#my future journalism instincts are kicking in

[captainmullin]

The Journal of Captain Mullin - Chapter O. - The Fool.

Summary: A retelling of Captain Mullin's story, a young mercenary who took up the mantle of The Grancypher crew - following in their father's footsteps. A story of grief, tragedy, and how to sail into the future.

[First Chapter] [Next Chapter]

[O. 1. 2. 3. 4. Interlude 1. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Interlude 2. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. Interlude 3. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. Interlude 4. 20. 21. 22. Epilogue.]

Chapter Wordcount: 4,473

Song Inspo: Icarus by Bastille; Is There Anybody Here? by The Dear Hunter; Dawn in the Adan by Ichiko Aoba

Notes: It's here! I will be trying my best to update this weekly, but it might be closer to every 2 weeks at most. I sincerely hope you enjoy my danchousona's story, and I'm eager to tell you more of it!! This is probably my biggest writing project to date. Please enjoy!

Divider Credit: @.craftkitsune (tufted banner design 03)

Wind.

That’s all I could feel. 

It rushed past my ears like a thundering waterfall; a cacophony of silent sound that made my eardrums burn. I wanted to speak, but no words could come out. The pressure on my chest felt crushing; utterly and entirely compromising. I couldn't move to do anything about the pain - to just accept whatever fate had befallen me.

What have I done?

Flashes of memories crossed my mind. My family, friends, and the world around me. Companions of old and new. I knew so little, and yet I know nothing. Death seemed so insignificant in the grand scheme of things. What had my life surmounted to? Was I a good person? Did I live a life worthy of being saved? 

What have I done?

I had a feeling that this wasn’t the first time this had happened. In the midst of the air, all I could see was red. A crimson sky; unchanging and unholy. It made my stomach churn with regret. Tears welled at the corners of my eyes as they slowly closed - I surrendered myself to the wind. 

What have I done?

There was a lingering feeling of regret, somewhere deep in my soul. I wasn’t sure if it was for myself, or for leaving so many people behind. I didn’t deserve to feel that guilt, that sadness - it was all my own doing. I knew that; it was something so deeply ingrained in my heart that I didn’t know anything else. I was always running, always turning away from those that mattered the most, and now I can’t say goodbye. Maybe I didn’t earn it. A shooting star, burning itself out. Doomed to eternally fall towards its own death. 

What have I done?

Oh.

I remember now.

Chapter O. - The Fool.

The Fool takes a leap of faith from the ledge they are perched at. Stepping and falling into the unknown are one and the same. What lies below the cliff's edge?

I awoke with a start, my instincts kicking in and causing me to jolt - resulting in hitting my head on the wooden supports above me. My room onboard the Starseeker was small, cramped, and entirely too compact for me to ever feel comfortable in it. Despite the many times I’ve taken this journey, the room always felt… off. Unsettling. Maybe it was the fact that I was returning home after being away for so long - that guilt that churned in my stomach remained even after my nightmare had passed. I tried to shake off the bile that had risen in my throat. The nightmare had passed, so why did it bother me so much?

I squinted at the window on the opposite end of me, it’s dawning sky peering back at me. It was a burning red; similar to the one in my dream. Stars still dotted the morning horizon. There was knocking at the door, its rhythm frantic - meeting the pounding of my heart. I groaned, rubbing the fresh injury on my head. It is way too early for any of this. What time is it, anyway?

"Hey, Mullin!" A voice called from the other side of the door: “Your stop is almost here!” 

"Oh, damn- thanks, Henryk." I replied, sitting up in bed. "I'll be out soon!"

Henryk was one of the three Erune siblings that were onboard The Starseeker - the small passenger ship Mullin occupied now. The Starseeker was run by an older couple; a young man as the helmsman and his Harvin wife as the captain that had aged alongside Mullin as they frequented distant islands. The Starseeker was one of the few ships that made out the long journey to Zinkenstill, leading the young mercenary to know them intimately over the past years. 

Henryk was the oldest of the siblings at 16, but still had boundless energy like he was 12. He was always running around the airship, constantly repairing it under the helmsman's watch. I feel like I've always been by their side, ever since I became a full-fledged mercenary. I hope I can see everyone again before I go.  

"You got it!" Henryk's footsteps faded away as he ran off in the opposite direction. I sighed, stretching out my arms and preparing myself to face the crew and the awning new day. Pink and yellow rays outside my window indicated that dawn was approaching… and I've always loved sunrises on Zinkenstill. 

What greeted me on The Starseeker's deck was the morning sun - and Osta, the second of the three siblings. She was mopping the deck - not always a morning person, but wanting to get her job done before the hot afternoon hit. Her constant black clothes were a reminder of how I used to be when I was her age; 14 and ready to fight anyone at a moment's notice. 

Breaking my gaze from her, I blinked away the remnants of sleep and made my way over to the edge of the deck. Clouds passed by in puffy white bundles; the sunrise giving way to a clear blue morning. I leaned over the railing - just enough to see Zinkenstill not far below. The green hills and dark trees were fuzzy in the distance, but I could still make out little houses down below. Farmland had made its change from the deep greens of summer into the beige colors of fall. One of them has to be Gran and Djeeta, right? Hopefully they're safe, with the Erste Empire collapsing I haven't had time to contact them… 

I reached out over the railing edge, my gloved hand grasping for the clouds that hung there in the air. Zinkenstill was so close, yet still felt so impossibly far away. The wind blew through my fingers as if it were beckoning me onwards. I could almost touch it, just a bit further- 

"Hey, watch it. I'm not catching you when you fall." Osta's monotone voice cut into my thoughts, the blood rushing back towards my head as I caught myself before I fell over the ship's edge.  Oh, that was a close one. 

"Sorry, Osta." I mumbled to no one. Maybe I've been too high-strung lately. Everything's been put on a wire-thin tightrope around here, me included. I shouldn't get distracted. They say absence makes the heart fonder, but… I looked down at the island again, and sighed. I just want to get home at this point. I need to pack. 

Turning around and waving to Osta, I headed back towards my cabin, eager to find coffee in the common room. Behind me, the white clouds formed a large shadow across the island of Zinkenstill, casting darkness over everything the clouds touched. A new day approaches and the cliff's edge remains ever-closer. 

An unfamiliar ship was docked on the port - that was the first thing Mullin noticed as they unboarded The Starseeker. It was a much larger vessel than the one the mercenary had just departed from; large sails and an impressive silhouette on the skyline. Adorned on her front was the carving of a large dragon head; her wooden eyes seeming to peer directly into Mullin's soul. They shuddered and turned away - not afraid, mind you, just… unsettled. The remnants of this morning's dream hadn't entirely faded away. 

Taking a deep breath in, Mullin hoisted one of their canvas bags over their shoulder and carried the other in their opposite hand. The coffee from earlier had carried out its duties - a jolt of energy throughout Mullin's system as they took their first step forward towards the path that led to town. Where their family was waiting. Another pang of guilt, but it was too quick to fully comprehend. They exhaled. 

And took another step. 

I felt an uneasiness in the air as I approached my home at the top of the hill; nervousness causing me to stumble on the rocky pathway. I hadn't felt this way returning home in a very long time, so why now? Something felt off - Gran usually greeted me as soon as I stepped foot on the island. I sat my bags down on the front porch and placed one of my hands on the pistol that was holstered around my belt. Shifting my weight, I knocked on the door. 

A beat passed. Then two. I shifted my weight again, and brought my hand up to knock again -

"MULLIN!" There was a shriek of delight from inside the house as the door swung wide open to reveal Djeeta; face flushed from running down the steps. Before I could react, she threw herself onto me and knocked me flat on my back in a hug. My bags tumbled back down the hill - and another headache began to form on the back of my head. In the back of my mind, I vaguely noticed that Djeeta was wearing… armor of some sort, and a weighty sword equipped to her side.

"Djeeta, what's-?" I began, patting her on the back and trying to regain my vision from my dizzying descent onto grass.

"You're home! Oh, there's so much we have to tell you!" Djeeta began rambling, offering a hand to help me stand back up. I closed my eyes, trying to ignore the migrain beginning to form. She then started going on about something about an adventure and we died and there's this really cute girl and-

"You DIED?" I opened my eyes and whipped around to face my sister completely now, watching as the excitement on her face quickly morphed into one of abashedness and only the tiniest bit of shame. Djeeta laughed and rubbed the back of her neck. 

"Well- um- it was only for a little bit-"

"'Only for a little bit'? Djeeta, what in the skies did you do while I was gone? Six months!" I said, "Six months and you've gone and up and died? Do you know how worried I was? The Erste Empire has gone through an entire revolution and I've had to work my ass off to make sure you both got money for food and-"

"It's okay, Mullin." This time, Gran's soft voice greeted me at the doorstep of our home. My brother was always the more rational one, but my apprehension didn't disappear.  He wore an expression matching Djeeta's - also rubbing the back of his neck. "Come inside. We should… talk. There's a lot you've missed."

My bags were still at the bottom of the hill.

Inside, the uneasiness I felt had somehow tripled in feeling. In front of me sat complete strangers - they were in my living room, my kitchen - and they all were equally as tense as I was. The first thing to catch my eye was a young girl, no more than 13, with vibrant blue hair. She wore a white dress, and an expression of concern as I was shuffled inside by Gran and Djeeta.

"Um… this is Mullin, right?" She said, her voice meek. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other - not nervous, but she's… curious? I thought to myself as I brushed grass off of my hair and clothes. I nodded. 

"...Yeah. I'm Mullin." I replied, feeling a bit lame in my response. I was never very good at first impressions, and no doubt that today would be full of them. I looked around the living room, and made a mental note of who was there. A man with a full beard was sharpening a knife while looking out the window - a woman with long black hair sat across from him. They both were occupied with their thoughts, it seemed. I could also hear movement and voices from the kitchen, but they were faint. 

I felt eyes on the back of my neck and turned to meet the gaze of a woman with brunette hair. She was dressed as a knight; her armor glistened and the sword at her belt told me she was far more experienced than I with it. Realizing I had taken too long to say something more than my name, I continued.

"...I'm their sibling. Older by a few years. I've been out on a job for the past few months. Have they…" I glanced over to my siblings. "...not said anything about me?" 

A pang of hurt went through me. I know I haven't been the most present lately, but surely they would have mentioned me? I've continually tried to send letters, but I haven't had many responses… 

"It's not like that!" Gran said, waving his hands in defense. I crossed my arms and raised an eyebrow at him, and he continued: "We've been traveling. We couldn't get any of your letters - we only saw the pile at our door this morning," he admitted. 

"-So we'll be going through them today with you!" Djeeta finished. I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. The knight to my side also sighed. She took her hand off of the hilt of her sword and held out her hand.

"...They never mentioned you had purple hair. Or how…" She gave me a once-over. "...Protective you might be. My name is Katalina Aryze. I'm a former Erste Empire lieutenant." 

I took her hand and shook it. It was a firm handshake; warm. The girl with the blue hair tapped me on the shoulder and also held out her hand: "I'm Lyria!"

Just Lyria? Nothing else? I also shook her hand, and was pleasantly surprised by how strong of a grip she had. Katalina smiled softly at her, and I could feel the warmth radiate from her expression. I guess these people aren't so bad. It still doesn't explain why they're here, though…

I looked back over at Gran and Djeeta, who were whispering conspiratorially to each other to one side of the room. Before I could say anything, the voices from the kitchen got louder and a large crash erupted from the room. I swiveled on my foot and began to move towards the noise, but Gran held out an arm before I could move. He gave me a silent shake of his head, as if to tell me everything would be okay. 

"Geez, old man, can't you do anything right?" A young girl's voice rang with more clarity now. Emerging from the room, the girl twirled a staff that looked about the same size as her and pointed it at the other man that came out. She huffed and puffed at him while he just groaned and rolled his eyes. He had brown hair swept over to one side of his face, and some facial hair - not nearly as intense as the other man's. He looked… tired. We locked eyes for a moment, a brief second of acknowledgement, before I glanced away. 

"I'm not an old man. Sheeh, it ain't my fault you dropped the cooking pot." He said, then leaned down to ruffle the girl's hair, only for Djeeta to clear her throat. 

"Ah-hem! Now that we're all here, I'll make some introductions!" She placed her hands on her hips in a pose exuding confidence - not that she needed any effort to be any louder. "Mullin, this is the Grandcypher crew. We're skyfarers now!" 

"I- what? What did you do in the six months I was gone…" I mumbled to myself, watching as she pointed out each individual member of their crew. Wait, what was the name…?

"That's Eugen in the corner. He's from Auguste, and he knows a lot about being an adventurer!" The aforementioned skyfarer nodded at me and I nodded back. He looked away from his knife for a moment and stared me down. Under his gaze, I shrunk back - only to be greeted by a warm, hearty laugh from Eugen.

"Hah! Good to meet ya. Gran and Djeeta are good kids - I can see you're the same." He smiled proudly and returned to his work. The woman next to him spoke next.

"My name is Rosetta. I used to travel with your father when we were younger." Rosetta had a ghost of a smile on her lips before she inclined her head towards my siblings: "They are much like him. It's good to meet you." 

Djeeta nodded, as if the introductions were to her satisfaction, then turned to the girl and the man who had come out of the kitchen - I should probably clean up whatever mess they made before getting my bags - and the girl spoke first.

"I'm Io! I'm a mage from the Valtz Duchy. Good to meet you!" She bowed her head and gestured with her staff to the man: "That's Rackam. He's the guy who pilots our airship. Y'know, that big one that's on the dock right now?"

The dragon's wooden eyes flashed through my memory. I said nothing, but waved my hand for Io to continue - but not before Rackam made a noise of discontent and cut her off: "'s not just any airship. That's my Grandcypher! You don't get the importance of it, do ya…" 

"Wait, The Grandcypher? Isn't that-?" I paused, frowning. That's the name? No. The crew that took down the Erste Empire was called the Grand-something. It can't be the same crew, can it? That would mean-

I locked eyes with Gran and Djeeta. My realization had caught onto them, and they wore matching expressions of hesitation and relief at the same time. They're the ones that toppled the Empire? With this crew? What? I felt sick to my stomach - and lightheaded. Why were they doing something so dangerous? What happened? How could they have done such a thing? Why? 

"Woah, they don't look so good!" Io said, making her way over to the front door. I hadn't moved a muscle. I couldn't say anything - no noises came out, let alone a word or a full sentence. My vision started to blur, and eventually it all went black.

Gran leaning over me was the last thing I saw before I promptly passed out. 

Mullin awoke in their bedroom, a hazy memory of dragons and the wind blowing past their ears joining them as they woke. Their head pounded against their skull; a dull migraine only growing worse by the second. Everything was too much for their senses - the shuffling of clothes and the bright light from their window indicated that the sun was still up, and that it hadn't been very long since they had fainted. 

A groan escaped their throat as they felt a cold cloth being pushed against their forehead. Soft voices faded in and out as their consciousness slowly came back to the mercenary; gentle hands helping them sit upright in bed. 

"Do you think we scared 'em that bad?" 

"I… I don't know. They tend to get worried pretty easily. Maybe it's that?"

"Aw, c'mon guys, it'll be okay! We have a ton to catch up on, I'm sure they aren't too upset?" 

Mullin blinked slowly, opening their eyes carefully so as to not let the rays of the setting sun hit them too hard. Squinting, the mercenary could make out three figures sitting at their bedside. Gran and Djeeta to their right, with Vyrn to their left. As their eyes adjusted more, they could make out that they were in their old bed; covers and blankets just as they were on the day they left. Their siblings wore matching expressions of worry, while the little red and orange dragon on the opposite side was much more hopeful. 

“See, they’re awake!” Vyrn chirped, resting his little paw on Mullin’s hand. “Knew you would wake up, buddy.”

“Mh- ugh… Vyrn…?” They mumbled, holding one of their hands up to their forehead. The rag was still there; cool and warm at the same time. It provided some relief for Mullin's aching head - but not much. "What happened..?"

"You fainted. Are you… okay?" Djeeta asked, shifting her weight between her feet. "I'm sorry. We didn't mean to shock you." 

Now fully sitting up, Mullin shook their head: "I- I'm fine. I was worried about you more than anything. What were you two thinking, running off into danger like that?" They winced, their headache still pounding. 

"It just sort of happened!" Gran replied. "Here, um, I brought some medicine. We should talk." 

Mullin nodded, and as the sun set over Zinkenstill, Gran and Djeeta explained how they ended up in the situation they were in now. Lyria - the girl with the blue hair - and Katalina, the knight, had crash landed on the island as they were running away from the Erste Empire. They also explained how they both managed to take part of the blow from a primal beast - leading to Gran, Djeeta, and Lyria's souls being bonded with one another.

So Lyria saved my siblings. I guess I owe her a 'thank you.' Mullin thought to themself as they listened to their story; from meeting Rackam in Port Breeze and Io in the Valtz Duchy, to Eugen and Rosetta - then to how they met Sturm and Drang, a famous mercenary duo that had worked with the Erste Empire for a time. 

"Oh, that's news to me," Mullin interrupted. "I was traveling with Sturm and Drang for a bit on a couple of excursions. I wonder if they were working for the Empire during that time too."

Vyrn just shrugged: "Maybe. But we won't really know until we ask 'em, yeah?" 

"Mm." Mullin nodded, and continued to listen. As the story wore on, the young mercenary began to nod off into slumber. The day had clearly taken its toll on Mullin; their headache was more like the vibrations of a beating drum against their skull. The story had seemed to end with Gran, Djeeta, and Vyrn all whispering their goodnights and sleep wells, before the door to Mullin's room was closed with a gentle click.

I awoke early the next day, still groggy but not nearly as confused nor frazzled as usual. I had no unusual dreams that night, which I think was a blessing in itself - I don't know how I would've reacted if I saw that dragon and her wooden, unfeeling eyes in my sleep. I shuddered, then began my trial of managing to rouse myself out of bed. 

I wasn't leaving for a while anyway, so there was no sense of urgency as I unpacked - I think Djeeta retrieved my bags as an apology for knocking me over - and found my journal. The worn notebook was one of many, its leather covers and unassuming nature was a piece of comfort and home in my travels. I approached my desk, digging out an old quill and finding my ink bottle. In the rising sun, I began to write.

I don't remember when I first started doing it. It began with Azazel teaching me how to write better - then again, my handwriting could never outpace his - the large Draph and the small human being an unlikely pair to many. We took field notes together, marking down locations on maps and different herbs for medicine. 

Then, it changed. I began to write to Gran and Djeeta on my travels, then started noting them down for my own sake. As a preservation of memory? In hopes that someone would read it when I had been long gone? A memoir? As my thoughts drifted, the ink on my quill began to leak onto the pages. I quickly began to clean up the mess; this was how most of my days began…

"Who wants pancakes?" A shout came from downstairs. "C'mon, we're leaving soon!"

Leaving soon? But didn't they just get back yesterday, like I did? My curiosity getting the best of me, I hurridly changed clothes and joined the others downstairs for breakfast. 

What greeted me that morning was Io and Lyria in the kitchen, making pancakes from scratch as Katalina was ushered outside to help Eugen with weapon maintenance - I guess they didn't want her in the kitchen? - before turning to find Rosetta in the living room, sipping tea. I guess my disappointment was apparent on my face, because as I approached her, she sat down the cup with a small smile.

"I'm guessing this was your tea, then?" A giggle escaped her lips: "I didn't know you were such an aficionado." 

"I'm… not," I mumbled, suddenly feeling a bit embarrassed: "I like that blend. I don't mind if you have some. I mainly drink it since coffee is too bitter."

"And…" Rosetta took another sip from her cup. "'Earl Grey and Bourbon' isn't?"

"Well- it's- the bourbon adds a smoky quality to the blend that you don't get with coffee, and-"

"Mullin, are you rambling about your tea stuff again?" I heard Gran from outside call in. He was sitting by the living room window, the front porch now overtaken by chairs and tables. "Eat breakfast with us out here, we need to ask you something."

"I'm not rambling- ugh, okay, I'll be there." I waved him off and leaned closer to Rosetta, almost conspiratorially: "If it's too sweet, there's sugar cubes in the top right cabinet above the stove."

Making my way outside, I grabbed a glass of water before sitting down with my family. Djeeta had already made me a spot, the steam of the pancakes coming off in waves in the cool Autumn air. However, as I sat down, it felt as tense as it did yesterday when I walked into the house. 

"Is everything okay?" I asked, cutting into one of my pancakes. Gran and Djeeta exchanged a look. Oh no. What is it?

"Mullin, um, we've been thinking…" Gran began, this time to look more nervous than usual. "And- and you have every right to say no, and it's absolutely okay if you do-"

"Gran. " I interrupted him: "Just tell me what it is, then I can say yes or no. Okay?"

"Okay, well…" Djeeta continued, eyes glancing off to the sides. "Do you want to say it together, Gran?"

An affirmative nod from Gran. Djeeta exhaled, as if she was holding in a breath. Then, my siblings looked at me head-on: 

"We want you to be the captain of the Grandcypher crew."

Wait.

What?

Icarus is flying too close to the sun

and Icarus's life, it has only just begun

this is how it feels to take a fall

Icarus is flying towards an early grave

[moopsy-daisy]

Going to treat this like a little messy journal for a minute. Not sure if my OCD is kicking up again or if this instinct has returned because I have finally had a moment of peace after a very messy move.

I'm craving a culture again. See, I don't belong in US culture, and I get reminded of that every time I get hungry. I can't eat wheat or dairy. If I order a little treat for myself, odds are good that it'll have run out and get replaced by something that will kill me a little bit.

Don't even get me started on being bisexual and polyamorous. I never know when I can even admit to loving the people I love.

Then there's the whiteness. Oh, I loathe it. I loathe the capitalist destruction of anything I could have been proud of. Folk art, language, holidays, magic, caring communities all erased in the name of modernity, progress, and white supremacy.

Trying to go back and find those eroded arts just reveals more crimes, both contemporary and historical. Doesn't help that I have no grandparents because they saw a potential disability and disowned me at birth. (Didn't even turn out to be an issue.) No memories of grandma's cooking or grandpa's wisdom.

I am utterly adrift. No culture, but what they sell on Etsy; no food, but what I can cobble together from cuisines that don't belong to me; no faith, because the gods here won't know me.

Too disabled by an autoimmune disease to get to know the land. Too ashamed of the crimes of my ancestors to ask permission to take refuge with another people.

Sometimes, I think I can make my own way of life, start over, and sew the seeds of a solarpunk future. But, it rings hollow and lonely. Culture ties you to others. You can't make it alone. But, no one is lost like I am. They have churches, or heritage, or large polycules. Or family.

So, I drift in circles. Wanting, trying, finding myself alone, taking solace in my independence, and inevitably wanting again.

I wish I could see the freedom in it, make my own meaning out of fucking pipe cleaners and glitter. Stars know, I've tried. Supposedly, I have Swedish blood, but I can't drink beer, milk, eat wheat, or relate to their climate at all. I have some mystery POC in my bloodline who intentionally kept her heritage a secret, so I will never even know who her people were.

I've visited Heathenry, Buddhism, animism, Shinto, Hinduism, witchcraft, and more. Only in the DIY mess that is magic have I had even a taste of legitimacy, and that's fleeting.

Hopefully, this fit will pass. I will distract myself with some game and forget how the world has left me weeping for a lost humanity.

[loosesodamarble]

The Vermillion Family

Mereoleona doesn't seem like the type to start a family but she does have one child in the future: Leoray.

..........

Leoray Vermillion

Her name isn't her birth name, she gave it to herself some time after being adopted by Mereoleona. She just liked the way it sounded. The "leo" means "lion" and "ray" refers to a "beam of light."

Age: 14

Birthday: July 1

Magic Attribute: Viper

Appearance: Being adopted, Leoray bears no resemblance to Mereoleona. Her hair is a dull shade of purple. Leoray likes to have her hair long and leave it loose, only really tying it up when she's training. Her eyes a storm gray color. It should be noted that Leoray is considered a great beauty and gains many admirers when she's older.

Personality: Leoray isn't all that much like her mother. For most of her life, she had tried to minimize her presence in the eyes of others but under Mereoleona's care, she learns to come out of her shell and take pride in who she is. She tries to be stubborn and bold. Ray doesn't let her foreign and adopted nature be a shame. Mereoleona chose Ray as her child and thus chooses Mereoleona as her mother, no one can say otherwise. Her boldness shows most when she interacts with Mereo. Often times, one can find them shouting at each other things like "Can you show me more fire in your fighting?" "Yes I can!" "Oh? THEN SHOW ME!" "YES I WILL!" Ray has tried to match Mereoleona's wild energy but instinctively holds back because she remembers the trouble she caused when her magic got out of control. As much as she wants to live up to Mereoleona's expectations, she can't bring herself to be exactly like her mom. Mereoleona understands that and encourages Ray to "stand tall like a lion, even if you can't roar like one." She's observant and intelligent which comes across much more with her desire to journal her experiences and her more careful way of speaking. She's eager to try anything that's put before her as a challenge and can overlook danger if it means potential growth.

Leoray's history: Leoray originally came from a land outside the Suit Continent. Her Viper Magic (a combined mutation of her father's Poison and her mother's Vine) was uncontrollable (almost as bad as Noelle's). When she used her magic, there was often property damage or scrapes and bruises on others as a result. Eventually, the neighbors got fed up and kicked the family out of town.

The family traveled around but Ray's magic kept acting up and getting them driven off. Her training wasn't successful due to her family's lack of encouragement. The things they said were along the lines of "if you don't train, people will keep getting hurt," "once you learn to control your magic, there's be less trouble," or "you just aren't trying hard enough it seems." When she was 10, her family finally gave up on her. They waited until she was asleep and left her a backpack with bare necessities.

Ray wandered on her own for a while, living off scraps from towns and wild berries. One day, she ran into a boar and, in a panic, her magic flared up. When Ray was about to attack the boar, Mereoleona jumped in and finished off the boar, wanting to make it her meal. She hadn't even seen Leoray. Ray's attack hit Mereoleona instead and got the woman's attention. Mereo recognized Ray's struggle and decided to take the child under her wing.

Ray doubted Mereo's ability to put up with her for long. It took several months Mereo for it to get through Ray that Mereo wasn't going to abandon her. Mereo told Ray, "I'm not a woman who backs down from a challenge. I'm not backing down from training you." Deep down, Mereo cared but struggled to show it. That was the day Leoray changed her name. Mereo laughed saying it was a little clumsy but it suited Ray.

When Ray was 12, Mereo saved her from bandits, screaming at them to "LEAVE MY DAUGHTER ALONE!" Their family bond was confirmed that day.

Leoray likes really spicy food. She actually managed to beat Mereo in a spicy pepper eating contest. She had a gut pain for days afterward but she always smiles at the memory.

Whether it's an effect of her magic or not, Leoray has an affinity with snakes. She has a pet boa constrictor named King.

Loves to read and journal. Writing her thoughts have actually helped her when it comes to training her magic. Looking back and thinking through what she knows and what she's trying to do helps her find what to focus on.

Leoray is drawn to calmer people. Fuegoleon is a great role model to her, being bold and intelligent like Mereo but with an air of control. Ray loves each of her cousins: Leonidas, Cyraleona, and Eleonora (@thoughtfullyrainynightmare's ocs). Leon is similar to Fuegoleon and thus Ray looks up to him (he's even her favorite). Ray believes Cyra's kindness and grace are great strengths. Nora is intelligent and cheeky, which is cute to Ray, but she worries about Nora getting into too much trouble.

Other people that Ray is close to include Raphael, Ann, and Clara. They're all good-natured people with various other good traits. Raphael is extremely well-read and down-to-earth. Ann is adventurous without being reckless. And Clara is supportive with a bit of sass to her.

Her best friend is Merel though, since they both learn under Mereo, they spend a lot of time together. Merel may be a scaredy-cat but she's friendly and determined and so genuine about everything that it warms Ray's heart.

[edgierthanmost]

Hey, @theblueskyphoenix, thanks for the book!

I got interested by the audio dramas and just had to snatch one up.

[mostlycompetentwriter]

Wow, he’s hot

“Pairing: Fem!Reader x Seo Changbin (SKZ)

Word Count: 8K

Genre: Neighbors to Lovers? Lol

Warnings: Aged up characters (Changbin is ten years older than the reader), explicit sexual content, language, drinking

Summary: You were a fresh college graduate, returning home for the summer before starting a bright, shiny new position in the city, but you certainly weren’t expecting to fall hard for your neighbor. 

A/N: I hope at least one person gets my reference/pun at the end....But seriously? Oh, what have I done...

Your roommate was hungover again, dressed to the nines in a purple bathrobe and pink fluffy slippers as she attempted to move huge boxes of random shit between her bedroom and the foyer of your shared apartment. 

It was priceless entertainment, at least in your opinion, especially after witnessing your roommate in rare form the previous night dancing from one frat boy to the next, draining entire bottles of alcohol like she needed the liquid encouragement. 

From what you had observed, she was determined to embarrass you at all costs, and under normal circumstances, you could’ve avoided her rather inappropriate behavior in exchange for your regular hook-up, Joshua. But he decided to remain mysteriously absent for the entire evening, which meant that you had been stuck watching over your roommate, hoping that she wouldn’t get you kicked out again....

“I know what you’re thinking, Y/N,” Laura huffed, pausing next to the counter-top where you sat. “What did you expect? It was my last night of freedom before going back home.”

“Yeah,” you snorted. “It was mine too, but I wasn’t plastered face-down in the shower last night.”

“Whatever,” Laura grimaced. “Did you sign off on the lease yet?”

“I did it earlier,” you replied. 

“Our bitchy landlord’s been complaining all week,” Laura said. “I’m tired of her late-night phone calls, plus my mom’s been really annoying about the move.”

“Oh?” you questioned. “When is she coming?”

“In like an hour,” Laura huffed. “Why do you think I’m busting my ass to pack everything?”

“I don’t know,” you said. “Maybe you needed a distraction from thinking about puking in the bushes behind the frat house last night.”

“Oh, shut up about that!” Laura hissed, slapping your arm as you kept laughing. “Isn’t you brother coming tomorrow?”

“Ugh, yeah,” you groaned. “He said he has to come super early because of work, but my ass doesn’t start functioning until at least 8:00.”

“Well, at least tell Chan ‘hi’ for me,” Laura said, giggling like a love-struck teenager because she had been infatuated with your older brother for years.

“If I remember to tell him,” you grumbled, stretching out your arms and deciding that it might be useful for you to start packing as well, especially since the most you would be able to accomplish tomorrow morning at the ass crack of dawn is following Chan around the apartment in a zombie-like state as the two of you loaded your belongings into his car.

“Don’t forget that I’m coming to visit next week,” Laura said, and you perked up a little at the idea of having your friend come around, especially since the two of you had just graduated together and those long days and nights of being glued together at the hip were coming to a bittersweet end.

“Sounds good,” you agreed, checking your phone one last time to see a weird gif from Chan (as you had come to expect from him) before joining your roommate in packing up the remainder of your former college life.

Chan had always been prompt when it came to his familial obligations, and the two of you spent two hours loading all of your stuff into his car before starting the long drive to your old childhood home. A place that you hadn’t ventured to since leaving four years ago to start undergraduate school.

“Looks the same,” you remarked, sunglasses perched low on your nose as you allowed the window to roll down to take in some fresh air.

“What did you expect?” Chan asked, humming away to whatever shitty metal song he had playing over the radio.

In a totally random and last-minute decision, you had decided that for the next three summer months while you were stuck in an in-between phase, you were returning home for a while before you were set to move into a new apartment in the city close to where you would be working full-time. It seemed logical to save money, and there was a small part of you that did miss your family and old friends. 

Of course, despite Chan’s dismissal of your earlier nonchalant comment about the unchanging surroundings of your hometown, you were startled when you realized that the old house next door, which used to be occupied by an elderly couple until they moved away during your senior year of high school, was missing it’s familiar ‘for sale’ sign in the front yard, and there was a black Mustang in the driveway.

“Home sweet home,” Chan sighed when he stopped in the carport attached to your former two-story staccato, opening the door with a grumble. 

You frowned, following him around to the back of his car. “Someone bought the house next door?” you asked, dragging your eyes away from the sleek, shiny sports car to look at your brother.

Chan grunted as he heaved your suitcase from the trunk. “Yeah, they moved in last month. I think the owner is a lawyer and he lives there with his daughter.”

“Huh,” you remarked. “That house has been vacant for years.”

Chan shrugged. “Yeah, well, the guy who lives there now is really nice. Mom and dad babysit for him a lot when he’s working.”

“Great,” I muttered. “They’ll rope me into helping.”

“S’ not so bad,” Chan said, growling in frustration when your suitcase fell over to the side with an unpleasant crash. “Can you help or what?”

You laughed at your brother’s outrage, reaching back to pull your hair into a messy bun. 

Meanwhile, you noticed the front door of your house opening from the corner of your eye, smiling when your mother shrieked and rushed down the sidewalk to meet you halfway in a long-winded embrace. “Y/N!! I’m so glad to see you.”

“You’re crushing me,” you heaved through constricted lungs, accepting your mother’s open arms even if it was a little over-eager.

“Oh! I’m sorry, dear,” she said, pulling back just enough to allow oxygen to circulate once again, but not enough to pull you away from her mushy kisses. “You look so healthy and beautiful!”

“Yeah, thanks mom,” you said, slowly beginning the untangling process of removing her arms from around you while Chan struggled in the background to carry your suitcase up the front steps. “I should help.”

“Of course!” your mom agreed, but a distant tug of curiosity had you turning back to look at the house next door once again.

“Hey? Do you know anything about the new neighbor?”

“You mean Changbin? He’s wonderful, darling. So polite, and his daughter is so funny.”

You wrinkled your nose, never having been a huge fan of kids. “Chan said you babysit for him sometimes.”

“It’s always nice to help someone out,” your mother tsked, and you could recognize her patronizing tone from anywhere. “Such a shame that he divorced his wife. Heard it was kinda nasty.”

“It’s not any of our business,” you reminded her.

“Oh, I didn’t say it was!” your mother sighed. “He doesn’t talk about it much.”

“Jeez, how much do you guys talk?”

Because from the sound of it, Changbin had to be as old as your mom to make this much of an impression. You grinned as you briefly imagined the two of them on the front porch drinking tea together and gossiping about the rest of the neighborhood.

“He’s far more friendly than Mrs. Jones was,” your mother remarked. “I think you’d like him, Y/N.”

“I don’t know about that...”

“Well, you’ll get the chance to meet him tonight,” your mother said, smile full and wide. “I’ve invited him over for dinner!”

Oh, great.

“Can’t wait,” you forced out between clenched teeth, rolling your eyes when your mom clapped her hands together before grabbing your hand to drag you inside, feeling only a distant shiver roll across your spine as you walked onto the porch as if someone was looking at you from afar....

Your mother was hardly the type to run out of conversation, and you eventually were forced to leave her downstairs to argue with Chan over some menial thing that he forgot to do for tonight’s big dinner while you trudged upstairs to find some peace.

Unsurprisingly, your childhood bedroom remained untouched, and you circled around the perimeter, studying old pictures of yourself playing sports and hanging out with friends. Fingers dusting over your collection of old trophies and high-school yearbooks that recalled long-ago days of feeling carefree - with the future wide-open in front of you for the taking.

But you were well off in the present, allowing yourself to indulge in the nostalgia of looking through old diaries and journals before your mother’s voice called you downstairs for dinner later that evening. “Coming!” you called back, pausing next to your mirror to check your reflection.

The smell of your mother’s cooking had your stomach rumbling from the hunger of only stopping once on the way home to eat cheap fast-food with Chan, and you forced yourself to walk like a normal person even though every instinct was screaming at you to find the source of that delicious odor.

You were nearly salivating at the idea of your mother’s homemade cooking, and your hand caught the rail of the bannister to turn the final corner, but the sounds of voices from below forced you to pause at the top of the stairs, eyes growing wide as you took in the sight of the unfamiliar man standing in your foyer, talking to your mother like they had known each other for years. “Oh, Y/N,” your mother said, and you shivered when the man turned to look at you. “Come meet our neighbor, Changbin. I think you’ll really like him.”

You held back a snort at the ironic comment because it only took you a few seconds to come to the conclusion that Changbin epitomized the phrase “just my type.”

He was on the shorter side, built like he had literally spent his entire life working out, arms bulging beneath his t-shirt and chest straining the material tight to his front. So much so that you could practically see his nipples through the fabric. 

His hair was jet-black, ruffled from the wind outside, and his eyes were equally as dark, lips contorted into a self-satisfied smirk that you found exceedingly hot.

“Hi,” you mustered without much thought, nearly tripping over your own two feet on the way down the stairs.

“This is my daughter, Y/N,” your mother said, inviting you closer so that you were standing directly in front of Changbin.

“Nice to meet you,” he said in a deep voice that was slightly rough around the edges.

“Y/N just graduate from college,” your mother gushed. “We’re so excited to have her back.”

“I’m home for the summer,” you explained, shivering at the dark look in Changbin’s gaze. “I’m starting an internship in the Fall.”

“Y/N will be working in publishing,” your mother explained, jumping in while you and Changbin continued to stare each other down - something intense and provocative.

“Really?” Changbin asked, eyes making a leisurely stroll of looking you up and in down in a way that had you feeling extremely self-conscious. 

“Oh! Give me one second to check something in the kitchen,” your mother said, excusing herself with a smile before leaving the two of you alone in the foyer.

You inwardly cursed your mother for leaving you both in an awkward silence. Say something!! You screamed to yourself.

“So,” you started, clearing your throat and forcing yourself to stop swaying back and forth. “Chan told me you practice law.”

“Yeah,” Changbin agreed, and you swooned at his crooked smile. “It doesn’t sound as interesting as your work.”

“I don’t know about that,” you countered politely, but Changbin was unrelenting.

“You looked surprised to see me earlier,” he remarked.

You swallowed hard. “Oh, well when Chan mentioned a neighbor with a kid, I just wasn’t expecting someone so....”

“Yes?” Changbin prodded, encouraging you to continue.

Someone so fucking hot, you thought to yourself, someone who was literally made inside my best fantasies, but those explicit thoughts belonged exclusively inside your head. “Young,” you eventually finished, and Changbin seemed disappointed for some reason.

“I’m 32,” he said, and your eyes widened perceptibly, realizing that he was ten years older than you.

“I would’ve never guessed,” you said. “I mean, not that it’s a bad thing-”

“It’s alright,” Changbin interrupted, and you were relieved to hear him chuckle. “I know what you mean.”

“I’m sorry,” you said. “I can be a little awkward.”

“No,” he shook his head, coming to stand a little closer. “I think it’s nice.”

Oh? What was that supposed to mean?

“I used to have a boyfriend who looked a lot like you,” you went on, freezing when you comprehended what you had just blathered without thinking.

But Changbin didn’t seem bothered at all. “I bet he wasn’t as old as me.”

“He was my age,” you said. “But I kinda like older men...”

Fuck. Did those words really just come out of your mouth?!

“Y/N,” Changbin said, and you trembled at the huskiness of his tone. “You should be more careful.” He leaned in then as if trying to keep whatever he was about to say a secret for just the two of you. “I can be a very dangerous man.”

“O-oh,” you stuttered, finding yourself two seconds away from literally melting at his feet when your mother suddenly re-entered the foyer with a dusting of flour across her chin. 

“Dinner’s ready!” she announced, and you were fleeing behind her without a second thought, escaping the intoxicating hold of Changbin’s presence before you did something you might regret.

For whatever reason, you found yourself sitting next to Changbin in the dining room for dinner that night. 

“I made chicken,” your mother said, gesturing to each dish sitting in a line down the center of the table as she explained tonight’s menu. But you were barely cognizant of what your mother was saying because the close proximity to Changbin was doing very strange things to your head.

“So, Y/N,” your father started when everyone had been served. “I hope your brother was helpful with the move.”

Chan rolled his eyes, but you grinned at your father’s words. “Yeah, I was a little out of it though because of the time.”

“Like I said,” Chan huffed. “I couldn’t get there any later.”

“Let the bickering commence,” your mother said. “Changbin, you wouldn’t believe the fights these two had when they were young.”

“I can only imagine,” Changbin said, and you were wondering how someone could be even more attractive by the sound of their voice alone.

“Do you still need us to babysit for you tomorrow night?” your mother asked. “We would be more than accommodating.”

“That would be great,” Changbin said. “I’ve got a late conference call.”

“It’s no problem,” your mother continued. “Your daughter is just the loveliest.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” Changbin replied.

“Y/N,” your mother said, catching you with a mouthful of chicken. “Changbin’s daughter is such a peach.”

You quickly forced down the food in your mouth when you felt Changbin’s gaze rest on you. “Oh? How hold is she, Mr. Seo?”

“She’s six,” Changbin said, and he shifted in his chair, causing your knees to brush together in a move that you knew wasn’t intentional, even if it didn’t stop your legs from wrapping together. “And you don’t have to be so formal with me, Y/N. Only my clients call me Mr. Seo.”

“O-oh,” you exhaled, reacting to the brief contact under the table, hoping that nobody else was noticing your strange behavior.

“Maybe Y/N could help watch Lucy when you’re gone,” your mother suggested, always the first to rope you into these things.

“Sure,” you agreed, even though the idea of pulling babysitting duty was less than appealing, and you could hear Chan snickering from across the table. He knew perfectly well your attitude when it came to kids. 

“I think Lucy would like that,” Changbin agreed, and you started to nod along until you felt Changbin’s hand move to your thigh.

Just that single move had your entire form frozen in place. 

While your mother continued talking about whatever subject caught her attention, you were left wondering how you should react to the very obvious posturing of Changbin’s hand moving decidedly against your bare skin.

“I’ll probably head back into town tomorrow morning,” Chan said. “I wasn’t able to get much work done.”

You knew it was a playful jab at you, but at that moment you were incapable of coherent speech.

“How is work, Channie?” your mother asked, just as ignorant as the rest of them to the situation unfolding beneath her table. “Anything interesting?”

“Not really,” Chan replied, and you nearly choked on the food you were swallowing when you felt Changbin squeezing your thigh. 

“Try to chew it first, Y/N,” your father chuckled, and you forced a smile which you hoped wasn’t as strained as it felt.

“What about you, Changbin?” your mother politely queried. “Anything interesting happening lately?”

“Maybe,” he said with a tone that was far too knowing.

“Hmmm?” your mother smiled. “You aren’t seeing anyone, are you?”

You knew the question was invasive, but Changbin handled it in stride. “I think it depends.”

“Sounds scandalous,” your mother joked, and you couldn’t have possibly been imagining it, feeling his fingers reach so high under the opening of your shorts that his fingertips touched the outline of your panties. 

You reached down to cover his hand with your own, bringing awareness to the fact that you weren’t ignoring what was happening, and he had every opportunity to pull back.

But he didn’t. In fact, Changbin’s light, playful touches only continued, and you were left reeling for what the intention could possibly mean.

Early the next morning, you were supposed to be cleaning the pool as a favor to your mother, but how could you be blamed for sneaking peaks at your neighbor working out in his backyard? 

“Holy shit,” you cursed under your breath, failing to do a very good job of pretending to be occupied with your current task while ogling the man across the lawn who was in the middle of another round of push-ups, biceps flexing while the rest of his body practically glowed under the sun. 

You knew it wasn’t a crime to permit the occasional glance, but your hardcore staring could certainly be qualified as spying at this point (especially in the direction of a lawyer) - making it blatantly obvious that you were very appreciative of the male form at the peak of performance.

Was Changbin seriously 32? And a father?

The questions boggled your mind, and in your distracted state, you clearly forgot to keep a firm hold on the handle of the pool’s leaf skimmer, huffing in annoyance when it splashed beneath the water.

It was enough to attract Changbin’s attention, and you were sure that your face was just as red as the towel draped over the back of your mother’s patio furniture when he stood to his full height before walking in your direction.

“Were you watching me?” Changbin asked, sauntering over to you with black mesh shorts hanging tantalizingly low on his hips, shirt foregone in exchange for a delightful sheen of sweat coating the skin of his thick upper torso in dripping rivulets. 

“Uh...” you trailed off anxiously, realizing that Changbin wouldn’t be stupid enough to fall for your half-assed excuses, especially after what had happened between the two of you last night. 

“You’re not planning on lying to me, Y/N?” he asked, raising one eyebrow in question.

“N-no, Mr. Seo,” you said, shaking your head quickly, barely keeping a firm grasp of your bearings as he abruptly leaned in closer, musk hanging heavy in the air between the two of you. 

“I told you not to call me that,” he said, lips lingering far too close to your ear for a simple neighborly exchange, and you could feel the body heat emanating from him in waves, holding you completely hostage as you briefly entertained the idea of falling to your knees right then and there. 

“What should I call you?” you asked instead, fisting your shirt between your hands because you were desperate for something to ground you in that moment. 

You could practically feel his smirk, holding in a gasp when his hand settled at the low dip in your spine, fitting into the space there as he pulled you tight against his front. “You can always call me daddy instead.”

Your heart skipped several beats at the scandalous words. Either that or you had just entered cardiac arrest.

But before you could muster a response, you found yourself leaping out of Changbin’s hold when the backdoor opened, and your mother was screaming out your name while waving like a maniac. “Oh!” she said when she realized that you weren’t alone. “I didn’t mean to interrupt!”

“We were just talking,” you quickly inserted, glancing at Changbin from the corner of your eye to see him smirking. 

For a while, the very strange flirtation between you and Changbin simmered down, and you tried your best to avoid him when you could, even if he made that very hard to do since he insisted on doing his morning workouts outside in direct line of your bedroom.

It was during the following week that you brought the divine glory of Changbin to your friend, Laura’s, attention, ushering her into your house when she parked on the side of street. “What the hell, Y/N?” she complained when you started practically dragging her up the stairs. “I’ve been driving for hours.”

“Oh, hush,” you said. “You’ll thank me later.”

“Thank you for what, exactly?” Laura questioned, but your response was to simply push her toward the window, standing side by side as you looked through the blinds.

“My new neighbor.”

“Holy fuck!” Laura gasped when she finally joined you, and you could only nod your agreement as the two of you continued to watch Changbin through two narrow breaks in your blinds, wondering how the image of your sexy neighbor simply mowing his grass could make you so wet. “That man is huge!”

“I think he does it on purpose,” you remarked, feeling your heart palpitate inside your chest when Changbin took a moment to pause his chore, reaching down to remove his shirt and tuck it into the waistband of his shorts.

Laura’s gasp was almost outlandishly laughable. “He’s ripped! Like, Sports Illustrated model worthy.”

“I would buy every last copy of that edition.”

“I’d even go a step further and tape the pictures to my wall.”

You both stopped to look at one another, nodding in your collective agreement. “Not here, though, my mom would freak.”

“Yeah, but how can your mom expect you to just ignore...that!” Laura exclaimed, gesturing wildly to Changbin. 

“She thinks he’s a fucking Saint, but I swear to god, Laura, he’s provoking me on purpose! The other night at dinner? He came over and put. his. hand. on. my. leg,” you said, emphasizing the last line with what probably looked like a comical widening of your eyes. “And he works out every morning in front of my bedroom? What the hell am I supposed to think?”

“No think,” Laura sighed dreamily. “Just enjoy the view.”

“Do you think I’m not?” you snorted. “I’m serious about him doing those things!”

“So what?” Laura grumbled. “Why are you actually worried that your fucking super model neighbor wants to make a few moves on you? I would be honored.”

“I’m not worried,” you huffed. “It just feels like he wants something from me.”

“Well, if it’s a good fuck, then send him all the signals you can, girl.”

“Really?” you muttered. “You know I suck with flirting. That’s why I only hooked up with Joshua at those stupid frat parties. He didn’t care that I was an awkward mess.”

“Well, neither will your neighbor,” Laura said. “Especially if he’s as interested as you say.”

You pursed your lips, considering her comment, but the sudden and unexpected sound of your door opening sent both you and Laura jumping nearly ten feet into the air as you hurried away from the blinds as fast as humanely possible to take up some form of normalcy.

No, mom, of course we weren’t staring at Mr. Seo.

“Girls,” your mother inquired as she walked inside, and you prayed that your mother hadn’t caught the two of you taking sly peaks at Changbin outside, but she seemed completely ignorant. “I have a question for you.”

“Hmmm?” you inquired, innocently enough, trying to act like the position that you had forced yourself into on the bed was totally not uncomfortable.

“Changbin needs someone to watch Lucy tomorrow night, but your father and I already made plans,” she said. “But I told him you would be more than happy to come over and help him out.”

You winced when Laura elbowed you in the side, giving you one of those looks that you knew quite well from countless nights of barhopping as sophomores. “Yeah, I don’t mind.”

“I’m sure you don’t,” Laura snickered, but you payed her no attention as you hurried to close the door behind your mother’s retreating form, breathing a sigh of relief to hear her walk back down the stairs.

In all of your years of existence, never had you questioned the appropriateness of an outfit to wear to someone’s place to babysit.

“Fuck it,” you eventually decided, settling on regular, well-worn jeans and a college t-shirt.

After all, it wasn’t like Changbin was staying for very long. He claimed he had something to do at the office, and you would be all alone inside his house with only his kid for companionship.

Still, after your conversation with Laura from the previous afternoon, you couldn’t help but feel more mindful about how he might look at you, and you forced yourself to wear your most professional smile when you rang the doorbell to his house, counting slowly from one until he opened the door.

“Hi, Y/N,” Changbin said, and you tried not to blatantly check him out; although, you couldn’t help but linger on the tight fit of his shirt across his pecs.

“Hello,” you nearly whispered, cursing your hormones as you followed Changbin inside.

“I actually have something to tell you,” Changbin said, leading you into the living room so that you could sit down while entered the adjoining kitchen.

“Oh?” you queried, as politely as you could, waiting for him to return.

It didn’t take him long, and you found yourself sitting up a little straighter from where you had made yourself comfortable on the couch. “So, I actually found someone else to watch Lucy,” Changbin explained, coming around to land next to you on the couch with two glasses of wine. 

“You did?” you asked, surprised and taken-aback. 

Why were you here then?

As if he could read your thoughts, Changbin smirked. “Thirsty?”

“Sure,” you agreed, taking one of the glasses and bringing the rim up to your lips. “I’m sorry, I just thought you wanted me to watch her.”

“I did,” Changbin said, and he seemed contemplative as he sipped his own drink. “But then I kinda wanted you for something else.”

“Something else?” you repeated because your mind was spinning those simple words in a thousand different directions, and you were only able to settle on one likely outcome when Changbin’s hand dropped to your thigh, reminiscent of your first dinner together from several evenings ago. 

He suddenly moved in closer to you, allowing you to smell the subtle cologne that he was wearing. “You’ve been watching me,” he said, and you shivered, feeling both hot and cold at the same time as you looked at him.

“S-sir?”

“Don’t play coy,” Changbin continued, and you found yourself observing the way his throat bobbed as he drank. “I don’t mind the attention.”

“You don’t?” you replied, a rather useless question considering the circumstances, and Changbin took your glass and sat both alcoholic selections onto the side table.

“Why wouldn’t I like it?” he asked, tracing little nonsensical patterns on the covered part of your thigh. “You’re a very beautiful girl.”

What. The. Hell?!!

“Mr. Seo, I don’t think-”

“Y/N,” Changbin interrupted, and you were so frazzled and disjointed by the sharp grip he took on your chin, forcing eye-contact that was so intimate, you could feel yourself grow a little bit wetter. “I told you not to call me that.”

It was the only precursor you got before Changbin was delving in, gripping your chin firmly as he connected your lips in a deep, sensuous exchange that had you reeling from the sudden 180 degree turn that the night had taken. 

In one word: everything was rough. Teeth meeting teeth, and tongues rolling in a messy glide against one another. Wet and warm. Silky and smooth. It was everything you needed in a kiss to get your gears turning, feeling your pussy positively throbbing in response.

“That’s right,” Changbin eventually said when he pulled the two of you apart - very much still in control. “We shouldn’t ignore this tension between us.”

“No,” you eagerly agreed, diving in once more for another earth-shattering kiss that rocked you to your very bones, taking the initiative to crawl into his lap, grinding yourself shamelessly against the tight bulge in his jeans while your fingers dug their way into his thick, dark hair. 

“Eager,” Changbin whispered between feverish kisses, keeping your mouths locked together at all costs, even if that meant growing a little bit light-headed from losing too much oxygen.

But you couldn’t get enough of him, not after all this teasing and tension. 

You didn’t care anymore, consequences be damned, and there wasn’t a single part of you opposing his intentional touches, giving him enough space to unbutton your jeans before sliding one hand beneath the waistband of your panties. In response, you moaned into his mouth, bracing your hands against his shoulders as he found the delicate folds of your pussy.

“Do you want me to touch you here?” Changbin asked, and you were feverishly nodding, sweat forming at the top of your forehead, trying your best to hold back your loudest moans when he slid right in with little resistance, moving his fingers around the inside of your cunt, stretching and filling you in a way that you imagined was nothing compared to what the thick cock beneath you could do.

But you would take anything from him, savoring the glide of his fingers since you were practically drenching him in sticky arousal, jerking forward every so often when his thumb pressed down a little too hard against your clit.

All the while, you could feel yourself start to break apart from the heated contact between the two of you, aching and wanting for the release that the look in his eyes told you he had every intention of providing.

And you were enjoying every bit of the journey to get there, bathing in his attention, groaning when his fingers curled up just right to tease your g-spot, and grinding down against the erection confined tightly in his jeans. 

Everything was suddenly so much louder, the sounds of his palm smacking against your cunt, fingers gliding through wetness, and the joined harmony of your combined moans and grunts. 

It was a rapid uphill ascent into the clouds, and you could feel him start to move even faster, pulling against the fabric of your jeans, and there was hardly any time for your mind to truly comprehend what was happening. Lost in a sinful haze of lust and divine rapture, wanting nothing more than to just lose yourself in Changbin.

Except he wasn’t letting you simply drown in the pleasure he was giving you, tugging at your hair to bring you back to the present, to the final string keeping your orgasm just out of reach. “You don’t think I haven’t noticed,” Changbin growled into your ear, keeping one hand tight around your waist to stop your squirming as he continued plunging his thick fingers between the tight walls of your pussy. “I see you looking at me because I want you to look.”

You moaned at the explicit expression of his desires, closing your eyes and returning your head against his shoulder, hips titillating according to the way he moved his fingers inside of you. 

“Cum for me,” he said, and you were more than willing to let go of everything, including the moans you had been trying to hold back, filling the house with the loud raucous of your screams as your orgasm snapped and unleashed a molten hot thrill along your spine.

You were gasping for breath, returning from the highest peak of satisfaction, but Changbin hardly gave you anytime to recover before he was removing his hand from your jeans and forcing you into the floor.

“My turn,” he grunted, and the sound of his belt unbuckling triggered some semblance of rationale, and you were practically salivating over Changbin’s cock, eyeing the red bulbous mushroom head and wondering how deep you could take him. “Well?” Changbin prodded, grabbing the base of his thick erection to brush it across the pout of your lips. “Open wide.”

You whimpered, but obeyed, allowing your tongue to stick out just enough to taste the drop of precum leaking from the tip. It was bitter and unappealing, but since it was from Changbin, you couldn’t resist trying more of him, going further and further down until you felt him at the back of your throat.

Your jaw was already aching from the extension, and a distant thought had you thinking, damn, you were gonna be sore in the morning. But it was completely worth it to hear him moan from above you, fingers tightening in your hair as you allowed him to set the pace, rolling you up and down his cock, tongue sweeping the sides and tip and digging into the little slit where you discovered he was the most sensitive. 

At the same time, you were all but humping his leg, desperate to get off again as he used your mouth for his own personal cocksleeve, hitting the back of your throat repeatedly, sending you gagging around his impossible length.

“You take cock like you were made for it,” he remarked, eyes glossing over in a way that had you feeling rather proud of your skills. 

It only lasted for a moment, and he abruptly held himself all the way down for one, two, three seconds until you were whining for him to let you free just long enough to take in another deep breath. 

“Finish me off,” he groaned, and you were working overtime to bring him to the edge, bobbing your head up and down the full expanse of his length, all gorgeous and velvety smooth skin. And you braced your hands against his knees, an anchor to reality, when he finally released down your throat, heavy and warm, causing you to nearly choke as you struggled to swallow every last drop.

“Good girl,” he whispered, petting your head softly as you whined and continued to rub yourself against him, jumping off the brink of orgasmic bliss right after him, allowing your head to fall down between his spread legs.

It was a quiet for a while as you both fought to catch your breath, but then he was moving again, rising from his position on the couch. 

You sat back on your heels at the jostling, whimpering when he stood over you with a menacing sneer, grabbing your face between his hands, forcing your gazes to meet somewhere in the middle even though you still couldn’t completely concentrate. But you were cognizant to at least understand his next words: “Lucy won’t be here tomorrow night, either.”

“Changbin,” you gasped, understanding the implications of his request and shivering at the effect they could still have on your worn-out body. 

“I’ll leave the door unlocked,” he whispered into your ear, keeping eye-contact as he brought his fingers still coated with your arousal into his mouth, sucking while you grew faint at the sight. Then, he pulled them free and knelt down to sear your lips together so that you could taste the riveting combination of your releases on his wicked tongue. 

You returned home that night in a daze, immediately heading for your room after assuring your mother that everything was totally fine with the babysitting, even if you probably appeared a little out of sorts. 

In the meantime, you landed on top of your bed with a sigh, opening your phone contacts to pull up Laura’s name, placing the call without any mind to the late hour.

She answered on the third ring with a curt grunt. “This better be good, Y/N.”

“Oh?” you replied with a nonchalant tone. “I thought you might be interested in hearing about my latest dick appointment.”

There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end. “You didn’t.”

“I did!”

“With your neighbor?”

You laughed at Laura’s shrill tone, rolling over onto your stomach with your feet dancing in the air behind you. “I totally sucked him off.” 

“Shit! How big is his cock?” Laura whispered over the phone as if anybody could possibly overhear your conversation. 

“Let’s just say he’s well-endowed.”

“You absolute slut!” Laura exclaimed. “Did he at least return the favor?”

“Oh, he’s a gentleman,” you explained. “He took care of me first.”

“Details!”

“He just fingered me,” you said, even as your mind sprinted with images and sensations; Changbin’s sultry gaze, defined muscles, and the burning desire he had planted deep in your core. 

“That’s hot though,” Laura said. “I can’t believe you actually did anything with him.”

“What? I told you he was sending me signals!”

“Yeah, but I was only halfway assuming that those signals might lead to his fingers in you!”

You couldn’t help yourself, laughing at Laura’s incredulous tone, and spending the next several minutes doing your absolute best to provide a heavily detailed play-by-play of your evening tryst with Changbin. 

“Lucky bitch,” Laura scoffed at the end of your long-winded tale. “I’d kill for someone to fuck me.”

“Well, we haven’t gotten there yet...”

“Yet? Are you planning to go back to him?”

“Obviously,” you said. “There’s unfinished business that I need to take care of.”

“You think he wants to fuck you?”

“I think he wants to do a lot to me,” you purred, smirking at the sounds of Laura’s outlandish squeals from the other end.

Still, you didn’t think those explicit fantasies would come to fruition so soon. But the next night when you returned to Changbin’s house under the guise of babysitting his kid, there were no formalities between the two of you because you both wanted each other in a way that should be considered improper. 

Fortunately, you were tired of caring about other people’s opinions, and it only took Changbin a moment to pull you into his house before his lips were crushing against yours, holding you around the waist as he started working at your clothes.

If whiplash was a thing in moments like these, then you had it bad, trying to follow the taste of him as he backed you both into the bedroom, closing the door and enveloping you both in the gentle glow from the lamp.

“Get on the bed,” Changbin growled when he finally pulled away, reaching down for the hem of his t-shirt. You swallowed hard at the sight of his broad, toned upper form, stumbling backward along the floor, hopping on one leg to finish removing your jeans for him, leaving you completely naked as you lowered yourself onto the mattress. “Good girl,” Changbin cooed, and you shivered at the huskiness of his voice, rubbing your thighs together in anticipation as he blatantly traced the outline of his cock through his jeans.

“Changbin, please,” you panted, already so worked up from just kissing and feeling his hands all over your body that you were desperate for something more.

“What do you want, gorgeous?” he asked, walking slowly around to the front of the bed as you watched him with eager eyes.

“Want you to fuck me,” you said, heart thundering against your chest when he started working apart his belt, pulling down his jeans and boxers and allowing his thick cock to slap up against his abdomen, already so hard for you even though you had just started.

“Hands and knees,” Changbin ordered, and you were surprised by your quick compliance, supporting yourself on shaky limbs as you felt him climb on the bed behind you, tensing when the head of his cock grazed your wet opening. “Look at you,” Changbin rumbled, teasing you even more by running his fingers down your spine, allowing his other hand to reach around to grope your breast.

“Hurry,” you practically begged him, and it was like the metaphorical band had finally snapped, and you moaned when Changbin took a firm hold of your hips, manhandling you back into position. 

“Good girls say please,” he snarled, and your entire form light up at the abrupt command.

“P-please,” you stuttered, and there was an unholy line of curses that left your lips when he directed his cock inside, penetrating you so slowly that you could feel every inch of him until he was snug against your ass.

“Since you asked nicely,” Changbin chuckled, and you had never been so turned on before in your entire life, heart racing and blood pumping, bracing yourself against the mattress when he started thrusting, gentle at first, but then faster and faster as you egged him on, wanting him to go so hard that he split you in half around his cock. 

“Oh, fuck,” you gasped, struggling to maintain any sort of grip on the headboard. 

“You’ve been holding out on me,” Changbin purred into your ear, sounding perfectly put-together despite the fact that he was literally drilling his cock into you. “All those guys you’ve fucked before, I would think your pussy wouldn’t be this tight.”

“You’re just too big,” you managed, crying out when he grazed a sensitive spot. 

“Oh? Is that why this little pussy is leaking so much?” Changbin asked, and you had no response for him, clearly fucked out of all rational thought as his hips slapped against yours in a bruising meeting of skin-on-skin. 

It was undeniable: you had never felt this full before...like Changbin’s cock was somehow reaching all the way to your guts, and you reached down to place a hand over your stomach, imagining feeling the bulge of his cock against the distended skin.

“How does daddy feel?” Changbin whispered into your ear, and if it was possible for him to literally destroy you, then it would be from that heavily suggestive question.

“So good,” you sniffled, tears falling inhibited, leaving your face just as wet as the place where he was crushing himself into you, repeating the same motion of leaving just the tip before re-entering you with added urgency, cock forcing its way between the slick walls of your cunt. 

It was a beautiful melodic song after that (or, perhaps, hard metal would be a much better genre), the rhythm of his hips rolling against your own, hard and then softer, bruising and fleeting, stuffing your pussy on every upstroke, holding you in place by his pure strength. 

You could feel that strength everywhere, the force of his cock squelching between your pulsating walls, the way you moved up and down the bed by his control, and, when you reached back with one hand to feel his arm, the flex of his biceps as his arms worked to move you however he pleased.

“What will your mother say, Y/N?” Changbin asked. “When she finds out that her daughter fucked the man next door?”

Your mother would absolutely lose her shit if she found out that you were willingly spreading your legs for a divorced 32-year old man who had a daughter you were meant to be babysitting. She would be even more taken aback to discover that you loved and craved every second of Changbin’s cock tearing you to pieces, stretching you so good that you imagined that you would still be gaping in the morning, desperate to have him fill you again. 

“Her little girl screaming like a slut for me,” Changbin hissed. “Say my name, Y/N.”

“C-Changbin,” you whimpered, feeling him roll to a slower pace, merely grinding his hips in circles as if teasing you for the answer.

You flinched and nearly cried when he smacked the fleshy part of your ass, trying to look back over your shoulder to see what you had done wrong. “Try again,” he said, giving you a meaningful look that your poor, fucked-out brain still managed to decipher; although, you were burning in your own skin at the thought of saying it out loud....

“Daddy!” you moaned, and Changbin suddenly reached down to catch a fistful of your hair, pulling your head back and forcing your back into an even deeper arch. 

“That’s right,” he sneered. “And Daddy’s about to ruin this pussy, fuck it so full of my cum that you’ll still be feeling it when you go back home tonight to your parents and lie about what you’ve done.”

Your next moan was the loudest of the night, overwhelmed by the nasty things he was saying to you, feeling your orgasm gaining speed and traction the longer he kept fucking you, cock moving at a neck-break pace, and fingers wet and hurried over your clit.

The combined friction of his cock and fingers had you reeling, struggling to keep yourself up as he pummeled you into the mattress. Taking great liberties in the screams he was forcing out of you, realizing that if he angled his hips with one of your legs stretched higher around his hip, then he could somehow reach even deeper, kissing your cervix and threatening to steal the breath from your lungs. 

More and More. Faster and Faster. Until the breaking point was right under your nose...

The next thing you remember is a release that was so intense, you managed to black-out when it was all over, pussy fluttering around the distinct waves of pleasure, barely coherent as Changbin continued chasing his own release until he fulfilled his obscene promise to you. 

Three Weeks Later

You had gotten awfully good at keeping Changbin a secret - a dirty and scandalous whisper at that. 

For a while, your mother questioned your insistence on going over to your neighbor’s house to babysit, especially considering your history of being less than willing to interact with children.

“She’s not like most kids,” you lied, waiting for your mother to relent before grabbing whatever bag you needed consisting of your overnight clothes, trying to appear as nonchalant as possible when you walked over to Changbin’s house.

Your mother watched you, at first, standing on the porch as if ensuring that you made it the dozen or so feet separating your yard from that of your neighbor’s. Eventually, she gave up on trying to catch you doing something you weren’t supposed to, but you still kept up appearances, ringing the doorbell and taking a few steps to the side to leave enough room for the screen to rotate on its hinges, offering you the irresistible view of Changbin standing there in all his glory. 

“You’re early,” he remarked; although he seemed to take great pleasure in seeing you as early as possible.

“Is that okay?” you asked with a knowing look, and Changbin chuckled while giving you his most arrogant smirk. 

In return, you smiled back at Changbin, watching him open the door just a little bit wider in invitation.

It was all you needed before surrendering yourself to whatever delicious and mind-blowing ecstasy awaited on you the other side.  

Summer of 69 indeed.

[queenboudicaa]

From Graham Linehan from The Glinner Update grahamlinehan@substack.com

Played The Fool

Sue Donym

Sep 16

I remember my college days studying journalism, which don't seem so long ago, but actually are now, and as a young eighteen year old, a friend gives me something she says explains gender. It is Judith Butler's Gender Trouble. I have heard of this book. People treat it like The Bible. I eagerly open the book and attempt to read it.

I cannot make heads or tails of it. I conclude I simply am not smart enough or well-read enough to understand the religious revelation. I make it to page sixty before giving up, the constant mentions of ‘Althusserian’ and ‘structuralist’ and ‘reifying’ finally defeating me. I don’t feel like any of the book has actually managed to lodge itself in my head.

I give the book back to my friend, and then I pretend to everyone around me that I have read the book. No one figures me out.

When I get older, I realize they all did the same thing.

In my senior year, I win election to student government. I am to represent ‘LGBT’ people. I am proud. I am unaware I am now standing on a cliff, the ground beneath me slowly breaking. I bury my head in the sand as my position becomes increasingly precarious.

I meet with faculty during the first semester. I read through a policy. Suddenly ‘LGBT’ has morphed. It’s ‘LGBTQI+’. I don’t know what the Q and I stand for, let alone that seemingly erroneous plus sign. I am supposed to be the expert, and all these middle-aged people are looking at me to explain the youth speak which is even bedeviling I, the putative youth. I muddle through, using this surprise new acronym, and then I Google it surreptitiously in the meeting. It means ‘Queer’ and ‘Intersex’, and the plus sign appears to be decorative in nature. I wonder what the Q covers that ‘LGBT’ doesn’t, let alone the God-damned plus sign, and I wonder why ‘intersex’ needs to be included at all.

They talk enthusiastically about how everyone has a gender. There are women with penises, men with vaginas. Gender is understood to be how you feel inside. I contort my mind around this way of thinking as best I can. A man is someone who behaves like a man, and a woman is someone who behaves like a woman. That is the working definition you have, even though you paper over it with phrases like ‘identifies as.’

I don’t think about. You can’t. You are told this is how it is, how it has always been, to think otherwise is actually you replicating the kyriarchy, over and over and over again, and you nod and accept it, because you are given this set of facts and told to nod. Pseudoscience justifies it. People talk about ‘brain scans’ and ‘the wrong bodymap’, and ‘indigenous genders’. It’s all conjectural bullshit, but everyone goes along with it.

When I can’t perform the cognitive contortions, I simply don’t acknowledge contradicting evidence. To do so would be to jump off a cliff into an abyss. It is a reflexive thing, unconscious, and its origins lie in the instinct for self-preservation.

Everyone goes along with it. I am a coward, so I accept it and move on. I am twenty two years old, and I don’t know any better, and I want to trust the organizations that say they hold my best interests at heart.

Part of my role on student government was providing student-based pastoral care in my college’s LGBT center. By the time I get there, it’s morphed into the LGBTQI+ Center. I consider myself even-keeled and well-adjusted, perfect to help ‘my people’.

Many of the people that come see me have fairly normal problems. I speak to lecturers about not being homophobic, meet with faculty about LGBTQI issues, and sit through interminably boring student government meetings full of bloviating Young Democrats self-assured about their future self-importance. Increasingly, more people come to speak to me about trans issues. Walking through the center one day, someone assumes I am a ‘pre-hormones trans man’. When I correct them, and say I am a butch lesbian, they suddenly become hostile. I don’t know why, but I feel offended to my very bones about being assumed to be a man.

More and more of my fellow butches suddenly start declaring themselves to ‘truly be men.’ I don’t think about this. You’re not supposed to think about it, or question them, just accept and affirm and acknowledge and adulate their new found authenticity. I get a new package of fliers from an LGBT charity, open them up, and suddenly find that I, simply defined as ‘butch’ (forget the lesbian!) am now supposedly ‘trans’ and under the ‘trans umbrella.’ I call this ridiculous, and loudly.

Someone pulls me aside to ask why I’m being so transphobic.

I meet with a charity group. They have this young woman on staff who declares herself ‘non-binary’ and uses ‘they/them’ pronouns. She does not strike me as gay, and her entire purview of ‘LGBT’ seems to forget the first three letters. She assumes that I am a trans man. When I tell her I am a lesbian, she asks ‘are you sure? Maybe you’ll change your mind’. She then starts talking to me about her boyfriend.

I wonder why this straight girl with dyed hair is telling me what to do on gay issues. What gives her the right?

At the end of the meeting, someone I know from the charity group tells me that ‘Aiden’ is upset I forgot her pronouns. I hadn’t realized. I tell him that this dyed hair fag hag told me I’ll change my mind about being a lesbian. He says that doesn’t excuse messing up Aiden’s pronouns.

The next time I meet Aiden, she keeps calling me ‘he’. She gets upset when I get angry with her.

My student body president sends me a please explain email the next day about upsetting Aiden.

One day in the center, in walks a man in a dress. That’s what I thought in my unfiltered thoughts, before the cognitive dissonance kicks in. But the Aiden experience has taught me a lesson to not speak up. The man uses ~the magical pronouns~, ‘she/her’ and this means he is a woman. He dresses like a prostitute downtown and declares he’s a lesbian.

He says he is a trans woman. But Chloe is different from all the trans women I had met before. They would call themselves ‘gay men gone too far’, tell you hilarious stories, wingman for me at the bar, argue about ‘when Madonna went bad’, arguments that turned into handbag duels at dawn. Many of them were older, and many of them had stories about surviving in a homophobic world, surviving AIDS, dangerous johns, and the joy they felt now, that gay rights had gone somewhere. This man was very different to them.

My hair stands up on the back of my neck every time I deal with ‘Chloe’. It requires conscious effort to make sure I don’t mess up his pronouns, because my brain says that’s ‘a fucking man’, but my cognitive dissonance around the situation and my sense of self-preservation knows that if I don’t call this man a woman I will be in for it. I have seen the results - ‘Chloe’, all six feet of ‘Chloe’, screaming at a fellow trans woman, Clara, half his size, for saying ‘you’re a man honey’. Chloe himself came to me demanding I ban her from the space. I refused.

Clara stops coming into the center. I ask her why, and she says ‘those flipping transvestites, they’re not us.’ Clara never comes back to the center.

None of this thinking about Chloe’s pronouns is conscious. I feel guilty every time my thoughts use the ‘wrong pronouns’. My head is tied up in knots - not something freshman me would have considered, turning up to the center with the goal of getting laid, now trying to smile and put up with this man.

He makes every conversation in there uncomfortable. We relax when he is gone and only homosexuals are in the room.

Suddenly, my straight friends start asking if I’d ‘sleep with a trans woman’. I try laughing this off. One friend gets very insistent, and when I tell him that I wouldn’t consider someone with a dick, he starts wondering if my preferences are ‘rooted in bigotry’. I ask him if he’d sleep with a trans woman. He tells me that no, he’d prefer a woman who can have his children.

I smile and nod, and when the conversation ends, walk out of the room as fast as I can.

Chloe tells us at length about their sexual proclivities. Bondage and leather and ‘being a dom’. Chloe tells us about his lack of luck on lesbian dating apps. I keep to myself that I had ended up setting a height filter to filter out ‘the trannies.’ Nor do I tell him that me and a group of women had made fun of men like him on lesbian dating apps, swapping screenshots and Silence Of The Lambs jokes.

Soon there are more Chloes and fewer women. They all start talking about radical communism, about ‘sex work is work’, ‘cultural appropriation’, and about ‘TERFs’ and how hideous they are. One of them expounds to me at length why I shouldn’t read any feminist works from the seventies, because they hated trans women, and I wouldn’t want to hate trans women, wouldn’t I?

They all behave the same way. I keep getting reports about the Chloes harassing people in the center, particularly young lesbian women. Then there is an influx of ‘Aidens’, straight women declaring themselves to really be gay men. One of them tells me I am ‘appropriating the culture of trans men.’

One day I am in the center, and I look out the glass window of my office. There are a dozen people sitting in the common room of the center, talking animatedly. I realize none of them are lesbian or gay in the actual sense of the word. I feel uncomfortable, but I cannot articulate why I feel such discomfort.

One of the Chloes knocks on my door. This one wears a pink tube top and a pencil skirt. I am strongly reminded of Buffalo Bill. He asks me out for coffee. I decline. He asks why, as I am single. I say that I am busy that day. He tries asking for another day. I say I am playing club football that day. He keeps trying to cajole me. Eventually I dispense with the politeness and tell him I am not interested in him. He shouts at me that I am transphobic and leaves.

A few hours later, my phone blows up. His friends are calling me transphobic for not being interested in him. It’s just one date, they say. One little coffee. You might like it. You don’t know. Your last girlfriend dressed the same. You need to unlearn your genital preferences.

I think to myself my last girlfriend was a foot shorter and had a vagina, but I don’t say anything. I ignore the messages. He is allowed boundaries. I am not.

I am sitting in a class. It’s on sexual histories, a class I took to broaden my horizons from my journalism degree. I try not to think of the student loan I’ll be incurring from taking it.

Strangely enough, it is perhaps the first blow to the self-imposed contortions of my thoughts. The professor starts his lecture by pronouncing that sexual orientation is, in fact, a social construct. He explains that the word ‘homosexuality’ did not exist until the 19th century, and thus, homosexuals are a creation of repressive Victorian sexuality. I find this theory strange. I had grown up in the ‘born this way’ era, to be sure, but my homosexuality seemed biological, instinctual, basal to my very way of being. A powerful attraction to women came to me as naturally as breathing, or seeing, or farting inappropriately on the second date. Yet here was this man telling me, that in fact, my perceptions were merely constructs based on my surroundings.

It seemed strange to me. Someone from the class, notorious for asking questions, puts his hands up and asks about the Romans - you see, he is a student of the classics, and he remarks that the Romans knew of homosexuals. The professor gravely informs in that in fact the Romans were aware of a ‘behavior’, and that as ‘homosexual’ as a word did not exist at the time, there were no homosexuals. Only behaviors, that we codify and understand on a cultural basis.

This made less sense to me than before. It made even less sense to me when someone else asks about trans people. The professor remarks that ‘trans people have always existed’.

Yet homosexuals were invented by the first sexologists, rather than through self-definition? We had to have heterosexuals invent us, as other, first?

I am sitting with some gay friends, and one of them complains about the focus on trans issues when we still don’t have same-sex marriage federally yet. We talk about our disappearing spaces, and I voice that sometimes I am the only lesbian out of thirty people sitting in the LGBTQI+ student center (it had been renamed). I think of it in terms of getting laid - because suddenly all the ‘lesbians’ in the center had penises. It happened so quickly that it was easy to notice. I went to a lesbian group, and it was a sausage fest I made up an excuse to leave. The Chloes moved in, and the lesbians instantly left. I feel constantly uncomfortable, watched, stared at, envied. The Chloes all talk about their genitalia and violent pornography at length, in public, and it makes me feel gross and dirty, and I start to dislike most of them.

I post on my Tinder that I’m not into penis. I log in the next day to find out my account has been banned. Tinder never gives me a straight answer as to why I was banned.

I finish out my term on student government. I don’t run again. I’m a senior. I finish my degree and hurry off to the real world. One of the Chloes takes my place as ‘LGBTQI+ students representative’.

It is the one who tried getting me to go out on a date with him. He makes me feel uncomfortable throughout the whole handover.

I am upset, because he will destroy everything I worked for.

I go to the gay bar with some friends. But when we go, we feel like the only homosexuals in the whole god-damn bar. It’s full of people with dyed hair. A man in a dress tries grinding on me, and when I turn around and tell him no, he calls me ‘transphobic towards trans femmes’. When I declare I am a butch lesbian, people ask if I am a ‘TERF’. I don’t know what a ‘TERF’ is, other than ‘terfs’ are bad. I have been told terfs are bad, so it has to be true right? I don’t want to be a bad person.

I try going to other gay events, and suddenly I am outnumbered. Me, a few older lesbians, and some gay men huddle in a corner of spaces we once proudly called our own, as the Chloes and the Aidens declare it their own - and even worse, that they are just the same as us. It is unnerving, and they no longer feel like safe spaces for me. Gradually, we all stop going. There were no more gay people in the gay space.

I have a lesbian friend. She tells me excitedly about a first date. She meets them in a quirky coffee shop. It is a trans woman twice her size. When she tells the trans woman that she’s not interested, they lose it at her in the coffee shop, calling her a transphobic bigot and screaming and shouting and threatening to hit her.

She tells me, because she knows I don’t tell people things. But she cannot say anything in public. She’ll be transphobic. So she keeps it to herself, and this man gets to continue preying on women who think they’re safe, catfishing, coercing and abusing them.

To say otherwise gets you labelled a terf. And terfs are bad. Why are terfs bad? Don’t ask. Just accept that terfs are bad. Terfs hurt trans women, and you wouldn’t want to do that, would you?

Eventually, my friend hears of her date doing it to someone else. She writes a call out post, saying that you shouldn’t hide important facts about yourself on dating sites. She gets called a terf for saying that ‘lesbians don’t have dicks’, and being verbally abused in public was the rational response of an oppressed person to oppression. It’s a scarlet letter, and she is branded with it. I am a coward and I do not speak up in public. I hate myself. I am thinking of my personal prospects, and not my friend, and not my people. Because if I speak up, I can kiss the career I dream about goodbye. I fear that scarlet letter being branded on my forehead.

I tell my friend in private that I support her. But I daren’t say that in public.

I daren’t ask questions.

One day, I am aimlessly browsing the internet at work. I have written enough copy to cover my ass for the next few weeks. I wait until my boss leaves for the afternoon, and wait out the rest of the day mindlessly scrolling. I see a post in an LGBTQI+ students group on Facebook I’ve forgotten to leave. It’s a troll post, which is apparently ‘terf rhetoric’. The link is still there, and the comments are blowing up, united in performative outrage.

I click the link . I find myself laughing at the description of ‘men in dresses’. To these ‘terfs’, a man has a penis, and a woman has a vagina. Anyone saying otherwise is a damned fool. It seems such an easy way to think about it. I mean, what is a woman, anyway? It doesn’t seem evil, wicked or bad. It seems… sensible.

Finding out more about this new way of thinking becomes addicting. I keep my scrolling through it on my phone. I have always had a fondness for reading people being harshly critical about anything, and now I have an endless source of it, articulating things I knew instinctually but could never find the words to verbalize, could never find the courage to verbalize. I wonder if I am being radicalized - images of ISIS radicalizing fighters over the internet run through my head. But everything seems to make so much sense. I am no longer contorting my thoughts around the desires of others, but thinking freely, observationally, openly, fearlessly.

It felt like my mind had freed itself from chains, chains placed upon it all those years ago, when that naïve eighteen year old who wanted to get laid tried reading Gender Trouble.

The gunk on my mind slowly unclogged. My way of thinking suddenly changed. I was no longer denying what my eyes saw in front of me. No, now I saw things as they were. There was no more contorting my way of thought. For the first time in a long time, I felt clear-headed.

One of the links I clicked in my flurry was a link to Dr. Ray Blanchard’s paper on ‘autogynephilia’. I read it, and finally, I had an explanation. Homosexual transsexuals. And ‘autogynephiles.’ The two types of his famous and controversial typology.

‘Autogynephiles’ - men who had a sexual fetish for ‘being a woman’, a fetish for an alter-ego female self, a fetish for our bodies, our minds, our souls, our experiences. All reduced to jerk-off fodder for some blockhead man.

It explained why they were so desperate for lesbians to date them. They needed us for validating their sexual fetish. Our lives and experiences, our spaces, our dating apps, our culture, our media, our websites, every breath we took, as far as they were concerned, needed to be focused on validating them. Because otherwise, the fantasy was ruined! This straight man would not be able to jerk off over ‘being a lesbian!’. We were not people, we were non-player-characters in their video game. Actresses in pornography, extras in a film where they were the protagonist, and we were off script. We weren’t fully-formed people, with our own desires, we were things, objects, film props.

The entire gay movement, from the lesbians to the gays, to the homosexual transsexuals, reduced to nothing props in some straight man’s sexual fantasy. That’s all we were to them, ultimately.

And I was expected to go along with it?! We were all expected to go along with it?

Not only that, I had gone along with it. I had advocated for this.

What had I done?

Every moment you come close, every moment you start thinking something isn’t right, you start feeling a little foolish.

Of course this is fine. Everyone is telling me so. The media, the public, the people around you. No one voices concerns. When you have them, you don’t say anything, because no one else is, and because you are a coward.

You feel a little foolish because this is foolish. Saying some women have penises is foolish. You know it is foolish, from the minute that idiot phrase leaves your mouth, to the minute it dances across your tongue, to the minute your nerves send the signal to your larynx to make the required movements to produce the very sounds. But, you think, you are no fool.

You are no fool, you think, when someone says ‘biological women have XY chromosomes’, or that it’s okay for a man on the college track team to identify as a woman and take a place on the woman’s track team. You know that’s not right. But everyone else is going along with it, and you are no fool, and you shouldn’t feel foolish, because everyone says this is the right thing to do, the right side of history, doing right by an oppressed minority, so you go along with it.

You are frightened of realizing you are a fool. So too, is everyone around you. No one likes being played the fool, no one likes realizing they were sold a pack of lives as a naïve eighteen year old looking for other gay people. And no one plays you for a fool. And thus the dance continues, everyone one too frightened to admit that, perhaps, we are all fools, believing in something physically impossible, no different to the bible-banging megachurch attendee, with our owns chants, our own magic words, ritual knowledge, and ability to be born again. We are smart. We liberal. We are on the right side of history. We couldn’t be believing in something that isn’t scientifically backed. We’re smarter than that. We’re not fools.

And when it finally gets too much, and you drift over to the cliff’s edge, the cliff that you can see the bottom of, the cliff you know you can’t come back from, you pull away. Because to go over it would to be to admit that you’ve been played the fool. No one likes that feeling, the shame, the embarrassment, the horror, the fear. What lies over that cliff is exile, a scarlet letter, fear and hatred and nasty women who just want trans women dead.

What lies beyond that cliff is a realization that you have been used. You have been used by something greater than yourself, to push medication on children. You have been used by straight men to participate in their sexual fetish without your consent. Your entire community, rendered a jerk-off prop for some straight man over night, and you were told that objecting was ‘transphobic’. You have been used to spread homophobia beyond your comprehension, to take part in the destruction of your own community, and you were told this was right and good.

To realize this, to acknowledge it, to move on and try and forge something better, that takes true strength of character. To realize this, to deny it, and obfuscate what you are doing, that I can understand. I too, was once a coward. I too, did not want to believe what my eyes told me was sitting in front of me. That cliff is scary, and to jump off it seemingly lies nothing but social death.

But eventually something pushes you over, without your consent. You realize you have been played the fool, because finally, something so gratuitous occurs that you must. Even the greatest cowards will eventually be blown off the cliff. The music will stop, and the dance will end, and you will finally feel the shame, the embarrassment, the horror, the fear, the guilt.

Because no one likes being played for a fool.

Perhaps, then, it is best to get this over and done with now, while you still have dignity to defend.

Some details have been changed to protect the identities of those concerned.

[ahkaahshi]

1:32 AM [hirugami sachirou x reader]

pairing: hirugami sachirou x fem reader

genre: fluff with sprinkles of angst

warning(s): descriptions of catastrophic thinking/anxiety, brief mentions of death, swearing

word count: 2.5k

overview: when hirugami’s old habits of rumination come back to haunt him, there’s only one person who can bring him peace

By the time it’s 1:32 AM, Hirugami has spent no less than a half hour staring at the digitized numbers of the alarm clock cutting through the darkness, watching the precious seconds and minutes of sleep tick away before his eyes. A strange haze hangs over him, and it’s as if his ears have been stuffed with cotton, amplifying all the thoughts pounding against his skull. For a moment, there’s an eerie silence in his head, during which he can hear the leaves whispering in the breeze outside of his window, and he thinks he’s finally falling asleep, but the quietude is painfully temporary.

With a heavy sigh, he turns on his back and stares up at the ceiling, giving his thoughts a moment to surface individually, like bubbles rising to meet the daylight shining down on a body of water.

When will what I do ever be enough?

Did I really choose the right path in life?

Would I still feel this way if my life had played out differently?

When will these thoughts stop?

Rumination is nothing new to him. Despite being able to keep the habit tucked away for a majority of his high school years with both yours and Hoshiumi’s help, he finds that it often comes back to haunt him at the most unexpected times. His week at work had been as smooth as it could be given he was a busy veterinarian, yet he’d felt a knot of something—uncertainty?—forming within him over the course of the past few days. Where it had originated from he had no clue, but it was proving to be a formidable opponent now, in the late hours of the evening while the rest of the neighborhood slept.

The journal on his bedside table catches his attention, and as much as he knows he should take a moment to pen down his troubles in an attempt to put them to rest, his hands feel too heavy to move. Just making the simple trip from his chest to the table feels like the most effortful task in the universe. He does, however, find the strength and motivation to reach for his phone lying beside him where he’d tossed it in agony after realizing he was using it far too long after bedtime.

His eyelids instinctively narrow at the sudden influx of light that spills onto his face from the screen when he turns it on, even though the brightness is at its lowest setting. Lazy drags of his fingertips find him face to face with your smiling contact photo, and sluggish taps compose a more to-the-point text message than he usually sends asking if you’re still awake. Gray dots appearing, then promptly disappearing along the bottom of his screen proves that you are—and in an instant, he’s answering a call from you.

“What’s up, Sachi?” you ask, voice more chipper than he’d expect at this hour.

“Nothin’ much,” he lies with a yawn. Hearing his voice weighted so heavily with fatigue makes your heart sink in your chest. “What’re you up to?”

He can hear rustling through the phone as you readjust the blankets ensconcing you to pull them up to your shoulders again. Gazing at your glowing computer screen, you respond, “Just watching a movie,” before asking, “Everything okay?”

“Just having trouble getting to sleep, is all,” he explains, the words leaving his mouth in another exasperated groan, “So, I thought I’d talk to my favorite person if she was still awake.”

Jokingly, you comment, “I won’t tell Kourai you said that, yeah?”

He chuckles. “Thanks.”

A comfortable moment of silence passes, during which you shuffle your feet beneath the covers to warm them up and he allows his eyelids to flutter shut so he can focus his full attention on the sound of your voice when you speak again. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

“Don’t you get tired of it, (f/n)?”

“Of what, baby?”

“Of listening to me talk myself in circles when I’m like this and hearing about the same issues over and over again?”

Though there’s a hint of irritation laced in his tone, you know it’s directed at himself rather than at you. “Sachi, you can talk about whatever you want as much as you want. I know how much you keep to yourself, so it’s okay. I just want to help, since I know how exhausting it must be for you to deal with.” There’s a short pause, and you know from experience that his mind is most likely distorting your words, forming them into daggers he sinks into his own heart. “I promise, it’s okay to talk to me about it. Trust me.”

He blinks slowly, takes a deep breath, and agrees, “Okay.”

Pursing your lips, you glance around the darkness of your room until your eyes settle on the bag you’d already packed, ready to take to his house for your scheduled weekend visits. “Would it help if you could see my face?” you wonder, your mouth curling up into a small grin regardless of the fact that he can’t see it.

“Well,” he hums, dragging his long fingers through his chestnut brown hair, “you know I’d never turn down the opportunity to see my gorgeous girlfriend, but you’ll have to give me a minute to touch up my makeup.”

With a snicker, you retort, “You’ll have plenty of time to pull yourself together if I just come over instead.”

“I couldn’t ask you to do that, sweetheart. Not at this ungodly hour.”

“And you didn’t,” you reaffirm, “but I want to, so, will you let me visit a whole—” you interrupt yourself to check the time before continuing—“eight and a half hours earlier than we’d originally planned?”

“I would love that,” is his answer given without hesitation despite his initial, intrusive thought of being burdensome to you by allowing you to drive over so early in the morning.

And even though he feels himself sinking deeper and deeper into the spiral of negative ideas swirling around him like the raging waters of a whirlpool, he doesn’t regret accepting your invitation when you arrive about twenty minutes later. Upon opening the door to your car for you, he’s greeted by your arms wrapping around his neck, pulling him close for a tight hug that instantly engulfs him in a warm feeling of comfort that he can’t liken to anything else he’s ever felt before from anyone else. He holds your body flush against his—even after he’s felt your grip loosen in a signal to pull away that then tightens once more at realizing he’s not quite finished yet—and acknowledges the guilt that suddenly rises within him.

How could I ever want to know how things could’ve been different when I have her?

“Thanks for coming,” he whispers, craning his neck to press a kiss to yours before finally releasing you and slinging your bag over his shoulder. The wave of cold air that rushes between your bodies at their separation nearly makes you reach for him again, but you settle for latching onto his hand instead while the two of you make your way up to his apartment. “You made it here in record time, speed racer.”

Chuckling, you joke, “Drove like I was answering a booty call.”

“I’m truly flattered.”

The gentle smile across his lips has your heart skipping a beat in your chest but doesn’t hide the fatigue clearly present on his handsome features. His hand on your back gently ushers you inside the familiar warmth of his home when he unlocks the door, and you make a beeline to his bedroom once you’ve kicked off your shoes. A look of amusement glimmers in his eyes at how quickly you settle yourself down in his bed and bury yourself under his comforter and blankets.

As he climbs into bed beside you, your hands move to the sides of his face to pull him towards you for a gentle kiss. “What’s going on, Sachi?” you murmur after your lips part. He sits on the mattress beside you, and the sinking of the bed naturally draws you closer to one another until your arms are wrapped around his torso and his draped over your shoulders.

“Just the usual,” he sighs, fingers absentmindedly grazing the fabric of your sweater, “You know, the whole wondering if I’ve done everything right bit. My mind just loves reminding me of my mistakes and going through how I could’ve handled things differently, even if the thing in question happened, like, five years ago.”

You hum understandingly and nod, focusing on his words to keep yourself awake—which is a challenge when his body feels like a lullaby.

“I’m still hung up over that dog we couldn’t save last month. Every day, I find myself thinking of the moment when his heartbeat just… stopped. And the look in his owner’s eyes when I told her he hadn’t made it. And I just wonder, what could I have done differently to keep him alive?”

He swallows thickly and breathes out a somewhat frustrated sigh. “And I replay the arguments I’ve had with people—and with you—in my head, wondering what I could’ve done to prevent them. But I know that hindsight’s twenty-twenty and that if I’d have known the answer or what was to come beforehand then it never would’ve happened to begin with. It’s so frustrating because I know this, I’ve been able to accept mistakes and let them go, yet I still beat myself up really badly over things every now and then.”

Moving away from him slightly so you can look up at him, into his weary but kind and welcoming gaze, you place your hands on his shoulders and give him a small smile. “Baby,” you say with an affectionate squeeze to his muscles, “these shoulders of yours are so strong, but they’re meant for carrying backpacks, me when I want a piggyback ride, or any kids we may or may not have in the future; not the weight of the world.”

He tilts his head to the side so he can lower his cheek onto one of your hands, spreading heat across your skin. With the way he’s watching you so intently, you can tell how much he values your words as well as the fact that you’re here, sitting in front of him instead of gazing at him through a screen.

Slowly, speaking as the thoughts enter your mind, you assure him, “It’s okay to fuck up. How would we learn if we didn’t?” You stroke his cheek with your thumb before your fingers move to his head of waves tousled haphazardly from whatever restless sleep he’d been able to get.

“Just remind yourself of the way you usually deal with mistakes. Acknowledge them, say yeah, that happened, and it sucked ass, but I’ll do better next time, and let go of them. I mean, I know it’s way, way easier said than done, but you’re really good at it. Remember all those times in high school I came to you, freaking out over the smallest things that I’d done? Who am I kidding? I still do that; but, anyway, it’s always been you who’s helped me. Give yourself the same permission to mess up.”

Your boyfriend of many years heaves a deep sigh as he lets the truth of your statements pass through his internal filter that does a fine job, unfortunately, in this case, of sifting through only the ideas he wants to believe. Though they’re met with initial resistance that only manifests as a defense mechanism, all your words manage to remain after the process like the smallest pieces of gold hidden amongst layers and layers of sediment.

Taking your hand in his, you tell him, “There aren’t really any right or wrong decisions, and I know you know that. They’re just choices you make. Mistakes are gonna happen no matter what, but you’re gonna be okay. I know you, Hirugami Sachirou, and I know how strong and determined you are. You can do what you set your mind to and with that smile on your face some people find annoying—” the grin in question appears on his lips, making you laugh—“Yeah, that one. So, get it into that big brain of yours that you’re doing your best or I’ll have to rough you up a bit.”

“I’m shaking in my boots.”

“As you should be.”

In an instant, the heavy layers of worry that had restricted him before unravel at your definitive statement, and he’s laughing while he pulls you into his arms once more. As always, his laughter is contagious, and it’s not long before you’re doing the same, body shaking against his. “Don’t unleash your wrath on me, baby; I’ll listen, I promise. And I’ll make your favorite for breakfast tomorrow,” he concedes with a teasing tone, a yawn whisking some of his words away.

“We have a deal,” you chirp, “Now, let’s go to sleep. It’s way past your bedtime, gramps.”

He complains, “You callin’ me old?” as your bodies sink down onto the soft mattress, his head pausing in its natural course towards your chest so it can hover above yours. “’Cause I found more gray hairs than I’d like to admit when I was doing my hair yesterday, so I’m actually really self-conscious about it.”

Sticking out your lower lip in a sympathetic pout, you comment, “I said you were old, but I didn’t say that you weren’t hot.”

“So, I’ve still got it, huh?”

“You’re basically a silver fox.”

A soft hum of contentment rumbles against your lips when he presses his to them to shower you with a few, affectionate kisses. Eventually, he pulls away and pecks your chin on his way to your neck, where he nestles his head as your arms readjust to accommodate his body coming to rest against yours. “Thanks, (f/n),” he mumbles, voice suddenly heavy and lethargic compared to how it had been moments earlier, “I love you so much.”

“I love you too.”

Your fingers card through his hair softly as he takes a deep breath and slides his palm along the back of your thigh to coax it around his waist so he can move his body even closer to yours. While the two of you lie together, surrounded in warmth, feeling the gentle beating of each other’s hearts against your bodies, Hirugami finds he has nothing left to worry about—no thoughts left to disturb him. And, because his mind is finally quiet and still, the ruminating beast within him quelled by your honest words and gentle touch, sleep finally comes just as easily to him as loving you does.

when night falls masterlist

when night falls taglist (send an ask to be added!)

@why-aminot-dead​​, @yamagucji​​, @toutorii​​, @shibayamasbae​​, @tsukkisbean​​, @devlovesiwa-channn​​, @captain-shittykawa​​, @ghblh​​, @postsfromthe6​​, @omibaby​​, @deerixiie​​, @oikawoahh​​, @stormlights​​

[mandohasmyheart]

The Beskar Guard // 1.

Masterlist  AO3

Chapter One - The Landing

The Razor Crest rocked and swayed as the Mandalorian within swore at himself for braving taking on those Imperial ships without back up. Not that he would have been able to get some in time, but still, he could have alerted the locals in the surrounding areas of what laid ahead. Whatever they had hit in the back of his ship had cut off his radio, not allowing him to send out the proper beacons or alert the local landing bay that he was coming in hot.

At this point, he was simply hoping for anything other than a hostile welcoming.

With a silent prayer, he was able to land the large ship in one piece without losing too much of the engine to his left. And from the looks of his surroundings, he could make out that there were various life forms moving about the bay, but none seemed all too concerned with his arrival. Taking a moment to collect himself, he reached for his valuables while making sure he had all the appropriate weapons on hand should he need them. He was often a target on his own, despite what he was currently chasing down.

Making sure the tracking fob was tucked away, he opened the back platform and made his way out into the unknown that was Savareen. He was greeted with nothing but sand and the chittering of something to his right. When he turned, he noticed there was a line of formal looking cloaks stepped forward, almost as if they were coming from the shadows. Instinct took over and Din reached for his pistol about ready to draw it forward when a soft, level voice came through the quieting chaos around him.

“There is no need for violence,” the shadow spoke, stepping forward even more while the others stayed back. “We know why you are here and we can help.”

—-

“Ha, I win again Zoros,” you smirked at the blue alien across from you while happily leaning forward and pulling all the credits forward. “At this point, you might want to just start tossing these things my way before the game even starts.”

The alien threw down his hand of cards before standing and muttering something in his foreign language. Despite your father always harassing you about the importance of learning the languages of the galaxy, you never really felt the need. Especially if all you needed to know what how to tell someone how much you were kicking their ass at cards, the money spoke for itself.

Busying yourself with counting, you waited for your next victim to make its way.

“Y/N.”

That familiar icy tone had you frozen in your spot, the cool credit warming in your palm as you stared ahead, not daring to turn around to the look of displeasure that would have graced his face, just as it always did when he found you anywhere but the palace. “Rafan,” you said slowly, rubbing the pad of your thumb over the slick credit still in your hand.

“Your father is requesting your presence.”

Of course he was, there was only ever a reason that Father’s right hand man came looking for you in the middle of the night. “Tell him he can wait until the morning.”

All the hustle and bustle of the underground card game seemed to fall silent as you felt the firm grip of a cold metal hand on your shoulder. “I have orders to take you in with force if I need to,” his voice continued to stay calm and collected as if the two of you were just talking about the weather. “I don’t think you want me to do that in front of your new… friends.”

Stealing a look around, almost every single being that was squished in the tight quarters of the room had their eyes on the man behind you. Not that you blamed them, Rafan was the kind of man that demanded attention. He was also the reason that you knew that your cover was totally blow with this crew. There would be no card games in the future for you here.

With a sigh, you threw down the credits and stood, aggressively shrugging off the hand on your shoulder before turning to face the man of the hour. Despite having known the man your whole life, the scars that riddle the stern look on his face always caught you off guard. His dark skin drew out the blueness in his eyes, the way they reflected the sky on a warm day while the scars along his right cheek and across his left eye gave way to the fact that he had seen some things. Even more when you caught a glimpse of his mechanical hand under his long robes.

“Let’s get this show on the road,” you said with a sigh, shoving past the man and out into the cool night.

Rafan managed to stay quiet while he trailed behind you. The walk through the bazaar at this time of night was an easy one with very few citizens wanting to be caught by the things that went bump in the night, so you really didn’t need the escort back home, but knowing your father, he had probably insisted that you were not to leave his line of sight.

As the oversized palace grounds came into view, the lush green grounds standing out in the sandy bleak city, Rafan finally spoke the obvious. “This is the third time this week alone,” he said in that calm tone of his. “Your father is not pleased.”

“Is he ever with me?”

There was a humorless chuckle from him. It gave you goosebumps as it reached your ears. “When you focus on your studies and know when you should stay quiet, he is always so thrilled.”

Thankful that he could not see the large eye roll you just gave, you squeezed your mouth shut while passing through the grounds, noting that several of the guards took a glance at you and stilled briefly before shaking their heads. Something was different tonight, usually everyone was at attention and concerned about your walk of shame back to the royal chambers, but everyone seemed to be little bit more relaxed? Was that possible when your father reigned with a sense of stern control?

Entering the main hall, the air felt different. It was not the kind of thing you felt like you could explain to anyone who asked, but it swirled and tightened with every breath in your chest. It was almost growing thicker as you approached the heavy doors that led to where your father would be waiting with that bored look of disapproval at his one and only child. The one that was supposed to have spent the night studying her politics and having been tucked into her bed chambers with a guard outside the door several hours ago.

“Ready?” Your escort asked as he side stepped around you to stand before the doors.

“Ready to get it over with.”

If you didn’t know any better, you would think that he gave you a knowing smirk like he knew something you didn’t. Once more, you stomach twisted with uncertainty at the unusual behavior surrounding you, but you held it together as the sturdy doors lurched forward with a loud groan. Sure enough, your father was wide awake, his evening robes flowing across his large seat at the head of the hall as he glanced up from the book in his hands like he was just doing some light reading.

He eyed you, his tired gray eyes glancing at your choice of common robes before looking over at Rafan. “What was it tonight?”

“Just cards,” he answered disinterestedly.  

“Thank the stars,” he said sarcastically before he turned his attention back to where you were standing waiting for whatever punishment that was going to be thrown your way. “Have anything you want to say for yourself?”

That thickness still settled in your chest, so you only were able to give him a small shrug. “I was bored and couldn’t sleep.”

Despite the look of exhaustion that plagued his face, you caught the ghost of a smirk at your answer. “Naturally.”

Now it was your turn to give a small smile at your father. One of few things the two of you shared was insomnia in varying forms. He used his to catch up on the important things that came with overseeing the planet of Savareen or reading the latest political journal while you used yours to see what was so exciting outside of the palace walls - the very walls you had been confined in for the last twenty or so years of your life.

The two of you held eye contact for no more than a few seconds before he cleared his throat and gave a nod towards Rafan, silently releasing him from his babysitting duties. It was quiet as his steps echoed out the hall and the doors closed with that familiar groan so that it was just the two of you. Not knowing what to do with yourself, you focused on how dirty your hands looked in the bright lights, something that would surely get a lecture during one of your lessons tomorrow.

“You know I don’t want you sneaking out,” his voice came out gentle, but stern. “Something could happen to you.”

“But nothing did.”

He stood from his spot, those robes hanging off him heavily as he took the steps down to meet you were you stood shifting your weight back and forth on your heels. “That doesn’t mean it won’t always be the case Little One.”

You knew he was right and that he was just simply concerned for you. Ever since what had happened to your mother, he did not waste any expenses at keeping you safe - one of the many reasons you were rarely given the privilege of getting out of the palace grounds. Sometimes it was suffocating, but having known what your father had been through you couldn’t blame him. Which is why sneaking out made it so much easier than having to have fight after fight for basic freedom.

His eyes continued to roam your face as you remained silent before him. “I think it’s time for a change,” he finally said, turning away from you and nodding towards something off to the side of the hall.

“A change?” You asked, your interest suddenly peaked at your father doing something different. He was a man of habit and old ways, ones that were considered very out of date, so the mere suggest of something new excited you more than it should.

“Yes,” he nodded once more, “a much needed one I think.”

Just as you opened your mouth to inquire more, a shadow moved forward from the spot your father had been facing. A large man stepped into the light, his armor reflecting the glare was almost blinding as he moved to stand beside your father. He was much broader than your frail old man, he towered over him with the thick layers of protection. The way he carried himself, his silence and overall demeanor was all you needed to see to know just what this man was.

“A Mandalorian?” You asked in a quiet gasp, your mind running through all the varying information you had learned of them over the years. “What’s he doing here?”

His covered face tilted to the side as he looked you over, despite not being able to see what was underneath, you could feel the way his eyes raked over your frame in silence. Taking a step forward, your father answered clearly, “He’s here for you.”

Your stomach dropped. If you remembered correctly, Mandalorian’s were known bounty hunters and damned good ones at that. “Me?”

The look of terror must have been clear on your face as he gave a low chuckle and a soft smile. “No, my dear child, he is here for you as your new guard.”

“Excuse me?”

Now the man of silence stepped forward, his throat clearing before he spoke. “I’m having some ship trouble,” his voice came through the modulator and moved deep into the pit of your stomach. “I might be stuck here for awhile and while inquiring for some work, I was made aware I was needed here.”

“As my babysitter?” You asked halfway towards the Mandalorian and your father. “I don’t need a damn babysitter.”

A knowing smirk crossed over your father’s lips once more. “Oh Maker,” he said like you were still a youngling running around with a dagger, an accident waiting to happen. “You need to be kept safe.”

Something in his tone was both soft and fierce, it was the kind of thing that you knew you couldn’t argue with, despite ever fiber of your being screaming at you to do so. Squeezing your eyes shut and taking a deep breath to make sure you could sort your thoughts clearly, you thought about how the armored man said he was having ship problems, most likely meaning that he would be sticking around just long enough to get it fixed and being on his way again.

You could do that. A couple weeks tops with the bounty hunter.

“Okay,” you finally said, letting yourself relax enough to shoot the strange man a smile. “Welcome to the shit show.”

—

[bloodandpie]

Supernatural fanworks masterlist

collaborative works by @monicawoe​ and @quickreaver​

(updated 11/1/2020)

Hello lovelies, here’s our most up-to-date masterlist including our 2020 contribution to the @spneldritchbang​:

Behold the Beast, Behold the Lamb - Season 4 AU.  Sam tried to free Dean from Hell, but angels intervened and took Dean for their own purposes. Sam is determined to get Dean back and will do whatever it takes, embracing his abilities fully. The more demon blood Sam drinks, the more demons he kills, the more he changes inside and out until it’s impossible to hide his monstrous side. Ruby, Uriel and Castiel push Sam to fulfill his destiny and become his true self—the Beast of the Revelation. (gen, Sam/Ruby, 20k words)

Here is a list of all our other combined works thus far, in no particular order:

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

word-count:  - written for the 2012 spn-genbang | sequel to The Devil’s in the Details When Sam opened Lucifer’s Cage, the only thing he found inside was Lucifer’s grace – his grace. With the return of his grace, Sam remembered his past – his war against the Host, his Fall, and his plans to bring about the End. The thing is…he doesn’t want the Apocalypse anymore. He likes things the way they are, and tries everything to keep his identity a secret- especially from Dean. Of course, the four Horsemen, Hell and Heaven have other ideas.(gen, 13k words)

Last Drop -  Written for the Twisted Tropes event - Sam/Brady AU set while Sam’s at Stanford:  Sam is slowly adjusting to his new life at Stanford University. He’s left his life of hunting behind, and traded it for endless studying and tests, but he’s plagued by dreams of Dean and Dad in danger, dreams of blood and violence. Then he meets Tyson Brady, who’s always there with a smile and a cup of coffee to get Sam through all-nighters. Sam’s dreams start to fade, but just as he’s getting used to a nice normal life, he starts to develop abilities—powers he can’t control. Brady thinks they’re great, but Sam knows power never comes without a cost. (Explicit Sam/Brady, 14k words)

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Best Self - written for @alyndra9​​  for the prompt: King of Hell Sam meets Kale!Sam and they have many differences of opinion to work out. (aka the only one who knows what Sam really wants is Sam.) words by monicawoe art by @quickreaver​​! (~4k words, Explicit Sam/Sam)

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All Our Wrath and Cutting Beauty

word-count:  written for the 2011 spn-reversebang:  Sam killed Alistair, but not before Alistair reminded Dean of who and what he'd become in Hell. Dean knows Sam can take down Lilith, and he'll make damn sure Sam gets strong enough to do just that. They'll stop the Apocalypse -- together, no matter how many bodies stack up, or how much blood is spilt. (gen, boyKingSam, demonDean,11k)

MANY more, beneath the cut:

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The Two Ravens

word-count: ~3,500 | written for the sammessiah antichrist-mas fest: Your brother he is, and heir to my throne. He’ll feed on the damned and he'll turn them to bone.

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The Last Days in the Land of Nod a comic adaptation of the fic by the same name

word-count: ~2,000 | The year is 2014. The Devil is wearing his finest, the Angel is human, and the Brother protects the survivors at Camp Chitaqua.

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We have also done collaborations with other talented writers and artists, including:

He Who Fights Monsters

word-count: ~52,000 | co-written with nwspaprtaxis for the 2014 GenTeensyBang: Demonic-MMA-fighting AU of the summer between Seasons 3 and 4. Dean's dead, dragged down kicking and screaming to Hell. Sam's not dealing well. And Ruby’s got her work cut out for her.

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Burdens, Doublefold

word-count: ~70,000 written for the 2012 spn-j2-bigbang, art by @ileliberte​What if Dean left Sam at Stanford after the fire, hoping it would keep his little brother safe and make things better? Somehow, 'better' never seems to be in the Winchester Family cards. Sam gets tangled up with his ex-roommate Brady, tracking psychics, but dealing with demons is never honest business. Dean carries on until his father is put in grave danger. He is left on his own to deal, stumbling into Harvelle's Roadhouse for help, where Dean gets just a little more than he bargained for. Eventually, the brothers’ paths twist and turn their way back to each other, but the results could mean the End of Days.

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Impala’s Run

word-count: ~23,000|written for the SPN Gen Big Bang, art by adrenalineshots | Sam and Dean Singer (aka Winchester) aren’t your average young Kansas farmers. Their home is very, very far from Kansas, in fact. Many light-years worth of ‘far’. The boys may look human, but certain talents set them apart: Dean speaks the language of machines, and Sam can heal through manipulating energy. Hidden on Earth by their father, their agricultural lifestyle gets rocked when warring alien races discover where they’ve landed, and Sam and Dean are forced to make the run of their lives.

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and here some other illustrated, shorter fics of ours for your enjoyment:

Instinct (Prophet of the Lord remix)

word-count: ~3,000 | (Kevin's POV of the same prompt) After the trials, Sam doesn't get better. Kevin's theory is that it's cancer: the trials are supposed to purge him of all physical and spiritual impurities, so tuberculosis is out, and cancer is the only reason left for Sam to be coughing his lungs up when he's supposed to be the pinnacle of human perfection. Nope. Sam's falling apart because the demon blood is gone.

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Instinct

word-count: ~1,300 | After the trials, Sam doesn't get better. Kevin's theory is that it's cancer: the trials are supposed to purge him of all physical and spiritual impurities, so tuberculosis is out, and cancer is the only reason left for Sam to be coughing his lungs up when he's supposed to be the pinnacle of human perfection. Nope. Sam's falling apart because the demon blood is gone.

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Bliss in Emptiness

word-count: ~41,000 written for the 2013 spn-j2-bigbang |As a reward for her loyal service, Lucifer brings Ruby back from death. When Sam throws himself into the Cage, Ruby slows his fall — just enough to grab a hold of his body, but not his soul. Together, they hunt the ever-increasing monster population and uncover evidence that Crowley and Castiel might not be as antagonistic as they seem. As the situation unfolds, Eve's interest in Sam piques and she gives him a gift that changes the very essence of what he is.

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Pattern Recognition: A Hannibal/Supernatural fusion AU

word-count: ~33,000 | Sam and Dean split after River Pass, and their confrontation with the Horseman, War. Since Will’s escape from the Baltimore Institute for the Criminally Insane, he and Sam have been in hiding. They have a cabin, in the middle of nowhere, that keeps them off the radar; they find comfort in each other. But they can’t stay off the chessboard forever, especially not when Lucifer, wearing Hannibal Lecter as a vessel, is tearing the world apart around them.

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Bones

word-count: ~1,800 | The third trial sounded way too easy.

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In the Cards

word-count:~3,600| written for the 2012 spn-reversebang:  Fate wasn’t hers to change. She was an oracle — there to tell them what the future held in store. Nothing more, nothing less. And people were so desperate to know, even though it changed nothing.

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Diary of a Madman

word-count: ~3,500 | Lydia's newest patient, Sam Winchester, suffered from hallucinations, delusions, and regular bouts of insomnia. He also thought he was Lucifer.

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Unless Its Roots Reach Down to Hell

word-count: ~2,000 | written for the evilsam-spn fright-fest 2014: Sam spent months piecing the spell together—he'd crafted it himself out of slivers of handwritten, ancient journals—the ones even the Men of Letters kept hidden away in a man-sized curse-box on lockdown in room 26.

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[srlkiller]

Made a new tumblr that I use more often on a personal level type shit.. I guess kinda like a finsta but the tumblr version? Switching from this one to the new one for writings and the venting ect bc that was never intended to be for this tumblr page anyways... and I’ve all ive been for months it seems on here is just writing n writing or using this blog as a fucking Twitter page smh... I haven’t been present on here at all which made me question what has changed about that.. I used to come on here every night to relax and post pictures and type small lil things and laugh at memes and dumb ass posts but now.. im never ever present and on the rare instances I am present on here.. I deadass just end up either writing huge paragraphs either stressing out or complaining, ranting about negative shit in my life or chronic tweet posting little ass shit like a true dumbass and it makes my page/blog look like a dam mess not to mention.. it shows how unstable and frazzled I am mentally to over 2k people + the ghost followers who stay keeping tabs on me. I absolutely hate that this is what a tumblr I’ve had since i was in the 8th(ish) grade has turned into since it used to be my little happy place and a form of positive escapism from all the bs in my real life... but lately I’ve noticed I have brought all that negative shit straight here which has then kicked in my instinct of avoidance and disconnect. Making this new private tumblr I think I’ve found a way to seperate the two n still keep an on the go online journal to have when I need it and that is important to me bc I really need that mentally so i love that I’m able to do that. I won’t be sharing this new tumblrs url and tbh i don’t see myself doing so in the near future either.. so please don’t ask for it and I hope you can respect where I’m coming from abs understand why I’m doing this - it’s set to private anyways so only i can view it but im very proud of the url name bc a great url name is sooo hard to come by these days... but i got the exact one in the first try! im obsessed w it n i wanna start slowly integrating this new name into some new projects and ventures in the future if possible. But for now tho, the tumblr side of things for it, is 100% set to private n i Intend to keep it that way for my own sanity n mental clarity rn. Thankuuuuuu for reading if u even did.

[paths-of-my-childhood-candid]

Lover Conquers All

By: Mark Sutherland for Music Week Date: November 4th 2019 issue (published online on December 13th 2019)

She’s the world’s biggest pop star, but despite her global success, Taylor Swift is also the music industry’s greatest advocate for artists’ and songwriters’ rights. And, with a ground-breaking new record deal and a bold new album, Lover, she’s not about to stop now. Music Week meets her to talk music and business...

Around this time of year, the Taylor Swift anniversaries come at you thick and fast. Nine years since her third album, Speak Now, every note of which was written entirely by Swift, hit the shelves. Five years since she released her mould-breaking pop album, 1989, and went from the world’s biggest country star to the world’s biggest pop star overnight. Two years since her Reputation record saw her become the only musician to post four successive million-plus debut sales weeks in the United States. And so on.

But today, Swift’s mind is drawn further back, to the 13th anniversary of her debut, self-titled record, and the days when her album releases weren’t automatically accompanied by mountains of hype and enough think-pieces to sink a battleship. Her journal entries from the time - helpfully reprinted as part of the deluxe editions of her new album, Lover - reveal her as an excited, optimistic teenager, but also one with a grasp of marketing strategies and label politics way beyond her years, even if she was reluctant to actually take credit for her ideas.

“It always was and it always will be an interesting dance being a young woman in the music industry,” she smiles ruefully. “We don’t have a lot of female executives, we’re working on getting more female engineers and producers but, while we are such a drastic gender minority, it’s interesting to try and figure out how to be.”

And, of course, when Swift started out she was, as she points out, “an actual kid”.

“I was planning the release of my first album when I was 15 years old,” she reminisces. “And I was a fully gangly 15, I reminded everyone of their niece! I was in this industry in Nashville and country music, where I was making album marketing calls, but I never wanted to stand up and say, ‘Yeah, that promotions plan you just complimented my label on, I thought of that! Me and my Mom thought of that!’

“When you’re a new artist you wonder how much space you can take up and, as a woman, you wonder how much space you can take up pretty much your whole period of growing up,” she continues. “For me, growing up and knowing that I was an adult was realising that I was allowed to take up space from a marketing perspective, from a business perspective, from an opinionated perspective. And that feels a lot better than constantly trying to wonder if I’m allowed to be here.”

In the intervening years, Taylor Swift has released six further, brilliant albums, growing from country starlet to all-conquering pop behemoth along the way. She takes up “more space”, as she would put it, than any other musician on the planet: a sales and now - having belatedly embraced the format with Lover - streaming phenomenon; a powerhouse stadium performer; an award-garlanded songwriter for herself and others; and a social media giant with a combined 278 million followers across Instagram, Twitter and Facebook (which would make the Taylor Nation the fourth most populous one on earth, after China, India and the US).

But her influence on music and the music industry doesn’t end there. Because, over the years, Swift has also become a leading advocate for artists’ and songwriters’ rights, in a digital landscape that doesn’t always have such matters as a priority.

In 2015, she stood up to Apple Music over its plans to not pay artist royalties during subscribers’ three-month free trials (Apple backed down immediately). She pulled her entire catalogue from Spotify in 2014 in protest that its free tier was devaluing music, sending Daniel Ek scrambling to justify his business model. When she returned in 2017, it was a crucial fillip for the streaming service’s IPO plans.

More recently, her ground-breaking new record deal with Republic Records contained clauses not only guaranteeing her ownership of her future masters, but also ensuring Universal Music will share the spoils of its Spotify shares with its artists, without any payments counting against unrecouped balances. And when her long-time former label boss Scott Borchetta sold Big Machine to Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings, taking Swift’s first six albums with him, the star publicly called out what she saw as her “worst-case scenario” and stressed: “You deserve to own the art you make”. She may yet re-record her old songs in protest.

In short, Swift has, for a long time now, been unafraid to use her voice on industry matters, whether they pertain to her own stellar career or the thousands of other artists out there struggling to make a living.

All of which makes Swift not just the greatest star of our age, but perhaps the most important to the future development of the industry as a more artist-centric, songwriter-friendly business. Hers is still the life of the pop phenomenon - she spent today in Los Angeles doing promotion and photoshoots (or, in her words, “having people put make-up on me”) as Lover continues to build on huge critical acclaim and even huger initial sales. But now, she’s kicking back with her cats - one of whom seems determined to disrupt Music Week’s interview by “stampeding” through at every opportunity - and ready to talk business.

And for Swift, business is good. The impact of her joining streaming, and the decline of traditional album sales, may have prevented her from posting a fifth successive one million-plus sales debut, but Lover still sold more US copies (867,000) in its first week than any record since her own Reputation. It’s sold 117,513 copies to date in the UK, according to the Official Charts Company.

Even better, while Reputation - a record forged in the white heat of a social media snakestorm over her on-going feud with Kanye West - was plenty of show and rather less grow, Lover continues to reveal hidden depths. Reputation struck a sometimes curious contrast between the unrepentant warrior Swift she was showing to the outside world and the love story with British actor Joe Aiwyn that was quietly developing behind closed doors, but Lover is the sort of versatile, cohesive album that the streaming age was supposed to kill off.

It contains more than its fair share of pop bangers (You Need To Calm Down, Me!), but also some gorgeously-crafted acoustic tracks (Lover, Cornelia Street), some pithy political commentary (The Man, Miss America & The Heartbreak Prince) and the sort of musical diversions (Paper Rings’ irresistible rockabilly stomp, the childlike oddity of It’s Nice To Have A Friend) that no other pop superstar would have the sheer musical chops to attempt, let alone pull off.

“Taylor’s creative instincts as an artist and songwriter are brilliant,” says Monte Lipman, founder and CEO of Swift’s US label, Republic. “Our partnership represents a strategic alliance built on mutual respect, trust, and complete transparency. Her vision is extraordinary as she sets the tone for every campaign and initiative.”

No wonder David Joseph, chairman/CEO of her long-time UK label Virgin EMI’s parent company Universal Music UK, is thrilled with how things are going.

“Love Story was a fitting first single release for Taylor here - she’s loved the UK from day one and has engaged so much with her fans and teams,” says Joseph. “She really respects and values what’s going on here creatively. To see her go from playing the Students’ Union at King’s College to Wembley Stadium has been extraordinary. Taylor is an artist constantly striving for perfection, and with Lover - from my personal point of view, her most accomplished work to date adore working with her and whilst it’s been more than 10 years this still feels like the start.”

And today, Swift is keen to concentrate on the present and future. She has a starring role in Cats coming up (and a new song on the soundtrack, Beautiful Ghosts, co-written with Andrew Lloyd Webber) and, after a spectacularly intimate Paris launch show in September, festival dates and her own LoverFest to plan (UK shows will be revealed soon). Time, then, to tell the cats to calm down and sit down with Music Week to talk streaming, contracts and why she’s “obsessed” with the music industry...

Unlike with Reputation, most of the discussion around Lover seems to have been focused on the music... Absolutely! One of the ideas I had about this record, and something I’ve implemented into my life in the last couple of years is that I don’t like distractions. And, for a while, it felt like my life had to come with distractions from the music, whether it was tabloid fascination with my personal life or my friendships or what I was wearing. I realised in the last couple of years that, if I don’t give a window into distraction, people can’t try to look in and see something other than the music. I love that, if you really pour yourself into the idea that an album is still important and try really hard to make something that is worth people’s attention span, time and energy, that can still come across. Because we are living in an industry right now where everyone’s rushing towards taking us into a singles industry and, in some cases, it has become that. But there are still some cases where clearly the album is important to people.

Does it matter that some new artists won’t get to make albums the way you always have? It’s interesting. Five years ago I wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal and said, maybe in the next five years, we would see artists releasing music the way that they want to. I thought that each artist would start to curate what is important to them, not just from an artistic standpoint but from a marketing standpoint. It’s really interesting to see different release plans, if you look at what Drake did and then what Beyoncé does, incredible artists who have really curated what it is to drop music in their own way. We all do it differently, which is cool. As long as people dropping just singles want to be doing that, then I’m fine with it, but if it feels like a big general wave that’s being pressured by people in power, their teams or their labels, that’s not cool. But I do really hope that in the future artists have more of a say over strategy. We’re not just supposed to make art and then hand it to a team that masterminds it.

Were you worried about putting an album on streaming on release day for the first time? Well, there are ways that streaming services could really promote the [whole] album in a more incentivised way. We could have album charts on streaming. The industry follows where they can get prizes. So you have a singles chart on streaming services which is great but, if you split things up into genre charts for example, that would really incentivise people. It’s important that we keep trying to strive to make the experience better for users but also make it more interesting for artists to keep wanting to achieve. But I really did love the experience of putting the album on streaming. I loved the immediacy, I loved that people who maybe weren’t a huge diehard fan were curious and saying, ‘I wonder what this is like’ and listening to it and deciding that they liked it.

You’d resisted streaming for a long time. Have you changed your mind about the format now? I always knew that I would enjoy the aspects of streaming that make [your music] so immediately available to so many people. That’s the part of it that I unequivocally always felt really sad I was missing out on. There wasn’t ever a day when I woke up and I was like, ‘Oh, I’m really glad that multitudes of people don’t have access to my music!’ So I always knew that streaming was an incredible mechanism and model for the future but I still don’t think we have the royalties and compensation system worked out. That’s between the labels and their artists and I realised that me, to use a gross word, ‘leveraging’ what I can bring to cut a better deal for the artists at my record label was really important for me.

How big a factor were things like that in you signing to Republic/Universal? That’s important to me because that means they’re adopting some of my ideas. If they take me on as an artist that means they really thought it through. Because with me, come opinions about how we can better our industry. I’m one of the only people in the artist realm who can be loud about it. People who are on their fifth, sixth or seventh album, we’re the only ones who can speak out, because new artists and producers and writers need to work. They need to be endearing and likeable and available to their labels and streaming services at all times. It’s up to the artists who have been around for a second to say, ‘Hey guys, the producers and the writers and the artists are the ones who are making music what it is’. And we’re in a great place in music right now thanks to them. They should be going to their mailbox and feeling like they’ve got a pension plan, rather than feeling like, ‘Oh yay, I can pay half my rent this month after this No.1 song’.

Did you have more creative freedom making Lover than on your previous albums? In my previous situation, there were creative constraints, issues that we had over the years. I’ve always given 100% to projects, I always over-delivered, thinking that that generosity would be returned to me. But I ended up finding that generosity in a new situation with a new label that understands that I deserve to own what I make. That meant so much to me because it was given over to me so freely. When someone just looks at you and says ‘Yes, you deserve what you want’, after a decade or more of being told, ‘I’m not sure you deserve what you want’ - there’s a freedom that comes with that. It’s like when people find ‘the one’ they’re like, ‘It was easy, I just knew and I felt free’. All of a sudden you’re being told you’re worth exactly, no, more than what you thought you were worth. And that made me feel I could make an album that was exactly what I wanted to make. There’s an eclectic side to Lover, a confessional side, it varies from acoustic to really poppy pop, but that’s what I like to do. And, while you would never make something artistic based on something so unromantic as a contract, it was more than that. It was a group of people saying, ‘We believe in what you’re making, go make what you want to make and you deserve to own it too’.

You’re obviously not happy about what’s happened at Big Machine since you left. But will the attention mean artists don’t find themselves in this situation in the future? I hope so. That’s the only reason that I speak out about things. The fans don’t understand these things, the public isn’t being made aware. This generation has so much information available to them so I thought it was important that the fans knew what I was going through, because I knew it was going to affect every aspect of my life and I wanted them to be the first to know. And in and amongst that group, I know there are people that want to make music some day. It involves every new artist that is reading that and going, ‘Wait, that’s what I’m signing?’ They don’t have to sign stuff that’s unfair to them. If you don’t ask the right questions and you sit in front of the wrong desk in front of the wrong person, they can take everything from you.

Songwriters are in dispute with Spotify in the US over its decision to appeal the Copyright Board decision to boost songwriting royalties. Do writers need more respect? Absolutely. In terms of the power structure, the songwriters, the producers, the engineers, the people who are breathing magic into our industry, need to be listened to. They’re not being greedy. This is legitimately an industry where people are having trouble paying their bills and they’re the most talented people we have. This isn’t them sitting in their mansions going, ‘I wish this mansion was bigger and I would like a yacht please’. This is actually people who are going to work every single day. I got into writing when I was in Nashville and it was very much like what I read about the Brill Building. You would write every day, whether you were inspired or not, and in the process I met artists and writers. Somebody would walk in and someone would say, ‘Oh, he’s still getting mailbox money from that Faith Hill cut a couple of years ago, he’s set’. That’s not a thing anymore. Mailbox money is a thing of the past and we need to remember that these are the people that create the heartbeat that we’re all dancing to or crying to.

You were clearly aware of music industry machinations from a young age... Reading back on the journal entries, I forgot how obsessed I was with the industry as a teenager. I was so fascinated by how it works and how it was changing. Every part of it was interesting to me. I had drawn the stages for most of my tours a year before I went on them. That really was fun for me as a teenager! A lot of people who start out very young in music, either don’t have a say or don’t have the will to do the business side of it, but weirdly that was so much fun for me to try and learn. I had a lot of energy when I was 16!

Are you doing similar drawings for next year’s LoverFest? Definitely. And that’s why it’s still fun for me to take on a challenge like, ‘Oh, let’s just plan our own festival’. Let’s create a bill of artists and try and make it as fun as possible for the fans. I’m so intrigued by what that’s going to be like.

Finally, when we last did an interview in 2015, you said in five years’ time you wanted to be “finding complexity in happiness”. How has that worked out? That’s exactly what’s happened with this album! I think a lot of writers have the fear of stability, emotional health and happiness. Our whole careers, people make jokes about how, ‘Just wait until you meet someone nice, you’ll run out of stuff to write about’. I was talking to [Cats director] Tom Hooper about this because he said one thing his mother taught him was, ‘Don’t ever let people tell you that you can’t make art if you’re happy’. I thought that was so amazing. He’s a creator in a completely different medium but he has been subjected to that same joke over and over again that we must be miserable to create. Lover is important to me in so many ways, but it’s so imperative for me as a human being that songwriting is not tied to my own personal misery. It’s good to know that, it really is!

[redemptionbaby]

Out of Touch | Arthur/Reader

Summary: With some liquid courage, you finally decide to tell Arthur how you feel. 80′s AU.

Notes: This is what I’ve been working on. Reader has a lot of personality in this one. 3321 words.

Warnings: Very slight dubcon because you’re tipsy

Liquid sloshed in your mouth, and you barely had the wherewithal to swallow it instead of letting it flow down your chin as you swayed. This party was fierce, but the liquor was fiercer. Your breath was probably acrid by now, a grim portent to your future in the bathroom. Neon lights beat down on the crowd and illuminated choice slivers of their writhing bodies. The growl of synth and bass was invasive in a way that felt enlightening. Like the vibrations were showing you the truth. 

Not an outrageous idea, coming from someone who’d had a few too many fruity drinks instead of dancing, sulking while watching someone else sulk. You could spy Arthur from across the room, settled into a sticky couch despite having gotten numerous offers to dance, with implications of much more. His tropical shirt was a sharp contrast to the bags beneath his blue eyes, unbuttoned to his comfort and showing off some chest hair. His hair was wild with stress. The look screamed I’d love to be on vacation right now, but my circumstances have made this impossible. You could tell he stayed out of some sick obligation to the people who had told him to loosen up and have fun, other members of your shared enterprise. You stayed for him. 

Another swig of tequila sunrise put you over the edge, imbuing you with either courage or foolishness. Or perhaps, honesty. The walk across the room was in slow motion, you could feel your heels clacking against the floor, your arms impassively maneuvering out of the anonymous grasps of the mass of people. You could see from the corner of your eye as Arthur’s gaze flicked to you, but just as quickly moved again. He was trying to give you an out. Pretending not to see you so you could take the chance, come to your senses, go have fun with someone else. Someone better. Too bad you’re too wasted to be able to think of someone else. 

The way you fall onto the couch, spineless and heavy, is far from graceful. You put a hand to your face to begin combing the hair out of your eyes and Arthur can no longer hide being so utterly transfixed by you. Even when you’re sweating vodka and strawberry syrup, half illuminated by burning neon lights, he can’t help but rake his eyes over your entire form, trying to memorize it. He’d rather die than be caught trying to draw you or take a Polaroid. He’d feel like even more of a creep than he already does, but for some reason he’s convinced himself that just looking isn’t as bad. 

A calloused hand cautiously claps the back of your shoulder instinctually. 

“Y’alright there, tiger? Have a lil’ too much?” The tenderness oozes from his voice even when he’s attempting to be joking. He’s nicer than even he knows. 

“I’m— I’m ok. Just working up some nerve… I guess,” you garble out, unknowingly making his stomach sink like a rock. 

“Who’s the lucky one?”

“What?”

“The lucky, uh, person. The one yer gonna… ask for a dance from?”

“Jesus, Arthur, what is this— a highschool dance? From the fifties? Nevermind, don’t answer that.” Great job. You’re really winning him over with that one. 

“... You want me to take ya home?” Arthur would not be nearly as cute if he was a mind reader. But sometimes you wish he was. But it’s nice to know that you’re bombing this and not looking so good. 

“No, no. If I don’t say this now, it’s not gonna happen,” you take advantage of the hand on your shoulder and move in, leaning towards him with your arms slung across each other. Not your most romantic move, but that ship sailed with your sobriety. 

“I like you Arthur. I know you think you’re some unlovable old man, past his prime and destined to be alone, but you’re not,” geez, you’re a brutal drunk. “You’re the best man I know, and I’ve met plenty. You’re nice to me, to everyone, but it’s not just common decency, y’know? Even when I’m looking like I’m about to vomit my soul, you’d drive me home, and I know how much you love that car. Even when I couldn’t give a damn about myself you’re always watching, making sure I don’t trip and fall. You’re handsome and gorgeous, and so comfy to be with. I got it bad for you. And I don’t expect you to say nothin’ about it, I know you’ve been hurt before and I’m not exactly looking like Miss America right now, but I had to tell you.”

As expected, he’s stunned into silence. Like the whole world has turned off. There’s no music, no crowd, just you and him on this sweaty leather couch breathing alcohol into each other’s faces. His first instinct is to refuse you, like every other good thing that comes his way these days. But you know him, and he knows you. The selfless and self deprecating excuses to keep himself alone and in misery can’t work forever. And he’s been out with you enough to know you’re an honest drunk. Those kinda feelings can’t be faked. Not like that. Not by you. 

But Arthur is still Arthur. He wouldn’t want you to do something you’d regret. So he cradles your cheek with his palm and watches your eyelids flutter as you lean into it, hope and anticipation stinging your eyes. His lips ghost over yours before making full contact, always giving you that window of opportunity, to stop him and turn him away, to take it all back. 

But you don’t. And the relief is almost enough to make him cry. 

Your free hand moves up, tracing the color of his shirt before sliding the tips of your painted nails over the hairs on the back of his neck, feeling the shiver that wracks his spine at the intimacy— something he hasn’t known for a long time. 

His kiss is chaste. A closed mouth, not daring to try anything else, but he doesn’t have to. You can almost feel the blood beneath the skin of his lips. He parts from you, opening his eyes to reveal a joy that Arthur doesn’t usually allow himself. The slight draw of his brows revealing that he still isn’t 100% certain this moment won’t end without rejection. 

Arthur Morgan is not a man who prides himself on self reflection. He’s not a man who’s often encouraged to improve, or to change. When you’re hired muscle, just coming back alive is enough. But for once, he wants to change. You inspire him to change. So for once, he’ll take a page out of your book, and ride this feeling instead of dreading an assumed shattering of the illusion. 

“I’d still like to take ya home, sweetheart, if that’s alright with you.”

——————————-

Arthur’s apartment was surprisingly quiet for being above a club. It still had that hum from the muffled music, but it was more relaxing than annoying. He hadn’t been all over you when he walked you up, but he fumbled with his keys like he was. Sat on his bed, your face in his hands, he kissed you more desperately, like a man starved. It felt so dreamlike. You had to summon the will to pull away. 

“Arthur. Tell me how you feel about me.” 

Arthur was by no means an inarticulate man, if his journal entries were anything to go by. But he was a man of action, one not used to being asked to share his thoughts and feelings. But silence wasn’t how you operated. 

“I… I think I love you. You make me wanna be a better man, angel. You don’t look at me like a source of favors. You look at me like… like I matter. And hell, I’m startin’ to believe it.”

He grabs your chin. His thumb traces over the soft edge of your lower lip. His eyes are avoiding yours in an attempt to compose his thoughts. 

But he spoke the words before even really thinking. 

“It’s like you don’t just want me to love you. You want me to feel loved.”

“Bingo.” God you feel like such a seductive genius. And apparently you’re right to feel that way, because Arthur’s grip on your body only becomes tighter as he presses kiss after kiss, trailing down your neck. In the meantime, your hands mindlessly work at the buttons of his shirt, and he’s too busy showing his affection to feel self conscious. 

He parts from you, sliding the shirt from his back with a facade of confidence before moving his fingers to the hem of your own, looking to your eyes for silent permission before lifting. The way you shake your hair out as you finish pulling it off enraptures him. Despite, or maybe because of, your smeared makeup and the way you grimace as the collar catches on your nose, he thinks you look gorgeous. Your hair crests your head like a halo for a perfect moment, you look like a goddamned album cover. Arthur’s sure to file all this inspiration away for later. 

“I can’t believe you— way too cute to be real,” he coos quietly, bringing his hands to the base of your ribs, flushing your skin with their heat, sliding them upwards. His thumbs graze your nipples before finding confidence in their movement, making you keen in a way you might have been able to suppress if you were stone cold sober. Arthur’s eyes flick up to your heated face with a sudden look of predation— like he’s a lion and you’re a wounded gazelle. 

Funny, you’ve never seen a lion fuck a gazelle on nature documentaries. But right now it doesn’t seem all that unlikely. 

Arthur doesn’t feel any of the confidence he exudes. He feels like a teenager who’s just seen his first pair of tits in a playboy magazine he stole from under his older brother’s mattress. His practiced hands undo your shorts, smoothly sliding them down before you kick them the rest of the way off. He undoes his belt almost with panic, like if he delays any longer you’re gonna get fed up and leave. 

The both of you are in your underwear, and it feels like hours have passed since you stepped through the threshold of Arthur’s apartment, but at the same time like no time has passed at all. 

“Even when yer wasted, you can’t help lookin’ so pretty, can ya?” 

“Says the man who hasn’t shaved or combed his hair in two days, but still looks like a Hollywood Star in a western,” you tease, sticking your tongue out to punctuate it. 

“Think I’d make a good Blondie?”

“Oh please. Clint Eastwood wishes he had as much personality.” You did it again. It was like you could trick him into loving himself a little more everyday, without even trying. It makes him chuckle, and you cock your head, not thinking it was that funny.

Feeling emboldened, Arthur lightly pushes the tips of his fingers against your collar bones, urging you to lie back so he can take his sweet time getting to know your body. You comply, a little giddy and almost doll-like, as he manhandles you slightly. He sinks his fingers into the soft flesh of your thighs and delights in the sensation while spreading them, staring in reverie at your vulnerable body, as well as the wet spot forming on your panties. He leans over you while his hand does a broad swipe over the clothed lips of your pussy, and you shudder a little from the stimulus. 

Arthur leans back to take a good look while he moves the bridge of your underwear to the side, using his other hand to stroke and spread your intimate parts playfully. He pulls the elastic past the expanse of your legs, leaving you completely exposed. Not to say that Arthur himself is completely modest in his briefs— you can see the outline of his hard cock and a spot of wetness where it’s already dribbling pre-cum. He had been drinking as well, but clearly it hadn’t held him back. Before you know it he’s got your legs pinned back and his face in your crotch, pressing kisses to your mound before diving in with his tongue, worming it into you. In the middle of giving you the lickout of your life, he parts with a hard suck to your clit, face red and breathing heavy just as you are. 

“Maybe I, uh— I shoulda asked first. Sorry, darlin’, it’s just, lookin’ like you do… you could drive a man crazy.” And in fact, you just might, he thinks. You throw an eye roll and a lazy, lidded gaze his way. 

“Fella, if I look like a lady who’s gonna complain about getting her pussy ate, you got the wrong impression. I’m not gonna get in the way of art,” you trail off, flicking your gaze south, “but I do wanna see you.”

This is usually the part where Arthur would bite back with a no, you really don’t. But the way you said it was just so… sweet. And juxtaposed against the downright filthy thing you’d just said, he couldn’t help but be charmed, and believe you. 

Thought not exactly uncharacteristically, Arthur slid his briefs down silently, like he was waiting for you to say something first. His cock sprang free, hard and flushed, thick and slightly veined. It was in moments like these that it really hit you how truly and honestly Arthur didn’t see what there was to love about him. Here he kneels, between your legs, with his solid build and girthy dick, strong jaw and mana blue eyes, having just licked your soul out of your body unprompted, and he’s still nervous. About what, that his dick is small? He must have been in enough public bathrooms by now to know that isn’t true. You take it upon yourself to reassure him. 

You reach down between your legs to stroke his length, trying to seem appreciative, because you are. Thank you Arthur’s parents, and thank you God, for giving this man such a perfect dick. You’re hoping to telekinetically express this feeling to Arthur, as there’s no way in hell you’d ever say that out loud, drunk or not. Between the light drag of of your nails, gentle as can be, and your focused, starry eyes, he kinda gets what you’re trying to convey. Your paramour delicately slides your hand from him, lacing his fingers with yours and pinning your arm back to the bed. 

“Not that I don’t like bein’ in your grasp, baby, but I can think of somewhere else I’d rather be. I think you and I have waited long enough, don’tcha think?” He rumbles, almost possessed by the seductive heartbreaker persona he had in his youth. Arthur can deny it all he likes, but past a certain point, charm comes naturally to him. You take in a deep breath and steel your resolve. 

“I’m ready, Arthur. I want you.” Six words he could live on. Even if it all ended now, if you suddenly rejected him and tried to forget this ever happened, just the memory those six words could sustain him. For a time, anyway. 

He frotted against you, gathering your slick on his cock before using his unoccupied hand to prod the warm, velvety head at your entrance. He leaned down to give you a lingering kiss before continuing eye contact and gently pushing his hips forward. After a short time and a bit of stretch, his head suddenly popped its way inside, making you gasp and squeeze Arthur’s hand. He watched you carefully for any sign of pain before continuing on, letting out a low groan when you’d finally taken him all the way to the base. He angled your hips up, and you could feel his pelvis against your clit as he started shallowly thrusting. He grunted and knitted his brows together a little before cracking a smile for you. 

“Tight, real tight... Relax a little sweetheart, let me in,” you were so hyper focused on Arthur, you hadn’t realized how tense you were. You did a deep exhale, attempting to relax more, and Arthur seemed relieved, and you shot him an apologetic smile. “Not that it don’t feel good honey, but I don’t want this to be over before it’s even begun, y’know?” he glanced to the side, bashful, but not ashamed. 

His thrusts became deeper, and gradually picked up until you were getting pounded. With the steady slap of his balls against your ass, the wet sound from where the two of you were joined, and the repeated moans of Arthur and oh god and fuck AH! coming from you, you felt like this must look like some cheap, cliché porno. Arthur growled and purred against you like a beast in a rut, alternating between attacking your neck with lips and teeth, and worshipping your face with less than coordinated kisses. You wrenched your eyes open to catch his gaze. 

“Does it feel good?” You asked nervously, unusually lacking in confidence. Or maybe you just wanted to play virgin for him, seeing as he made you feel like one. Meanwhile the depth of your compassion and concern for his enjoyment nearly made Arthur blow his load right then and there. 

“Good?” He huffs out, “baby, you got no idea. Incredible, more like. Like yer pussy was made for me.” Arthur wasn’t particularly thinking about what he was saying. Then again, he never really did with you. That was part of what made loving you so easy— it just came naturally to him. 

Your lover’s hips began to stutter more and more as the both of you neared breathlessness, his free hand dipping down to put the rough pad of his thumb against your clit while he stole a glance at where the two of your were connected. 

“You close, darlin’? I am.”

“Oh god— yes, Arthur,” you gasped. 

“Then cum for me. Cum with me.”

The kiss you two shared in that moment would be one to rival the final pages of the Princess Bride in terms of pure love and passion. What an idea for roleplay that would be, huh? With your fluttering walls stroking his cock, Arthur came tumbling with you in ecstasy. His hips were completely and instinctually flush to yours, you’d never felt so full and warm in your life. 

Arthur heaved himself, sweaty and out of breath, off of you to lay at your side and stick to the sheets. For once, he didn’t even consider lighting a cigarette. He wouldn’t dare do anything to distract himself from your complete and total company in that moment. Slowed by liquor and sex, you could already feel yourself drifting off, and it didn’t escape your bedmate, who just sheepishly recalled how much you’d drank and felt a pang of guilt in the back of his head. But that was a problem for tomorrow Arthur, not tonight Arthur. Tonight Arthur just pulled the sheets of his bed up over you before begrudgingly getting out of bed, and coming back with a wet towel and a glass of water. The water was placed gently on the nightstand on your side of the bed, the towel used to clean the both of you. Luckily you had been sleepy and pliable enough not to fuss over the cold of the wet towel, but you did scrunch your nose and pout adorably. 

Arthur, laying on his side and facing you, held your face and kissed your forehead before looking at your eyes, blinking slowly, your eyes spending more time closed than open. 

“You better not forget this tomorrow morning, y’hear?”

“If I do, remind me?”

Arthur could live with that. 

[bananaofswifts]

Around this time of year, the Taylor Swift anniversaries come at you thick and fast.

Nine years since her third album, Speak Now, every note of which was written entirely by Swift, hit the shelves. Five years since she released her mould-breaking pop album, 1989, and went from the world’s biggest country star to the world’s biggest pop star overnight. Two years since her Reputation record saw her become the only musician to post four successive million-plus debut sales weeks in the United States. And so on.

But today, Swift’s mind is drawn further back, to the 13th anniversary of her debut, self-titled record, and the days when her album releases weren’t automatically accompanied by mountains of hype and enough think-pieces to sink a battleship. Her journal entries from the time – helpfully reprinted as part of the deluxe editions of her new album, Lover – reveal her as an excited, optimistic teenager, but also one with a grasp of marketing strategies and label politics way beyond her years, even if she was reluctant to actually take credit for her ideas.

“It always was and it always will be an interesting dance being a young woman in the music industry,” she smiles ruefully. “We don’t have a lot of female executives, we’re working on getting more female engineers and producers but, while we are such a drastic gender minority, it’s interesting to try and figure out how to be.”

And, of course, when Swift started out she was, as she points out, “an actual kid”.

“I was planning the release of my first album when I was 15 years old,” she reminisces. “And I was a fully gangly 15, I reminded everyone of their niece! I was in this industry in Nashville and country music, where I was making album marketing calls, but I never wanted to stand up and say, ‘Yeah, that promotions plan you just complimented my label on, I thought of that! Me and my Mom thought of that!’

“When you’re a new artist you wonder how much space you can take up and, as a woman, you wonder how much space you can take up pretty much your whole period of growing up,” she continues. “For me, growing up and knowing that I was an adult was realising that I was allowed to take up space from a marketing perspective, from a business perspective, from an opinionated perspective. And that feels a lot better than constantly trying to wonder if I’m allowed to be here.”

In the intervening years, Taylor Swift has released six further, brilliant albums, growing from country starlet to all-conquering pop behemoth along the way. She takes up “more space”, as she would put it, than any other musician on the planet: a sales and now – having belatedly embraced the format with Lover – streaming phenomenon; a powerhouse stadium performer; an award-garlanded songwriter for herself and others; and a social media giant with a combined 278 million followers across Instagram, Twitter and Facebook (which would make the Taylor Nation the fourth most populous one on earth, after China, India and the US).

But her influence on music and the music industry doesn’t end there. Because, over the years, Swift has also become a leading advocate for artists’ and songwriters’ rights, in a digital landscape that doesn’t always have such matters as a priority.

In 2015, she stood up to Apple Music over its plans to not pay artist royalties during subscribers’ three-month free trials (Apple backed down immediately). She pulled her entire catalogue from Spotify in 2014 in protest that its free tier was devaluing music, sending Daniel Ek scrambling to justify his business model. When she returned in 2017, it was a crucial fillip for the streaming service’s IPO plans.

More recently, her ground-breaking new record deal with Republic Records contained clauses not only guaranteeing her ownership of her future masters, but also ensuring Universal Music will share the spoils of its Spotify shares with its artists, without any payments counting against unrecouped balances. And when her long-time former label boss Scott Borchetta sold Big Machine to Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings, taking Swift’s first six albums with him, the star publicly called out what she saw as her “worst-case scenario” and stressed: “You deserve to own the art you make”. She may yet re-record her old songs in protest.

In short, Swift has, for a long time now, been unafraid to use her voice on industry matters, whether they pertain to her own stellar career or the thousands of other artists out there struggling to make a living.

All of which makes Swift not just the greatest star of our age, but perhaps the most important to the future development of the industry as a more artist-centric, songwriter-friendly business. Hers is still the life of the pop phenomenon – she spent today in Los Angeles doing promotion and photoshoots (or, in her words, “having people put make-up on me”) as Lover continues to build on huge critical acclaim and even huger initial sales. But now, she’s kicking back with her cats – one of whom seems determined to disrupt Music Week’s interview by “stampeding” through at every opportunity – and ready to talk business.

And for Swift, business is good. The impact of her joining streaming, and the decline of traditional album sales, may have prevented her from posting a fifth successive one million-plus sales debut, but Lover still sold more US copies (867,000) in its first week than any record since her own Reputation. It’s sold 117,513 copies to date in the UK, according to the Official Charts Company.

Even better, while Reputation – a record forged in the white heat of a social media snakestorm over her on-going feud with Kanye West – was plenty of show and rather less grow, Lover continues to reveal hidden depths. Reputation struck a sometimes curious contrast between the unrepentant warrior Swift she was showing to the outside world and the love story with British actor Joe Alwyn that was quietly developing behind closed doors, but Lover is the sort of versatile, cohesive album that the streaming age was supposed to kill off.

It contains more than its fair share of pop bangers (You Need To Calm Down, Me!), but also some gorgeously-crafted acoustic tracks (Lover, Cornelia Street), some pithy political commentary (The Man, Miss America & The Heartbreak Prince) and the sort of musical diversions (Paper Rings’ irresistible rockabilly stomp, the childlike oddity of It’s Nice To Have A Friend) that no other pop superstar would have the sheer musical chops to attempt, let alone pull off.

“Taylor’s creative instincts as an artist and songwriter are brilliant,” says Monte Lipman, founder and CEO of Swift’s US label, Republic. “Our partnership represents a strategic alliance built on mutual respect, trust, and complete transparency. Her vision is extraordinary as she sets the tone for every campaign and initiative.”

No wonder David Joseph, chairman/CEO of her long-time UK label Virgin EMI’s parent company Universal Music UK, is thrilled with how things are going.

“Love Story was a fitting first single release for Taylor here – she’s loved the UK from day one and has engaged so much with her fans and teams,” says Joseph. “She really respects and values what’s going on here creatively. To see her go from playing the Students’ Union at King’s College to Wembley Stadium has been extraordinary. Taylor is an artist constantly striving for perfection, and with Lover – from my personal point of view, her most accomplished work to date – her songwriting has gone to a new level. I adore working with her and whilst it’s been more than 10 years this still feels like the start.”

And today, Swift is keen to concentrate on the present and future. She has a starring role in Cats coming up (and a new song on the soundtrack, Beautiful Ghosts, co-written with Andrew Lloyd Webber) and, after a spectacularly intimate Paris launch show in September, festival dates and her own LoverFest to plan (UK shows will be revealed soon). Time, then, to tell the cats to calm down and sit down with Music Week to talk streaming, contracts and why she’s “obsessed” with the music industry…

Unlike with Reputation, most of the discussion around Lover seems to have been focused on the music…

“Absolutely! One of the ideas I had about this record, and something I’ve implemented into my life in the last couple of years is that I don’t like distractions. And, for a while, it felt like my life had to come with distractions from the music, whether it was tabloid fascination with my personal life or my friendships or what I was wearing. I realised in the last couple of years that, if I don’t give a window into distraction, people can’t try to look in and see something other than the music. I love that, if you really pour yourself into the idea that an album is still important and try really hard to make something that is worth people’s attention span, time and energy, that can still come across. Because we are living in an industry right now where everyone’s rushing towards taking us into a singles industry and, in some cases, it has become that. But there are still some cases where clearly the album is important to people.”

Does it matter that some new artists won’t get to make albums the way you always have?

“It’s interesting. Five years ago I wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal and said, maybe in the next five years, we would see artists releasing music the way that they want to. I thought that each artist would start to curate what is important to them, not just from an artistic standpoint but from a marketing standpoint. It’s really interesting to see different release plans, if you look at what Drake did and then what Beyoncé does, incredible artists who have really curated what it is to drop music in their own way. We all do it differently, which is cool. As long as people dropping just singles want to be doing that, then I’m fine with it, but if it feels like a big general wave that’s being pressured by people in power, their teams or their labels, that’s not cool. But I do really hope that in the future artists have more of a say over strategy. We’re not just supposed to make art and then hand it to a team that masterminds it.”

Were you worried about putting an album on streaming on release day for the first time?

“Well, there are ways that streaming services could really promote the [whole] album in a more incentivised way. We could have album charts on streaming. The industry follows where they can get prizes. So you have a singles chart on streaming services which is great but, if you split things up into genre charts for example, that would really incentivise people. It’s important that we keep trying to strive to make the experience better for users but also make it more interesting for artists to keep wanting to achieve. But I really did love the experience of putting the album on streaming. I loved the immediacy, I loved that people who maybe weren’t a huge diehard fan were curious and saying, ‘I wonder what this is like’ and listening to it and deciding that they liked it.”

You’d resisted streaming for a long time. Have you changed your mind about the format now?

“I always knew that I would enjoy the aspects of streaming that make [your music] so immediately available to so many people. That’s the part of it that I unequivocally always felt really sad I was missing out on. There wasn’t ever a day when I woke up and I was like, ‘Oh, I’m really glad that multitudes of people don’t have access to my music!’ So I always knew that streaming was an incredible mechanism and model for the future but I still don’t think we have the royalties and compensation system worked out. That’s between the labels and their artists and I realised that me, to use a gross word, ‘leveraging’ what I can bring to cut a better deal for the artists at my record label was really important for me.”

How big a factor were things like that in you signing to Republic/Universal?

“That’s important to me because that means they’re adopting some of my ideas. If they take me on as an artist that means they really thought it through. Because with me, come opinions about how we can better our industry. I’m one of the only people in the artist realm who can be loud about it. People who are on their fifth, sixth or seventh album, we’re the only ones who can speak out, because new artists and producers and writers need to work. They need to be endearing and likeable and available to their labels and streaming services at all times. It’s up to the artists who have been around for a second to say, ‘Hey guys, the producers and the writers and the artists are the ones who are making music what it is’. And we’re in a great place in music right now thanks to them. They should be going to their mailbox and feeling like they’ve got a pension plan, rather than feeling like, ‘Oh yay, I can pay half my rent this month after this No.1 song’.”

Did you have more creative freedom making Lover than on your previous albums?

“In my previous situation, there were creative constraints, issues that we had over the years. I’ve always given 100% to projects, I always over-delivered, thinking that that generosity would be returned to me. But I ended up finding that generosity in a new situation with a new label that understands that I deserve to own what I make. That meant so much to me because it was given over to me so freely. When someone just looks at you and says ‘Yes, you deserve what you want’, after a decade or more of being told, ‘I’m not sure you deserve what you want’ – there’s a freedom that comes with that. It’s like when people find ‘the one’ they’re like, ‘It was easy, I just knew and I felt free’. All of a sudden you’re being told you’re worth exactly, no, more than what you thought you were worth. And that made me feel I could make an album that was exactly what I wanted to make. There’s an eclectic side to Lover, a confessional side, it varies from acoustic to really poppy pop, but that’s what I like to do. And, while you would never make something artistic based on something so unromantic as a contract, it was more than that. It was a group of people saying, ‘We believe in what you’re making, go make what you want to make and you deserve to own it too’.”

You’re obviously not happy about what’s happened at Big Machine since you left. But will the attention mean artists don’t find themselves in this situation in the future?

“I hope so. That’s the only reason that I speak out about things. The fans don’t understand these things, the public isn’t being made aware. This generation has so much information available to them so I thought it was important that the fans knew what I was going through, because I knew it was going to affect every aspect of my life and I wanted them to be the first to know. And in and amongst that group, I know there are people that want to make music some day. It involves every new artist that is reading that and going, ‘Wait, that’s what I’m signing?’ They don’t have to sign stuff that’s unfair to them. If you don’t ask the right questions and you sit in front of the wrong desk in front of the wrong person, they can take everything from you.”

Songwriters are in dispute with Spotify in the US over its decision to appeal the Copyright Board decision to boost songwriting royalties. Do writers need more respect?

“Absolutely. In terms of the power structure, the songwriters, the producers, the engineers, the people who are breathing magic into our industry, need to be listened to. They’re not being greedy. This is legitimately an industry where people are having trouble paying their bills and they’re the most talented people we have. This isn’t them sitting in their mansions going, ‘I wish this mansion was bigger and I would like a yacht please’. This is actually people who are going to work every single day. I got into writing when I was in Nashville and it was very much like what I read about the Brill Building. You would write every day, whether you were inspired or not, and in the process I met artists and writers. Somebody would walk in and someone would say, ‘Oh, he’s still getting mailbox money from that Faith Hill cut a couple of years ago, he’s set’. That’s not a thing anymore. Mailbox money is a thing of the past and we need to remember that these are the people that create the heartbeat that we’re all dancing to or crying to.”

You were clearly aware of music industry machinations from a young age…

“Reading back on the journal entries, I forgot how obsessed I was with the industry as a teenager. I was so fascinated by how it works and how it was changing. Every part of it was interesting to me. I had drawn the stages for most of my tours a year before I went on them. That really was fun for me as a teenager! A lot of people who start out very young in music, either don’t have a say or don’t have the will to do the business side of it, but weirdly that was so much fun for me to try and learn. I had a lot of energy when I was 16!”

Are you doing similar drawings for next year’s LoverFest?

“Definitely. And that’s why it’s still fun for me to take on a challenge like, ‘Oh, let’s just plan our own festival’. Let’s create a bill of artists and try and make it as fun as possible for the fans. I’m so intrigued by what that’s going to be like.”

Finally, when we last did an interview in 2015, you said in five years’ time you wanted to be “finding complexity in happiness”. How has that worked out?

“That’s exactly what’s happened with this album! I think a lot of writers have the fear of stability, emotional health and happiness. Our whole careers, people make jokes about how, ‘Just wait until you meet someone nice, you’ll run out of stuff to write about’. I was talking to [Cats director] Tom Hooper about this because he said one thing his mother taught him was, ‘Don’t ever let people tell you that you can’t make art if you’re happy’. I thought that was so amazing. He’s a creator in a completely different medium but he has been subjected to that same joke over and over again that we must be miserable to create. Lover is important to me in so many ways, but it’s so imperative for me as a human being that songwriting is not tied to my own personal misery. It’s good to know that, it really is!”

[memcjo]

Day 16 of my Olicity Fanfiction Recommendations is upon us!!  DAY 16, people!  WOW!  SO many amazing authors to enjoy!! @smoakmonster​ is today’s featured author. I really enjoy her one shots from A-Z but also her multi-chapter fics. Please check some of these out!!

Dear Felicity~ A series of letters Oliver journals to Felicity from prison.

We Three Queens~ A look into three Christmas adventures of Oliver, Felicity, and William. Spoilers for 6x09.

The Queen Identity~ He wakes up half-dead on a fishing vessel in the North China Sea with no name and no memory of how he got there or why his body is coated in scars. Except he knows things. He acts on instinct and can snap somebody’s neck. He’s fluent in six languages–at least, the six he’s used so far. And he knows how to hunt. He just doesn’t know who’s hunting him. The implant in his hip sends him to a bank account; and the bank account finally gives him a name that bears no meaning: Oliver Queen. At the U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong, Oliver meets and befriends fellow traveler Felicity. Together, they go on the run and scour Asia, following the trail of clues that leads to his past...and their future.

You Can’t Outrun Yourself~ Rookie Agent Felicity Smoak slowly but surely becomes acclimated to life as a CIA operative. Her greatest fear? It's not interrogating terrorists or stopping bomb attacks. No, her greatest struggle is that she's developing feelings for one Agent Oliver Queen, who also happens to be her handler.

Starling Holiday~ European Princess Felicity takes off one night during her holiday in Starling City. When a sedative she took from her doctor kicks in, however, she falls asleep on a park bench and is found by an American reporter, Oliver Queen, who takes her back to his apartment for safety. Once Oliver realizes who Felicity is, he seeks to get an exclusive interview with her. But romance grows, changing everything.

How do I Love Thee: A-Z ~ A series of standalones. The first few are in response to prompts for the Olicity Hiatus Fic-A-Thon. Additional one-shots and/or AUs may show up on this list in the future.

Sad Beautiful Tragic~ Various Olicity short stories and drabbles. Title from Taylor Swift song.

As always, stay safe!

[love-fireflysong]

Deals and Autographs

hey, who here wants to read a stupid headcanon combining kids practicing their signature for when they inevitably become famous and writing your crush’s last name with your first just to see how it looks? if so, do i have the fic for you!

Ashley has a secret. One she will never, ever tell anyone even on pain of death. The secret is this: buried deep in a drawer filed with random bits and bobs is a journal. The journal in question is fairly innocuous looking all things considered, there’s a baby pug on the front cover wearing a pair of glasses and sleeping on top of a book, but it’s whats inside that can never see the light of day. The first few hundred or so pages are embarrassing enough on their own, filled with the unpolished writings of a twelve year-old’s imaginations, but it’s the last couple of pages in question that terrify her. So that being said, it’s not that it’s super traumatic or anything, or even that she’s murdered someone, or one that will cause everyone she loves and cares for to hate and shun her. It’s just super embarrassing, and the idea of anyone —especially Chris— finding out is enough to make her want to die.

So to the surprise of absolutely no one, Josh is the one who finds out about it.

She is thirteen years-old when the event occurs. It had been a fairly run of the mill day too, Josh and Chris were over to hang out and work on some homework together in her bedroom. Chris had excused himself to use the washroom and Ashley went to go and grab some more snacks from the kitchen, leaving Josh in her room. Alone. And unsupervised. You know, just the two things that Josh should never, ever be. She had just walked in with her arms loaded with a few cans of pop and a couple bags of chips only to be greeted by the sight of her best friend with the journal in question. And, of course, open to the last page. She’s pretty sure it’s not possible, but she swears in the moment that all color had drained from her face at the same time her ears were burning with the power of her blush.

She immediately dropped everything onto her bed with a shriek and dived at Josh frantically, trying to rip the thing from his hands, but seeing as he’s almost two years older than her and nearly two and a half feet taller, he held it out of reach above her head easily.

“GIve it back, give it back!” Before he can say a word, she takes her elbow and jams it right into the center of his gut as hard as she can, grabbing the book the instant he bends down with a grunt of pain.

“Holy shit, Connor wasn’t kidding about how goddamned sharp your elbows are when you accidentally hit him in gym, was he? That actually hurt!”

Ashley ignores him and holds the journal tightly to her chest, feeling the color return to her face as she just glowers furiously at him. “What the hell are you doing going through my stuff?!”

Josh shrugs. “My pen died and I forgot my pencil case at school, so I was trying to find one of yours. But more importantly,” he glances at the book held protectively in her arms, and she instinctively turns her body to hide it further. “I gotta say, I think you’re a little young to be thinking of marriage, Ash.”

She know’s her face is now red from the absolute embarrassment flooding her entire body. He had seen it, of course Josh had seen it. Her shame and dream all in one. A couple of the final pages were taken up by her name in the cursive forms of her signature, written not quite a year ago when she first got the notebook from Chris as a Christmas present. They had been practice as the autograph she was sure to need once she became a best-selling author. But sprinkled throughout, written in the same loopy font of her signature, was not the name Ashley Brown.

But the name Ashley Hartley.

“I can only wonder what exactly our Mr. Hartley would think if he knew that this existed! That you felt for him so strongly!”

“You can’t! You have to promise me that you won’t tell him!”

“And why would I do that? There’s absolutely nothing in this for me.”

Thinking quickly, she blurts out the first thing on her mind, “I’ll do your English homework for the rest of the school year.”

“Hmmm, tempting, but no. It would arise too much suspicion if my homework was suddenly getting A’s but I was still getting C’s on my tests.”

“I’ll buy you lunch everyday for a month.”

“A little better, but still weak.”

“I’ll tell Sam that you have a crush on her.”

“Oh ho! Threats now! I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“...I’ll tell Emily that you have crush on her.”

Josh’s eyes narrow but his smile widens. “Now that’s just playing dirty! But still a no.” He hums and haws for a moment, and Ashley starts to fidget nervously. Chris is going to get back from the bathroom any minute now and it’s bad enough that Josh read her journal, if Chris reads it then she’s literally going to die. “I got it.” He turns a wide, toothy grin on her and oh boy, her entire body seizes in fight-or-flight response. “You gotta swear that you’ll name your first born kid after me.”

What.

Ashley could feel the instant her mind did that whole record-scratch, freeze frame effect and she just stared at Josh like he had just lost his entire goddamned mind.

“You’ve lost your goddamned mind.”

“No, no. It’s perfect! I don’t tell Chris and all you have to do is just name your kid after me. Everyone wins!”

“I’m not naming my kid after you! What if’ it’s a girl?”

“Hey, Joshua is a perfectly serviceable unisex name. It’ll be fine.”

“It is not! I am not gonna name my hypothetical daughter Joshua!”

“Fine, fine. Joshlynn then. But that’s my final offer. Either you agree to this, or I tell Chris that you want to marry him and have his little nerdy babies who are not named Joshua in any way, shape, or form.”

Ashley thinks about this for a second, tossing around which is worse: her entirely hypothetical child being cursed with the knowledge of being named after Josh Washington or Chris finding out that she’s had a crush on him since, well, practically forever. The sound of a toilet flushing down the hall decides for her.

“Deal.” She sticks out her hand and shakes Josh’s, and hurriedly moves to throw her journal back into the drawer where it belongs, never to see the light of day again, just as Chris walks back into her bedroom. Her secret safe, but a part of her wonders at what cost, and what she has just sentenced her poor, poor unborn child to.

The next time the journal is pulled out, Chris is the one who finds it.

The two of them have been dating for a couple of years now (and doing all the things that dating people do, like going on dates, and kissing, and holding hands, and kissing), a fact that continues to bring a smile to her face every time she thinks about it. In fact, the entire reason he finds it to begin with is because he’s helping her pack up her room so she can move into an apartment with him at the end of the month. It’s been nearly seven years now since she last thought of the journal, so she’s almost surprised when he pulls the thing out of the drawer and shows it to her.

“Oh wow, you still have this?”

Ashley laughs, shocked that he even recognizes it. “Have you ever known me to throw out a book of any kind? I can’t believe you even remember it honestly.”

“Well yeah, course I do. I spent ages in that stupid store trying to find you the perfect present. Think I was more worried about this then I was buying for my parents.” He opens it to a random page and reads a couple of sentences on a page before bursting out laughing. “Wow. This is almost painful to read. Pre-teen you was clearly the literary genius of our time.”

Ashley laughs again, getting off of her bed and placing the snow globe in her hands into the partially full box next to her. “Oh shut up. I still bet it’s better than anything you’ve written in the past —oh, I don’t know— year.” She takes is back from him and flips through a couple of more pages before wincing. “Oh, eyuck. You’re not wrong. This is bad. Maybe I should just toss this one.”

Scandalized, Chris rips it back from her and holds it protectively to him, looking at her like she had just kicked the pug on the front of the journal. “Don’t you dare! This is a priceless antique. Proof that even the most illustrious of authors start from the awkward grammar stages of youth.” He ignores her eye-roll and returns to flipping through more pages, and laughs harder. “Wow, you practically filled the entire thing too. The last few pages are just you practicing your autograph.”

“What can I say, a future best-selling author like myself needs an easily recognizable signature. It’s practically a requirement.” She waits for his comeback, but is instead greeted with the image of him staring down at the pages with a slack-jawed look of amazement.

That’s when she finally remembers exactly why this particular notebook was shoved in a drawer and not on her shelf with the others. And the solemn deal made in this bedroom nearly seven years ago. It wasn’t a secret anymore that the two of them had liked each other for some time, they had just never talked about how long that time had been. And this wasn’t exactly the way she had intended on him finding out.

“Listen, Chris, I can explain—”

He didn’t give her a chance to finish, he let the notebook fall through his fingers and drop to the floor as he advanced towards her, tangling his hand into her hair and kissing her for everything he was worth. She reacted just as quickly, wrapping her arms around his neck to hold him closer and sighing happily into his mouth. Ashley could feel herself falling backwards onto the bed behind her and let it happen, deepening the kiss when Chris let his hand start to climb underneath her shirt and rest just underneath her bra, the feeling of his hand on her bare stomach sending immensely pleasurable shivers up her spine as it always did.  

Slowly, he pulled backwards and just looked at her as though he was seeing her for the first time, and it was the best sight he could have wished for. “So,” his voice was rough and the warmth that had begun to pool in her stomach was almost unbearable. “Ashley Hartley, huh?”

Ashley bit her lip and she could see his eyes drawn to it. “Be honest with me, what do you think of the name Joshlynn?” 

[gffa]

You know how some fandoms just keep piling on the fic, so you’re like, “I’ll just wait one more day, so I can read a few more and include them on the list!” and then two weeks later it’s still happening and you finally have to go, “NO, I HAVE TO YELL ABOUT THIS NOW, NOT IN ANOTHER MONTH.” and yet people still keep posting fic? That’s me yelling at STAR WARS fandom about how much wonderful fic there is and that I cannot keep up with it and it’s the best problem to have! Because, oh, this collection has some incredible fic, so many of them that I want to shove right at people and yell at them to read this amazing thing, and how brilliant this fandom is. STAR WARS FIC RECS: TIME TRAVEL RECS: ✦ Legacy by myrlendi (thehistorygeek), luke & leia & obi-wan & anakin & ahsoka & cast, time travel, 105k wip    Three months after the Battle of Endor, Luke Skywalker goes in search of a rumoured Jedi temple in a secluded part of the Mid Rim. He finds within the temple nothing but a strange artifact, which unexpectedly brings him much closer to the Jedi of old than he ever thought he would be. ✦ Let’s Try This Again by Nny11, obi-wan & ahsoka & anakin & cast, time travel, 33.5k wip    Anakin’s life is shaken up when he finds a small togrutan toddler hiding in a dingy alleyway, after all, she did create a Force bond with him and is apparently his future Padawan. Wizard! PREQUELS RECS: ✦ A Constituency of One by victoria_p (musesfool), padme & obi-wan & anakin & cast, 3.7k    Padmé is the one who figures it out. ✦ And the Void Answered Back by Ghost_Owl, obi-wan & anakin & rey & finn & poe & ben & yoda & maz & han & cast, force ghosts, 84.9k wip    (Follows the Force ghosts of Anakin, Obi Wan, and friends getting dragged kicking and screaming through the events of The Force Awakens) ✦ Supreme Chancellor Obi-Wan Kenobi by stonefreeak, obi-wan & anakin & padme & cody & bail & palpatine & cast, 22.1k wip    By an old Republic law, all members of the Jedi High Council are senators in the Galactic Senate, and can thus be voted in as chancellor. ✦ Dooku Deserves a Break by nny11, dooku & qui-gon & yoda & obi-wan & anakin & ahsoka & luke & cast, 1k    Master, it’s time now. The voice was faint and familiar, and it burned. It’s soothing sound eating away at everything. Pain, pain, pain- It went ignored. ✦ The Past Remains by otherhawk, obi-wan & anakin & cody & mace & plo & adi & depa & cast, 15.6k    The war drags on leaving trauma and destruction in its wake. After a bereaved Master is accused of harming his padawan, Obi-Wan is sent to talk to her, dredging up memories of his own past. ✦ Not the same fate as mine by liv_k, obi-wan & anakin, 2.6k    Excerpts from the journal of a newly minted Jedi Knight. ✦ perfect in so many ways by victoria_p (musesfool), padme/sabe, nsfw, 1k    Padmé knows she’s been selfish. ✦ untitled by stonefreeak, obi-wan & bant, 1k    When Bant steps into Obi-Wan’s room in the Halls, it’s like a balm to his nerves. She’s one of his oldest friends, and her familiar presence is so very soothing. He really has missed her, they see each other too rarely these days, what with the war. ✦ Villain of a Different Story by HiNerdsItsCat (HiLarpItsCat), obi-wan/satine & anakin & cast, 73.2k wip    It turns out that there are some perks to being the Chosen One: Anakin finds himself transported five years into the past—only to discover that it isn’t his past, but a completely different one. One where Obi-Wan Kenobi left the Jedi Order, where Qui-Gon Jinn survived… and where Anakin Skywalker is the galaxy’s greatest villain. ✦ Accidental Baby Acquisition: The Obi-Wan Kenobi Way by kitkatkaylie, obi-wan & anakin & qui-gon & cast, 8.5k wip    Shmi Skywalker was desperate, so when she saw a Jedi in the marketplace of Mos Espa she did something that many would judge her for if they knew but just as many would understand. ✦ A Personal Touch by DragonHoardsBooks, obi-wan & anakin, 6.2k    New jedi padawan Anakin Skywalker realizes that there is more to being a jedi then he tought. Discovering a completely new culture will take time and effort, but maybe he’ll make some friends along the way. ✦ untitled by stonefreeak, mace & cast, 1.2k    “News, I have, from the investigation into the altered mission reports from the Senate.” ✦ untitled by stonefreeak, anakin & ahsoka & background obi-wan & cast, 2.4k    The past and the present blurs together, Anakin can hardly breathe through it. Too many thoughts crowd inside his head and the more he tries to sort himself out, the more of the past he remembers and the more fears for the future it brings up. ✦ Passing by Nny11, ahsoka/barriss & luminara & anakin, modern au, 18.3k    Barriss claims she’s dating Ahsoka, Ahsoka agrees to go along with it, and both of them spend the next 6 months worrying the other will discover their crush on the other. Nobody is really surprised about this fact besides them. ✦ Jedi of Light by Sannah, obi-wan/anakin/padme & mace & yoda & plo & even & jocasta & cast, 9.4k wip    Out of irritation with the war and with permission from the Council, several talk show hosts create a show that airs weekly about the Jedi. They name the show *Jedi of Light,* and go around following Jedi and asking them questions. OBI-WAN/ANAKIN RECS: ✦ And yet, somehow, a happier ending by liv_k, obi-wan/anakin (pre-slash?), ~1k    He had always known that there would be no happy ending waiting for them at the end of the road. And yet, somehow, he felt that this was happier than what could have been. ✦ The Missing Part by Nightstar269, obi-wan/anakin & ahsoka & palpatine, NSFW, modern au (of sorts), 109.3k wip    Anakin Skywalker, a student of mechanical engineering, has always felt that his life was lacking something, a feeling that was made much worse with the deaths of his mother first, and of the woman he loved some time later. Still haunted by the pain and heartbreak, he tries to go on with his life as well as he can. When an initiative of the director of the university has the students attending the classes of another degree so as to enrich their knowledge, he will meet someone that will turn his world upside down. ✦ my push and my shove by victoria_p (musesfool), obi-wan/anakin/padme, nsfw, crossdressing, d/s, 1.8k    There wasn’t much Anakin wouldn’t do to make Padmé and Obi-Wan happy. ✦ Collar by bell (belldreams), obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, d/s, 9.4k    “You have to be sure, Anakin. Once we’re in, we’re in.” “I think I can handle being your sub, Obi-Wan.“ ✦ Shaak Herding for the Troubled and Lonely by protos_metazu_ison (larkspyt), obi-wan/anakin & anakin/padme & ahsoka & plo & cast, au, 34.3k wip    Disgraced Master Obi-Wan Kenobi was content to live out the rest of his life as a hermit until the Prime Minister appeared at his door, begging him to attend the Skywalker clan’s annual party. ✦ Solstice by lilyconrad, obi-wan/anakin & ahsoka & cast, 8.9k wip    After the events of Equinox, Obi-Wan and Anakin find themselves back at war with enemies both seen and unseen. ✦ Home by little_tales, obi-wan/anakin & qui-gon & shmi & cast, time travel, 6.4k wip    Time travel fix-it story with a bit of a twist. After his death, Obi-Wan wakes up on Tatooine, in the body of his padawan self. But instead of trying to prevent Anakin from Falling, he decides to change the future by stopping Qui-Gon from ever meeting the little Ani. ✦ Tidbits by SingManyFaces, obi-wan/anakin, ~1k    Things go a little bit differently when Anakin sees Obi-Wan off on his mission to Utapau. ✦ untitled by subskywalker, obi-wan/anakin + implied obi-wan/anakin/padme, nsfw, 1.6k    (The easiest way to kill someone? You just need to kill what they love the most.) ✦ 36 Questions by kenobiapologist, obi-wan/anakin + background anakin/padme + implied obi-wan/anakin/padme, 30.7k    In a study by psychologist Arthur Aron, they found that strangers would fall in love when asked to answer 36 questions together. ✦ Let’s Be Wrong Together by bluebell26, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, 3.1k    Anakin Skywalker had a dark secret. He’s been in love with his Master for several years now. He is attached. Yes, attached. It was bad, he shouldn’t, but what his former Master didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. ✦ Untouchable by Blu3sc0rpion, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, non-con issues/themes, 64k wip    A mission on Kraysiss-Two takes a turn for the worse. Ancient Sith designs work against both Obi-wan and Anakin as they desperately try to find a way off world. In the throes of confusion their relationship begins to spiral. They might be able to escape, but can they ever truly be rescued? ✦ Seed by bell (belldreams), obi-wan/anakin + anakin/padme, NSFW, 44k    When Anakin falls prey to a lethal poison, Obi-Wan has no choice but use all his resources to heal him– no matter how reluctant he is in administering the antidote. ✦ Miasma by lilyconrad, obi-wan/anakin & cody & rex & & kix & cast, dark themes, 20.6k    Obi-Wan never believed his best friend and lover Anakin would die first. But he has. ✦ [iasip music] Anakin Explains to His Darkest Timeline Son That He’s Gay by destiny919, obi-wan/anakin & luke & ahsoka & cast, 2.2k    "Ah, Padawan,” said Qui-Gon. “The crux of the matter lies in that our world is prey to the spectre of compulsory heterosexuality.” Obi-Wan gasped, horrified. “No! Not that!” ✦ Swear On It by dirkygoodness, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, mild d/s undertones, 6.5k    He squeezes his eyes shut tight against it and holds his breath for a moment, trying to get himself under control. Tonight it doesn’t seem to be working, though, because the images of people he knows and loves hurt and bloody and dead just won’t get out of his mind. ✦ Unexpected by planetary_retrograde, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, 2.1k    Obi-Wan’s first instinct when Anakin is hiding something is to help. ✦ Hidden Treasures by SingManyFaces, obi-wan/anakin, modern au, 3.9k    Ben Kenobi doesn’t look like the type to have tattoos, and Anakin badly wants to see his hidden ink. ✦ He Is the Chosen One by wearethewitches, obi-wan/anakin & cast, fem!anakin, 17.8k    Darth Vader dies. Then, Anakin Skywalker wakes in the body of a dead slave woman in 31 BBY, a year before the Occupation of Naboo. ORIGINAL TRILOGY RECS: ✦ Maker by ambiguously, luke & r2-d2 & c-3po, 1.8k    Threepio’s processor has an error. Luke and Artoo have to figure out why. ✦ does it bother anyone else that someone else has your name? by suzukiblu, multiple pairings across all of star wars, soulmate marks, 2.9k    Drabble series about various soulmates in the Star Wars universe. ✦ brittle, break by glorious_clio, leia & luke & han & chewbacca & rieekan & cast, 8.2k    They’re not on Hoth very long, but Leia stands still long enough for it to leave an impression on her. A very cold sort of impression. ✦ sand into glass by glorious_clio, luke & cliegg & owen & beru, 2.2k    AU where Cliegg is around for Luke’s arrival at the Lars homestead. Luke has a lot to learn from his grandfather. REBELS RECS: ✦ The Starry Crown by bedlamsbard, ezra & kanan & sabine & zeb & chopper & cast, 8.8k wip    Months after Ezra Bridger vanished into the depths of the mysterious Jedi temple on Lothal, he reappears – with Kanan Jarrus in tow. All Hera Syndulla and the other surviving members of the Ghost crew want is to retrieve their missing teammates, but a Jedi who can raise the dead is a prize too great for the Empire to pass up. Palpatine will do anything to get Ezra and the secrets he carries – secrets that may allow the Emperor to control reality itself. FULL DETAILS + RECS HERE!