how to make Father recognize the humans as equals!” he declared, his eyes alight with excitement.

“Why would you want that?” you asked, a knot tightening in your chest. “We’re different for a reason. We’re not meant to be like them.”

His face fell as he paused, the thrill evaporating. “I need them to be seen as equals so I can bring them to heaven with us! Don’t you remember everything I’ve shared? All the dreams I have?” 

The ache in your heart deepened. You wanted to forget, to lose yourself in his bright hair and vibrant blue eyes, but the thought of Adam, Eve, and Lilith standing beside you twisted like a knife, no, not beside you...beside him. Two perfect couples, it seemed.

“Of course, I remember,” you said, forcing a smile. “Please, continue.” But inside, a storm raged between your heart and mind. 

What if you could just keep him for yourself? What if you shattered his wings, leaving him grounded and broken? What if you descended into the chaos below and extinguished Lilith’s light? What if you bound him to your will, claiming him as your own?

In that moment, you felt the weight of your thoughts, and the realization stung sharper than any blade. He was meant for her, not for you. There is no way when he spoke of you to her, if he did that, she had these thoughts...were you even an angel?

A chill ran down your spine as these dark fantasies engulfed your mind, each thought more treacherous than the last. You gasped, the air thick with dread, realizing you were still with Lucifer, his presence a paradox of comfort and ongoing torment. 

He rushed to you, his fingers brushing your cheek with a heavenly and cruel tenderness. His soothing yet distant voice echoed in your ears as a haunting melody. He was perfection incarnate, and you couldn’t fathom why those mere mortals deserved even a fraction of his devotion. You were willing to sin to keep him all to yourself...

After countless attempts to gain your attention, he realized it was futile. With a gentle sweep, he lifted you into the air, his wings unfurling majestically as he flew you to your resting zone—a serene haven that now felt like a ticking clock counting down to your last moment of peace. 

If only you had known this would be your final day in his embrace, perhaps you would have listened more intently, held him tighter against the wind, and begged him to affirm that your bond was real—that his heart belonged to you, not to that woman on the surface.

But morning shattered the tranquility, a sudden onslaught of light and chaos. Angels gathered, their faces a storm of judgment as Lucifer stood before them, shackled and tormented, bound to that woman from below. 

Tears blurred your vision as the reality of betrayal washed over you. He had chosen her, and in a cruel twist of fate, you were forced to witness your shame laid bare before God and all the Angels you shared home with. 

Then came the searing pain—the molten metal of chains biting into your neck and wrists, dragging you toward the center of the circle of wrath. Confusion clouded your thoughts as you locked eyes with Sera, whose disdainful glance pierced through your confusion like a dagger.

“Y/N, DO YOU KNOW WHY YOU’VE BEEN SUMMONED HERE WITH THESE TWO TRAITORS?” The voice boomed, a thunderous echo that reverberated through your very essence. You looked past Sera to see Him—the man the Archangels called Father, his presence both majestic and terrifying. With a shaky breath, you swallowed your fear and shook your head.

“No, Father, I don’t understand. Why am I being punished?” Each word felt like a desperate plea, even as the burning sensation clawed at your skin, choking you of your right to breathe.

“Father, please! Y/N is innocent! She knew nothing of my plans; she was ill when I confided in her last night!” Lucifer’s voice, once a safe haven for your soul, now felt like salt in an open wound. The sincerity in his plea twisted your heart, revealing the depths of betrayal you had yet to fully grasp.

“Silence, Lucifer, for God speaks! The matter at hand isn’t who has wronged whom but that this angel knew of your treachery and chose to remain silent!” Your world crumbled hearing Sera’s voice. You were to fall alongside those who had deceived you, tethered to the very man who had strung you along with promises and soft whispers late in the night, now choosing to partake in those nights with Lilith instead.

“FOR YOUR PUNISHMENT, Y/N, YOU WILL BE THE JUDGE OF THE SPACE BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH. YOU WILL DETERMINE THE FATE OF SOULS, FOR YOU HAVE CHOSEN TO WALK AMONG BOTH SIDES! YOU WILL FACE ETERNAL LONELINESS AND ISOLATION FOR YOUR TRANGRESSIONS UPON HEAVEN AND EDEN!” Fear engulfed you, a suffocating darkness that threatened to consume all hope. You were to be cast into a purgatory of your own making, alone and forsaken.

“Release her shackles!” As Sera’s voice cut through the air like a blade, you felt the chains around you dissolve, yet the burn marks remained, a permanent reminder of your choices. You were thrust away from Lucifer, your heart pounding against the confines of your chest, and when your eyes finally met his, you saw the flicker of concern. It ignited a deep-seated rage within you.

Pain shot through your back like lightning as your wings began to transform from gleaming white to a deep, obsidian black. Your halo, once a radiant gold, dulled to bronze, and your skin took on a gray hue. The purity of your existence was now tainted by your one-sided love for Lucifer.

“FATHER, NO! SPARE HER!” Lucifer’s desperate cries echoed through the heavens, but they fell on deaf ears. You stood there, hollowed out, your heart aching not for the punishment before you but for the betrayal that had led you here.

As the Archangel Michael took his stance next to Lucifer, he raised his sword, poised to sever Lucifer's wings. You were forced to witness the agony of his fall. His screams of anguish faded into the abyss as the clouds beneath you crumbled, sending you spiraling into your new reality.

For years, you lingered in purgatory, a silent reaper of the soul’s passage, guiding some to Heaven’s light and casting others into the depths of Hell. With each soul that passed through your hands, your heart grew heavy with bitterness, festering into a resentment that twisted into distaste. You found yourself haunted by thoughts of Lucifer—by the life he now shared with her, the woman who claimed his heart and turned your world upside down.

Then came the day you were summoned to Heaven, tasked with presenting your report on the balance of Winners and Sinners. It was there, amid the looming towers and the changed landscape of your once home, that you first laid eyes on her—Charlie Morningstar, a living echo of Lucifer, with his fiery spirit shimmering in her every gesture.

As you sat in the grand jury meeting, the air thick with tension, you listened to the murmurs of angels discussing Lucifer and Lilith’s child. Your heart ached as you watched Charlie fight for her dreams, her passion reminiscent of his—how he had once battled for his aspirations, now he was seemingly forgotten till Charlie showed up.

Then, as if summoned by fate, Adam snapped his fingers, opening a portal to cast Charlie and her partner back to hell. Just as it threatened to close, a surge of instinct propelled you forward, a desperate need to reach him again, the man you loved, to grasp the fleeting connection you had lost. You rushed toward the portal, your heart racing, your soul crying out to see him missing you.

On the other side, Lucifer stood, his eyes wide with shock and recognition. Amidst his hand, a cold golden band sat, showing where his commitments lie. Time froze as you locked gazes, every unspoken word hanging heavy between you. He extended his hand, a lifeline reaching through the veil, but the portal snapped shut instantly, severing the moment like a blade.

Tears welled in your eyes as despair washed over you, your head drooping low as the chamber emptied around you. Sera approached her presence, a gentle reminder of all those years ago, offering solace amid your sadness.

"It's time to let go, Y/N," she murmured, her voice soft yet firm. You nodded, feeling the weight of her words settle heavily in your chest. With a trembling hand, you reached out to the wall where the portal had been, yearning for the connection that had vanished.

As Sera sighed and stepped away, you whispered, “Please, please, please prove I’m right...Please, please, please don’t bring me to tears for one more night...” 

Years of pent-up emotions, longing, and heartache surged in a wave. A soft black glow began to envelop you. It consumed you, drawing you back into the solitude that Lucifer had unwittingly gifted you—a prison of your own making. Purgatory was your new and forever home.

Instead of proving you right, Lucifer had always been a master of disappointment, a beacon of hope that burned too bright yet always flickered just out of reach. He would continue to choose her, leaving you alone in the shadows, grappling with the remnants of a love that had never truly belonged to you. Or...did it...

Thank you again, everyone, for the support; I will slowly take steps back into the community one foot at a time. I hope you enjoy my pieces and stick around for my growth <3

[puhmpken]

Hii!! How are you? I’m here to request something if that’s okay :D anyways I’ll start!

I was wondering if I could request Alastor with a GN! Reader who has a Yuno Gasai Personality from Future Diary? Everything should be explained in the link I setted here ^_^ have fun with this!

素敵な一日をお過ごしください。

this has NOT been edited

Authors Note: I am doing good! I am excited because this is my first request, while I am working on upcoming books! But ofc I can do this! I hope this is too your liking and you enjoy it!

Make sure your staying hydrated, healthy & happy! <3

In the sprawling labyrinth of Hell, where souls clash and demons reign, a presence lingers & hides in the shadows, fixated on one soul.

“I have been watching him for so long,” Y/N murmurs softly to themselves, hidden from view, there (e/c) reflecting the dawning red in the sky, their eyes trained on Alastor as he strolls through the chaotic streets of Pentagram City.

“I know his favorite music..the whiskey he savors at the bar. I watch him whenever I can and read all the papers about him.”

“Many say he’s a menace, deserving the blade of a exterminator’s spear through his heart. While others don’t view him fondly, labeling him as mean and ruthless.”

“But those people no longer exist.”

Title: Diary of the Obsessed (oneshot)

Written/Edited By: @puhmpkins-blog 🎃

In the heart of Hell, where chaos and darkness is on every turn and corner. Sinners run free and practically wild, while some quench the thirst for blood due to their human life. Others take shelter wanting to hide and keep there head for another day to come.

Alastor was one of those chaos, he was a overlord in hell. Who was powerful, many feared him, while others want to kill him and take his spot. You weren’t that case at all. You can’t remember how or even why you got to hell, but you assumed you had committed sin..maybe you stole candy from a baby smh.

It’s a blur, you just remember waking up to a red filled sky with a pentagram and the rest was history. You were a quiet soul, never bothering anyone and always moving swiftly to get where you needed to go. Everything in this “hell” life was boring, it was merely black and white for you. Well all up until you bumped into a deer demon.

He was a overlord in hell, but that’s not what attracted you to him no..no far from it. It was the way how he carried himself, walking with the ego of a god, talking with so much wit and passion about certain sinners. You couldn’t help but feel under a trance by this demon, it was a spark in your dead heart. It felt like it was beating again and dancing to the sound of his voice when he spoke.

You enjoyed this feeling a lot, it made your life easier, gave you a reason to go outside and stroll around.

You sometimes hid in the dark of corners or walk across the street from him to watch him in the corner of your eye. You can tell he wasn’t aware of your doing, just going on with his day doing his normal set routine. This slowly morphed into a obsession with the radio demon you had.

Your once normal life, was filled with stocking or running into him. Maybe he would catch on? But it didn’t faze you, it only pushed you more. It was like a game of a mice catching cheese.

Morning. The sky was always filled with red, the screams of the few who woke you up out of your sleep.

Yawning sitting yourself up. You lived by yourself in a single, almost run down apartment on a upper building floor. You couldn’t complain to much about it, your lucky to be even living somewhere like this, you could’ve been going in and out of motels but you had a place to call home..kinda of

Today was like any other day you got up from your bed, the wood creaking under you with every step you take as you made your way to the bathroom.

Going through your daily routine to fix yourself up and put on your work clothes, you brushed out (h/l) white, sandy tan hair. Making sure to style it correctly. You were a worker under Rosie in her emporium, the job didn’t call for a lot of action, all you had to do was seat behind a desk in the front near the door to ring up customers as the purchased whatever items they could find in her store.

And she carried a lot.

You were her only worker, well besides Franklin but she had disappeared a while after a recent extermination under questionable circumstances, you didn’t need a psyche to put two-and-two together to known Rosie may had something to do with it.

But nevermind that, you made your way out the run down apartment with nothing in hand besides a bottle of water, and the keys to your room hidden away in your pocket. You wore clothes appropriate to the job and ones that Rosie wouldn’t be able to say a witty comment about.

The doorbell chimed as you pushed it open, being first greeted by the smell, of flowers mixed in with smell of something being made you couldn’t put your finger on it, but it was almost like meat?

You sat down behind the desk as you cupped your hand towards your mouth before saying

“Ms. Rosie! Where are you?” You waited a moment as it went quiet, the lights where on? That means she had to be here..somewhere. You turned your head sideways, leaning a ear out to possible hear any nearby movements, no clicking of a heel or laughter to hear, which is peculiar for her in most cases.

‘Maybe I thinking to much, and she just went outside for a moment’ You tell yourself as you walked behind the counter setting up your little check out station.

Just as you finally finish up your station, you hear a bell that chimes. A scruffy looking demon fella wasn’t too tall, he held a box about the same size of his chest,

“I have a uh umm package for Ms. Rosie” He said as his eyes began looking at you before the drifted off away from you probably looking at the different items, ‘fella probably never been inside of a emporium’

“I can take it” You say as he approaches your counter placing the cardboard down on the table, signing off for the package he leaves

Grabbing the package, you felt a vibration of sorts,’What in the..’ You thought to yourself, as you felt the box buzz..one time and then again.

‘That’s weird, what’s in there..’ You question to yourself, as you heard the third buzz go off. Your eyes drift to the clock hanging on the wall,

‘Great and it’s barely 10:40am’ You sighed, without Ms. Rosie there you, would more than likely have to run the store by yourself. Just until she gets there at least, you were kinda trained in it..just don’t let nobody steal from the shop and you keep your job

As the day slowly began to pick up, you moved the cardboard box down from your counter to under hidden from the eye of really anybody, unless they were to walk behind the counter, as the hour started to pass, you noticed something kinda peculiar..the box, it seemed to buzz every 10 minutes. You realized this, when you counted the buzzes you received..five buzzes the whole hour.

‘I gotta open it..’ You thought to yourself, as you waved by to the last person it was now 12 o’clock, Rosie still hadn’t made contact with the store or even appeared it almost like she’s gone missing or disappeared

Shutting the doors and locking them you lower the front dark purple blinds infront of the window, to hide from the public view, now it’s just you and the box. Walking careful towards the counter you squat down reaching under and in the desk grabbing the cardboard box, once grabbing it you stand back up and place it down on the desk eyeing it..

BUZZZ!!

Staring at it wide eyed, you grab a pair of box cutters carefully cutting open the box you see..

‘A phone?’ You said outloud almost dumbfounded as you tilted your head looking down as the closed device, it was a red phone, with black swirls decorating around it. Reaching in and grabbing it, you carefully rotate it around getting a good look at it, nothing too out of the ordinary. Just a regular what seems to be flip phone..

BUZZZ!!

‘Fuck!’ You thought as you quickly try to grab it as it slips from your hands the buzz nearly scared you as you weren’t prepared for it. Catching the phone you hold it, your heartbeat slowly down as you open it

‘Why is there ‘A’’ You thought blinking blankly at the phone ‘Why would Rosie want something like this..does she even understand how these work’ You snickered the thought of Rosie trying to frighten out what and how to work a flip phone made you laughed, as you pushed random numbers and hit random text you finally came onto a screen, that looked like a log of some kind it read..

Alastor 10:40 AM

Running to Mimzy Cafe

Alastor 10:50 AM

Will run into Huskier, and almost get into a brawl with him

Alastor 11:00 AM

Leaves Mimzy, strolls down Dahmer Blvd.

Alastor 11:10 AM

On Dahmer will see AD, and almost brawl with him

Alastor 11:20 AM

Goes to the ‘Happy Hotel’

Alastor 11:30 AM

Begins work

‘Who is this Alastor guy..’ You thought to yourself as you looked at the log, is this some diary of some kind, did he drop his phone? What the hell is happening and like a train it hit you..this wasn’t some regular demon, this was THE DEMON.. Alastor the Radio Show Host..

Weeks had pass since you acquired this strange artifact—

A/N: Srry a scrap put together oneshot, if i should finish it let me know ..

[artaxlivs]

Trick, please? (Only if there's still time 😄)

Okay soooo I did go to your blog to make sure I'd be in the right realm of interests (Even though its a trick and I get to pick, I still want you to like it) and I saw these two things...and couldn't resist the combo.

Drumrolllllll, a frog leans out of the skrim on the stage and wails, "It's the special Halloween Muppet Show with tonight's guest star, His Royal Highness Arthur Pendragon!"

"And cue the dancing girls."

Arthur looks over to the scrawny dark haired man wearing the headset. He looks frazzled and strangely cold because it's sweltering backstage but he's got on a jacket and a red scarf around his neck for some reason. Maybe he's sickly?

"Excuse me-" Arthur starts to say loudly, trying to get the man's attention.

"Shhhh!" A chicken hisses at him.

A chicken.

Arthur raises an eyebrow and glares at her but she's not cowed.

A scraggly looking bear in a neckerchief leans across Arthur and looks out to the distance, waving his hands cheerfully, and says "Wokka wokka!" Then he wanders away.

Arthur sighs, turning to get the man in the headsets attention again.

"Listen, Arthur? Is it? I'm gonna need you to move aside. The dancing girls are coming straight through here in a second and you'll get run over." The man whispers, nudging Arthur into the corner behind his podium.

Scoffing and bristling because how dare he, Arthur starts to step back toward the man but a line of kicking cancan girls dressed like witches all linked together at the elbows kick their way past him. They continue kicking, linked together well into the hallway. Arthur shakes his head and moves back near the man again.

"Now, see here. You may address me as Your Royal Highness-" Arthur starts to say but then a pig in a black evening gown and opera gloves pushes him to the side. He thinks she's supposed to be dressed as Mortica Addams since the frog was wearing a pin striped suit and had a mustache drawn on.

"Merlin, Merlin, where is my Ker-my?" She pouts to the man in the headset.

"He's dealing with that blown tuba in the orchestra pit, Miss Piggy." He cringes a little like he's preparing for a physical blow.

"I need to talk to him about my number!" She hurumphs; her facial expression morphs into anger and she's squeezing her hands...hooves? No she has fingers - hands - into fists.

"Well, I'm here and His Royal Highness is here if you wanted to talk about your duet," the man, Merlin, waves his hand toward Arthur. When Miss Piggy gasps and crowds Arthur, Merlin's whole body relaxes and he turns back to his work, keeping one eye on the stage and one on his call sheet.

"Ohhhhh Arthur, may I call you Arthur? We're going to make such beau-ti-ful music together." She turns her body so she can lean into him and gaze up, eyelashes fluttering.

"Uh..um, er...yes. I mean, yes our duet will be good but no, you're not allowed to call me Arthur, it's Your Royal Highness," She starts to shake like she's going to explode and Merlin inches away from her, though he doesn't look over at her, almost like he's afraid to make eye contact. "You know what, just for tonight, you may call me Arthur."

She melts instantly, leaning in again, eyelashes fluttering, "Oh Arhth-y, I'm so hap-py. I have to go warm up my voice but I'll see you soon, okay?" She makes an air kiss and turns away. A chicken run across her path and she growls, voice dropping low and gravelly, "get out of my way you stupid chicken!" But then she simpers back of her shoulder, "by-yeeee!"

He can hear her singing "I Put a Spell on You" By Nina Simone as she walks away and he gulps.

"What-" Arthur starts to ask but then a Muppet in a chef's hat mumbles by, knocking Arthur into Merlin who ducks his head and blushes. "Excuse you!" Arthur almost shouts and the chef doesn't looks him just mumbles gibberish as he pushes a cart with a bubbling cauldron on stage.

The chef immediately starts throwing in whole bottles that say "eye of newt" and "dragon's teeth." The impact splashes and slooshes liquid over the sides of cauldron and it hisses as it splatters on the stage. He continues to mumble happily the entire time.

"If you'd get out of the way, Your Royal Highness," Merlin says snarkily, "you'd stop getting pushed out of it. Sit here." And he points to a chair next to his podium.

For a moment, Arthur thinks about being difficult because this person, this stage manager, this Merlin, can't tell him what to do, he's royalty, dammit. But then he nearly gets bowled over by the chickens again as they run across the stage in the middle of the chef's skit for apparently no reason.

"Why did the chickens cross the stage?" he asks in confusion.

The bear leans in from nowhere again, waggles his jazz hands and says, "To get to the other side! Wokka wokka!" and then he wanders away. Again.

Arthur sighs, sinking into the chair. What is wrong with these people?

The entire show seems to drag on for an eternity but also is over like a whirlwind and Arthur finds himself sitting next to Merlin for all but the two skits he's in. One where he's afraid that Miss Piggy actually did put a spell on him and another where he fought a dragon to save Miss Piggy.

The dragon was actually just four Muppet monsters wearing a big shaggy pink rug with a hole in it where one of the monsters stuck his head out and growled at Arthur menacingly before he stabbed it with a rubber sword. When Arthur returned to his chair after that one, he found Merlin smiling down at his call sheet, the tips of his ears as pink as the shag dragon.

As the night wears on, Arthur has to admit that he finds Merlin rather charming, efficient and well organized. When Miss Piggy comes to collect Arthur for their skit, Merlin blushes again, nodding to Arthur and advising him to break a leg, "but not really."

It's endearing really. And even amid the loud chatter of a herd of Muppet monsters and a broken tuba that sounds like a foghorn, Arthur finds his eyes drawn again and again to Merlin, with his secret little smile and his ears that are just a little too big. But every time he goes to ask Merlin out for coffee, there's some calamity happening that can only be solved by the stage manager.

After the final bows, Arthur returns to the stage manager podium, hoping to find Merlin but instead he finds a note addressed to "The Once and Future King." It contains only one sentence, "Not yet, but soon." It's signed with a drawing of a wizard hat.

[yeonjuins]

I listened to the songs a few times to really grasp them ♡︎♡︎ and here are my thoughts:

foolish heart by luca - I really love the instrumental and the overall vibe of the song and the vocals >>>> literally so pretty ( I was picturing a specific type of performance in my head but i literally can’t English right so it’s hard to describe sksk) and also listening to this with the rain sounds in the background or just on a rainy day >>>>>>>

Juno by choker - I never heard a song like this but I actually really like it.. THE WAY IT WAS THE DISTORTED VOICE AND THEN THE ACTUAL VOCALS CAME THROUGH *dies* that was so good… help the switch ups are so good.. the song reminds me of so many different things but I can’t put my finger on it- but the vibes are immaculate (don’t know why but at the beginning I pictured someone breaking glass in slow motion with this in the background AKSK) the ending -I’m obsessed-

diary by sogumm ft. punchnello - oh the vibe!! The vibe… the vibes are great,,, I’m a sucker for voices like hers- I like how the song starts off calm and then kinda picks up futher into the song and also the beat and small voice distorts??? wow… and when he starts rapping is also great and the ending???? gold. I feel like “I always say I can do better” is gonna be stuck in my head-

honey bee by sogumm . penomeco - the beginning is so pretty!!! the melody, the beat, their voices together >>>>> this is such a good pairing,, not enough words to express sksk I really like it ,, her voice is so so pretty ,, it’s such a cute song … it’s too good to be two minutes!!! also the ending for that one too.. the little instrumental was so nice

movie by penomeco - oh this is so pretty… I love how it’s just the guitar (I think it’s a guitar- SJSJ) for a little while and then the “claps” come in but the vibe ,, gives off a good spring like driving to the beach for a picnic vibe,, the song is so pretty… (child come on after that ended and idk i kinda liked the transition-)

-humming anon ♡︎

(lengthy answer!)

HELLO MY SWEET ANGEL ! school was cancelled today so i was able to give your songs a listen (": i'm sososo glad you like the songs and yes... juno by choker hits SOOO different and just how it musically progresses is so addicting AAAA all these songs are just pure chefs kiss to me and i'm so glad u enjoyed them (": hopefully at least one of them was playlist worthy

i was able to give your songs a listen hehe they're all pretty swell <3 there was nothing to be worried about

Winter - JUNNY & Yelloasis ft Yayyoung

omg i’m so surprised people know junny... i absolutely love his song ‘by my side’ ;; i think i found him through thank you though and that got me absolutely hooked... i love junny’s vocals so much but i think i found love with yelloasis’s voice oh my god... idk something about those words of vocals just HIT with me? it’s similar to be’o - counting stars (”: 

Like a Sunflower - Rheehab ft Yayyoung

ouu im seeing a trend here... you like yayyoung (”: PAHAHHA this one is sososo chill oh my god... definitely the sort of song to listen to while studying and just chilling... oh my god i did more inspecting on yayyoung and i acc have one of her songs in my library ;0 it’s ‘do you feel like you have no one to turn to?’ but oh my god im listening to ‘if only you knew’ and i’m in love... it samples the same guitar part as ‘come over’ - tom the mail man so i instantly new the song... imagining just meshing these two songs together would create such a sweet harmony oh my god...

sorry for going on a tangent abt the featured artists but otherwise this song is so lovely and chill... i can see u listening to this at night on a calm drive back to your house (”: 

Fallin For U - Peachy!, Mxmtoon

now this is the lofi song everyone listens too PAHAHHA i know this song blew up on tiktok and was paired with all the aesthetic edits / montages of people living their daily lives so i simply associate this song with that (”: mxmtoon is so lovely her voice is so angelic... 

History - Frex

ouuu i like this one the most... her voice is so pretty wtf WHA the pre-chorus build up with the kick snare is so GOOD and how it sort of... whats the word... explodes ?! PAHHAHA oh my god and then the part where the song takes a back for a bit and it’s just her vocals along with this simple beat.... this song doesn’t really have a structure to it but i love it even more for that sole reason because it just makes sense... 

Out of Touch - Laica

THE ALBUM COVER IS SO FUCKING PRETTY GOODBYE i love LOVE songs with a good ALBUM COVER LORD.... just STARING AT IT... i acc love ‘close to me’ by her as well (”: god god this song is acc so good perhaps this one is acc my favourite in the end (<- clearly needs to explore this artist more) hehe this one got added to one of my playlists... i really like this one... idk there’s something about it... i definitely think it’s the distorted guitar sounds(?) during the chorus and how that slowly gets integrated throughout the rest of the song (i’m clearly rambling at this point) TLDR this one hits hehe 

[fandomtookoverlife]

Working Tease

Pairing: Aaron Hotchner x fem!reader

Summary: reader and hotch have a spicy weekend, they like to remind each other and remember their fun times while on a case. 

Note: while the summary makes it sounds like there’s smut there really isn’t 

Warning: swearing, light sexual content, lightly implied dom sub relationship  

Word count: 3k 

Category: ummmm… fluff? A little smuttiness 

A/N: I hope this is good and you like it. I just got this idea in my head and couldn’t shake it so I decided to write it. This is the first time I’ve written anything like this so go easy and I really hope you like it 

I definitely got a little softer than I meant to in the middle but I like it so. 

I swear I swear I swear spiral part 2 next 

(My other blog: @mac99martin )

Masterlist 

---

Oh dear god, it was Monday morning, ugh, Mondays, and the team had just come back from a rare weekend with no case. It was the best weekend, Jack was at a sleepover for the weekend so you and Aaron decided you would have a sleepover too. Much like Jack’s you didn’t do much sleeping, though for very different reasons. You had come into work achy, sore and bruised from all the handmarks and hickeys across your body. As you said, it was a fun weekend, but it came with repercussions. Those being, you hurt, everywhere. And of course, you were called in for a case. You walked into the conference room; you were the first there so you stood at the table and grabbed a file, that’s when Aaron came up behind you. You jumped, not expecting anyone to touch you, but you settled into his touch, his hands around your waist. His touch alone relaxed you, your muscles immediately loosening and feeling better. “Hey” he whispered into your ear nibbling on it as he spoke. He turned you around to face him. And you place your hand on his chest. Feeling his hard muscles through his tight fitted dress shirt. His hands move down to your ass, the simple touch sends shivers from your sensitive bottom throughout your body as memories play through your head of how you got the bruises to begin with. You slowly felt his hand cup your ass, “Aaron-” He squeezed, you took a sharp inhale and whimpered burying your head in his chest, gathering the fabric of his shirt in your hands.

 “Oh I’m sorry baby, did that hurt?” you whined at his words, he took one hand off your ass and tilted your chin up so that you were looking at him, a sad pouting look on your face, he kissed the top of your head. “Your adorable” pulling you back into his chest and moving his hand back down, using both hands to caress your ass, sending shock waves through your body as his hands continued to dance across your sensitive skin. His touch ignites all the nerves in you, your body heating up, yet still, you nuzzle your head further into Aaron’s chest, seeking comfort, a release, as your grip tightens on his shirt, and very intently making sure not a single sound leaves you. To both of your disappointment, you heard footsteps coming down the hall, he gives you a quick kiss before reclaiming his professional nature and moving a respectable distance away from you. He easily regained his composure, you're always so jealous of how he can just snap right back into work mode, you quickly turned around hiding whatever completely unprofessional expression you had on your face, though you did catch a slight smirk on Aaron’s face, asshole. 

---

You had done the briefing, squirming in your seat the whole time, Aaron had announced wheels up so you packed your bag and drove to the airstrip, again sitting uncomfortably, until finally, you made it to the jet, where you got to sit for even longer, well isn’t this perfect, the weekend wasn’t worth the torcher of the next few days-yes it was-whatever. You and Aaron were at the back of the plane, files open on your laps in front of you, everyone was nose deep in files and facing away from you. Aaron casually slips his arm from his file up your back and rests it on your shoulder. You don’t acknowledge his movement until he puts pressure on your shoulder, coaxing you towards him, at first you resist, but he’s a very persistent man so after checking the rest of the team isn’t looking you shift your weight to lean towards him. You hear movement so you lean further towards him, playing at looking at his file. When Aaron is satisfied that no one is looking he moves his hand from your shoulder to your collar, pulling it to reveal your neck, your hickey cover neck to be specific. You turn your head, looking back at his hand, moving up to his eyes. His eyes are warning with a bit of smugness behind them, he uses his knuckle returning your eyes back to the file while he goes on to reveal more of your neck. Once he is satisfied with the amount of skin he has, he places his hand on your waist. Fortunately, as you are on the aisle seat, your body is blocking most of Aaron, but you both consistently glance up, just in case. He takes a moment, admiring the delicate marks across your delicate neck, leaning in he runs his nose along your neck, before placing light chaste kisses up and down until finding a rather large hickey taking residence on your pulse point. He starts placing an open-mouthed kiss on it, running his tongue along it, you restrain yourself, closing your eyes and revelling in the feeling of his touch, as well as the shivers that run through your body. He continues his act of affection, unable to pry himself away from you, loving the way your body reacts to his and the way your neck looks with his mouth on it. His movements get smaller until lips move up to your jaw, placing a final beside your chin. You turn back to him, a find smile on both your faces, you lean in placing a soft kiss on his lips before turning back to your file, his hand still wrapped around your waste

--

You were all in a conference room, it wasn’t anything special, honestly, it was the opposite, you had all been in a lot of police stations before, always setting up in any free room with a table, and they always sucked, stuffy, dull rooms, but most of the time they at least had windows. This one didn’t have a single window, not even one on the door. The fluorescent lights were horrible and one of them had even been flickering. It was like what? 9 pm, you don’t even know anymore, you had done all the running around for today, theorized and profiled your minds away and now had little else you could do today. You had basically been sitting in silence for over 30 minutes now, after running out of things to say you had all silently agreed that no one had anything more to add but weren’t ready to give up, resulting in a tension-filled room, the only sounds being of rusting papers and creaky furniture. 

God you were ready to fall asleep right here on the table, just turn your brain off and die-you had just been staring at the same page for what feels like forever trying to read the same lines over and over until eventually, you gave up and have now, for at least the last five minutes you’ve literally just been staring, the words morphing into thick blurry lines, your eyes now focusing on the white of the page more than the ink while your brain slowly drifts away. 

Your mom would call this lala land whenever you zoned out as a kid, and really she still does any time you zone out around her. You always hated it when she snapped you back into reality; you like being in lala land, it's peaceful, your brain is empty, there are no thoughts, some peace and quiet, an escape from your own mind, which is normally a very busy place. It's kinda like your swaying to the music, except you can't hear the music, you're just floating in blissful nothingness. 

At this point you're so lost in your own mind you don't even hear the door opening nor the extra person who has come in. Though, you do notice the file you've been blankly staring at has now been taken out of your hands. Your hands have stayed in the same position, as if they still had a file in them, your eyes try and subtly scan your surroundings for it, turning your head to find Aaron with it. Your hands clenched into fists and you bring your arms back to your body, “Uhm” your mind cannot even form words right now and it is *extremely* annoying, it feels so empty like a whiteboard that has just been wiped clean, literally all you can come up with is, “what?” 

“JJ just came back with food.”

“Oh, right.” -you didn't know JJ went to get food 

You turn your attention back to the group, going to help clean up papers and hand out food but Aaron’s eyes stayed on you. 

-

When food was handed out you sat back down and Aaron sat down next to you, pulling his chair over to be closer to you, his hand going to rest on your thigh, you glance down and then look into his eyes, a little smile making its way onto your face. Your sweet smile forcing a small one on to the corners of his own lips. He shifts his posture further towards you and you mirror it, “are you alright?” 

“Of course”

His eyes narrowed slightly, “you seemed… out of it, earlier”

A wholesome feeling bloomed through your body, though you kept your physical reaction minimal, “ya, I was.” Aarons face stayed in its negative state, you moved your hand down to your thigh, placing your hand on top of his and lacing your fingers through, “don't worry, I’m back.” relief, and even a slight smile washed across Aaron’s face, he moved his hand from under yours and moved you closer to him finally settling down resting his hand on your back.

You spent the next 45 minutes eating and when you were done Aaron deemed the day was over and that you’ll start fresh in the morning. 

You all cleaned up, packed up and drove back to the hotel, all the while Aaron somehow managed to stay physically connected to you at all times. Honestly, it was kinda impressive. 

You were in your room for all of 1 minute before knocking on Aaron’s expecting door. You both quickly got ready and slipped into the comfort of the hotel bed, it wasn’t the same as your’s -or Aaron’s- but it did just fine, especially with Aaron’s warm body right next to you. You moved closer, intertwining your legs with his and laying your head on his chest. Aaron adjusted, you lifted your head slightly, letting him move freely, he took the opportunity to move your hair out from under your head and throw it behind you, he pulled your head back down to his chest. His hand kept in your hair, going back and forth from messaging your scalp and running his fingers through it, softly detangling it as he went. He loves your hair, always touching it, playing with it, and running his hands through it, while he loves all of those things, occasionally, this weekend, for example, he likes pulling it. And although you too thoroughly enjoyed the hair pulling, this was really nice too. You fell asleep to the soft sounds of his breathing, the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest and the light brushing of your hair.

--

Aaron spent the weekend marking you, so he had no shortage of sensitive places to touch you, and on cases, all he ever wanted to do was touch you.

-

This case has been such a pain in the ass, staring at the crime board in front of you. The answer is right in front of you. Just see it, it has to be here, what aren't you seeing!?

Turns out it was in front of you, the necklace the third victim was found dead with was the same one that one of the suspects from the beginning of the case was wearing when you interviewed her. 

The arrest was thankfully cut and dry; the team and the local cops ambushed her house, and while they did have the unfortunate timing of her being in the kitchen, with lots of knives, you got lucky and she didn't protest. 

Much to the entire team’s disappointment, the plane wasn’t going ready for hours, which meant that you all still have half a day to kill before you can even think about going home. So here you were, back in the conference room, again. You cannot begin to articulate how much you hate this room. You would give anything to leave it, but the team decided to start the paperwork so here you are doing the (second) worst part of the job in the worst room you've ever been in. Now, are you being over-dramatic in your personification and feelings for a room: maybe, but you don't care, you're tired and you really just want to go home, so it is what it is. 

No, but seriously, you are so bored, the combination of this room and this case is just not it. Now, this is really terrible to say, which is why you would never say it out loud, and you definitely shouldn't be thinking it in the first place. People are dead, and that really bad- that being said this case was so boring. Again, sounds bad but you're just having such a hard time concentrating, room+paper+sleep deprivation+this specific case, concentration is just not coming to you. Ok, you studied psychology, you know why you are thinking about and caring about your little problems over actual death, the brain and whatnot, but that doesn’t help stop you from feeling bad. And on top of everything else previously stated: is this internal monologue really helping you focus? Absolutely not, but here we are.  

-

Although it’s less than two hours later, it feels like an eternity. Over-dramatic again, yes, but even from halfway across the country, you can still hear your bed calling your name. That being said you're pretty proud of yourself, you've actually gotten some work done, weird right, but give yourself some credit, you've done well in this time. That is until you feel Aaron subtly place his hand on your shoulder. You notice it but you don't give it much attention, focusing on your next sentence, and even when he pulls your collar and you feel his hand on your bare skin, feather-light touches skimming across your shoulder, circling the slightly faded bruises and marks to the mostly faded bite mark. You give in, relaxing into his touch, taking a minute to stop focusing on the world and simply drift into calmness. The simple touch giving you a small reminder of his love and affection, willing you to continue, to make it through until you get home. Aaron takes his hand tucking your hair behind your ear, his hand lightly brushing jawline. Just like that, the moment has passed, both of you getting back to work.

but now with the smallest amount of extra motivation.

Aaron’s hand stays on your shoulder. 

--

As if you all hadn't waited long enough to go home already something happened with something and everyone was sitting on the plane for an extra hour before take-off. You guess you just didn’t wake up with much patience this morning because you quickly got bored of every app on your phone, out of severe boredom you somehow ended up on photos - and there you are, the last photos in your camera roll happen to be the ones you took on Saturday before Aaron got home from dropping Jack off. You had decided that you wanted to do something a little more special so you put on this very nice new set, it was a black two-piece, the bottoms were covered in lace, high waisted and cheeky. The bra was almost completely lace and see-through, the only solid parts being the boning that also happened to accent your chest perfectly, needless to say, he loved it. But of course, you, staying on brand, got impatient, you were alone in the house and he wasn’t going to be back for 15 minutes. Naturally, you found yourself in front of a mirror admiring how you look, when you picked up your phone. That's what you find yourself staring at now, looking just as good as you remember when taking them. 

-

When you were finally up in the air you had decided to play chess with Reid, you usually didn’t win but it was fun anyway, you had also carefully chosen the single set of seats near the back, a seat that you could perfectly see Aaron from who was seated on the outside seat, facing you near the front. When Reid asked why you're sitting here to play as opposed to your usual seat you shrugged it off saying no particular reason, that was far from the truth but he definitely didn’t know that.

You were halfway into the game and Aaron had been working for a while, that's when you pressed send. You put your attention to the game, Aaron looked at his phone and looked up at you but you didn't look at him until he had opened the message, catching his reaction was everything you wanted it to be. 

You tried not to smile at how he was trying to control his reaction but your ego definitely went up. His body didn’t move, posture staying tense and rigid but his eyes met yours. His eyes were angry and powerful but his pupils were dilated. You put a sweet smile on your face, feigning innocents, but winking at him before turning your attention back to the chessboard, leaving him to his own accords, having to deal with himself until he can get home. 

You couldn't help but smile knowing precisely what you did to him and when you saw your phone you had to bite back the much bigger smirk threatening your lips. 

“Your place when we land. You better drive really fucking fast” 

If he could tease you, why couldn't you tease him?

---

Tag list:

@spencers-renaissance @averyhotchner @hotch-meeeeeuppppp

Tagging:

@girl-of-many-fandoms

Lmk to be added! 

[mggpleasedontlookhere]

pascal pt. 2

summary: spencer deals with a grueling case which reminds him of his son, and so he decides to finally come home 

word count: 1,307                                                                                     reading time aprox: 5 mins

masterlist

part 1

It has been a few days since Spencer had left, in which I had left him numerous voicemails about his whereabouts and mental status. Unfortunately I had received no intel about him, until Garcia had reassured me that he had been cooped up in Derek’s house.

It was around 2 pm in the afternoon and I had just put Pascal back in his cradle after feeding him. The sun beamed through the windows, emitting a gorgeous array of  blinding rays into the living room where I sat. A book lay on my lap, specifically ‘Persuasion’ by Jane Austen, while I sipped on a cup of tea.

Despite the serene atmosphere, harsh thoughts permeated my head space and completely betrayed the peaceful setting I was situated in. Throughout the days of the empty apartment, my mind had wondered about nothing but Spencer; even when I was cleaning, I would get caught up on a single task because I was overthinking.

Just like now, I had been staring at the same sentence for 10 minutes without a distinct clue of what it meant. My guilt had built its own narrative that took me out of my own reality. Truthfully, Pascal was the only thing that had kept me grounded in the past time. However, he also reminded me of the fight that ensued previously.

I was stressed- we were both stressed- at the time and the fight was nothing but agitation fueled nonsense. Me and Spencer had gone through so much worse compared to our argument, yet I felt like this conflict embedded itself in Spencer’s memory in a malicious manner.

On cue, the front door had opened tentatively, startling me in process.

There he was in flesh and bone: Spencer.

He didn’t look at me when he entered the living room, but he also wasn’t angry. His shoulders were slumped, his hair was a mess, and he wore a grimace on his face. These were usually the telltale signs of a ghastly event.

He had dropped his belongings beside him carelessly and made sluggish, yet earnest strides to the chair I sat in. Within a few moments, he stood in front of me with his head still hanging low. Although with an abrupt maneuver, he placed himself on his knees and laid the side of his head on my lap.

“I’m sorry” He mumbled, his voice sounding distorted and muffled.

Instinctively I laid an apprehensive hand on his head, running my fingers through the tangles of his hair. I was still disoriented from his sudden behavior, slightly baffled to what his intentions were. Although I had received clarity as I felt my lap dampen with Spencer’s tears.

“Hey Spencer, what happened?” I asked gently, lifting his chin up slightly to get a good look at him. His eyes were puffy and dark circles encompassed them, making them more apparent. His eyes were flushed in a rouge color, yet they were painted by Spencer’s melancholy tears. His lips were slightly pursed into a frown, a small habit he did whenever he was despondent.

“I’m so sorry”

He persisted in apologizing, repeating the sentence continuously as he ignored my inquiry. He muffled his head deeper into my lap, grabbing a hold of both of my wrists in the process.

“Spencer...tell me what happened” I stated, worry encompassing my entire consciousness as my heart wrenched at the state of him.

He had finally responded to my suggestion, looking up at me with his doleful eyes. “I had- there was this c-case we had and- I- just can’t” He broke down in a fit of tears, incoherent whimpers emitting from his supple lips.

“Spencer…” I pulled him up from where he knelt, before taking him into my embrace. “You can talk to me- and if you don’t want to that’s fine- but I’m here” I professed, feeling him clutch onto the sweater I was wearing.

He pulled away and wiped his nose with his sleeve, recollecting his composure to elaborate on the reasoning of his discomfort. “I- we had a case and the unsub- oh my god, you won’t believe it- he was strangling infants Y/N...INFANTS!” He explained, becoming exasperated as he came onto the topic of the activities of the criminal. I cringed as he spoke about the methodology of the abhorrent unsub, my heart wringing as I placed my shoes in the parents of the victim.

I continued to stroke his hair, knowing that was a comfort for him, as he continued with his disdainful spiel. He stumbled over a few of his words while venting, especially on the parts where he would mention the sadistic tendencies the unsub had. I noticed the volume of his tone increase whenever he’d get passionate about the subject, considering it was about the death of a child.

“And- Y/N- all I could think about was Pascal… what i- what if it was Pascal?” He lamented, gazing into my own eyes with regret. His attention flickered to the hallway where Pascal’s nursery was situated. “I can’t even b-be th-there for him, how am I-” He paused, getting choked up as his throat contracted in dread.

I was now stroking his cheek, wiping away any evidence of tears that were once there. I paid full attention to his words, observing how his facial features would contort in genuine agony. My feeling matched his own as if our emotions were intertwined or if our bodies transcended into the same being.

“I can’t even be there for him...how can I protect him from people like that” He enunciated every word with self reproach, shaking his head at his inability of being a father. Tears cascaded down his cheeks once again, hitting the sides of my thumbs as I comforted him.

“Spencer come here” I cooed, pulling him up to my level, so he was more accessible. I stood up with him, tightly holding onto his hand as I guided him into Pascal’s nursery. He followed me in apprehension despite his disquietude, baffled about my intentions. I dragged him to where Pascal laid quietly, the music box playing in the background.

A paternal smile etched on the corners of Spencer’s lips, contrasting the ferment mood he was in before. “That’s your son” I whispered, encouraging him to take a step closer to Pascal. “And I know that he loves you with all his heart despite him not understanding what that is yet” I reassured, standing beside him with my arms wrapped around his free arm.

He reached into the crib, stroking the forehead of our son lovingly. “He looks so peaceful” He stated with a smile. I nodded, watching his face morph into a more content expression. It was as if all the horrible things in the world had dissipated and all that were in the room were the sources of his bliss.

“The things you- the incredible things- you do are all for protecting the little family that we have and I’m so grateful for you in my life” I began, snuggling into his embrace as he lifted his arm up to invite me into a hug. “And you were right, I’m sorry for-”

“No Y/N- I’ve put my job over my family numerous times, so I should be the one apologizing” He sighed, pressing a longing kiss on the top of my head while we stared at the bundle of our creation in front of us.

I pressed my hand against his stomach, clutching onto him like he would disappear again. “Let’s not worry about that anymore” I suggested, closing my eyes in bliss. He nodded in agreement, leaning down to place a chaste kiss on my lips.

“I love you so much Y/N- and Pascal” He professed, pulling me into him.

“I love you too Spence- and Pascal”

-

taglist: @rexorangecouny​ @april-14-blog​ @haylaansmi @guessthatswhyiliveinhell​ @aperrywilliams​

A/N:

this was def. fun to write! i love writing about more taboo or uncommon prompts

anyway i hope you enjoyed this little story, see you soon <3

[iamnotoriginalphil]

Lying is the Most Fun (Loki x f!Reader) - Part 8

Synopsis: It’s time to face the music back home.

Words: 1615

Warnings: none

**GIF not mine**

You rested your head on Loki’s shoulder, your arms wrapped around his neck, swaying to the beat of the music. He was humming along, a surprise given you thought this was a pretty recent song in Earth’s history. You didn’t expect Loki to know any chart topping songs from the last year. His arms were tight around your waist as he led you.

It had been a beautiful wedding. Your sister had been radiant, Brad looking handsome in his suit, and Jake had managed to not be such a showboat for the ceremony. You had cried. You’d admit it. You weren’t ashamed.

You’d found Loki sitting with your mother. You’d never seen him look so handsome in a suit and tie. He’d smiled at you when your eyes had met as you walked down the aisle. You hadn’t seen him all morning, spending your time with the rest of the bridal party getting ready.

Now, with all the speeches done, and the first dance out of the way, you were refusing to move out of Loki’s arms. Tomorrow you would have to return to your daily lives, and you’d have to explain to your bosses about this change in your relationship. But tonight, you could forget there was anything other than this going on. Tonight, you were just a normal person at your sister’s wedding, enjoying the company of the man you were falling in love with.

“Loki?”

He stopped humming, looking down at you. You lent back to better look at him. He was smiling.

“Yes, my love?”

“Can we stay in this moment forever?”

“Whatever you wish.”

He twirled you under his arm then drew you back to his body. He lent down, capturing your lips with his. You sighed into the kiss, relaxing against him. He drew back but you kept your eyes closed, trying to follow him. He chuckled.

“Love,” he murmured.

You hummed, blinking your eyes open. He cupped your cheeks, running his thumb over your cheekbone. You wondered if you looked as happy as you felt.

“We are going to have to discuss what happens tomorrow,” he said.

“Can’t we just keep ignoring it? Just for a while longer?”

“One more dance.”

You rested your head on his shoulder, listening to the music. He wrapped his arms around you again, tight enough to have your body pressed against his. He began humming along to the violins again, the melody soft in your ear. You smiled.

________********^********________

You sat in the chair, your leg bobbing a mile a minute as you ran your fingers over your palm. Loki was sitting across from, looking bored. He was looking right into the camera in the corner as if he were on the Office. You knew his exterior was often a mask for the emotions going on beneath the surface, but you would have appreciated him looking even a little unsure about the coming meeting. You’d never seen him look so calm.

The door opened, the hinges squeaking. You looked up from your hunched over position, letting your hands fall. You found your boss staring down at you. You sighed, standing up, following as he held the door open for you.

You sunk into the comfortable chair, crossing one leg over the other. You pushed your hands under your thighs, hoping to keep them still for the coming interview.

“What the fuck am I meant to make of this?”

You squeezed your eyes shut, taking in a deep breath. You opened them again, your superior officer’s face tight with what you assumed was anger. You could understand why he felt that way. You would if you were in that position.

“Seriously (Y/N), what the fuck is this?”

“It’s all there,” you said, “I tried to make it as clear as possible,”

“Am I supposed to believe that you have fallen in love with a homicidal demigod from Asgard?” he demanded.

“I don’t think he’s homicidal,” you said, “just bored, and… sad.”

“You’re off this assignment,” he said, leaning over the desk towards you.

“I know.”

“And don’t think you’ll be able to see him.”

“I assumed as much.”

“Not until we can ascertain whether he has used his magic on you.”

“If he had letting me file a report was a stupid mistake on his part. If he was hoping that I’d let him go then this was a sure fire way of making that never happen.”

“Loki is many things but not stupid.”

“Exactly.”

He considered you before sighing and dropping into his chair. You watched him run his fingers through his hair. You waited, knowing he needed time to process.

“How did this happen?” he asked.

“I asked you not to send him with me,” you said, “but when you’re pretending sometimes it becomes too real.”

“You can’t seriously be blaming me for this.”

“No, I’m just explaining the catalyst,” you replied, “but there are days when he is the only person I see. And you know when you spend so much time with another person sometimes these things happen. This can’t be the first time you’ve seen this.”

“Sure, but usually between recruits working undercover or in a team. Not whatever this is.”

“I can’t help it, Sir. I understand if you never want me to see him again.”

He buried his head in his hands. You lent back, knowing you might be fired for this. People had been fired for less.

“You are so fucking lucky.”

You opened your mouth to say something, but nothing came out. He looked up at you, shaking his head as if you had managed to slip out of a very tight spot through sheer dumb luck.

“Aren’t you going to ask why?”

“Why Sir?”

“Because two days ago I was sent an order to release Loki,” he said, “I suppose his good behaviour convinced one of the higher ups to let him out. A car is coming to pick him up in an hour. He’s being sent to the Avengers.”

“Of course he is.”

“And unless you’re a smartass I’m going to be sending you to the base there.”

“Why?

“Because you’re our best agent to handle him should something go wrong.”

“So I’m not in trouble?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” he said, giving you a small smile, “you’re going to be working as Loki’s handler in the Avenger’s Institute. I wouldn’t say that’s getting away scot free.”

You laughed, relief flooding your body. You got up from your chair, shooting him a smile. He gave you an answering smile.

“Go put his mind at ease.”

“Thank you, Sir. Thank you.”

You pulled the door open. Loki inclined his head towards you, but otherwise showed no sign he’d noticed you. You grabbed his hand pulling him to his feet. He quirked an eyebrow at you but otherwise said nothing.

“Come on, you have some packing to do.”

“Some packing?”

“You’re getting out of here. And so am I,” you said, “you’re being let go.”

“I’m what?”

“The higher ups are giving you back your freedom. You must have been real nice at some point.”

“I’m being released?”

“You’re being released.”

He picked you up, swinging you around. Your shriek morphed into a laugh as he hugged you tight. He lowered you back to the floor, kissing you deeply. Your laughter was muffled but you couldn’t stop.

“I do not wish to take anything. Let us leave now,” he said when he’d released you.

“A car is going to be sent for you. It’s gonna take us to the Avenger’s Institute.”

“What?” He pushed you back from him.

“What?”

“I’m being sent to those do gooders?”

“If it’s any consolation, your brother isn’t there,” you said, “we believe he’s somewhere on the coast of Australia.”

“They’re trading one cage for another,” he spat.

“But I’ll be in it with you,” you said, “and you won’t be forced into anything.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, love.”

“I’ll always be with you.”

He pressed his lips together to keep from saying anything else. You sighed, pushing your fingers into your hair.

“I’m guessing this is the kindest thing he can do after find out about our relationship,” you said, “I call it a win.”

“You’re not being forced to live with a group of people that would rather see you dead.”

“They might, given our relationship,” you pointed out.

“I will not let them try,” he hissed.

“And neither will I.”

His eyes bored into you. You stared up at him, crossing your arms over your chest. You raised your chin, waiting for him to pass judgement on you.

“The way I see it, this is the only way for us to be together. If you don’t want that then you can refuse,” you said.

“Of course I want you,” he said.

“Then you’ll do this,” you said, “for me.”

He cupped your cheek, pulling you forward a step. You looked up into his blue eyes, wanting for his answer, needing him to say it out loud.

“I will do it, but only as you are the one asking it of me,” he said.

“Good.”

You pulled him down for a quick kiss, then pushed him back a step. He looked down at you, pouting.

“You might not want any of your stuff but I do.”

You turned on your heels, walking away from him. You let him wrap his arm around your waist, ignoring the looks of other agents walking by. He pressed his lips to your temple and you smiled to yourself.

It might not be in the way you thought, but it looked like you were getting your happy ending after all.

Tags: @sheridans-dynamos​​​​​​ @tumultuous-love​​​​​​ @juniperbab​​​​​​ @internetgremlin​​​​​​ @true-queen-of-mischief​​​​​​ @sev7en​​​​​​ @fleurs-en-ruines​​​​​​ @lokilover2000-blog​​​​​​ @hakuoyuki​​​​​​ @el-eldritch​​​​​​ @foreverbeingthunderbuddy​​​​​​ @fuckthatfeeling​​​​​​ @libellule2001​​​​​​ @thefallenbibliophilequote​​​​​​ @smollest-soybean​​​​​​ @jessiejunebug​​​​​​ @cxstl-e​​​​​​ @paulsonix​​​​​​ @sadwaywardkid​​​​​​ @alcoholic-muffin​​​​​​ @eveybitch @subtlemalice​​​​​​

[tinywordsblog]

Tiny Words is a creative nonfiction podcast, featuring my own writing and stories. In episode 1, I talk about my experiences with disordered eating, body image, and recovery. 

And, more than anything, this is an ode to little Amber, and the little legs that have carried her this far. (It’s also an ode to the White Rabbit Cafe’s vegan chocolate chip cookies).

Trigger Warning: This podcast episode discusses topics of disordered eating, weight, health, calories, and food. If these things are triggering to you, I would not recommend listening to this episode, but I appreciate you nonetheless. 

Transcript: 

The goal of the ‘Tiny Words’ blog has always been to highlight the small truths of life, those that make up our existence and have a larger impact than it might seem on the surface. For this podcast series, I’ll be featuring my own writing as an audio presentation. I’ll be telling my own stories (and perhaps those of others) through a format that is new to me as a creator. Throughout the past few months, I’ve reopened the world of creativity and writing--a realm that has long been boarded up and evacuated. I wanted to reopen that realm in this podcast episode by writing a story that many months of therapy has shown me is one of my own truths. With that said, I present “Just a Little Husky” to you. I hope you find something of myself in this. 

DISCLAIMER: I want to preface this story with a trigger warning. This episode discusses topics of disordered eating, weight, health, calories, and food. If these things are triggering to you, this episode might not be best for you. 

[introduction music fades into the story]

I was in elementary school when I discovered what a body was. I knew that we all had stomachs and arms and legs and chins. I was aware of those things only as they related to being a child. My legs carried me where I needed to go. My arms were used for holding and hugging and gesturing. My stomach was something to be fed and nurtured. But I never knew what those things were supposed to look like. Or that those things were “supposed” to look like anything at all. At that same age, my older sister’s friend--only 2 short years older than myself--lost a significant amount of weight. Our families rallied around her, remarked on her “dedication” and the clockwork-like Wii Fit exercises she was doing. For the first time in my life, thinness was celebrated. 

I became aware of the looks that those closest to me had given plus-size women before I knew what a plus size woman was. The side-eyed glances to a woman in a form-fitting shirt. Scoffs cast on young girls confidently wearing shorts when “they really shouldn’t be wearing shorts that short. Not with that body.” 

When my sister’s friend lost weight, and more importantly when she was celebrated for her weight loss, my innocence began to crack and shatter. A mirror had been turned on myself, and confidence became something you needed to shrink yourself down into. 

My sophomore year of high school, a pediatrician--one who considered himself “traditional” to be exact--told my mother and I that, “it wasn’t a problem yet. She’s not overweight. Just a little husky.” 

Just a little husky. Just a little husky. Just a little husky. 

Not a problem yet, but becoming one. Just a little husky.

He diagnosed me with the feelings of self-hatred that had cast their shadow on my reflection. “Just a little husky” and suddenly I became no more than a number. 

It wasn’t until a year ago, when my therapist furrowed her brows and asked, “He said what?” that I realized my pediatrician’s words were the wrong thing--not my body. Now, I see his comment as a lapse in his judgment. Back then, though, it was a death sentence.

I was raised on diet culture and calorie counting apps and skinny teas and fat-free versions of your favorite snack foods. That day at the doctor’s office, I was prescribed a monster thinly-veiling itself as healthy living. It told me that to be healthy was to avoid. To shrink. To achieve the smallest possible number. 

And, really, the numbers were all I had. Scale in the morning, before breakfast to be the smallest possible weight. “Bare minimum” best describes it. I ate cereal in the morning, exactly one cup-sized measuring cup full of Special-K with no milk. I would eat a  sandwich for lunch, on bread that was strictly labeled “light,” spread with one exact tablespoon of peanut butter-- or perhaps two, on a cheat day. I ate snacks, but never more than 90-calories each. For dinner I would eat with my family, but I “portion controlled” and never took a second serving. I’d eat side salads as a main meal on a bad day, and dessert was a rarity. My pantry was full of green block text screaming “light,” “low-fat,” “diet soda,” “shrink yourself until there’s nothing left”, and wither away faster with this brand of pretzels for a lower rate than the competitor!

The patriarchy packaged up an eating disorder into a glittering pink parcel and sold it to me on a silver scale. Told me I was too fat to feel worthy of a crop top. I was commercialized into a fat kid with a complex about the clothes I wore and the way I sat, constantly aware of  the way my face morphed into a smile and how my body moved around me when I danced. I sewed my worth into the waistband of my pants. I practiced my smile and adjusted my posture. I wore only the size that I wanted to be, and if a store’s clothes ran smaller--forcing me into the next size up--I cried my way to another. I was “just a little husky,” and the diet was not enough to erase those words from the corners of my mind. 

I once heard a slam poem by Blythe Baird called ‘When the Fat Girl Gets Skinny’ that says, “If you develop an eating disorder when you are already thin to begin with, you go to the hospital. If you develop an eating disorder when you are not thin to begin with, you are a success story.” When I first heard Baird’s poem, I tried to pretend that I wasn’t listening to my own existence sung back to me from someone else’s mouth. But it was my own song. When you go from being fat to being skinny through means of an eating disorder, your mental illness becomes a physical celebration. I was fifteen years old being asked what my “secret” was by fully-grown aunts and uncles. I was told “You look great”, a compliment that I’ve learned translates to “You look smaller.” They applauded me even when I asked for no Easter candy, when I asked permission to eat my birthday cake “and even the ice cream, too?” 

To this day, I still ask for permission when eating a fear food, but now I’m able to answer my own question. When I was restricting myself, I thought of progress only in quantitative terms. I was a series of numbers, gradually getting smaller, hoping to never get bigger. Now, I can see my progress cast around my person like light falls through a window. The light does not pick and choose certain objects to illuminate just like my disordered eating did not pick and choose certain aspects to affect while leaving others untouched. When progress came, it could be seen shimmering on every surface. I see my progress in the way I slouch in chairs. In how I clothe myself in patterns that I love rather than vertical stripes because, to quote a dying fashion industry, “horizontal stripes make you look bigger.” In how I laugh without covering my mouth. In how I’m trying to learn to love my smile no matter how it stretches my face. In how I speak without fear of my voice “sounding fat,” though I’m still not sure how fifteen-year-old Amber thought a voice could sound that way. 

In how, even on my bad body days, I buy myself White Rabbit Cafe-sized vegan chocolate chip cookies. In how I sweeten my tea and spice my food. In how I’ve forgotten the number of calories in a single grape and couldn’t tell you the amount of carbs in a bowl of pasta. In how I love my stretch marks as if they were the perfect tattoos. 

My body certainly isn’t a temple, but I’m learning day-by-day to turn it into a warm bed on a rainy day. It’s becoming a place to take comfort, a thing to clothe in loving embraces and swaths of my favorite colors. Or, rather than making it a metaphor, maybe my body is just my body. My means of navigating the world. The vessel used to love and be loved. The thing I carry around with me always. 

Maybe I am “just a little bit husky,” and that’s a thing to be celebrated, too.

[goodmythicalshipping]

Three Wishes (1/4) - “Legend of the Lamp”

WOO, 500 FOLLOWERS! WE MADE IT, KIDS! 🎉

Thank you so much to all of you wonderful Mythical Beasts who follow this blog. When I first started it up a year ago, I never thought I would get this far with it and ever since, I have just continuously felt more and more accepted by this community. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for being your mythical best. ❤️

In celebration, I’m proud to let you know that I’ve written a new fanfiction! Yay! And it’s Aladdin-themed! I started writing this fic a couple of months ago after they posted this video to Instagram, and it’s now finally reaching completion! You can read the first chapter, “Legend of the Lamp,” below or up on my AO3 page.

Hope you enjoy, and thanks again for 500 follows! 😊 - Sage.

Summary: In Pre-Islamic Arabia, a poor street rat, Rhett, struggles to survive in an unforgiving and discriminatory world... that is, until he comes across a rather mythical-looking lamp. Having concealed a deep secret his whole life, his entire world is soon changed forever by a certain bespectacled genie.

Chapter Two >>

The sweltering sun beamed down harshly on the sands of Agrabah. Villagers from near and far gathered to trade and haggle goods, which have long been recognized as some of the best in the land. The rays of heat scorch the back of Rhett’s exposed neck, making the freckles smattered across it even more apparent. He gazes upon the civilians beneath him from atop a dilapidated, stone fortress in the center of the busy bazaar, searching for his next victim in the crowd. After a few moments more, he finally spotted his target: an elderly man selling fresh loaves of bread. Hungry, Rhett licked his dry lips, preparing himself for an ambush. Carefully lowering himself off the rooftop to reach the canopy beneath him, he hears a high-pitched whimper above him. Looking up, his canine companion stares at him doe-eyed.

“Hey, Barbara,” Rhett coos, reaching up to grab her. “How about we getcha some food, huh?”

The tall man secured the pup in a large pocket inside of his vest, and continued his descent. Leaping unnoticed from awning to awning like a phantom, he finally reaches his destination and gingerly crouches on top of the vendor’s booth, hovering over him.

“Ok, Barbara,” Rhett whispers, scooping her out from his vest. “Time to do yer thing!”

Laying down on top of the tent, Rhett gently lowers Barbara upside-down to silently meet the back of the old vendor’s turban, remaining unseen.

“Fresh bread!” the vendor calls out to bazaar patrons, bread loaf in hand. “Fresh bread for sale! Baked with the finest grains in the Arabian Peninsula! Fresh bread!”

Finding his opening, Rhett suddenly swings the pooch forward, who bites into the loaf of bread in the old man’s hand, releasing it from his grasp.

“Hey!” the vendor calls out, looking above him to find the culprit.

Rhett quickly pulls her up and into his arms, springing up from his horizontal position and peering over the edge of the tent to face the old man beneath him.

“Thanks for the free meal!” Rhett taunts him, as he swiftly leaps onto the awning adjacent to him.

“Hey, stop! Thief! Help! Someone stop that man, he’s a thief!” the vendor cries out, attracting the attention of a group of guards armed with large swords. Instantly detecting Rhett in the sea of people, they charge after him, pushing shoppers out of the way to reach him. Rhett looks back, catching sight of the herd of guards on his tail.

“Uh-oh,” Rhett mutters, increasing his pace.

“Stop, thief!” roars one of the guards. “I'll have those hands as a trophy, street rat!”

Leaping down from the last awning in his path and rounding a corner to hide, food in one hand and Barbara in the other, Rhett peers out to look behind him.

“All this for a dang loaf of bread?” he jokes, chuckling to himself. He then runs up the stairs of another abandoned building, jumping out of an open window and landing on two ropes strung between buildings with drying clothes on them. He skied down them, collecting bits and pieces of clothing on him as he goes. Finally, he nears the end of the rope when a woman reaches out and slams the shutters closed. Barbara jumps just in time to land safely on the roofing next to it, but Rhett slams into the shutters and falls to the street, his fall being broken by numerous awnings and the pile of clothes around him. He pulls off the top layer of clothes, and is about to enjoy his bread when the guards catch him at the end of the alley.

“There he is!” exclaims one guard, rallying others behind him.

“You’re not getting away that easy!” another yells at him, inching closer as Rhett, who takes one of the sheets in the pile and wraps it around him as a disguise. He rushes over to a group of women near him, who giggle at him as he fans himself dramatically.

“Mornin’, ladies,” he says in his best feminine voice.

“Getting into trouble a little early today, aren't we Rhett?” one of the women teases.

“Nah,” Rhett replied coolly. “Y’know yer only in trouble if ya get cau-“

He is cut off by one of the guards yanking him back by his shoulder, turning him to face him.

“I’m in trouble,” Rhett finishes.

“Now we finish this,” the guard sneers, pulling out his blade. Just in time, Barbara jumps from the roof and pounces onto the guard’s head, covering his eyes with his own turban.

“Nice one, Barbara!” Rhett cheers.

With the other guards close behind, Rhett grabs the dog and runs off in the other direction as a long chase ensues. The pair manages to lose them, making a quick turn and sending the guards hurdling into a large haystack, leaving them time to escape. They take off into the nearest alleyway, and plop down onto a couple of wooden crates to enjoy their stolen goods.

“And now, my ‘lil partner in crime, we feast!” Rhett boasts, breaking the bread loaf in half. Barbara eats her half happily just as Rhett notices two young, poor children rummaging through the garbage for their own meal. The girl notices them, hiding herself behind the bin. Steadily, Rhett takes his piece of bread and approaches the children who cower at the tall man squatting down to meet them.

“Hey, it’s okay,” he reassures them, handing them the piece of bread. “Go ahead, you take it.”

The children graciously take the bread. In the distance, Rhett hears music and people cheering. The children follow him to find the source of the noise, soon locating a crowd of onlookers. Easily peering over them due to his tall stature, he sees a prince riding through the streets on his noble steed. Just as he tries to move closer for a better look, the two children race out into the street in front of the startled horse before Rhett can stop them.

“Move, you dirty brats!” he shouts at them, attempting to attack them with his whip before Rhett sprints out and catches it with his arm.

“Whoa, hey!” Rhett interrupts. “Man, if I was as rich as you, I might afford some manners!”

“Ha!” the prince scoffs, kicking him into a puddle of mud. “That’ll show you some manners!”

As the prince treads forward, Rhett calls back out at him from the ground.

“Hey, Barbara, lookit that! S’rare to see a horse with two asses, don’tcha think?”

As the crowd howled, the prince stops in his tracks and turns his head back at him, seething.

“Listen here, street rat. You are a nobody. You were born a street rat, and you will die a street rat. The only ones who will miss you are the rodents left gnawing on your bones.”

As the prince passes through the gates to the palace, Rhett charges at him, only to be cut off by the doors slamming in his face.

“I’m not nobody!” Rhett yells and pounds at the doors before admitting defeat, slumping and turning to meet the pup at his feet. “C’mon, Barbara. Let’s go home,” he sighs.

Rhett picks her up, and dolefully hikes back to their shared abode.

---------- Exhausted, Rhett collapses face first into his cot after tucking in Barbara for the night. The only light in the room came from a crescent moon in the distance. Letting out a low groan, he mulls over the day’s events in his head. How dare that prince call him a “nobody”? As if he himself weren’t the nobody, putting on a triumphant spectacle to impress a bunch of royals who probably could care less if he dropped dead at their feet!

Either way, he didn’t appreciate being cut into so deeply. The worst part about it was… the prince was right. His wardrobe was nothing but mere rags, and he survived by taking shelter in the slums of Agrabah and stealing food from innocent, hardworking market vendors, with no real home to return to. Maybe he really was a nobody… Defeated, Rhett rolled over on the cot in preparation for sleep when he felt something sharp underneath his mattress.

“Ouch!” he whispered sharply, as to not wake Barbara. “What the heck is that?”

Searching under the mattress, he pulls out what appears to be a… lamp? How did a lamp make its way under his mattress? And how had he never noticed it there before? Examining the lamp, Rhett noticed its golden exterior was coated in dirt, naturally from being hidden under his bed all this time. He licked his thumb, and began wiping the lamp’s outer shell to clean it off.

Once it was clean, he took a closer look at its etched details. It truly was a sight to see, with Rhett admiring its intricacy. He was suddenly shaken out of his admiration by the lamp vibrating in his hands, causing him to drop it onto the wooden floor. He let out a yelp as he scooted backwards, waking Barbara up in the process who began barking loudly.

“Shhh, no! Barbara, shhh,” Rhett hushed her, afraid someone would find them. As the lamp continued to shake, azure smoke began spilling out of its long spout, filling the air and causing Rhett to cough violently. More smoke escaped the golden vessel, beginning to take form as a long, ominous yawn bellowed from it. Rhett’s watery eyes widened with fear as he watched the figure morph into a half-human shape, with Barbara continuing to growl. At last, the figure made a loud snapping sound, sending steam in every direction of the small room.

As Rhett shielded his eyes, the smoke cleared out through the open window and the figure revealed itself, still yawning loudly. Rhett moved his hands, staring up at the strange being. In front of him levitated a shirtless, blue man with perfectly coiffed hair and… are those glasses? His bottom half remained a long tail of smoke, as he began to speak.

“Well, s’about time!” the figure exclaimed, reaching his arms up to stretch. “Man, 10,000 years in that tiny ‘lil lamp’ll really give ya a crick in the neck!” He reaches down toward Rhett, effortlessly lifting him up by his vest and standing him up on his feet.

“Anyway,” the figure continued, cracking his back. “Nice to finally be outta there! Say, what’s yer name, fella?”

“Uh,” Rhett stuttered in disbelief. “R-Rhett?”

Was this really happening or was he having a fever dream? He must’ve hit his head harder than he thought during that fall earlier...

“Rhett!” the figure repeats excitedly, rainbowing his hands in the air to spell out his name, which lit up in sparkling letters.

“Whoa! How’d ya do that?!” Rhett questioned, astonished.

“It’s my party trick,” the figure responded, wiggling his eyebrows and waving the letters away. “Boy, yer a lot taller than my last master! Either that or I really gotta invest in some stilts.”

Rhett just continued to stare at him, dumbfounded. The figure rolled his eyes at this.

“Yer still not gettin’ it, are ya big guy?” the figure asked bluntly. Rhett shook his head, still bugged-eyed.

“You. Are. My. Master!” the figure explained, punching each word as he poked Rhett in the chest. “And you rubbed my lamp. So lemme ask ya: what d’ya reckon that makes me?”

“A… genie?” Rhett answered shyly.

“Ding ding ding, we got a winner, folks!” the figure cheered, as a bell rang and small fireworks went off behind him. “Tell ‘em what he’s won!” He suddenly lowers his vocal register to imitate that of a TV announcer, using a beam of moonlight coming from the window as his spotlight for drama.

“Well, O’ Powerful One, today our contestant Rhett has won THREE MAGICAL WISHES! These wishes can be used to fulfill any of your wildest desires at any given time! Restrictions and rules may apply, see genie for details,” the genie narrates, then returning to his regular tone. “Thanks for that! What an amazing prize, right?”

“So, three wishes? Anything I want?” Rhett queried excitedly.

“Slow yer roll, compadre. Not exactly anything,” the genie pointed out. “Didn’t ya hear the announcer? There are rules in play to ensure that ya don’t mess this up. I only get to play fairy godparent once every so often, y’know!”

“Such as?” Rhett frowned.

“Rule numero uno: I can’t kill anyone,” the genie lists, his head suddenly falling off and onto the floor to demonstrate, making Rhett scream. “Oh, calm down already, s’just a gag! Honestly, it’s like you’ve never met a spirit before!”

“Sorry,” Rhett apologized. “We don’t usually get a lot of mythical beasts like yourself around here.”

“I find ‘beast’ rather harrowing, but I’ll take ‘mythical’,” he continues, placing his head back on. “Now, rule numero dos: I can’t make anyone fall in love with you. Remember: I’m a genie, not Cupid. If yer looking for him, you’ll have to sail across the Meditteranean. And lastly, rule numero tres: I can’t bring anyone back from the dead. A) That’s ribald and B) It’s unethical. I’ll emphasize again: genie, not reanimator.” The genie then floated directly toward Rhett’s face, noses almost touching.

“Any questions? No? Great! So what’ll it be, gentle giant Rhett?” the genie requested, unmoving.

“Alright, genie. I’ll take y’up on yer offer,” Rhett answered finally, blushing slightly as his proximity. Rhett had to admit: for someone who wasn’t human, the genie was quite alluring. “But just one question first: d’ya have a name? I would like to believe that one of yer previous masters gave ya one, unless I’m mistaken.”

“Ah, yes, I’ve had a plethora of different monikers over the past few millennia,” he replied. “Let’s see: Genie, Gene, Genie-us… m’also quite partial to titles such as ‘O’ Powerful One,’ if that wasn’t apparent. But if we’re speakin’ in terms of chronology, my last master decided to call me ‘Link.’”

“Well then,” Rhett mused. “‘Link’ it is. Link, this is my accomplice, Barbara.”

“And what a precious accomplice she is!” Link cooed, petting her, who did not respond to Link’s touch. “I’ll have y’know I’m great with animals.”

“That’s probably because she can’t feel ya,” Rhett noted, waving his own arm right through Link’s. “You’re pretty transparent, physically speakin’.”

“Har har,” Link said flatly. “My question still stands. I’m waiting.”

Rhett stood there thinking for a moment, contemplating what to wish for first. He could just take the easy way out, which would be wishing to get out of the slums and live a life of luxury in the city. However, he remembered his reasons for ending up in the slums in the first place, which brought him much remorse. This feeling was only intensified by the rude prince’s comments earlier that day, a glaring reminder of how useless he really was. He could wish to get rid of the prince, but Link just told him he can’t kill anyone and Rhett was not that cynical.

He had come here to escape and become somebody great, and ended up as a nobody anyway. Thus, to prove the awful prince and all the others who looked down upon him wrong, it was then he vowed to wish for true greatness. But where to start? He then thought, if he can’t beat them…

“Join them,” Rhett mumbled out loud.

“Join who?” Link chimed, snapping Rhett out of his daze. “Yer dog in not being able to feel? An odd request, I’ll admit, but if that’s what ya wan-”

“No!” Rhett interrupted. “I think I need to sleep on this.”

“Understood. I mean, I did just pop out of a gilded teapot after an extended period of eternal darkness to give you, a random stranger, three wishes that could potentially bear life-changing consequences,” Link deliberated. “Very well, then I shall wait for ya to awaken tomorrow morning, master.”

Rhett nodded, returning to his cot as Barbara snuggled up to him. He kept his eyes on Link, who just… stood there watching him.

“Are you just gonna watch me all night?” he asked the genie.

“Well, here’s the thing: genies don’t actually sleep, because we can’t,” Link revealed. “Even if we could, I just spent the last decamillenium trapped inside of what is essentially a fancy gravy boat, so I’m not really looking to rest. Don’t mind me! I’ll keep m’self busy and make sure nothing bad happens to ya.”

Bewildered, Rhett gave him another slight nod before resting his head back on the cot and attempting to drift off to sleep.

“G’night, Link,” he whispers, eyes already shut.

“G’night, master.”

(To be continued)

[fanaste]

New Years? I’ll Parse.

December 31st 2014 – 11:57pm (three minutes to midnight)

They were fighting.  He got that.  They’d had a fight, he got that too.  But Jesus fucking Christ they’d had lots of fights before.  He was familiar with the silent treatment okay? He was.  But it’d been weeks.  Weeks that had morphed into months and now he’s sitting here staring at his God damn phone at a number he hasn’t seen flash up on his screen since last December.

And maybe because of that someone could say they had officially parted on bad terms but if you’d asked Kent, if you ask him now even he’d tell you they weren’t the worst terms they’d ever parted on.  At least Jack was still breathing when Kent left him.

Someone pushes the door to the smoking area open and Kent hears the tantalising notes of the Beyonce song that always makes him think of fucking.  It’s about drinking and fucking and she’s on the beach writhing around and if Kent were into women he’d be into that.  As it happens he’s not into women.  He’s into emotionally unavailable French Canadians with an ego the size of his home country.

“You can’t…you don’t come to my fucking school unannounced-“

“Because you shut me out!”

“And corner me in my room.”

“I’m trying to help-“

“And expect me to do whatever you want-“

He was just trying to help.  Kent promised Jack he’d come back for him.  Maybe not out loud, not with words Jack could take and keep inside him for cold nights when Jack thought he’d left all possibility of Hockey behind in a sick puddle on the bathroom floor.  Jack had to know he hadn’t stayed away because he wanted to.  His parents must have told them he’d tried to visit but that Alicia had told him not to come.

“Don’t come Kent.  He need to rest.  He needs to know there’s life outside of Hockey.”

And like an idiot.  Like a newly drafted NHL player idiot he listened.

But he never forgot.  How could he?

Jack was the love of his life.

In the background Beyonce sings about being in love.  Kent’s in love all right and he’s shit faced.  And this song reminds him of frat house hallways and hands groping desperately at a body he hadn’t touched in too long but that felt familiar as his own.

“Fuck Jack! What do you want me to say? That I miss you? I miss you, ok? I miss you.”

He was just trying to fucking help! But Jack was too stubborn, to determined to try and fail on his own and face his father’s rejection like some martyr.  And Kent knew he’d hate it, he’d hate it and he’d love it because deep down he wanted it because he felt like he deserved it.

“You always say that.”

In the spaces between his hammering heart beats Kent felt the edges of his longing turn to anger.  Why was Jack being like this? Why was he throwing Kent’s help away? Why was he trying to throw Kent away? And on the wave of those questions came more questions like, why hadn’t Jack tried to call? Kent found his fucking body didn’t he remember that? Hadn’t anyone told him? Didn’t he care?!

“You know what Zimmermann? You think you’re too fucked up to care about? That you’re not good enough? Everyone already knows what you are but it’s people like me who still car!”

“Shut up.”

Jack didn’t want his help then fucking fine.

“You’re scared everyone else is going to find out you’re worthless right? Oh don’t worry! Just give it a few seasons Jack trust me!”

“G-get out of my room.”

Heaving in the silence Kent swallowed around the jagged parts of his heart and in the hardest voice he could muster said,

“Fine.  Shut me out.  Again.”

Truthfully Kent expected to ride out the next few days of the silent treatment, give Jack a chance to calm down, to realise that his pride wasn’t going to get him anywhere fast.  Magnanimously Kent gave him a week to sort his shit out before texting,

‘I’m sorry about last weekend.  Please consider my offer’.

But all he got was more silence.  Silence in January, silence in February and come draft day there was more of the same except this silence was worse because it was screamed all over the sports networks and blogs.

Zimmermann signs with Providence Falconers

Kent skated so hard that day he puked.

Now Kent stands in the smoking area of a club on the strip with too much coke in the air and too much liquor in his body and he’s staring down at his phone and cursing Jack Zimmermann’s name.  Sagging against the dirty brick wall he takes a deep breath and with every cell in his body and all the power in his mind he makes a wish.  He makes several wishes, actually.

I wish I was happy.

I wish I was stronger.

I wish I didn’t know how to love.

I wish I’d never fallen in love with Jack Zimmermann.

I wish I’d never met Jack Zimmermann.

Something in him shifts anxiously after that last one and his eyes snap open.   No.  He doesn’t wish that.  He doesn’t.  He can’t because…because he doesn’t know who he is if a part of him doesn’t love a man he can’t have.

He pulls up Jack’s number again.  Sooner or later he’ll see Jack.  They’ll face off on the ice and even though they’ll be playing against one another he’ll remember what it was like to play in the Q.  He’ll remember that when they played together nothing could beat them.  When they hit the ice Kent will look at Jack and Jack will smile and he will know that whatever happened last year doesn’t matter.

Maybe Jack will love him again.

He brings the phone to his ear and listen to the ring.

“You’ve reached the T-Mobile voicemail service for ‘Jack Zimmermann’,” Kent’s heart clenches at the sound of his voice.  “This person is unavailable to take your call.  Please leave a message after the tone.”

Kent hangs up.

In the background the music stops and a voice, muffled by the thick walls of the exterior, announces.  “It’s almost midnight! Countdown with me!”

Ten

Kent brings the phone to his ear again.

Nine

It rings.

Eight

Seven

“You’ve reached the t-mobile voicemail service for ‘Jack Zimmermann’,”

Six

“this person is unavailable to take your call,”

Five

“Please leave a message after the tone.”

Four

Three

Two

One

“Hey it’s- it’s me.  Happy New Year.”

December 31st 2015 – 10:55pm

Kent Zips up his pants, fishes his cell out and leans against the stall door.  The music is muted in the bathroom but he can’t tell if it’s because it’s any quieter in here or if it’s just the ringing in his ears.  Occasionally the hiss of urine hitting porcelain reminds him where he is but soon his focus on the little glowing screen drowns even that out.  The little glowing screen all lit up with the sky blues of twitter.

That Bittle kid is tweeting up a storm.  He’s back in Samwell for the new year and there’s pictures of him leaning heavily into bodies twice as tall and twice as wide as himself.  Not that it’s hard when then guy’s the size of a thimble.

@omgcheckplease @clarissaexplainsitall showin’ bros how it’s done.

Kent’s signal is shitty in here and it takes his phone an agonisingly long time to pull up the picture of Lardo grinning as Holsom and Ranster(???) bow before her.  She has a heeled foot on Holsom’s shoulder and her shutter shades, that can hide a look of determination so scary Kent knew he was done for the moment he accepted the pong ball, do nothing to obscure the triumph she exudes.

@omgcheckplease reigning 2016 champion @clarissaexplainsitall

Kent closes the photo and scrolls up and down looking for a tweet, any tweet, that’ll clue him in to what’s going on in Samwell…or more importantly what’s going on with a certain dark haired, blue eyed Canadian.

Kent’s not a fan of Eric’s, not in the least, but he’s become an avid checker of his feed ever since a picture of Jack turned up over the fourth of July weekend.  A picture of him looking comfortable in a kitchen straight out of a Southern Homes Style magazine.

They haven’t spoken since the game.  They didn’t even speak at the game just exchanged passive aggressive jibes through reporters who resurrected all their old clips from the Q helping Kent to relieve the now excruciating memories of good times playing with a guy Kent thought to call his soul mate.

At the end of the game Kent tried to get hold of Jack but he was long gone.  At least Kent got the game winning goal.  If there was ever a better fuck you to someone it was a game loss for Jack.

Finally when his finger hurts from swiping and his eyes g smudgy Kent locks his phone and slips it back in his pocket.

A second later a smack on the door makes him jump so hard he nearly topples into the toilet.

“Hey open the fuck up!” A familiar voice bellows.

“We know you’re in there Parson! There’s a shot here with your name on it!”

Kent takes a deep breath and tries to pull himself together.  When he opens the door he covers any sign of heartache with a glower at two of his team mates.  “What the fuck were you doing in there?” Cray peers curiously past him.

“Making sure they’ve got the right number for your mom on the wall.” Kent retorts summoning the cocky half smile he wears in all he posters and cards he scrawls his signature over after games.  All it takes is this quirk and Kent’s untouchable again.  The boys follow him across to the sink.  There’s no soap and all the taps do is dribble water when he turns them.  He can’t believe they charge fifty bucks for tickets to this event and can’t even spring for decent plumbing.  If he was a better team captain he’d have sanitiser with him.

Jeff guffaws and Cray flips him off.  “Quit hiding like a bitch in here and come join the party.  The company got hotter.”

“How,” Kent scoffs, “I was in here.”

Cray gives him a sarcastic little smile, “You think you’re the hottest member of this team huh?”

Jeff ushers them both out of the men’s room.

“I am the hottest member!” Kent shouts over yet another terrible remix of a song he likes.

Cray mimes that he can’t hear him.

Kent rolls his eyes and pushes through the sweaty corridor of bodies that strain their necks to see the three figures heading up to the coveted VIP area.  Kent wipes sweat from his brow that he’s not convinced is his with a grimace.  He doesn’t want to be here and he’s not drunk enough yet to forget that he hates New Years.  It’s the same shit every year.  A different party, a different city but it’s always the same vibe.  He’s always with people he likes, he always drinks too much and then makes the same promise.

He’s going to live life like he never met Jack Zimmermann.

He’s not drunk enough yet though but luckily for him (or at least as promised by Cray) there are six women dressed in flirty little skirts and tops waiting for them on the leather seats specifically designed to make you feel like you can drink (and snort) as much as you like and it’ll all slide down you and not stain just like the liquor you’ll spill on their wipe clean couches.

Kent takes a deep breath and reinforces the face that makes it look like he’s into this.  “Where are the shots?”

Jeff gives him an indecipherable look and situates himself on the bench furthest from the girls.  Cray rolls his eyes as if to say ‘whipped’.

One of the girls leaps up, prompted by her friends, and crosses the small space towards him.  She’s wearing heels, not that Kent’s looking at her feet, but her tottering is unmistakeable and more prominent still because she’s obviously drunk.  “I’m Amber.” She says when they’re within shouting distance.

Kent smiles like his posters.  “Hi Amber.”

One hand rises to tuck her hair behind her ear and she smiles coyly down at her chest.  It’s dusted with glitter Kent can see it shimmering in the strobes.  “You like to party?” she asks withdrawing a little white baggy from her sparkly cleavage.  When she looks up Kent thinks her eyes flash black.  Kent wonders if this is a sign that he should give up now and just let someone drag him into oblivion the quick way.  His eyes snag on the baggy full of shit that gets guys benched Amber shakes in her long fingertips.

He thinks about it.  It’s a party.  There’s only the team up here.  The team and six women who won’t keep quiet about partying with the hottest members of the Las Vegas Aces.  Who will regale their friends with very detailed stories, from what they wore to what they took.  Time feels suspended as he tries to make his decision but his brain is foggy enough that he quickly bores of his pros and cons list and where he falls on the turns has him nodding faintly.

He’s nowhere near the ice now.  “Yeah.” He breathes, “I like to party.”

Amber’s grin is a mirror of his own as she pops open the bag and sprinkles a line across the rise of her left breast.  Kent feels like a rapper when he snorts it from her skin and accepts the chaser shot Cray hands him.

He feels like a NHL player.

He feels like the Kent Parson they write about on the blogs.

In the background someone mutters, “Just like Zimmermann.”

December 31st 2015 – 11:30pm

Kent doesn’t know who dragged who but he’s not moving anymore.  He’s pressed up against a toilet stall door and whoever it was that was giving him eyes from across the room is now giving him eyes from the floor as they kneel ready to make good on a threat delivered between the dancefloor and the sticky club hall.

I’ll show you a good time.

This isn’t Kent’s first rodeo, he’s made toilet stall fucks into an art form and so he bites down on his lips to smother the embarrassingly loud moan of relief when the guys plump lips wrap around his dick and a hot wet tongue circles the head.

Kent puts out a hand to brace himself on the stall wall behind his kneeled companion.  His hips jolt as he shifts and the guy pulls back with a protesting, “Dude.”

“Sorry.” Kent mutters and means it.  The guy gives him a sceptical look and Kent would reassure him that he isn’t into forcing strangers to deep throat him if he could find any of the words needed to articulate that and sound genuine.  Instead he prompt’s the guy with a “So?” desperate to drown out the droning remix of a Solvig song with the sound of this guy sucking his dick.

Mercifully the guy takes a breath and takes Kent into his mouth again.  He knows what he’s doing and when Kent feels the guys other hand cup his balls he thinks that perhaps this could be over before midnight, just in time for Kent to stumble out and say Happy New Year as if he thinks this year is going to be any different from the last.  Or the one before that, or any of the ones before his best friend tried to kill himself and cast Kent out of his new post suicide life.

Kent blinks slowly and slower still until a particularly lascivious lap of his friends tongue pushes him far from the bathroom at Midas and back to somewhere they’re not playing terrible remixes of songs he likes.  Somewhere the music is something with a bit more twang and completely ill fitting to the Canadian mansion he’s in.

The mouth on his there isn’t hurried or impersonal.  It’s slow and loving and a little shy because he’s just seventeen and both of them pretend to know what they’re doing with girls but with each other there’s nothing but honesty, and so when Jack takes him into his mouth it’s with an uncertainty that makes Kent both impatient and fond.  Kent reaches out to caress Jack’s cheek, to tell him he feels so good, that his mouth is amazing and that he’s about to come.  It’s crude and scripted but he hopes that between the stock phrases they’ve picked up from all those pornos that Jack hears what Kent is really saying.

You’re perfect.  I can’t believe you’re doing this for me.  I love you.

They never said they loved each other but you didn’t get chemistry on the ice like theirs without heart.

A tug on his dick pulls him from the tentative ministrations of the past and plants him back in the toilet stall of the club he wished he’d never fucking suggested for the night.  His hand hovers in mid air paused on it’s way to the strangers face.  The guy gives it a sideways look but doesn’t say anything.  Instead he pushes his face down and down and down until his nose brushes the hairs at Kent’s groin.

Kent moans.

“You like that?” The guy pants his lips spit slick and eyes glassy from too much fairy dust.

All he can do is nod because his throat is throbbing so hard he feels like he can’t breathe.

“Fuck yeah you do.” The guy smirks moving his tight grip up and down Kent’s flesh.  Kent’s belly quivers and his balls tighten between his legs.

Kent can’t remember the guy’s name and it doesn’t matter.  It won’t matter when he’s come, it won’t matter when they leave the stall and go back outside to toast another year of fucking around and being fucking miserable and wishing he’d never met Jack fucking Zimmermann and then taking it back because he daren’t risk the wish coming true.  Because what excuse would he have for burying his misery in every body he meets at a club three sheets to the wind if he can’t blame it on Jack?

What would he do with all the mental space freed up by getting over Jack?

The hand stops moving and clamps around the base of his dick.  Kent mewls belatedly realising he was close, so close.

“Not yet.” The voice below him growls.

Fuck you yes yet Kent scowls removing the guys hand.

The guy smirks at him and mutters something that doesn’t sound English.  Kent’s belly clenches and his dick pulses.  When he looks down again all he can see is dark hair.

“Can- uh, can you speak French?” he asks brokenly.

“Huh?” the guy frowns up at him shattering the bubble.

“Nothing – nothing forget it.”

The guy gives him another wary look like he’s deciding this is more hassle than it’s worth and Kent wouldn’t blame him but he could kill him if he stops now because he’s so, so close.

In the background the music the cuts off.  A second later the chant starts.

Ten

Nine

Eight

Seven

Kent’s once again enveloped in the wet heat of the strangers mouth.

Six

Five

Four

Three

His belly tightens and his leg shakes.

Two

One

In a rush his body tightens and the black behind his lids turns white as the cum painting his partners face.

The guy turns to spit what load he caught in his mouth, down the toilet.

Happy New Year.

December 31st 2016 – 3:00pm

“Last year Hudson said you all went to a club.” Lewsey says scooping up his Taco but leaving half the filling behind on the Styrofoam plate.

“Uh huh.” Kent answers taking care to keep his own Taco filling in the damn Taco because he’s not an animal and this is not his only meal of the day so he’s not going to act like it is…well not in front of the rookies who are acting every bit like the children they are when Lewis pouts and misses the hint to quit while he’s ahead.  “And?” Kent asks after he’s finally swallowed.

“I’m just sayin’ a house party…it’s a little…” he gropes around for the right word and Kent hopes to god it’s the right word because he’s in a pissy mood.  Killing himself in the gym was not the good mood shortcut he’d hoped it be and despite Cray engaging him in a squat competition (and losing sorely which always makes Kent’s gloating a little sweeter) the endorphin’s washed away with the soapy run off down the drain.

He’s tried to solve the problem with food but that’s not working either.

“High school?” Cray finishes because he loves watching a car crash.

Kent shoots Cray a dirty look that he brushes off with an obtuse smile.  Kent takes a delaying bite and when he’s finished he gives Lewsey the kind of look you reserve for the child that’s been winding you up all day.  It’s a look he inherited from his mum and makes him look just like her.  “We all went to a club and it was hella expensive and wasn’t that much fun.  Jeff’s got a huge fucking house, the booze is free and the music’ll be better.” He takes a breather and sips his soda, “But by all means go to a club and stand outside in line all night.  You won’t be missed.”

Lewsey gapes and Taco filling falls from his mouth.  He struggles to catch it back, “Erm.” He chews quickly, “No it’s-“ he looks at Cray for help but Cray’s too busy trying to smother his laughter.  “It’s fine.”

“Is it?” Kent asks tartly.  “You don’t have to come.”

Lewsey once again looks to Cray for help which is stupid because the guy lives for awkward moments like these.  Everyone thinks Cray’s a nice guy because he doesn’t verbally give the rookies shit, but none of them have wisened up to the traps he silently lays.

“No, no! I want to.” Lewsey insists.

“It’s not mandatory.” Cray says with artful nonchalance.

Kent looks down at the table for a knife but all he sees is a straw.  If he gets an eye it’ll shut Cray up but he’ll only get one shot and he can’t vouch for his accuracy.  Which is ironic considering what he does for a living.

“It isn’t?” Lewsey doesn’t sound sure.

Before he answers Kent finishes his Taco.  He takes his sweet time with it and Cray doesn’t fill the gap of silence which leaves their rookie to glance between them anxiously while nibbling on his own food.

By the time Kent’s done Lewsey’s practically purple.

“Look,” Kent begins, wiping his greasy fingers on a napkin.  “Come, don’t come, I don’t give a shit.” He screws up his tissue and punctuates his words by throwing it onto Lewsey’s plate.

“No, no! I wan-wanna come.” Lewsey stutters.

Kent shrugs and gathers up the their debris.  “Whatever man.  Be there or not it’s your night.” And with that he takes off for the trash can at the back of the restaurant.

While Kent’s in the bathroom Lewsey looks helplessly at Cray who shrugs like he doesn’t know what’s up with their captain but looks like he knows exactly what’s up with their captain.

“Did I- did I really offend Parser or something?” Lewsey asks slowly.

Cray makes to shrug again but he likes Lewsey the best out of all the rookies.  Lewsey reminds him of his sister (the only family member he can stand), he even kind of looks like her…or the male version of her at least which is more than he does because he got their dad’s looks which includes their dads unfortunate nose and tendency to put weight on round the face.  Cray takes a deep breath then on an exhale answers, “Parser hates New Years.”

Lewsey takes a moment to digest this.  He considers it for a moment after that and then says, “My brother hates New Years too but that’s because he got run over when he was a kid and I’m pretty sure he has PTSD from it.  Or at least that’s what my sister thinks.  I think he just hates that he never has anyone to kiss at midnight.” He shrugs as though it’s just one of those mysteries he’ll never figure out.

Cray loves this kid.

“Does Kent have PTSD?” he asks.

Cray blinks a little startled.  He doesn’t know if Kent has PTSD per say but he knows that when it comes to December thirty first there’s something ugly that unfurls inside Kent.  “Nah he just never has anyone to kiss at midnight.” Cray lies easily.

Lewsey rears back like this is the most confusing part of his afternoon so far.  Not the being abducted at two thirty to go get Taco’s from a tiny fast food joint right on the lip of the city.  Not being told to leave his phone behind on pain of endless drills.  Not being told that he can only order an everything Taco or a nothing Taco with extra refried beans.  Not being forced to wear shorts even though it’s a little too chilly for that.

“That doesn’t make any sense.” Lewsey declares.  “He’s Kent Parson! Captain of the Las Vegas Aces.”

Cray’s smile makes his face ache.  “And yet,” he tries not to laugh, “he finds himself puckering up into air at midnight.”

Lewsey lowers his voice, “Every year?” he asks disbelievingly.

“Every year.” Cray confirms.

“Is it a suspicion thing? Like Moller and the…” he makes a crude motion with his hand.

“No.  Not many people know this but,” Cray leans in conspiratorially, “Kent Parson has no game.”

“No!” Lewsey practically gasps.  “No way!” he almost sounds scared like if Kent Parson has no game then none of them do.

“Honest to God.” Cray crosses his fingers under the table.

When Kent returns it takes one look at Lewsey’s confounded expression for him to turn a suspicious one on Cray.  “What did you tell him?”

“I told him you woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning and not to take your piss poor mood personally.” Cray lies seamlessly.

Kent doesn’t miss a beat, “You told him I got not game didn’t you?”

Cray’s grin is shit eating, “He believed me too.  You need to pick up more, it’s getting too easy.”

Kent flips him off.  “Crays a liar and a scumbag,” Kent educates Lewsey, “and out of the two of us he’s been celibate the longest.”

“Helps me focus my game.” Cray replies sombrely.

“Right…” Lewsey’s eyes dart between them both.

“Let’s blow this joint.” Kent pauses, “If you’re not familiar with the term Cray it’s when-“

“Fuck you man.” Cray shoves his shoulder and they burst out into the white sun of the parking lot.

Cray cries shotgun and runs for the car like a child.  Kent walks slower because his hamstrings are fucking killing him and Lewsey hovers in the gap between them like an excited child but one that doesn’t want to lose sight of his parents.  When he reaches out for the backdoor handle Kent frowns.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting in the car.” Lewsey rolls his eyes.

“Rookies walk home.” Kent deadpans.

Lewsey laughs haltingly, “Har har.” He tries the handle again but Kent won’t unlock the car.  “Seriously?” Lewsey squeaks.  “How am I supposed to get back?”

Kent shrugs.

“Come on man.” He whines tugging on the handle.

Kent motions for him to back away from the car and Lewsey retreats a step.  “Next time,” Kent advises opening the drivers side and getting in, “don’t be so ready to believe Cray’s lies.” He slams the door down and a second later the window rolls down.  “See you at Jeff’s later.” Kent salutes him then starts the car.

Lewsey makes an aborted sound of protest but Kent’s car peels out of the lot and he doesn’t even break when he meets the road.

Lewsey stares after them long after they’re gone.  And even longer after that when he realises he doesn’t have his phone.

December 31st 2016 – 6:02pm

“You’re wearing that?” Kent leans forward to squint at the screen even though he can see Katie perfectly.

His sister gives an impatient little snort, “The hanger makes it look shorter.” She says to reassure him.

Not reassured in the least Kent remarks, “I think the dress makes the dress look short.”

Kate’s withering look is just as effective on screen as it is in person, “I don’t tell you how to dress.” She retorts.

“I don’t wear tiny dresses.” He argues.

“Only because you don’t have the legs for it!”

There’s a pause and then both Parson siblings dissolve into laughter.  Kent clutches his heart dramatically and in between guffaws pouts, “Wow babe.  Ouch.”

“Sorry, sorry.” Katie sighs giving a rueful little smile.

“You already had this talk with mom eh?”

“I already had this talk with mom.” She nods.

Kent sits back feeling like an asshole.  “Sorry.”

“It’s fine but it’s not like I can help being hot.” She smirks.

Kent rolls his eyes but says, “Well it is to be expected of the sister of Kent Parson.”

Katie looks confused, “Is this Kent Parson massive nerd and consistent loser of hungry hippos, pool, connect four, fuzboll and basically every other game that isn’t on the ice?”

“No it’d be the other Kent.  The one who’s good at everything.” He says sardonically.

Katie shrugs clueless.  “Never met the guy.”

“Christ put mom back on.” He groans.

Katie’s eyes bug out of her head and Kent’s about to tell her to calm down when she sputters “Is that Cray?!”

Kent does a double take over his shoulder when he sees what Cray’s wearing…or not wearing.  He thinks this is bad enough but Cray’s wearing the boxers with beavers all over them, a nod to a very lewd joke he will definitely not share with his sister.  From the screen there’s a wolf whistle and said sister sings, “Hey hot stuff! Where’d you get that body?”

Kent slams the laptop screen down.  “I was on skype to my little sister!”

“Yeah,” Cray laughs, “And she can chirp with the best of them.”

Kent will not tell Katie that in case she feels entitled to gloat.  “What the fuck are you doing in your underwear in my room?”

“I thought you liked that kind of thing.” Cray scoffs.

Kent feels his heart leap into the back of his throat.  “Why the fuck would you think that?” He chokes out venomously.

Cray rears back, “I was joking Christ.  Fragile masculinity much?”

Kent could howl if he were capable of finding anything to do with his panic funny.  He hasn’t been able to relax since Zimmermann and his stupid blonde boyfriend came out on centre ice after the cup win this summer.  He knows it’s ironic to feel even more trapped now when Zimm’s no doubt did it to unchain not only himself but many others living closeted life in the world of professional sports.  Kent doesn’t know if Zimmermann forgot what that sort of scrutiny would do to everyone in his life or if he just didn’t care but on the cusp of the big reveal came a litany of blog posts that spent way too much time looking for clues about his orientation in his past and unearthed some rumours about he and Kent that sat way too close for comfort.

Kent hasn’t said a thing about them but he’s been approached several times and even now, all these months later, he still has to watch what he says when Jack’s name comes up.

It also means he’s had to act like the big ol’ straight bro in the locker room just to convince the other guys that the rumours are just that, rumours for teenage girls who romanticise gay relationships between hot guys.

Honestly it’s more exhausting than the regular old pretending he was doing before.

“You’re still half naked in my room.” Kent blinks at Cray.

“I was looking for a spare towel.  I gotta shower.”

He couldn’t come in looking for a towel before he took his god damn clothes off? Kent girits his teeth.  “What’s wrong with your shower?”

“The waters still not back on.  Jesus Christ Parson what crawled up your butt and died? I shower here all the time.”

Cray’s right.  Parson lets him shower here all the time, he’s even peed while Cray’s been in the shower so it’s not like he hasn’t seen Cray’s bubble butt before.  But (butt!) it’s different now because before Kent was straight and now he’s…well he’s never been straight but the guys didn’t know that, and the ones who did suspect were such a minority as to be easy to ignore or convince otherwise.

Fucking Zimmermann.

“So can I use your shower?”

Kent deflates and hopes his expression is less anxiety and more apology for snapping ‘irrationally’, “Yeah.  Towels are in the airing cupboard it’s the door beside my bedroom door.”

“Ahh,” Cray hums, “So that’s what that room is.”

Kent almost doesn’t dare ask but he’s desperate for the distraction, “What did you think it was?”

“Your red room.” Cray snickers.

December 31st 2016 – 9:30pm

Swoops opens the door in a glittery green shirt that makes Kent question his whole existence.  “Parse, glad you could make it.” Swoops exchanges a handshake and when both men pull each other in for a back slap Swoops speaks against his ear, “mention the shirt and I’ll pee in your beers.”

When Kent pulls back he’s smirking.

“Kent.” Swoops warns.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“You two spend too much time together.” Swoops’ girlfriend sashays down the hall.  She looks stunning in a velvet grey dress that hugs her hips in a way that means Swoops is gonna be cleaning up everybody’s drool all night.  Jasmine hip checks Swops out of the way and embraces Kent.  “Glad you could make it.” She presses a kiss to his cheek.

Kent’s missed Jasmine and Swoops over Christmas while they went to Spain to visit Jas’ parents and he opens his mouth to tell them so when Hudson interrupts from over his shoulder.

“You almost sound like you mean it.” He guffaws shouldering his way past Kent through the front door.  Neither Swoops not Kent miss the stiffening of Jasmines spine or the tightening of her smile.

There’s a history there.  A history Swoops will never talk about because he’s been advised not to jeopardies team dynamics.  It’s a history he won’t tell Kent in case Kent feels obligated to do something.  It’s a history that makes Jasmine suddenly look self-conscious in her outfit.

Kent pulls away and he watches as Swoops and Hudson exchange a perfunctory handshake and back slap.  Hudson turns and does the same with Kent.  It’s full of just as much feeling as Swoops’.  “Glad you could make it Parser.  Missing the club?” Hudson’s eyes glint with innuendo.

Kent tries to head his flush off before it reaches his face.  “Only thing I’m missing is a beer.”

“Bar’s where you left it.” Swoops waves them in.

December 31st 2016 – 10:30pm

“You should have seen this guy! He looked like fucking Puff daddy snorting coke off that chicks tit.” Hudson claps Kent on the back so hard he sloshes beer on Swoops’ carpet.

“Shit.”

Swoops leaps up with him, “I got it Parse.” He puts out a hand to stop Kent from rising from the couch to do it himself but Kent’s sick of hearing Hudson tell a story that makes him sound like a grade A douchebag.  Kent’s a dick he doesn’t exactly work to prove otherwise but the coke thing was exceptionally douchey and he’s only ever done it once.  But once is all it takes and now it’s Hudson’s favourite story to tell.

He wasn’t even there until after Kent had done it but nobody ever seems to fact check him.  Hudson’s a good story teller and even Kent finds himself believing his version of events because it makes him sound less like a fratty white boy and more like the pimp people expect a professional athlete to be.

“Parse I got it.” Swoops assures him a second time for show when Kent is on his feet and following him into the kitchen.  Jasmine whirls round wine glass to her lips looking guilty that she’s been caught necking pinot.

“Having a good time baby?” Swoops laughs.

“It’ll be great when I get to bottom of this bottle.” She pours another generous glass and waves the bottle at Kent, “Want one sweetheart?”

Something in Kent will always soften when Jasmine calls him sweetheart.  It’s the way she says it with such fondness in her voice.  It fools Kent into thinking that Jasmine loves him too.  He’s five beers in and it’s easy to say yes to another drink and bask in the warmth of the press of Jasmines lips to his cheek and her hand cupping his jaw.  “You okay?”

Kent nods.

“Hudson’s telling the coke story again.” Swoops shuts the fridge.

Jasmine tucks her lips between her teeth in displeasure.  “What so he thinks you’re like him now?” her voice is sharper than the knife on the cheese board.

“He’ll get bored in a second when he realises all the women here have heard the story.” Kent waves it off.

“Which one?” Jasmine can’t fight snorting.

“All of them.” Jeff says meaningfully.

There’s that history again.  Kent’s got enough beer in him to give him amnesia and ask about these other stories but there’s a crash from the study that sends Swoops flying with the names of someone’s kids on his lips.

Jasmine swipes  a bit of cheese and holds it out to Kent, “Soak some of that up yeah?” She gestures to the bottle in Kent’s hand.  Kent waves off her concern because he’s very determined to get wasted before twelve and he’s only got – he checks his watch- ninety minutes left.  He chugs the rest of the beer and steals Jasmine’s glass.

“One day,” she sighs, “you’re going to have to get over him.”

“Who?”

Jasmine gives him a look.

“Who says?” he gasps wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Your sanity?” Kent reaches for the wine but Jasmine pushes it out of his reach.  “Come on Kent.”

“Don’t tell me how to live my life.” He scowls childishly.

Jasmine gives him a long look but when he doesn’t rush to apologise she leaves the kitchen.  Kent snags the wine bottle and takes a swig trying to fill the space that Jasmine’s disappointment hollows out of him.  When it doesn’t work he goes out to freeze in the garden.

December 31st 2016 – 11:25pm

Kent’s butt has gone numb but he’s still staring at the god damn app.

He wants to say he’s happy for them.  He wants to get behind them like everyone else and say words like ‘good for them’ and ‘that’s real progress they’re pioneering’ and ‘we should all representation’ and other sentences with buzz words like that but he just…can’t.  Kent can’t support them not because he’s a raging homophobe but because he’s broken hearted and bitter.

Silence he could take.  Being frozen out he could take.  But seeing them like that? On the ice in front of thousands of fans and cameras that broadcast to millions more all over the country, all over the world, kissing? Kissing like they were in love? Kissing like they’d waited their lifetimes to do it?

Kissing like they were fucking happy.

There was nothing but white noise in his head when he saw it on Cray’s phone but after they’d gotten outside, after Carly couldn’t be heard giving his opinion like anyone gave a shit, his brain filled up with the kind of howling Kent was terrified people could hear.

That was supposed to be us!

His brain still screams it sometimes.  It screams it when his eyes snag on a picture of Jack beaming at the camera holding a fucking pie that isn’t on any diet plan Kent’s ever prescribed to.  He screams it when he sees a picture of them kissing on instagram or twitter.  He yowls it when he sees the picture of Jack passed out in bed, covers hiked up to his waist and hair all sleep mussed.

Roadies are tough even on the veterans the caption reads.

It’s supposed to be cute but it makes Kent want to hurl.  Kent only met that bitty kid once but he’s pretty sure that whatever he has with Jack can in no way compare to what he and Kent had.

They were masters on the ice.  The bloody champions of the no look one shot goal for fucks sake! Everything they were on the ice they were a million times more off of it and each side fed into the other making them real contenders.  Kent and Jack were supposed to go in the draft together.  They were supposed to graduate to pro from their farm teams and get the A’s and then captaincy.  Kent was supposed to spend his days doing the two things he enjoyed most.  Playing hockey and loving Jack.

Sure Kent still gets to play hockey but he has to watch someone else love Jack and Jack love someone else.

Meanwhile Kent sits here on his ass too afraid to take a chance on someone else because lord knows Jack got all the luck.  He gets lucky enough to find a boyfriend at Samwell, a boyfriend who obviously understood the dangers of Jack coming out in the world.  Kent wouldn’t be so lucky.  Kent would probably tether his line to someone who would sell him down the river, out in him in the tabloids or blackmail him for their silence.  Or worse resent him for pulling them back into the closet with him.

Kent pitches the wine bottle into the garden and hears it smash somewhere down the patio.  He regrets it immediately.

Gluttonous for punishment Kent opens up Eric’s twitter.

@omgcheckplease start as you mean to go on.

Attached is a picture of a series of pies all laid out neatly and photogenically along a gleaming kitchen counter.  A kitchen counter Jack’s pay check paid for no doubt.

The next few tweets are a transcript of conversations they’ve been having with their friends and family during the day.  The next few are a saccharine sweet shout out to all the ‘fans’ who have supported them this year since the Falconers cup win and Jack and Eric’s big gay reveal.

Eric doesn’t type big gay reveal, Kent just adds that in because he’s angry and petty and self-destruction has no bite unless he’s adding in his own internalised (and really it has to be internalised because only six people in Kent’s life know he’s gay) homophobia.

The next tweet comes with a picture of a beer pong table set up.

@omgcheckplease @clarissaexplainsitall showin’ bros how it’s done again!

@omgcheckplease reigning 2017 champion @clarissaexplainsitall

Attached is a photo reminiscent of the photo taken last time except there’s only one guy beneath her foot and it’s Jack.  His face is all scrunched up and peculiar looking and Kent does a double take when he realises that it’s because he’s laughing so hard.

He sways on the wall and closes his phone.

He doesn’t know who the fuck that guy in the photo is.

Falling off the wall Kent starts the slow stumble back to the house and when he steps through the patio doors the warm air dries his lips and shrinks his bladder threateningly.

He hunts for the bathroom but the downstairs one is occupied and so he crawls, on his hands and knees, up the stairs too drunk to just hold onto the railing.  When he summits them he spots two girls leaning against the landing wall each staring at their phones.  Both are leggy and blonde and completely Hudson’s type

“They are goals.” The tallest leggiest one gushes.  Her gold dress makes her glow.

“Such goals.” Her less leggier but no less blonder friend agrees.

“I know it’s, like, not pc to say but I totally think them making out on centre ice was hot.”

“Oh my god hella hot.”

If you think that’s hot you should have seen him sucking cock Kent thinks to himself and because he finds himself so hilarious he snorts out loud.  The girls whirl around eyes saucer wide and full of guilt.

“Sssorry ladies,” he slurs passing them, “Please go back to…whatever the fuck you were doin’.” He sends an approximation of a grin over his shoulder before shutting the bathroom door behind him.

He throws the lid up, pulls his pants down and relieves himself.  Outside in the hall he hears the girls say,

“Kent’s hot.”

“Brett says he’s a fucking mess and a coke addict.”

Hudson invited them then.

“Do you think those rumours about him and Jack were true? You know the-“ she pauses and Kent wonders if she’s miming sniffing coke or a handjob.

“Regardless I’d still fuck him.”

After a beat the other girl says, “Yeah me too.”

December 31st 2016 – 11:48pm

“Kent? Kent? Open the door.  I know you’re in there.” The handle twists but Kent made sure to lock it so all it does is rattle against the frame.  “Fucks sake.  You better not be passed out in your own puke.”

Kent grunts.  Not his style.

There’s a muffled “Thank god.” Outside the door followed by a click of the lock and finally the door opening.  Swoops appears with a glass bottle in his hand and the first thing Kent slurs is,

“That better be vodka.”

“Ha ha.” Jeff says humourlessly.  “No.  You’ve had enough fucking liquor you can drink this.” He hands him the bottle and a slice of bread, “And eat this.  Why are you in my bath tub?”

Kent ignores the water but does take the bread.  Crumbs fall onto his chest.  “It looked comfortable.”

Jeff heaves a weary sigh, “And is it?”

Kent shakes his head and more crumbs tumble down.  It’s very uncomfortable but Kent was sad anyway and so he decided what was a little more discomfort in the grand scheme of things? “I should have come.” Jeff gives him a look.  “I’m ruining the…the…good times.”

“Hudson’s hitting on Maya.  You’re missing a hell of a crash and burn but other than that,” Jeff pushes the water at him again, “you’re not preventing anything.”

Kent doesn’t believe him for a second.  He’s always fucking up and getting too drunk and then too mopey and Swoops, no Jeff, he’s Jeff when it’s just them together, is always there to look after him.  To drag him from one drink too many, helping to smooth over fights that Kent swears to god he didn’t start.  Jeff’s like his guardian angel…or his carer.

“You shouldn’t have to look after me.”

Unexpectedly Jeff snaps, “Then stop needing it.” Taken aback Kent blinks up at him.  “Is this about Zimmermann?”

Kent sinks down in the tub, “No.” he mumbles into his chest.

“And last year wasn’t about him either?”

“No.”

“You’re the worlds worst liar I swear to fucking god.” Jeff mutters, “I don’t know how nobody has figured you out.”

“I’m Captain,” Kent pouts petulant, “you’re not supposed to give your captain shit.”

Jeff gives him a dry look, “Pretty sure the captains not supposed to get wasted and curl up to die in my bath tub, and yet.”

Kent flips him off.

“Real captainly.”

Kent swigs water and hopes Jeff is affected by the defiance in the violent gulping.

“It could be you, you know.” Jeff says softly after a minute.  “You could come out.”

Kent almost spits his water out.  “I’m not like Jack.” He says when he’s done.

“You’re not?” Jeff looks genuinely puzzled.

Kent might find it fond if he knew how to process that expression and all it really meant.  “I’m not…” he combs his soupy brain for the word, “beloved.”

“Beloved?” Jeff blinks at him in disbelief.

“Beloved.” Kent scowls at him.  It’s less effective every time he does it.

“How in the fuck is Zimmermann beloved? You think just cos his dad was a hockey star and his boyfriend started a black market jam trade that that makes him beloved?” Jeff snorts as if to say give me strength “It’s his boyfriend doing the baking not him.  Jack Zimmermann is no more or less ‘beloved’ than you.”

“I can’t come out.”

“Can’t or don’t want to?” Jeff replies swiftly.

Kent bristles, “Don’t want to.” Kent snaps.

At length Jeff decides, “I think that’s bullshit.”

“Don’t fucking assume you know anything about what I want.” Kent snaps viciously…or vicious for a guy drunk in a bath tub with crumbs all over his shirt.

“God forbid I do that Kent huh? God forbid I try to help you off this self-destructive fucking rollercoaster you are determined to be strapped into.”

“I never asked you to help me!”

“That’s what friends do!”

“I don’t need you as my friend!” he shouts.

“Of course you fucking do!” Jeff shouts back.  “Without me you’d be dead, or worse, slandered in all the papers for all the fucking bathroom blowjobs.”

Kent scoffs bitterly, “I never took you for a homophobe.”

Jeff sneers at him, “I’m not a fucking homophobe you asshole I’m trying to look out for you.  You don’t want to be out then stop fucking around with randoms who would sell you down the river if they ever found out who you are.  You don’t want the wider world knowing things about you you’d rather keep secret then maybe you should stop taking strangers into back rooms and working your way through Nevada one grindr user at a time and focus on getting over Jack fucking Zimmermann.”

By the time he’s done Jeff’s chest is heaving and the air’s turned thick and heavy with all the words he’s just said.  Kent can’t say anything for the giant lump in his throat and it takes him several tries before he feels like he can swallow it enough to make sound around it.  “Why couldn’t it be me?”

Jeff sinks down, turns and leans his back against the tub.  “You and Jack?”

“We used to date.” Kent whispers like he’s just admitted something huge.  Like Jeff doesn’t already know that the tear in Kent’s heart is shaped like Zimmermann’s knife.  “He thinks I forgot him and then when I went to talk to him at Samwell he just-“ Kent takes a shuddering breath, “he didn’t want to know.  He told me to get out.”

Jeff takes a breath, “That was a long time ago.”

“He gets everything.” Kent croaks miserably.  “The legendary parents, the money and the privilege.  He got the fresh start and every hockey team vying to be his first pick even after he left them hanging.  Then he gets the A and the perfect fucking boyfriend and now,” Kent’s head lolls against the tub, “now he gets a team who supports who he really is.”

Kent makes Jeff wait for the kicker.

“And he did it all without me.”

And there it is.

“We’d be there for you.”

Kent snorts, it’s a nice thought but it’s hardly true.  “You think Hudson and Macksey are gonna be there for me? You think the GM’s are gonna be there for me? You know what they’ll fucking say.  They’ll watch the ticket sales go down and the fights on the ice get worse and they’ll think maybe it’s best if I get scratched for a few games.  Then it’s me handing over my C and sending me down to ‘train’ kids at the farm and then come trade day,” he makes a whistle bomb sound, “they’ll sell me to the only bidder.”

“They can’t kick you off the team for being gay Kent.”

“They can make it hard to stay on it.” He snaps, “God Jeff I love you but you’re fucking naïve.”

Jeff makes an angry impatient noise in the back of his throat, “You think you’re the only one who has a secret on this team? Do you think you’re the only player on this roster who has things they think they need to hide for fear of being benched or sent down to the farm? Jesus Christ Kent you’re the fucking captain.  You could help these peoples!”

“I don’t owe anybody anything.”

“Then you’re just like Zimmermann, or worse because he just did that.”

“For himself.” Kent refuses to believe that Jack did that for anybody but himself.  He won’t have thought about the wider world.  Jack’s only ever crippled under the public pressure, he’s never risen to meet it or change it.

Jeff makes that sound again, “For himself or not he’s not opened a door that the leagues been trying to hold closed for decades.  Whether he continues with this or not it’s out there now and pretty soon other players are going to gently nudge their way out and declare themselves too.  You could be one of them.”

Kent’s silence is considering.  “But I’d be alone.” He says quietly.

“You wouldn’t be alone.”

“You think I could find someone to kiss live on air after a game?”

Jeff rolls his eyes, “Now you’re just being facetious.  I’m saying that if you came out you’d have people in your corner.  Your family for one and me and Jasmine and loads of other guys on the team.”

Kent makes a sound, “You sure of that?”

“I am.  If this bullshit,” he waves over his shoulder to Kent wasted in the bath, “is about more than your heartbreak with Zimmermann just know that you don’t have to be afraid of walking out there alone if you want to be honest with the world about this part of you.  But if this is only about Jack then I have some friendly advice for you.”

Jeff pauses so Kent has to ask ,”And that is?”

“Get some therapy and get over him.”

“I thought the best way to get over someone was to get under someone else.”

Jeff thinks he hears a smile in Kent’s voice.  He answers with his own, “The rate you’re going through them don’t you think if that were true it would have happened by now?”

“You can’t slut shame me.” He grumbles sinking down into the tub.  His sneakers squeak on the porcelain.

Finally Jeff turns hooking his muscled forearms over the lip of the tub and staring down into Kent’s tear streaked face.  Gently he wipes one away from his cheek.  “Kent.  I love you okay? I can’t watch you do this anymore.  You’re too fucking talented and amazing to be sitting in my tub thirty seconds from midnight drunk crying over a boy who doesn’t love you.”

Kent sucks in a breath.

“Yes you idiot I love you.” Jeff rests his cheek on the tub and regards Kent with a fond smile.  “And so does Jasmine.”

“It’s not exactly the kind of love that has us making out on centre ice is it?”

Jeff shrugs, “You never know”

Kent’s belly does something clenchy that he’ll only start to understand when he’s hungover, “but if you want it to be you’ll have to start picking up the tab at meals.  You can even start at brunch tomorrow.”

Kent burps.  “Oh God.” He scrambles to get up.

Jeff fights to lean back before Kent’s flailing limbs can smack him in the face.  “Jesus okay? We can ease into it you can get the coffees.”

“Nope!” Kent falls half out of the bath in his haste to get away.

“Christ Kent you’ll never get that-“

Kent pushes violently past him and falls face first into the toilet.  Then vomits.

“-kiss now.”

“Urgh.” Kent gasps into the bowl.

Jeff leans over and presses his hand to the space between Kent’s shoulder blades and slowly rubs up and down in what he hopes is a soothing manner.  Kent opens his mouth to thank him then vomits again.

“Happy New Year Kent.”

Kent flips him off.

“No really.  It’s midnight.” He slides his phone under Kent’s face.  “See?”

On the screen 00:00 flashes up.  “Fuck.” He sighs.  “Happy New year man.”

Jeff’s hand returns a steady slow comforting stroke along his spine.  “Happy New Year bro.”

Staring at the rancid water at the bottom of the toilet bowl Kent doesn’t know how happy the new years going to be but when he wakes in the morning to find two Advil’s and a water with a note propped against it that reads;

Hi sweetheart.  Breakfast’s on you yeah?

He begins to reconsider.

[delightfullycraftynut]

Baaa

While watching this video for the first time, I had a few accidental onlookers who were absolutely horrified by this bad boy. More specifically, I heard a few “I’m going to have nightmares now”s, some “What the hell are you watching?”s, and one or two “Oh God, that’s so disturbing”s. While that is the whole point of this blog, I think I’ve learned my lesson about watching videos for the first time with a live audience. The lesson, of course, being that I definitely need to keep freaking out people. Being weird is pretty great. And on that note, let’s talk about “Baaa”.

That is genuinely the title of this video, by the way. It’s just “Baaa”. Our lovely video creator/nightmare motivator, who goes by cyriak, already has 964k subscribers and is truly a blessing from whichever religion believes in screwing up whatever’s good on this planet via strange content that gives one feelings of dread and horror. The last time this channel was active was eleven months ago, which is something that is both pretty awesome and pretty crappy since we clearly need to have our lingering senses of humanity flushed out of us like the toxins that they are. So I bring you a review of “Baaa” as a type of cleanse that’ll scrub you clean of whatever happiness and joy you’ve kept in a little corner since childhood and were saving for sometime special. Or at least this could be a temporary feeling and you’ll feel better until my next post. :)

Our video solely features a nice little lamb, whom I will now dub as Lam🅱 because it is a Lame 🅱oi, and nothing bad can happen if there’s no dialogue, right? Everything is nice and dandy as this precious little angel prances to some janky jams and bounce its head around in a lovely, playful manner with its tongue out. And Lam🅱 really is cute, I’ll give it that. I mean come on, look at how cute it is!

It’s all very sweet and fun for a few seconds until you watch it elongate and three other lamb heads appear out of its back while the clownesque music goes bananas in the background. The heads just keep popping in and out until the body smushes back together and Lam🅱 has turned into one of those monsters with two heads and no rear end. This sucker is literally one of those pushmi-pullyu creatures from the “Dr. Dolittle” franchise. That is, up until its back reveals a wormhole and allows a grub-like creature to hop on out. It’s revealed that this is how this monster reproduces and it occurs within nanoseconds. Basically, we’d be screwed if these suckers existed in real life since they’re very demonic and very... lambish? 

For the rest of the video, Lam🅱 continues to morph into creatures more horrible than the one before it and the list goes on to include a torso surrounded by two detachable heads with wings and legs moving in a chainsaw-like manner, a normal body save for the spinning circle of heads, and an abdomen with lambs’ tails as legs and a spinning head circle smack in the middle of its back. I’ll spare you from hearing about every single creature that Lam🅱 transforms into mainly because I want to not be permanently scarred for the rest of my life just from writing this review. To make you feel better after watching this video, here’s a gif of where Lam🅱 is now. 

There you go, now you leave this blog and be both horrified AND hungry! That’s truly the best combination of feelings. I’ve done some good work today. 

If you’d like to watch this video for yourself, here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQO-aOdJLiw

[jimwithonem]

My Creative Process

Generative art is digital art made with programming code. That's one definition. I like to think of “genart" as a vehicle for artistic expression for those who can’t paint or draw. That’s me. I couldn’t brush or illustrate myself out of a corner, but I can code. Generative art provides me the capability to express myself in a way I never thought possible. So, I welcome the convergence of art and algorithm and the creative freedom it provides.

I use the Java programming language in Processing, an open-source IDE developed specifically for designing visual electronic art. In this post, I describe my process for creating these types of non-illustrative, non-objective compositions including the song lyrics they contain. Call them, I don’t know, symmetrical abstractions maybe.

I derive the aesthetics for my compositions primarily from Suprematism and simple geometric abstraction and strive to express feelings associated with or produced by the deeper meanings of lyrical content. I’m concerned with stripping down the message of each piece into its raw expressive form, as opposed to constructing some sort of metaphorical object.

For the lyrics, I draw from my own encounters with a vast range of musical styles and genres. A sort of synesthesia takes over when I write where certain words or phrases link to works from music's past. Such impressions, if you will, augment my research into topics of interest and anchor my work in the last 70 years of music. Exploring foundational art forms gives me an occasion to find relevant contexts and expressions with a healthy dose of chaos and randomness.

My lyrical writing process adapts components of the universal creative problem-solving process. For me, I’m more concerned with the process of creating art than perhaps the product itself. I don’t consider myself any sort of authority about music or art, but I do think that process is interesting and perhaps offers a different way of thinking about how art is made which, in my case, means framing new lyrics within a visual piece. Waiting around for inspiration, or lightning, to strike is sort of a Ben Franklin approach where one is dependent on bad weather. Process streamlines this out of the equation.

To prepare for writing this post, I’ve eaten a bowl of fruit, drank a glass of water, found a comfortable chair, donned my headphones, and decided to bang it out. I want to listen to my gut, rather than it distracting me for attention. I suspect there may be many interruptions and temptations to quit early, but I’m intent on ignoring those for the moment. Now, there’s nothing to it but to do it.

The Lyrical Process

Articulate

In the articulation phase, I pick a topic to write about. It may be suggested by someone else, is related to something I’m experiencing at the time, or is inferred from some musical work of the past or present. For example, a topic I chose recently was about finding love in an unusual place or circumstance which David Bowie wrote about in his song Heroes. I wouldn’t dare presume to rival Bowie’s work, but topics are free for anyone to explore and play around with.

Inspire

Now it’s time to lower the lights and get into a mood. Each topic suggests certain attitudes and feelings that require I achieve an emotional state. It’s harder to write when I’m not feeling it, so music helps me reach a certain place where I can tap into available inputs and jumpstart creativity. I prefer to feed my creative process rather than starve it of information. Avoiding creative anemia requires a certain amount of intention, perhaps.

Accept

This phase is all about commitment. It’s my goal to finish the first draft of a piece in one sitting. Sometimes that’s as little as an hour or even days. The blank page can be a tyrant unless it knows your serious about putting something down. Acceptance helps me gather the energy I know I will need to see the project through from start to finish, or until my laptop battery runs out of juice. (Right now I'm sitting at about an 82% charge, so we’ll see.)

Analyze

Here I hop on Google and research the topic by reading articles, watching videos, and scanning blogs and boards. I’m looking for psychological or philosophical insights and perspectives to fill my cup of knowledge. Oftentimes this stage goes very quickly, but other times the information is just not there in sufficient quality or quantity. In this case, I do a soft pivot and come at the topic from a slightly different angle by changing my question or query.

Ideate

This is where the process gets a little easier. Once the creative waters are heated to a steady boil, words and phrases stand up and take notice and I write them down without analysis or edifice. I try not to actually write the song here, just curate the words I need to fill my palette with color. At the end of the day, I will attempt, in the spirit of Bauhaus minimalism, to use as few keywords as possible in the final work to convey a feeling, situation, meaning, or story. Too many words in the final piece are prohibitive for the reader in my opinion.

Associate

Making associations to prior art and current culture is a cool way to position a piece within its larger context. It also helps to have a bit of synesthesia here. For me, that means words or phrases trigger prior works without any conscious effort. So, I just write these down along with everything else and welcome the possibility of standing on the shoulders of giants. Perhaps art is a sustaining innovation where one just hopes to make incremental improvements to delivering a message, and the language of love takes over from there.

Arpeggiate

I start forming a repeating rhythm in my head here as a way to sort of frame the meter of the lyrics. My goal is to play around with the meter and stretch the boundaries and rules to my liking. For me, that means less is more. Because of many years of private vocal training, I can envision a phrase, run, rest, or diphthong and how it might be interpreted by a singer - sort of like visualizing vocal sounds as shapes - which allows me a bit of latitude in development. Typically, I won’t jump on an electronic or app arpeggiator here, just use the percussionist in my head.

Overflow

Sort of like making a prototype, or a blacksmith shaping a blank of molten metal, a work takes its form from repeated blows of the hammer. If the art is allowed to cool down it must be reinserted into the fire for another iteration with the master implement. I like to sustain momentum here and strike while the iron is hot. Cooling down too soon may result in ideas sitting just out of reach with no ladder to retrieve them.

Rewrite

There’s no getting around for it. Writing is about effort, yo. One must write and rewrite, then rewrite again, until a piece reaches a certain momentum or economy of scale. If necessary, I put the work down and come back to it later if I feel it's not ready or I’m exhausted. At this stage, I want to evaluate what I have and whether its something I want to proceed with.

Assuming I now have a lyric I’m more or less happy with, and this is a judgment call more than anything else, I move on in the process. Since I’m creating for me, I try not to impose any sort of perfection or expectation. I’m looking to startle myself or discover an effect. I don’t think this is a goal per se, more of a perception of what “done” means. Of course, art is never really done, right, so it’s just a matter of putting it out there with warts and all. Perhaps there is some sort of beauty in imperfection and uncertainty that gives room for love to cover the gap in unexpected ways. This means not shying away from essentially darker tones or topics and really acknowledging those emotions without discrimination.

The Genart Process

Through the experience of learning Processing, I have created a sketch applet to lever as a framework for constructing pieces of art. The sketch has undergone many redesigns, refactorings, and iterations which permits me to focus on configuration over convention. While the app is not gold plated or even perfectly constructed, it does use principles to encapsulate complexity and accelerate runtime.

Import

After converting a lyric into CSV format, I configure the app to import it into the sketch at runtime. The idea here is that the elements of each lyrical piece are analyzed and combined with a level of randomness to algorithmically achieve a unique output. I find that using the code in this way liberates my mind from intentionality and objectivity and suggests interesting or unusual geometrical representations of the work.  

Configure

A few choices have to be made about the font, color, and level of randomness, and dimensions of geometry. This is an iterative process, but typically a lyric will imply a color palette based on its mood or message. I try to find a starting place that provides an appropriate level of detachment that doesn’t overwhelm the final piece. Just enough is good enough, in my opinion, but too simple is boring. I prefer the artwork conjure a picture in the viewer's mind however abstract.

Experiment

A composition begins to form at this stage which leads me to code and recode the geometrical equations in relation to their placement on canvas. I like to experiment with color, movement, and perspective to shape the art into submission. What starts out as a divergent step may morph or molt the work until I start to see something I like. Then, I converge on that and continue to work it out.

Iterate

Finally, I iterate and evaluate until I’m more or less satisfied with the results. Small tweaks are often better than larger ones because it keeps the work true to its disorganized qualities. Too much intervention or intention can lead to overkill which can cause a setback. A certain level of acceptance of what is good enough is balanced with what I want to see emerging from the piece. However, it’s interesting to note that the two products, the lyrics and the artwork, synthesize into a new whole where each is evaluated and improved in relation to the other until a completed work results.

It’s fun and rewarding to make something that I or someone else may think is beautiful or inspiring. I want to thank you for reading and invite you to hit me up anytime with questions or comments. I wish you the best with your own artistic journeys. 

Jim

[ibythetidepromotions]

An interview with Empirical Designs

Could you please introduce yourself to the readers? My name is Nick DePalo, I’m a graphic designer and the owner of Empirical Designs.

Was there any particular art pieces that made you want to start your own graphic design company? I’m not sure there’s a specific piece of work that made me want to be a designer. I really had no idea what graphic design was as a kid. I just loved to draw, and sketch, and doodle on notebooks. I was never very good at that, but I loved the process of making art. I love the feeling of taking ideas from your head and making them into tangible, physical products. So I’d say it’s more the process of creating art that influenced me over specific pieces I admired or artists I looked up to.

Empirical Designs has seen large commercial success; professional sport teams, beer companies, etc. in your portfolio. When first starting, did you ever think it would reach this level? When I first started designing, I was just doing really amateurish stuff for my own band to cut corners and save some money. I had no idea it would turn into a business, never mind a successful one.

When a band comes to you for merchandise, do they usually have their own ideas about a design or is it your own original ideas you deliver? It’s a bit of a mixed bag. Some bands will approach me with well thought out ideas with sketches or specific concepts they want me to bring to life. Other bands are more indecisive and aren’t sure what they’re looking for, so I develop the concepts for them and tailor the artwork to their taste.

How do you get in the mindset to create these designs? For the most part, I get myself in the right frame of mind before I ever sit down at my computer. I spend a lot of time thinking about a design and sketching crude ideas before I ever “start” the design. So for me, that process usually starts when the job is proposed. I try to make sure I have a clear path to a design solution before I agree to take on a job, but sometimes something better comes while sketching, sometimes it comes while revising or coloring. Every design becomes it’s own adventure. I’m less ritualistic that other designers, because in my honest reflection I’m still trying to find my voice through design. I don’t want to be stuck in one frame of mind, doing one style of art. Great artists can be the best in the world at a particular style. But to me, the best artists are well-rounded and can develop solutions for anyone, not just bands, breweries or sports teams.

When coming up with a new band logo, how do you get a feel of the them and their style? I ask bands a series of questions that help me understand their taste. I also ask them to send me visual references of designs they like. Often it’s best to just glance over the written directions, because everyone uses different jargon and vocabulary to describe art and music that might not align with my own. So for instance if a band says they want a “bold” design, I have to figure out what their definition of “bold” is, because it’s safe to assume we do not attribute the same values to that word. That’s why visual references are so helpful. I can look at the pictures and analyze what about them the band perceives to be “bold” and use that visual cue when developing my own concepts. I often listen to their music and reflect on the aesthetic of bands similar to their sound. Even if the band asks me to design something similar to a popular band they look up to I try not to borrow too much influence from it, because ultimately I want the band I’m working with to be successful. Maybe one day my client will get a chance to play alongside their heroes. It would look pretty silly if their logo was a toned down version of the original logo on the same show flyer.

On your website, you mentioned working with Silent Planet. Which art did you create for them? Just a show flyer, nothing too important.

Recently, you released a blog post about music promotion and  it got over a 1,000 hits in a couple of days. When bands come to you, what recourse do you give them to help them thrive and take the next step? Most bands are pretty terrible at marketing themselves, so I just try to provide them simple solutions to help boost their profile a bit. My partner John Sottile wrote a great article outlining some simple ways you can effectively promote your band in the current market. I would encourage anyone interested to give it a read, it has some really helpful information. LINK: http://www.empiricaldesigns.net/blog/2017/2/13/five-effective-ways-to-promote-your-band

Browsing your “for sale” section, I see a piece called “Think of the Radio.” What was the inspiration behind it? I did an art series called Oblique Strategies, where I would create artwork based on special instructions and prompts. Here’s an except from an in-depth blog post I wrote about the piece.

Growing up in the age of the Walkman, I didn’t have much of a personal relationship with the radio. When I think of the term “radio” I always picture a golden age, way before my time filled with antiquated broadcasting equipment, and fast talking announcers. The radio always seemed so unique yet ethereal to me. So in this week’s entry I set out to investigate how radios are built and operate, and how they came into the mainstream and morphed how we consume media in the modern day.

I explored the differences between AM and FM signals, as well as the first commercial broadcasts and pirate radio stations. The most enthralling discovery I made was stumbling upon a video detailing the first production FM Transistor Radio, the Sony TFM-151. By all accounts, the radio the was commercially unsuccessful and only approximately 1000 radios were made in 1958. I immediately fell in love with the complexity and craftsmanship of the TFM-151. I simply could not fathom how we’d gone from such intricately manufactured radios being on the cutting edge to completely archaic in half a century.

I set out to make the TFM-151 part of a functional apparel design. I was able to purchase a service manual which included schematics, repair instructions and replacement parts for the radio. Based on my limited knowledge of electronics I created my own psudo-diagrams. I used a technique called the Golden Ratio to create a rough layout. I then took a grid simulating the look of schematics and boxed the grid into sections using the golden ratio. I allowed each section of the design to overrun it’s allotted space within the layout. This created the feel of a schematic grid which was breaking through another subtle grid in the layout, leaving tension between the structures. I overlaid some copy paper to texture the piece and simulate the feel of an old service manual. I finalized the text and layout, as well as distorted and frayed the edges leaving us with the finished product for "OS02: Think Of The Radio".

What would you say are the top three reasons bands usually fall short when trying to market themselves? I think bands fall short by lacking understanding of their own sound, their image, and the market their playing in. There’s so many experiences I have reading bio’s and RIYL’s where what the band sounds like and what they THINK they sound like are very different. In my opinion, most people are pretty bad at analyzing themselves so I would highly suggest that before you fill out the genres and what-you-sound-like parts of your bio, have someone in the know take a good listen to your music. You need an outside opinion to develop descriptions and comparisons which best explain your band. This will help inform prospective listeners, and encourage them inform their friends if they’ll enjoy your music. It’s easier to market yourself when you take the time to analyze WHAT you are marketing and WHO you are trying to reach.

Is there anything else you would like to tell the readers before we go? You can check out my portfolio at http://www.empiricaldesigns.net/ Drop us a line if you’re looking for apparel designs, album artwork, branding, press kits, lyric videos, or any other type of designs you may need. We’d love to hear from you. Thanks for having me on to talk about design!

Empirical Designs Social Media:

Website

Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

Interviewer: Corey Pena

[pratktcven]

love in a time of social media

love in a time of social media part one. shance. eventual nc-17. alternate universe. lance is the king of shitposts and selfies. shiro is an artist who loves his dog and fatalistic humor. somehow, they fall in love. warning! underage drinking and casual use of marijuana

.

They meet online.

Specifically, they meet on tumblr. Shiro is an artist of middling popularity and Lance is a shitposter of the highest caliber. Shiro follows Lance months before Lance follows him; indeed, Lance is unaware of Shiro's work until Shiro @'s him in a small comic.

'I couldn't resist,' Shiro types below the image. 'Thank you for the inspiration, @lances-a-lot.'

Shiro—@white_iron—has a simple art style and a sharp sense of humor that makes Lance laugh out loud. He reblogs the comic, telling his followers to check it out, and proceeds to creep on Shiro's blog. Lance's first stop is Shiro's small about section.

Hello! My name is Shiro. I am a post-grad history student and I spend my limited free time walking my dog or doodling. art tag doodles photography

Shiro's blog consists mainly of his artwork. Occasionally, Shiro will also post real-life pictures of his dog, a beautiful black and white akita with bright eyes and a dopey smile. There aren't any pictures of Shiro himself. Lance—who takes roughly a thousand selfies every day—comments on this oddity to Blue, his enormous gray long-hair.

Blue blinks at him.

"My curiosity has been piqued," Lance replies primly.

Blue blinks her big gold eyes at him again.

"Enough of your judgement!" Lance over-dramatizes. "I can follow who I want!"

Shiro's blog is twenty-four pages of self-produced content that Lance blazes through in less than an hour. There are no reblogs. Lance nearly twitches at the restraint and—after a moment—decides to check if Shiro's likes are public.

"Jackpot!" Lance crows when the page loads.

Shiro's likes are a riot of memes and shit-posts. Art references and how-to's. Nerdy history jokes. Links to academic articles. Male fitspo. Healthy recipes, juice cleanse tips, and over-indulgent foodie pics. NSFW gifs of twinks writhing open-mouthed on rumpled sheets. Pictures of space and nature. Lots of dogs. Several of Lance's selfies. More than one necromancy pun. If it is at all possible to fall in love with someone based on their likes, Lance does it.

Lance's infinite scrolling comes to a halt at half past one, when his one of his many phone alarms notifies him of the time. Lance groans, closes his browser, and hauls his butt out of his narrow bed. It takes him a couple minutes to find an acceptably clean pair of skinny jeans and an unwrinkled sweater; he hasn't done laundry for several weeks.

"After lab," Lance tells Blue as he wriggles out of his worn sweats into his socially acceptable denim. "I'll do a load tonight."

Blue flicks her tail at him, a rude gesture that Lance returns with one of his own. Blue sends him baleful glance.

"Don't look at me like that," Lance says even as he plants a kiss between Blue's mismatched ears. She lost half of her left ear in a fight before the shelter picked her off the street. "You started it."

Blue meows loudly and bats Lance's nose.

"Okay, okay, you're right. I started it." Lance presses one more kiss on his cat's skull. "Have fun bird-watching. I'll see you later."

Then—with his good-byes said—Lance grabs his notebook-laden satchel, and is out the door.

.

Lance's lab is as much of a challenge as it always is. Lance is good at math—numbers and variables are easy—but his brain refuses to wrap around the concepts of physics. It's a small miracle that Pidge is his lab partner; without her, Lance is certain he would fail.

"You're a lifesaver," Lance gushes as they leave the old building. "Let me buy you pizza to show my gratitude."

"I told Matt I'd have dinner with him," says Pidge. "His roommate is going through some sort of clean eating phase and it's driving him nuts."

"He can come," Lance says. Then, less magnanimously, "But he has to get his own slice."

Pidge rolls her eyes as she texts her older brother. Lance shoots a text to Hunk, who responds with a single thumbs up emoji. They all meet at less than ten minutes later at the off-campus pizzeria that sells by the slice. Lance gets three for himself and two for Pidge; Matt, who is the only person over the age of twenty-one, covertly buys a pitcher of beer that they pour into their small, plastic water cups.

"Sweet, sweet, processed goodness," Matt half-cries as he chews, his mouth filled with cheese, pepperoni, and grease. "How I missed you."

Lance would be more sympathetic to Matt's dilemma if the man hadn't embarrassed him in a game of beer pong at a sorority the week before. Lance can't prove it, but he knows in his heart of hearts that Matt cheated. Nobody beats Lance at beer pong, okay. Nobody.

"That bad?" Pidge grins.

"You have no idea," Matt bemoans. "Like—Takashi's a great dude, don't get me wrong—but when I found him on Craig's List I was more worried about being murdered in my sleep than I was about weird diet habits. Turns out I should have been more worried about the diet habits. Our fridge is filled with kale. Kale, Kit-Kat. From the farmer's market."

"Kale is really good for you," Hunk interjects.

"That's what Takashi said," Matt mutters. "I don't know how much longer I can go on like this."

"Hasn't it only been three days—"

"An eternity—"

Lance laughs at Matt's plight and, once dinner is finished and the four of them part ways, he takes out his phone to tweet about the roundabout retribution.

Lance @lancesalot #revenge is best served blanched. or in a smoothie. #kale #healthyliving #karma

.

It's a little past nine when Lance returns to his apartment. His roommate, Rolo, and his ambiguously defined girlfriend/partner-in-crime, Nyma, are sitting on the couch sharing a joint. A bag of popcorn is ready on the battered coffee table and the television is playing an old nineties buddy-cop flick.

"Hey," Rolo says, smoke curling upwards from his mouth. "Wanna join?"

"Nah." Lance turns down the proffered joint with a shrug. "Gotta take my laundry down. You feed Blue?"

"Like she'd let me forget."

Blue—who is perched on the windowsill—releases a single, plaintive meow. She has no problems letting anyone know what she wants and when she wants it, especially when it comes to being fed.

"Thanks man."

"De nada."

It doesn't take Lance long to gather his dirty clothing and stuff it into his hamper. He takes it all to the basement, throws a few loads in, and settles into one of the old armchairs that have accumulated in the corner. He knows that he should read ahead for his classes, but the siren song of social media grips him. An internal debate rages inside him for all of three seconds before he opens his tumblr account.

Lance barely feels the twinge of guilt.

There are several asks—all anonymous, as per usual—and one unread message. Lance is a little surprised by the latter; after a few weird encounters, he changed his setting so that he could only receive messages from people he followed. He clicks on the conversation first.

white_iron Thanks for the follow! I'm really flattered. You're one of my favorite blogs.

Lance smiles at the message.

lances-a-lot no problem!!! ur art was super funny i laughed at everything pretty sure my cat thinks i'm crazy now

After hitting send, Lance plugs in his chunky headphones into the audio jack. He has a new chillwave playlist that Pidge gave him, but he knows that if he doesn't give Tycho his full attention Pidge may murder him. So instead, Lance pulls up his trusted Rihanna compilation and double clicks on the first song. He bops his head in time with the beat and opens his asks, quickly answering his anons.

Several chart-toppers later, a small ping interrupts Rihanna's plea for the dj to turn the music up. Lance looks at the vertical line of icons on the side of the page and sees that he has another message from Shiro. Lance opens the conversation immediately and reads:

white_iron My dog already knows I'm crazy.

white_iron sent a photo post.

A small preview image has been loaded into the conversation. It is a cartoon version of Shiro's akita, her expression morphed into one of extreme judgement. Her eyebrows—twin dots of white on her dark face—are low over her big eyes and her ruff is fattened comically around her muzzle. Lance cannot help but laugh at the exaggerated accuracy and immediately reblog it.''

lances-a-lot OMG THATS FANTASTIC
 THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT BLUE DOES

white_iron Stare into the depths of your decrepit soul and find you wanting?

lances-a-lot haha, yes! blue acts like i dont spoil her rotten shes such a princess

white_iron I definitely know how that goes. Bee has three dog beds, but she insists on sleeping in my bed or in my roommate's.

lances-a-lot blue has peed in every. single. bed i bought for her i stopped trying after awhile it was getting to be an expensive exercise in futility

white_iron Two words. Dog toys.

Lance talks to Shiro for the next couple of hours while his laundry finishes. Mostly, they swap stories about their pets and commiserate about their less than desirable—if not inadvertently hilarious—behavior. Lance even tells Shiro about how he rescued Blue. In turn, Shiro talks about the process he had to go through to adopt Bee. Shiro mentions that Bee is a service dog; what for, he does not say.

Don't be that asshole, Lance reminds himself as the topic wanes. His comfort is more important than your curiosity.

Lance is having such a good time talking to Shiro that he barely notices midnight pass. In fact, if it weren't for the enormous, jaw-cracking yawn that his body produces, Lance would not have noticed at all.

lances-a-lot dude i just noticed what time it was like i could seriously talk about blue forever but laundry sleep ADULTING i have calc at 8 am, ugh kill me now

white_iron Tell me about it. I have to TA an 8 a.m. class.

There is a small pause. Lance gnaws on his bottom lip as he watches the ellipsis that indicates typing flicker in and out of existence.

white_iron Talk to you tomorrow?

Lance bites down harder on his lip. Normally, he would send back a quick affirmation before logging off, but his interaction with Shiro feels different than the interactions he's had in the past. Their chemistry is undeniable and their conversation never felt flat or stilted. Yet while Lance knows he's been lowkey flirting with Shiro, he cannot be sure if Shiro has been flirting back.

Fuck it, Lance thinks as he gathers all his courage and sets his fingers back on the keyboard. He can feel how warm his cheeks are. Just do it.

lances-a-lot its a date ;)

After he sends the message, Lance closes his laptop and jumps off the armchair. He feels jittery and unsure, yet also oddly hopeful that maybe this time—for the first time—his interest won't be a mistake.

.

[lookgoodformula]

Speed Is the Name of the Game With Hourglass Voyeur Waterproof Liquid Liner

The new Hourglass Voyeur Waterproof Liquid Liner ($34)

It’s the Murphy’s Law of makeup. Whatever can go wrong with your winged liner, will go wrong with your winged liner, and that little kitten flick you intended to make morphs into a giant jungle cat of a flick extending from the outer corner to almost all the way behind your ear.

That said, it feels a little strange to talk about new $34 Hourglass Voyeur Waterproof Liquid Liner in the context of speed, and speediness, because, you know, “liquid liner” and “speediness” don’t often go together, but they do in the case of this liner. It makes quick work of liquid liner lines.

So, how does it do what it does? I dunno… It’s some kinda Hourglass hocus pocus.

A new addition to the permanent line, it’s a dark, true black liner with a shiny finish and a waterproof formula, and the color doesn’t have any blue or green undertones.

The tip reminds me of Tom Ford’s liner

The long, thin felt tip looks a lot like the tip of my holy grail Tom Ford liner, which is the main reason I was eager to give this liner a try, but it’s not exactly the same. It’s slightly stiffer (the Hourglass tip) and, because of that, the first few lines I drew with it were jagged, thick and, basically, out of control.

The tip took me a little while to figure out.

Use a light touch

Like, the lightest of light touches — we’re talking butterfly kisses. Once you get that down, it’s easy to quickly draw crisp lines with it in just a minute or two.

SO FAST!

And I think that the intensity of the black color lends to its quickness, along with how readily the liquid dispenses from the pen tip. Even that seems faster than usual for liquid liner.

I mean, it doesn’t gush out like a liquid geyser or anything, but if you press too hard… Not good. Your lines will look thick and jagged.

If, on the other hand, you use a light touch with it, it’s easy to get those perfect, opaque crisp lines.

No crease transfer

Oh, and here’s my biggest pet peeve when it comes to liquid liner: when you have to sit there with your eyes closed waiting for it to dry so that it doesn’t transfer up into your crease.

Uh…

Voyeur dries within a minute, so you don’t have to play the waiting game with it.

The final verdict

It’s a yes for me, but this bad boy probably requires some practice. If you’re trying liquid liner for the first time, Voyeur is going to be tricky. If you get it down, though, your luscious lines will last you through anything and everything.

In other news…

I’m totally obsessed with Lady Leshurr.

K, so, one of the reasons that I think YouTube is one of the best things ever is because of all the new music I find when I’m listening to it/running on the treadmill.

Last Sunday I randomly clicked on a video by a rapper named Lady Leshurr, and she’s really good! She reminds me of one of my favorite rappers of all time, Missy Elliott. She’s got that swagger and sort of a playful style.

She did this series of six performance art-like YouTube videos called Queen’s Speech, where it’s just her speaking directly to the camera, and they’re done in one continuous take. Her music gets me going, too. When I was listening to it on my run the other day, I wasn’t intending to run that far, but I ended up doing four miles, which is good for me.

I also wanted to start a band and believed that by the end of that four miles, I was Beyoncé.

Give her a listen! She’s really good.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

P.S. Sorry for being MIA lately! I had some technical difficulties with my computer, and Connor Claire has been having a couple of “high needs” days.

Poor thing has a bad diaper rash, so we talked to an advice nurse who gave us some suggestions that seem to be helping.

She’ll be OK, but I’m giving her some extra TLC this week.

Hope you’re doing OK. How are things out yonder way?

The post, "Speed Is the Name of the Game With Hourglass Voyeur Waterproof Liquid Liner," first appeared on Makeup and Beauty Blog | Makeup Reviews, Swatches and How-To Makeup. from Makeup and Beauty Blog | Makeup Reviews, Swatches and How-To Makeup http://ift.tt/2l1XY0J via IFTTT

[smartphone-science]

Some days I sit and think, “what will I write…?” What do you say when you get to 1000 posts? Maybe you just start where you are, diverge to where this all began, then offer a collection of reader’s favourite posts, and a few of your own? (And throw in a few pictures.)

Slow to fall

This piece started a long time ago at a café table in Melaka, the laptop in front of me with a sweet kopi susu[1] carefully placed to one side.

The book is, Biopunk dystopias: genetic engineering, society, and science fiction, by Lars Schmeink. Who can resist a title like that? This photo is from Kuching (not Melaka), taken from outside the cafe, looking out over the lake. It’s a favourite place for me in this town. ©Grant Jacobs, 2019-.

I ponder my next move, watching a guard patrolling the entrance of the building. He reaches up and waves both hands at the birds sitting on an arch above the entrance. Plucky, stubborn or daft, one refuses to go.

It’s an avian-human standoff. The guard looks up at the bird, and bird down at the guard. It shuffles its feet, then settles. I imagine later he’ll poop on the forecourt. The bird, not the guard. Pigeon’s revenge. Or whatever it is to a dinosaurian mind.

Source: Wikimedia Commons (Public domain). This has nothing to do with anything, I just like ancient marginalia![2]

Birds are evolutionary remnants of the dinosaurs. My mind wanders and I imagine them holding subconscious existential angst at that they were once (mostly) giants when our ancestors were insignificant little nocturnal rodents. Maybe a few modern birds sit there and think, “I’m higher up than you”…

The recalcitrant pigeon prompts memories of Guillermo Mordillo’s sweet, thoughtful takes on life. Gentle stubbornness was one of his themes. His posters muffled the bland walls of my graduate student bedsit.[3] One poster I liked, but never bought, featured a gardener standing next to pile of leaves and a large tree. The gardener is clutching a rake and, like the guard, he looks up. High in the branches a solitary leaf clings on, defying the gardener from completing his task.

Writing, interrupted

Attacks on two mosques in Christchurch brought early attempts at this post to a stop. It didn’t feel right to write about something trivial so I didn’t. This state persisted while I travelled and tended to other things.

By then I was in Kuching, Sarawak. All around me were Muslims, alongside Sarawak’s wider ensemble of ethnic groups: Iban, Chinese, Hindi, and others.

Sarawakians are a cheerful and friendly lot. At Pustaka Negri Sarawak—the base for their state library—a lovely café looks over the lake in front of the building. In the early morning light joggers tread the paths that circumnavigate the shores. Late in the afternoon the pumping throb of dance aerobics fills the atrium adjacent to the café. They’re an enthusiastic bunch, dressed in a wide range of garb: loose-fitting or tights, hijab[4] or not.[5] They wave hello as you pass by.

It was upsetting to imagine anyone wanting to hurt them.

Evening aerobics in the Sarawak State library atrium. ©Grant Jacobs, 2019-.

The average person is just someone living under a different code for life,[6] mostly doing the things we all do. Jogging, moving to the beat of music, driving to work, getting through the day.

Late afternoon, Sarawak State library, looking back towards the atrium. ©Grant Jacobs, 2019-.

One thing not getting done as much as I wanted was writing. I began writing Code for life ten years ago. It hasn’t—yet—lead to what I would it like to.[7] Still, I’m still here and maybe one day it’ll fall into place.

Sciblogs and blogging: beginnings

My blogging started before Sciblogs from Alison holding up one of my essay-length comments and inviting me to write it as a guest post. Alison was part of the group that started Sciblogs. I was invited as one of the founding writers.

Scilblogs, 23-May-2010, taken from the Wayback Machine. Sciblogs started in October 2009.

We were an interactive lot, trading notes on the backchannel, commenting on each other’s blogs and generally solving the world’s problems. Or at least those touching on science communication.

Not all of our chatting was about science. Topical issues were fair game and we aired some of our concerns about pretty much anything. SMC staff, especially Peter Griffin, asked our opinion on science communication matters. Pioneers of a new venture, we were finding our way forward.

In one of the early years I set out to write every day, and did. It’s a bigger effort than many might think; around 2–4 hours a day, every day. Around that time I asked a couple of New Zealand editors about writing for their outlets and was was advised to not bother. They wanted ‘New Zealand only’ stories or zip. Long-form science writing was something they took from syndicated international feeds at the price of a one-off cost per year. Science-writers in NZ? Yeah, nah.

Part of Goodread’s list of science communication books. These are ones I have not read. At ~$150 I won’t be buying the Oxford Handbook any time soon.

On top of reading ‘the literature’ (scientific research), I studied science writing, also touching on journalism and editing.[8] Scientists are by nature self-learners. When we want to learn something new, we just get on with it. Alongside the reading a big influence for me was ScienceOnline, then a very active forum of scientists, editors, writers and everything in between. They were open to honest criticism to do better.[9] Their community offered a path towards paid long-form science writing for the few keen to move in that direction. The idea of running science writing alongside my scientific consultancy appealed. Unfortunately the organisation fell apart as I felt doors were starting to open.

Back on Sciblogs

On Sciblogs correspondence was vigorous too. Some threads covered over a hundred replies. Thoughts ranged from useful to a few who wrote directly to the authors that their intention was to harass. (They did that too.)

Topics covered a wide range and some of our articles were featured at the NZ Herald. The list of these near the end of a Nature Soapbox article I wrote gives a bit of a feel for the range of topics at the time, and who was writing then –

(You’ll need to use the article to link to the pieces.)

A feature of blogs is readers have more-or-less direct access to the writer and in the case of science blogs, to people with specialist knowledge. It can be a mixed blessing for contentious topics, but it lets readers ask questions of people with a background in the area, something that’s not common online.

I haven’t lived in this village for a long time now, but have never found time to change the banner. The three topic themes are still mostly true, though.

Code for life mostly draws from genetics and molecular biology. It’s also mostly for general readers, so it doesn’t feature much computational biology (my field) these days. My work starts from genetics and molecular biology, but the hands-on stuff is computational, drawing from theoretical biology. It’s hard to relate that to non-scientists. It cuts a bit: like most scientists there’s a lot I’d say about my own lot.

Occasionally I offer criticism of efforts to present science to a general audience.[9] (Expect more of that.) Conveying risk, for example, might seem a dry topic at first, but it’s body and soul to a lot of science writing. There’s the use of language, too. Metaphors for example. They’re widely used and encouraged, but I often prefer something closer to direct explanation.

Speaking of language, finding the featured image was interesting. Searching for images of ‘monk writing’ you get a lot of writing by monks, rather than monks, writing.

Like software mangling parsing language, people misread your words too. Some seem determined to find ‘other’ meanings – especially those with committed views on contentious topics. Some of it will just be ordinary rushed reading, but even so at times it’s as if your words are being filtered and morphed into something they wish were there. That, too, is a mixed blessing. It can be quite unsettling to read alien ‘re-interpretations’ of what you’ve written.

A peek inside a cell. Molecular model of E. coli cytoplasm. Source: PLoS Computational Biology; image credits: Elcock. I’ve wrote about this simulation in Friday picture: molecular modelling of the cytoplasm.

I’ve covered a lot of contentious topics, mostly out of a perhaps misplaced sense of duty. There’s satisfaction in helping, and a need for better coverage of some topics. I enjoy exploring corners of genetics and molecular life more. A hidden world inside our cells is being visualised. There are some fantastic practical applications. It’s the same fascination that carried me into my corner of science after all, and I get to share a little of it with others. That’s a privilege, although at times I think one more easily held by those with a salaried income.

Science communication is also an opportunity for writers to explore corners away from their immediate research interests. It gives them a chance to tackle topical issues in a way they can’t easily within an academic setting. For those of us at it for a long time, it sometimes feels like a saga, one where the hero battles their way through thickets, past strange new beasts and lands, sharing with the reader their exploration of new places.

Reader’s favourites

With this little rumination this I’ve landed my 1000th post. A milestone of some sort that has been in no hurry to drop. Hopefully it’s more a colourful autumn leaf than damp splat of milky excrement. The gardener can get on with his next job – the guard can call in the cleaner! (Or get the mop out himself.)

Participants in a science competition in Sarawak. ©Grant Jacobs, 2019-.

Looking back some articles were read by more people than others. My favourites are not necessarily these.

How many people have visited a post is a clumsy proxy for how much readers liked it, but it’ll have to do. I’m also a bit wary of the statistics. Although they’re nominally visits from 2009, what ranks high feels closer to, or skewed to, what I’d expect for visits since Sciblogs shifted to using Google Stats. (Earlier we used StatCounter. For example, none of the Christchurch earthquake posts rank well but I recall them being very well-followed.)

Popularity counts can reflect where the articles are shared. The most popular two at least, I think, draw in reader through being shared on very popular sites. Here are the ‘top’ three –

How to spot a badly drawn DNA helix (July 2013). A guide for artists to artists to get them right. It’s amazing how many are badly wrong for something so iconic. (This issue has recently recurred with a prominent research journal featuring a left-handed DNA helix on their cover.)

The world’s largest bacteria (November 2011). The largest, smallest, longest, etc. factoids are often popular.

The Impossible burger is not genetically engineered (July 2018). This was put up to counter local media fuss.

Vaccine-related posts regularly draw a fair number of readers:

Faking an HPV vaccine claim in more ways than one (June 2018)

Vaccines and risk on Auckland motorway billboard (October 2018)

Vaxxed at University of Otago: venues should be able to decline (April 2017)

Bad science: baking soda, fungi, cancer, nuclear fallout, rosacea (September 2012)

Please don’t share vaccine concern posts (April 2017)

Vaccine battles (November 2017)

A few vaccine resources (April 2017; I’d like to present an updated take on this sometime)

Vaccine rates in NZ and what do those that delay infant immunisation think (April 2013; this one is relevant to the current measles outbreak. My impression is mainstream media (MSM) have been largely aware of these studies.)

For new parents of parents-to-be facing vaccine information (January 2019)

‘Fake author’ papers opposing HPV vaccine retracted, editor’s defence (May 2018)

Science writing is a topic I’ve covered quite a bit – we all like to think about that thing we do:

Science writing vs science journalism (January 2010; my views on this have shifted – I’d like to revisit this at some point)

How long do you take to review a research paper? (September 2013)

A few a miscellaneous pieces fared well, too –

Scientific paper has a face in a turd. Who could it be? (December 2018)

From science PhD to careers outside academia: what might help? (January 2013)

What use now is handwriting? (November 2011)

What motivated you to become a scientist? (February 2015)

GMOs and glyphosate are topics I’ll return to –

Is GM corn really different to non-GM corn? (December 2016)

USA Court ruling on glyphosate— the role of IARC and Eugenie Sage’s call (August 2018)

Glyphosate and TIME magazine: writer employed by advocacy group a dubious choice (November 2018)

Regulating GMOs: time to move forward (November 2017)

Thankfully at least a few are articles exploring corners of biology in the top 30 or so –

What does a chromosome look like? (November 2013)

Temperature-induced hearing loss (July 2010)

The sheep-leaf nudibranch (March 2015)

Deleting a gene can turn an ovary into a testis in adult mammals (January 2010)

The origin of a false claim: projecting demons (October 2018)

Haemophilia – towards a cure using genetic engineering (July 2011)

Festival in the old town, Kuching. ©Grant Jacobs, 2019-.

A few favourites

My favourites are those I enjoyed writing or researching. They’re not examples of my “best writing”! Besides, it’s impossible to please everyone; each reader’s tastes differs. Some might prefer pseudoscience smack-downs over quirky corners of genetics.

Then there’s that I can’t even review all 1000 of my posts.

(For some older posts the formatting is less than ideal. These have been affected by updates to WordPress or Sciblogs. It’s too much work to fix these without access to the server.)

General stuff

C’s founder is no more Explaining to non-geeks why Kernigan’s passing means a lot to those in computer science and computing industries.

Honey’s antibiotic properties found? One research group played off different compounds found in honey to determine the contributions of each to antibiotic effect and the strength of combinations.

Rubella, not a benign disease if experienced during early pregnancy As a ‘rubella kid’ this topic is close to my heart in its own way.

Monday potpourri: maps, malaria in the USA, cholera in Dunedin and vaccines Three very short pieces chained in a line of thought.

Autistic children and blood mercury levels Where we get mercury from.

GMOs and the plants we eat: neither are ‘natural’ An attempt to point out that, among other things, both our ‘natural’ foods and GMOs are not really ‘natural’.

Aww, crap Some pitcher plants have adapted to be tree-shrew toilets…

Book sales, frumpy readers, and mental rotation of book titles While at the famous-in-Dunedin 24-hour book sale I wondered if there was a ‘right’ orientation to scan rows of books. (Nominated by a reader for OpenLaboratory 2010.)

Preserving endangered species — of gut microbes A interesting idea – new to me – that we should not only conserve rare species of animals but also microbes in our gut that reflect now-rare diets.

Genetics

Bengkala A mix of travelogue and genetics. I visited Bali to meet a village with a genetic deafness where everyone used sign language.

Monkey business, or is my uncle also my Dad? For male pygmy marmosets, their genetic father could be their uncle. Confused? I still get regular visits to this early effort.

Deleting a gene can turn an ovary into a testis in adult mammals I was startled to learn that ovaries may not be permanently defined to be ovaries in some adult mammals.

The inheritance of face recognition (should you blame your parents if you can’t recognise faces?) Prosopagnosia is surprisingly common and has fascinated me for years.

Epigenetics, a confused muddle in the media My biological research interests involve some aspects of epigenetics: here I make a gentle prod at epigenetics being oversold in media.

I remember because my DNA was methylated Epigenetics meets neural systems, meets memories. I get a little lyrical in the beginning, which I confess I enjoyed.

Boney lumps, linkage analysis and whole genome sequencing Looking for the basis of inherited bone spurs.

Temperature-induced hearing loss This was a surprise to learn: a few rare individuals have lose their hearing when they have a high body temperature.

Loops to tie a knot in proteins? How proteins fold is an interest from my Ph.D. student days. A few proteins do more than just collapse on themselves in folding: they tie knots, threading the chain through itself.

Coiling bacterial DNA DNA in cells is rarely ‘naked’, it is packaged with proteins. This article presents a new model for bacterial DNA packaging.

Finding platypus venom Researchers cleverly did not extract the venom, but created possible venoms by comparing the platypus genome with known venomous proteins and expressing the genes that matched.

Genetic tests and personalised medicine

Autism – looking for parent-of-origin effects Some genes are expressed in a way that depends on what parent the gene was from. I report on a study looking at autism this way.

Doggie ERVs We have in our genomes endogenous retroviruses, ERVs. Turns out that man shares ERVs with his (her) best friend.

Haemophilia – towards a cure using genetic engineering Using ‘designer’ zinc finger proteins to insert a working copy of a missing gene.

Kumara are transgenic They’re natural GMOs and serve as an illustration of how arbitrary calling something a GMO is.

Map shows New Zealand with lowest death rate on earth in 1856, over 11 in 1000 dying Maps are great. Zooming in on this old map, it claims NZ had the lowest death rate at the time. (It may not be true, but it’s a fun thing to have spotted.)

Let’s finish with a few more recent efforts –

Regulating GMOs: time to move forward Something New Zealand needs to move forward on.

Go voyage the great beyond (A little lyrical; fun stuff to write)

Cow farts Sometimes just getting the basics right is what is needed

A gene drive in mice – but only for females There’s a call for discussion about gene editing and gene drives in NZ. I hope to add to this.

Scientific paper has a face in a turd. Who could it be? Already featured earlier, but writing this was fun…

A foil to the populist scourge: towards a Science Commission for New Zealand? Not for the writing, but this is an issue I’d like to see addressed.

USA Court ruling on glyphosate— the role of IARC and Eugenie Sage’s call I hope to return to this; there was terrible coverage on this in TVNZ 1 News earlier this year – their reporter seems to have simply copied popular opinion rather than investigate.

Upcoming

Before I tell you these, a confession: I don’t want to hold myself to these! Things change. By the time I get to them, other news might want attention. That said, in my notes I have stuff on:

a letter by young scientists calling out the Green Party for the GMO policy. (I have a post on this in draft.)

the recent TVNZ report on the Christchurch City Council struggling to implement their ‘ban’ on glyphosate

Science journalism, especially ‘critique not criticism’

gene drives

vaccines for parents (yes this is an on-going thing, unfortunately)

gene therapies (lots of great stuff to cover)

human gene editing

a random collection of biology-related things that just interest me, and might interest others

There’s a long backlog of ideas. The list above barely scratches what there is. (More are list in a blogimmuniqué from the close of last year.)

Evolution is a tinkerer,[9] maybe I’ll tweak the form a little too.

Maybe I should explain this one day – a cover illustration showing prediction of functional (DNA-binding) residues from my PhD student research. Way back in 1992! What was top-end molecular graphics then is ordinary now. The picture shows looking straight down the DNA, as if we’d chopped it like a salami. Or a cucumber, if you’re a vegetarian. (Copyright, EMBO J.)

I could touch a little on computing. (As a computational biologist, I have a ‘tech reporter’ side too.) I may trial short posts offering very brief takes on recent research. Short takes aren’t suited to critical coverage, but they’ll let me get something out, and you get something to read. I don’t like not offering critique—to me it’s a central part of science writing—but doing that can take a substantial amount of time. In the same vein, I may explore a molecule or mutation (or allele) of the week.

Away from the blog I explore other writing styles and genres. Blogs favour the writer’s voice, something usually avoided in mainstream media or longer form work. Similarly, a fair bit of what I write here is pitched at slightly geekier level than I would for, say, a magazine. (There’s more of my thinking, and fewer ‘story’ pieces.) As a result most of what I write here doesn’t resemble what I’d offer editors. I may tinker around that space, too.

Last thoughts

I hope you can forgive a little doggerel, milestone pieces are excuses for this sort of thing… (my apologies to Tolkien & Finn),

I’ve started on this little journey. Where the road leads, I do not know. I go where it takes me, to revel in unfamiliar places. Do I dare to live each moment free from the last? I’ve come a long way, but I’m not yet done. I look around each corner, hoping there may wait a new road or a secret gate.[10]

I’ll be continuing on, obviously. The story’s hero has more places to explore.

Speaking of roads I’ve been out in the world a bit. Four months cycling through north Germany, Denmark, Sweden (including Gotland), Estonia, Lativa and down to Austria. Then London, Cyprus, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and more recently Malaysia (especially Sarawak, Borneo). There will be more of those roads, too, but also exploring new lines of writing.

Sunset near Kuching footbridge. Sunsets are often impressive here – so are the lightning storms! ©Grant Jacobs, 2019-.

Acknowledgements

I’d like to thank those who gave me an opportunity to write at Sciblogs. Forgive me for not naming everyone! Alison deserves especial thanks for the getting me onto this science writing thing.

Thanks to Sarah-Jane, the current Sciblogs editor, for statistics of my blog (unfortunately I still can’t access my Google Stats!)

Footnotes

Lest anyone be misled, this post only touches on the writing part of what I do, not the science.

1. A very sweet Malaysian coffee. Roughly, it’s perhaps 1cm of condensed sweetened milk with coffee poured on top. When served it usually has a layered appearance—deep brown coffee sitting on off-white condensed milk until you stir the milk in. (Pro travel tip: kopi susu can be a very effective laxative if needed!)

2. I’ve no idea if the illustrated marginalia were executed by the scriveners themselves or added later by artists. They’re easily found online, but one sampler of more bizarre examples might be this article at i09.

3. There’s a commercial website of Mordillo’s present-day stuff. Click and drag to move the sky around (up, down, sideway). It’s excellent, a lovely website. If you click on each topic (at the bottom), the sky will move! Don’t miss the mini-golf asteroid or the man in space bubble. Or the flag planting on the balloon moon. And, oddly, a flying space super-cow, complete with bell. (Some of the pages aren’t loading as I write; this might be browser-specific.)

Mordillo died in late June this year. Some of the obits point at his postcards (I have a few), but he did much more.

4. I’m writing hijab as it’s a generic term, and one most people will be familiar with. Locally the covering is called a tudong (or kerudong). I’m hardly an expert on woman’s head coverings, but there are many different styles. These two women dressed for an engagement party are on the more elaborate end of the scale, but it’ll give you some idea. You’ll commonly see something similar to this photograph of a schoolgirl wearing an al-Amira. It’s uncommon to see nijab, and rare to see burqa or similar. (In the latter case, I suspect they may be visitors from the Arabic states.)

5. How prevalent Muslims are depends on where you. They’re more noticeable near the library, I suspect because the state mosque is just across the way and many visitors are students. In upmarket malls, the dress code swings more Western. The Muslim dress code is varied, and you get the clear impression that hiding the “form” of the body is optional. Classically Muslim dress covers both the skin and hides ones body shape. One young woman—teenage rebel and all—who occasionally comes to the library wears heels, skin-tight jeans, a lingerie-style top, push-up bra (common in Asia), all topped with a hijab.[4] It’s not exactly modest. The other extreme are what I take to be visitors from Saudi Arabia covered from head to toe bar a viewing slit for the eyes. By contrast modest for Sarakawians would be relaxed clothes with an al-Amira-style head covering. Even then many can’t help but wear bright colours. It’s a much more relaxed feel than, say, Northern Pakistan when I visited there around year 2000.

6. If you think there’s irony with the name of this blog, it’s actually one of the reasons for the name.

7. I try track where at least some of my pieces get to using an occasional hunt online. It’s gratifying to see the number of places that have linked to my efforts, and people seem to like carefully thought-out discussions of a topic, but it’s hard to put in the sort of effort these pieces take without some sort of return. Some of the sites linking to my pieces draw a lot traffic. A few pieces sit next to media reports (e.g. at the Evening Report and elsewhere.)

I miss the ClustrMaps that showed a world map with red dots representing where my readers were from.

8. Editing is something I’ve looked into before. Many years ago I applied for and got offered a job as an editor at university press, but ended up declining as the same week I was offered a research position.

9. There’s an essay I could write on this. TL;DR version: in my opinion if you’re involved in specialist writing, you ought to be open to criticism. It’s a hard line, perhaps, but to me you ought to be able to hold up to what you’ve presented, and how you presented it. I’m a fan of the idea that, given opportunity, science writers should stick to the broad field they understand.

Like a novelist breaking down other’s work to understand better what works (and what doesn’t!), I find critiquing science pieces and author’s approaches instructive. Likewise you can try to understand and critique “the system” (editors, publishing outlets, etc), too!

9. A very famous science quote from a near-namesake, Francois Jacob, is “evolution is a tinkerer, not an engineer.” Life evolves with continual (random) tinkering on existing life forms. His biography is excellent, but the one lecture I heard of his was disappointing.

10. For those not familiar with The Lord of the Rings, my lines borrow, merge (and mangle) a few of the poems in Tolkien’s novel, and the Finns’ All I Ask. Hey, what can a guy do?

Some readers wish wish there fewer less poetry and songs in LOTR, but The road goes ever on expresses an over-arching theme. You can’t leave that out! (It’s a novel, not a trilogy – a very large book of six parts, not to mention several appendices, published in three volumes.)

An aside: a few years ago I came up with a fun idea for a short science(ish!)-based LOTR sequel, and toyed with the idea as a writing exercise. A little research lead to the LOTR fan fiction archive. It currently has over 57,000 stories…… Yeah, you read that right. 57,000. Rightfully or wrongly that put me off. How do you even compete with that? Why bother? Also: how does one zealous fan read even a fraction of all of that?! (I’m not that kind of fan, either. A bit of a problem for writing what would basically be fan fiction as you’re unlikely to succeed unless you know the score inside and out.)

There’s some discussion about the poems at Wikipedia, and more that you could read on the many fan sites, but here are parts of I’m playing off –

The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with eager feet,

Until it joins some larger way

Where many paths and errands meet.

And whither then? I cannot say.

Also:

Still round the corner there may wait

A new road or a secret gate,

And though we pass them by today,

Tomorrow we may come this way

And take the hidden paths that run

Towards the Moon or to the Sun.

Images and copyright

Hanging in the margins is a cropped version of a public domain illustration featured in this Atlas Obscura article. All photographs are from the author’s collection (copyright, with all rights reserved). The EMBO J cover illustration is copyright EMBO J. (I have my own collection of variations on the basic theme, but it’d be an effort to relocate them.) The screenshots are, of course, public domain.

Editors and writers, please note my blog contents are copyrighted. I’m available for writing or editing work; feel free to ask. (While writing this, I found yet another website that has ‘scraped’ a copy of one of my stories. I’m happy to help where it’s reasonable to, but please don’t just take my work!)

Featured image

This image is a favourite of mine that I have used before. I love old art work with details of working tools or daily life. Call it a different form of travelling if you like.

It’s a portrait of Jean Miélot,“secretary, copyist and translator to Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy”, which Wikimedia adds, “NOTE: NOT IN FACT A MONK AT ALL, though a canon of Lille Cathedral.” Ha. He cut it both ways. What you get for being a favourite of the Duke, perhaps?

via Science Blogs